Gosh I thouht all of these years that San grow from the roots, and not the tips. I learned something to day. I would remove the damaged leaves, either toss them or replant. I repot mine every three years leaving only three perfect growths to a pot. I have also found out in the past 30 years that they can break out of anything that you pot them in, so don't buy expensive pots for them. They love to fill the pot and be crowded. I am so glad that your plant has grown so beautiful. Cats won't eat anything that can harm them, and as far as I know rubbing against a leaf will do no damage to the cat, cut the base of those nasty looking leaves all the way to the base, or remmove them by taking the whole cluster out and cutting out the unnessary growth completely from the rest. Get the cats their own scrathing post. Norma

My neighbor's 15# cat ripped out our front screen door once and my 19 yr old 7# female cat tore out after him. They looked like a whirlwind cartoon as I frantically tried to disengage them. This same little cat of mine broke the same doublehung window twice in her earlier years, I saw her do it while running around the house. (Luckily the same window each time, I was not happy about losing the original old wavy glass.) Now this same cat is around 21 years old and still slips out any opening, inc loose screen. All my cats are indoor-only but this one continues to saunter out like a fool, given the opportunity. We also have a 14# 1 year old and he actually sets up shop at certain casement windows he's seen open during remodeling and works hard to push them open. Occasionally one of the kitchen guys closes a window without locking it and the cat gets "lucky" dropping down over stone steps leading down to a concrete sidewalk. I'm forever checking these locks. I'd say make any screen/window twice as secure as you think you need. A determined cat with time on her hands may very well surprise you one day.

My cat is trained not to go on the counters. It takes some real patience on your part, though. A real "cat person" loaned me a book called "how to make your cat do what you want" when I got my cat, since I had never had one before. I learned a few critical things from that book: 1. Cats do not respond well to negative reinforcement from you. If you yell or chastise them when they do something, they will do it because it gets your attention, and sometimes out of anger or spite or just to demonstrate that you are NOT the boss of THEM. 2.Positive reinforcement SHOULD come from you so the cat associates you with the positive rather than the negative. 3. Negative reinforcement should NOT be associated with you and should happen both when you are there and when you are not. 4. If you punish a cat every time they do something, they only learn not to do it when you are around. Several methods were suggested, but what worked for me was the marbles. Cats hate loud noises. You put a handful of marbles in cleaned out tin cans and line the counter with them. Leave them there all the time that you are not working at the counter. Space them so the cat can not jump up onto the counter between them without knocking them over. If the cat jumps on the counter he/she will knock over the can of marbles onto the floor which will cause a loud noise as the marbles fall and startle the cat. The scat mats would also work, but you would need to cover the counters with them and that would be rather expensive. I would not want to spray stuff on my counters that is not food worthy, so check out what is in those sprays and how they smell and make sure they will not be absorbed into the stone or damage the resin or discolor the stone. I lived with those cans of marbles for about 6 months, but my cat is now 9 yrs old and never goes on the counters. I confess to having knocked them over more than she did. I found the easiest way to live with them is to just push the cans to the back of the counter while you are working in the kitchen so you are less likely to knock them over yourself, and then just slide them forward again when you are done. When she did jump up on the kitchen table a few times after I stopped using the cans, I would laugh, pick her up off the table and put her on the floor, and tell her "that's not for kitties". If she jumped up again, I laughed, held her up so I was looking at her on "eye level" and said the same thing, then kissed her on the head and placed her back on the floor. If I had to I would have put the cans back rather than yell at her, a good decision as I learned later with my couch. She doesn't go on the table now 9 years later, either. However, I wasn't so smart with the couch and yelled at her and shooed her away from it. To this day, if I am ignoring her and she wants to get my attention, she will go over to the couch and start to run her claws over it! I am not sure if it is out of print now or not, but even if it is, if you can get a used copy off eBay or somewhere, it is worth the price. It is esp useful if you are starting with a kitten, because the learned behaviors will be with that cat (and YOU) for many years. It might take longer for cats that are older and were used to getting up there, but a new kitchen and a new countertop are a great time to alter the behavior. The cat is aware that things have changed and this is new stuff. He/She might as well learn that the new counters just aren't as friendly as the old ones. :) Sue

My very first cats were indoor pets, my apartment companions. Happy as clams, they lived for many happy, active years. Later on, we moved into a more rural environment and we opted for a cat door and an indoor/outdoor life for our cats. They all appeared to be very happy, actually spending most of their time inside whenever we were home. They loved the outdoors, no question. And so began years of testing for and treating numerous diseases, plus tapeworms, hookworms, roundworms, heartworms, fleas, ticks, cat scratch illness, and ringworm (fungus). Makes me a little ill when I think of it. Gosh, all of the visitors, young and old, that I exposed to these issues. I developed ringworm on two occasions, and had a long, debilitating bout of cat scratch illness on another. This was before the days of the powerful chemical treatments we now shower our outdoor pets with to prevent a few of those infestations so we had to fight flea infestations on the cats and in the home......even more exposure to chemicals. But if cats are eating birds and rodents (and who knows what else), they WILL end up with an assortment of internal parasites as well as other stuff that can infect their owners. You cannot vaccinate against everything. Be mindful, too, that humans can host some of these internal worms.