Fish and cats are a weird pair to be friends. Well, in truth, they can never be friends! But when you are both a fish and cat lover, it’s hard to stop yourself from getting both of your favorite pets in your house. But is it really safe to have an aquarium when you already have a cat in your house?
Well, not always. Generally, cats are quite curious animals who will love to chase your fish all around the aquarium or worse, will try to catch the fish by putting their paw in the water, finally, breaking the aquarium.
But your heart will always want to keep both of them in your house, won’t it? So, what you can do is to prepare everything with the most possible care to keep these pets away from each other for as much as possible.
What Will Happen?
Since I already mentioned that keeping an aquarium with a cat in the house is not a wise decision, you will have to know about the risks of it.
Though cats hate water, they can still get attracted to the aquarium watching those little things swimming around. Moreover, big aquariums with colorful LED lights are a great source of entertainment for them. At first, it might get funny watching your cat having an interest in your fish but it will turn dangerous pretty soon.
Besides, cats love to scratch the aquarium glass for either fun or to shoo away the fish. This will only end with either the glass (or specially acrylic tanks) getting damaged or scratched. Not to mention the possibilities of your cat jumping into the tank or knocking it over.
Now that you know that it’s not very safe to get an aquarium with a cat at home, you should try to prevent harmful situations if you decide to get one anyway.
How To Keep The Fish And Cat Away From Each Other?
Fish and cats kind of act like they’re each other’s mortal enemies. So, it’s a wise decision to keep these two pets at a great distance.
1. Place a Lid on the Tank:
While your cat can torture your fish in many ways, you won’t want them to have direct contact with the fish. Also, if anyhow it manages to catch any of your fishes, you know what might happen next!
The main way your cat can ever have a connection is with the top of the aquarium from where it will try to catch your fish with its paw in the water.
So, you can prevent that from happening by using an extra lid or buying a fish aquarium with a lid. These lids come with small holes on the top allowing your fish to have enough air while keeping the cat’s paw away.
2. Correct Location:
An easy way to keep both your favorite pets away from each other is to put the aquarium in the correct location. The correct location means the place where your cat can never reach not even by jumping. A place difficult for your cat to reach will also work since it will give you enough time to get them separated.
If you can’t find a place unreachable for your cat, try placing hard objects on the way so it would take a lot of time for it to reach there. However, if your cat just enjoys watching the fish from a distance, you have nothing much to worry about.
3. Avoid any kind of Launchpads:
After finding a nice location, you might be happy knowing that your cat can’t reach there with a single jump. But you should know, cats can get to much higher places by hopping onto the furniture or anything near the place to help them jump there.
This is a very important thing you should keep in mind before placing the fish tank anywhere. Just make sure there isn’t anything nearby the aquarium that your cat can use to jump there. And if you are unable to find a place like that, place little obstacles on the way so that your cat doesn’t even try the first steps.
4. Keep Your Cat’s Stuff Away:
You should never even think about putting any of your cat’s belongings near the aquarium. It’s obvious that the cat will try to go there more often than usual. So, anything near the tank especially cat beds, litter tray, or scratching posts should be moved away to a distant place for your aquarium’s safety.
Keeping the cat’s accessories away from the tank will make it uninterested in a few days and it will start to play separately in its own place.
5. Distracting the cat:
Another way of keeping your cat away from the fish aquarium is to keep it distracted. Give it anything that will catch its attention for a long time like toys and satisfy its interests. Especially, a cat tree can be a great way of distracting and keeping them busy with something they will love spending time with.
However, there’s no need to spend a lot of money on this thing. Try to find something budget-friendly.
Final Words
We understand how hard it might be to keep both cat and a fish aquarium in the house without the cat trying to get a hold of your small pets. But the best thing you can do is to prepare everything possible to keep them away from contacting each other in any way.
The techniques we mentioned above are some of the proven ways of having a peaceful environment between your fish and cat in the same house. But you can also use some of your own ways to keep them separated.
Some cats are really quiet and they just want to watch your fish swim around from a distance. If your cat is one of that kind, you won’t have to worry much about getting it away from the fish. Just make sure that they don’t try to get too near the tank. You know how curiosity can grow eventually!
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