Edit: also try wiping the table with eucaliptis oil as they often don't like the smell on their paws / mouth.
I've had cats for the past forty years, and they make awesome pets, in my opinion.
Yeah. As you're obviously aware, this cat will require extensive and persistent training. Older animals that are surrendered to a shelter are not-infrequently difficult to train or deal with.
People who are -for whatever reason- unable to properly train their animal will often surrender their poorly-socialized and poorly-trained creature to a shelter, where it becomes someone else's problem. It kinda sounds like you ended up with one of those kitties.
Anyway. Do you have a cat tree or similar carpeted furniture that is -explicitly- for the cat to claw, chew, and otherwise demolish? If you don't, you definitely should get one or more such items. They're kinda pricey, but:
1) Cats with claws are going to scratch things. It's what they do, it's impossible to stop, and it pleases them to scratch things.
2) Cat trees/furniture are almost always less expensive than nice human furniture. :)
For our cats, occasionally spreading catnip on new cat furniture and encouraging them when they scratched it rather than the human furniture was quite enough to make them stop scratching couches and the like. (You might go so far as to scratch the cat furniture with your hands in view of your cat while making whatever noises of approval you make when the cat does something good.)
Once a cat gets it into its head that that cat furniture is its furniture, you don't need to go to great lengths to convince the cat to scratch on the new furniture when it inevitably becomes time to replace the worn-out stuff.
Cat vomit is an unavoidable part of cat ownership. If the cat vomit doesn't nearly always contain a hairball, it's entirely possible that the cat's food doesn't agree with its digestive system. As our cats aged, food that was once perfectly acceptable started to disagree with them, and we went through a multi-month search to find foods that agreed with them.
Sadly, I have no advice for the out-of-litterbox shitting and pissing. I've never had to box train an old cat. :( If a cat is unhappy or angry, it may choose to fail to use its litterbox. So, the problem could be more than just the wrong type of litter. But -really- I have no freaking clue. :(
Best of luck with your cat. I do hope that you can figure out what he needs to be happy, comfortable, and keep all his shit contained in his shitbox. :)
> I think you may be a bad
> cat _owner_ from the
> sound of it
And if the cat was treated poorly and dumped at a shelter, it's the victim.
It's extremely reasonable to conclude that the cat's owner(s) are the problem. It just happened to be caused by a previous owner in this case, which was key missing context.
However, you totally can train them. It's certainly easier when they are younger, and unfortunately you can't stop them from doing something in the future if you don't catch them doing it (preferably early on in the behavior.)
It is definitely worth seriously considering the pros/cons of owning a pet before you get one. I have two cats, and I am stuck with them for the next ~15-20 years.
http://i.imgur.com/WCbGRZx.jpg
It looks terrible but at least it will last as long as the laptop.
If Apple were to make a charger with steel-braided armor cable to prevent animals from chewing it, there would be a 250 reply thread on HN about how obnoxiously heavy and inflexible Apple chargers are. And some guy's cat story about how it destroyed the charger anyway.
B) I have several dell charging cables and they're just slightly more substantial and don't feel bulky at all. In fact if anything the cord from the charger to the wall is slight overkill.
C) There is a solution well inbetween that steelseries uses for their mice:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/reviewimages/steelseries-kinzu...
I'm not sure exactly what it's made from, but cat has not even gotten close to damaging it yet. Not saying it needs to be on every cable, but for a $75 cable it would be nice.