Q: My 14-year-old male cat keeps pulling up threads on new carpet on my previously wood stairs. Please help! What can I do or use to prevent this from continuing? I have been clipping his nails regularly. I have aluminum foil over the first few steps. I have a big piece of cardboard blocking the stair entry. Somehow he gets on them anyway, and I will notice a new pull. I am beside myself!

A: From the cat’s point of view, your steps were newly carpeted just for his enjoyment! He has no idea the fabric on the once-barren steps, which feels so good to him, can possibly have monetary value. He has no concept of money at all.

There are many ways to dissuade him from using his claws on the carpet in addition to the methods you have used. I have found that putting strips of double-sided tape on the edges of the steps works very well and is more convenient than aluminum foil and cardboard.

No matter what you do, however, he will do his best to go around those repellents if he has no other place to use his claws. Get one of those big cat trees that have shelves covered with carpet.

Place this near the stairs and make it as attractive to him as you have made the stairs unattractive with the tape and such. The best way to do this is by spreading loose catnip all over the shelves.

Now when he walks over to the stairs to use his claws and finds them unattractive, he will see and smell the cat tree as an alternative, walk away from the steps and use his claws on the carpeting of the cat tree. Thus you have tricked him into making your idea his idea.

As time goes on and he no longer thinks of the carpeted steps as an option, you can remove the tape and other barriers.

Q: I grew catnip in my garden this year with the idea of drying it in the fall and making my own cat toys. However, I do not think I will ever get to do this, as my cats spend a great part of the day rolling around in the catnip bed and crushing all the plants. Plus, in the morning the plants are all crushed again by the stray cats in my neighborhood.

Can my cats overdose from all this catnip? They seem fine when they are out of the bed, but while they are rolling and lounging in it, they certainly look like they are in another world.

If you think that their visits to the catnip bed should be restricted, then I will build a cage around it — but they seem to enjoy it so.

A: You really do not need to worry here. The element in catnip that cats enjoy so much never enters their bloodstream when they inhale it or eat it. The reaction you see is merely in response to the smell and taste. It is not a narcotic at all, and any cat can snap out of a catnip high whenever it chooses to do so.

Catnip is in the mint family, and, like most mint plants, it grows quickly, so even though your cats seem to be abusing it a bit, I am sure you will have plenty to dry in the fall for your cats’ winter enjoyment. So I would advise you to continue to allow them to enjoy themselves this summer in the catnip bed.

Q: I have lived here for 22 years now and I have never had a rabbit in my backyard, but just this week, I have seen a wild cottontail rabbit in my backyard every morning. I am quite pleased with this, as I feed the wild birds and chipmunks and enjoy my backyard being considered a sanctuary by them. What kind of food can I put out to encourage this rabbit to stay and have a family in my yard?

A: The numbers of Eastern cottontail rabbits are declining in the Northeast, so your desire to encourage their population growth is admirable. However, diet is not the issue. Rabbits mainly eat grass and there is no lack of that in suburbia.

Of course, they occasionally will munch vegetables in a garden or newly planted flowers, but such intrusions are easily preventable with low fences.

If you really want to help the populations of cottontails, what they most need is cover. Manicured yards just do not have the cover these animals need, and that is why they are on a decline. Consider planting thickets of shrubs such as rambling-type rose bushes. These would allow the bunnies to escape from predators and raise their young.

Q: We are very upset and hope you can help. Our 8-year-old cockatiel just flew away. His wing feathers grew in over the winter. We were meaning to bring him to the pet store to get the feathers trimmed again, but with communions and other May events in our family, we just never found the time. The bird was on my son’s shoulder, and he forgot all about the bird and went out the back door. As soon as my son got outside, the bird zoomed to the top of a tree and stayed there, chirping loudly for half an hour. We called to him and put his cage out under the tree, as he always flies back to it in the house — but he just sat up there, calling and calling, and then he took off and flew out of sight. We put notices up all over the neighborhood, but nobody has seen the bird. Can you tell us anything else we may be able to do to get him back?

A: Bad luck and circumstances allowed the bird to fly away, and it takes extremely good luck and circumstances to get the bird back. You have to look at the situation from the bird’s point of view.

Most likely in your home he had never been more than 8 feet high or so and now, in the blink of an eye, he is 50 feet off the ground. Just imagine what you look like to him from all the way up there. Even if he did recognize you, it would take him quite a while to figure out how to fly back down from such a height. He never did that before.

In such a situation, most pet birds will stay way up in the trees for about two days, trying to figure out what happened and what they should do. By the second or third day, a bird is very hungry, thirsty and tired and really wants to get back down to ground level so that some human — any human — can feed it.

At this point, the bird makes its way back down and seeks out the first people it can find. Sometimes it lands on an unsuspecting person’s head and sometimes it just sits on the ground or on a car, waiting to be picked up.

If the person who finds your bird has seen one of the signs you put up notifying people of your loss and potential reward, then most likely you will get the bird back. The signs are about the only thing you can do to turn the bad luck in this situation into good luck.

The more people who know the bird is missing, the better chance you have to get it back.

Contact local lawn maintenance companies that cut grass in neighborhood backyards all day while everyone is at work. They have a good chance to encounter your bird when it has chosen to leave the trees and seek humans again.