Tattle Tale Pet Training Vibration Alarm Title

My badly food obsessed cat loves to slam her automatic feeder (LOUD) against the wall to dislodge extra snacks. She has wised up enough to do it when I am not in the room... i.e., in the middle of the night. This is the only feeder I've found she hasn't succeeded in breaking into, so I didn't want to buy a new one and risk it not working, but nothing has been able to curb this habit. Somehow, this alarm is just sensitive enough (on the low setting and with a washcloth underneath) that it doesn't go off when the feeder dispenses food, but activates the second she starts tampering with it. It is such a relief to leave the alarm to do its job instead of engaging in a nightly battle of wills with a 7 lb housecat. I do feel bad that it frightens her, but this has been a years-long war for us and I have lost every battle. I think this is a great solution for problem behaviors that nothing else will fix. The alarm is extremely shrill and very loud up close, but surprisingly tolerable from the next room over. I will say it is hard to turn the unit off without triggering the alarm. I can't say anything about battery life as this is only day two, but the thing seems pretty sturdy.

I got this because all the other tricks I googled to keep my cats off the kitchen counter were a bust, and I think this has been the best "pet repellent" I've found! It's been the cheapest & most effective! The device feels the vibrations on the counter to set the alarm off & for the most part, it's accurate. However the sensitivity level is confusing to me at times because I'll set something down on the opposite end of the counter & it'll go off but my kitten (8lbs) will get on the counter right beside it and it won't go off-- keep in mind I have granite counter tops and she's not jumping from the ground, but from the bar stool so that may be why!! I do think it's really a hit or miss depending on your pet though. My older cat is ~12lbs & when he gets on the counter it goes off so maybe he just walks heavier than my younger one? Either way, my older cat was the main problem and the alarm scared the crap out of him the first couple times and he hasn't gotten back on since! Overall I'm very very happy I found this alarm & I'm probably gonna order additional ones for other locations!

Our situation: we don't mind our pets being on our furniture, but we *do* mind them peeing on it. One of our current foster cats sometimes clashes with a couple of our own cats, and in response, one cat (still not sure who) had been peeing on the couch on our sun porch. Since no type or amount of cleaner or pheromone spray seemed to keep them from re-soiling the same area, we decided that (at least until the instigator foster gets adopted & things are a bit calmer) they'd just have to stay off of the couch, period. To this end, I ordered the Tattle Tale and 2 Stay Off! mats at the same time. The Stay Off! mats had better reviews overall, but they were also rather small and would be difficult to conceal on some surfaces (like kitchen counters) if we chose to use them elsewhere later. So I figured I'd also order the Tattle Tale for good measure. We put them both on the couch, with the Stay Off! mats concealed under a couch cover. In terms of how they work, the Stay Off! mats are, at least in theory, a better idea for keeping pets off of a couch. The "alarm" sounds on the Stay Off! mats when they are stepped on...when your pet actually tries to get onto the off-limit surface. The Tattle Tale senses vibrations, which doesn't necessarily mean that there's a cat climbing onto the couch. It also goes off if the couch gets bumped, which happens quite a bit. This isn't necessarily a *bad* thing. For example, if you're having a problem with your cats clawing your couch, vigorous clawing may also trigger the "alarm". But then it also happens when, say, cats are playing and just happen to collide with the couch. Using the lower of the 2 sensitivity settings might fix this, but out of concern that it might also make it less effective at detecting when a cat jumps onto the couch, I leave it on the higher setting anyway. But in terms of effectiveness, the Tattle Tales wins by a long shot. Its sensitivity might cause it to false-alarm more often, but the Stay Off! mats just aren't sensitive enough (at least for cats). It might be different with a larger pet, or if the pet was leaping directly onto the mat, but the cats don't always take a flying leap onto the couch. Moving slowly and stepping lightly, the cats easily step directly onto the Stay Off! mats without setting them off. Only if they're running and / or land hard will they actually set off the Stay Off! mats. The Tattle Tale is much more sensitive. The smallest and lightest of our fosters (who only weighs about 6 lbs) can occasionally sneak onto the couch without setting the Tattle Tale off, but only if she's very slow and delicate about it. Because it detects vibrations, the Tattle Tale also isn't limited by the surface area of a mat. Not counting the arms, our couch is close to 6' long. Our Tattle Tale is positioned at one end of our couch where we'd had problems with inappropriate elimination, but the alarm still sounds if a cat hops onto the opposite end. And then there's the "alarm" sound itself. To be fair, some cats frighten easily while others are pretty unflappable, so it would be difficult if not impossible to come up with a single alarm sound that would be effective on every single cat in the world. Still, there's a world of difference between the 2 products. The sound that comes from the Tattle Tale is much louder and much higher pitched. When we first got the 2 products, we played around with them both a bit individually, for the sake of comparison. Our cats just didn't find the Stay Off! mat's alarm to be an especially compelling reason to get off the couch. They'd look right at it as it was beeping but wouldn't move. As for the Tattle Tale, it isn't so much that they're scared by the sound as it is that 1) they want to get away from that awful, loud, high pitched sound, and 2) that they know they're busted. I may order a couple more Tattle Tales to try out on the kitchen counter. I'd definitely buy again!

I was very hopeful that this product would keep my two cats off our dining room table. Nothing has worked in the past -- neither sprays of water, nor aluminum foil, nor scolding them, nor citrus smells -- nothing. Here's what happened when I set up the Tattle Tale alarm. Cat 1 jumps on the table. The alarm (which lasts only 2 seconds and is relatively quiet -- my microwave beep is louder than this) sounded. Cat 1 is on guard at first, then curious. He walks over to it. The "alarm" remains silent, even though it's supposed to be sensitive to any and all movement. Cat 1 swipes at alarm. It sounds and stops. He swats again, and it sounds and stops again. Then, he walks around the table for a while while the alarm sits silently. Finally, he curls up for a nap on one of our placemats about 4 inches away from it. Cat number 2, intrigued by the sound, hops up on the table. The alarm sounds. She goes over to it. Although she's sniffing it, prancing around the table, and stretching, it doesn't sound again. So she curls up for a nap as well. And there I am, watching the "Tattle Tale" oversee the afternoon siesta of the two felines it was supposed to scare off. My guess is that it's not sensitive to most of the vibrations caused by cats' paws and that the 2-second, relatively soft sound of the alarm is not frightening enough to scare cats away. Even cats more skittish than mine, I imagine, could easily tolerate the benign beep eminating from this device. Don't waste your money. I burned $6 on shipping and now have to pay a 25% restocking fee. And the cats are still on the table.

Mr. Kai is a tuxedo cat who, despite having a regularly cleaned litter box, would rather prefer pooping in the bathroom sink. Getting tired of being thwarted anytime I forgot to leave a half inch of water in the sink, I decided to order this as a new strategy. Despite Mr. Kai's lack of grace, the gentle thud he makes when jumping up on the sink doesn't always set the alarm off when it is set on low sensitivity. If I set it on high, the alarm will greet me at 6am when I merely flip on the light switch to brush my teeth. When the alarm does go off, he seems to be not too bothered by it. You can tell it annoys him, but once the duration of the beep is over, there's nothing more to stop him from doing his naughty deed. Instead, this alarm seems to be more what it's name suggests. It's a tattle tale. When I hear it, it's my signal to drop what I'm going and run to the bathroom to hiss at him. On it's own, it doesn't do much in the way of training, however I've also now ordered the Ssscat, which is basically a motion sensor switch attached to an air can. Now, when I hear Tattle Tale at night, it's because Mr. Kai had just been startled by one of his worst fears. He hates when I dust my computer with canned air and this Ssscat thing is basically the same noise - or exactly the same noise when you swap the expensive refills out with regular actual canned air. In summary, this is more alarm-like than training device, especially when it comes to cats and dogs. I recommend using this in addition to something more effective in training.

Did not work well. My dogs are small . Never did work.

Any cat person knows that cats are notoriously hard to train - they're not wired for it like dogs. Best to simply give them more attractive alternatives, figure out what they need. In most cases that's worked for us (and trust me that we spoil and pamper our cats), but in this case we have 6 different kinds of scratchers and a bunch of perches in the family room but the cats decided they like to scratch the furniture. I know that at least one cat was using the chairs for scratching because I found a couple of claw marks on the seats before buying these alarms. It seems like the Tattle Tale is our solution. I have 3 chairs that I want to keep them off of. These chairs swivel, so they move pretty easily, and they're on a hard solid floor, so simply walking past doesn't vibrate them. This was a better option for this situation than using the air spraying products. I set one Tattle Tale on each chair seat, and any touch of the chair sets it off (but not simply walking past). The alarm is a 2-3 second ear-piercing beep. I haven't seen a cat set one off, but I'm sure it would scare them away. It makes me want to run. But that's good. Since this isn't in our living room where we spend a lot of time, we're not usually around to watch for (and redirect) undesirable cat behavior. It's been a week and we haven't heard the cats set off the alarms (and when we're home & awake, we would hear it), so that tells me that they're not touching the chairs. Plus there are no new claw marks. Maybe they set them off when we were asleep or at work. (I should have set up the video camera to see.) The important thing is the end result: the chairs seem to be safe. I may always leave these alarms on the chairs, instead of presuming at some point that the cats are trained. They're small and simple to remove when we're using the room, so it doesn't bother me to leave them (and I like everything to look just so). I hedged between 4 & 5 stars because they might have had a volume control, but that's being a little picky. If I need something for near my bedroom at night, I'd have to go with the air spray device (like Jackson Galaxy uses). I wouldn't have been willing to pay any more for these (and some are charging more). Even at 22 this got pricey buying a few - it would have been nice if someone had a volume discount.

Seems to be an individual thing in what works for different cats, as well as the rules different owners have for them. This didn't product do much to deter my cat, and was a pain in the rear for the humans. However, it would probably work for some cats, as well as have some other uses. I don't like my cat to walk on the kitchen counters (I don't let humans do that either!!). Totally grosses me out. Cats walk around in their litter boxes! Mine doesn't bury her poop, which is a totally different story. I don't want to have to disinfect my counters every time I cook, just in case the cat's been up there. Only want to clean counters after cooking. We don't care if the cat gets on the couch or beds. We like to snuggle with the cat on that furniture in my house. To each his/her own. However, IF this sound bothers your cat, it would work well for training him/her to stay off of furniture or counter, or stay away from certain areas. The problem for us was that the darn thing goes off every time you come near it, even on the low setting. If you turn it off while working in the kitchen, it makes that sound when you turn it back on, plus you have to remember to do that. If all you're doing is getting something to drink in the kitchen, then it's just annoying. We would hear it going off during the night and sometimes when no one is in the room. Things are still knocked off the counter, spilled, etc. Don't know how long she stays up there, but it's still happening just as frequently. I'll share one thing that's helped me, because I've learned a lot of ideas from others sharing them in reviews. This cat suddenly started getting on the kitchen counter a lot more often than she had in the past. When there's a behavior change in anybody or anything, it's good to try to figure out what's been different since the time the behavior changed. I figured out that when I started putting her cat food into a pretty cookie jar instead of a sealed canister is around the time when the counter surfing amped up. Easy solution: the food went back to a sealed container. I'm still looking for an effective way to keep her from ever getting on the counters, but it's happening a lot less when she can't smell the food there. Wouldn't you be willing to climb a counter if you were hungry and smelled a luscious steak up there? This product could be useful for other times when you want a warning or deterrent. Might work to deter toddlers from going where you don't want them to go. However, it's NOT loud enough to alert you to them getting to something dangerous, such as out the door to a pool or getting into something poisonous. More like getting a cookie between meals, or alerting you to them getting up after a nap.