This just happened to me last night. I leaned my favorite Strat, a Chrome Blue 2004 American Series against the soft part of a chair that was right behind me while I checked my e-mail. No one else in the room, no animals to be concerned about. Then in the blink of an eye our large cat ran into the room, bounced off the chair and into the window sill to capture a fly. The chair happens to be a swivel chair that doesn't spin very easily, but the cat hit it with enough speed that the guitar fell to the side bumping the end of the headstock against the wall, and the neck bumping my paper shredder. When I picked it up I felt extremely lucky. No visible damage to the neck or body and only a small scuff on the headstock. I couldn't believe there wasn't more damage. Then I shook the guitar and it became obvious with a distinct rattle under the pickguard that one of the solder joints has came loose. Still I feel lucky, but tomorrow I will make the 50 mile trip to see my luthier and have him repair it.

This event got me thinking there must be many other horror stories involving guitars and pets. I don't remember seeing a thread involving this particular subject. Any other pet stories out there???

Ouch! I'm glad it didn't get hurt though.

I really have more little brother/guitar horror stories than pet/guitar horror stories. The only thing is that one of my dogs likes to chew up any picks that land on the floor. In fact, he chewed up my very first pick. When I got my first guitar I only got one pick with it. And that pick only lasted about a day and a half before it got chewed up.

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my strat has a bunch of little marks on the headstock, where Molly(my cat, decided to chew on it as a kitten. No real damage though. The only time she has chewed on or clawed anything she wasn't supposed to.

She is obsessed with that guitar though. She tries to bite or swat the strings and make noise.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

I know what you mean about cats being obsessed with guitar strings Twelvebar. If my cat even hears me crack open a new set of strings he will come running. If he gets ahold of one I have to chase him all over the house to get it back.

I guess I'm lucky, our Mainecoon and Tuxedo cats stay out of the room when I'm playing. Maybe they were music critics in a former life
John.E

My wife has kittens that have been on a rampage lately. My guitars are hanging on the wall and so far they have not messed with them. I never set them on the floor, even in a stand.

This is not an animal tale, but when my son was a lot younger, he was running in the house and tipped one of my guitars over. The neck was snapped diagonally at the 5th to 7th frets, the only thing holding the neck together was the rosewood fretboard.

From that day forward guitars were either up on a wall or in a case.

RK

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RK

2007 Fender Highway 1
2012 American Deluxe
2015 MIM Dave Murray HHH
2010 Fender Blacktop
1987 Fender Avalon Acoustic
2012 Marshall DSL 15 watt head

No guitar woes, thankfully, but I once had a tom cat who hadn't been neutered as effectively as might be expected. I had purchased a new amplifier (about $1800 worth, back in 1992) with an expanded metal grille protecting the speakers — it was one of those tall half-stacks, a Tubeworks 100W beast. Anyway, the cat saw fit to mark his territory with a nice cloud of corrosive pheromones that penetrated the metal grille easily and ate away at my speaker cones. A sad and smelly affair.

Wow!!!

My friend got an amp from his dad. it was an old Traynor from the 70's. it had been stored in a shed at their farm for almost 20 years. we pulled it out, and it was full of mouse poo. we wore masks and cleaned it up, but all it needed was new tubes, and it worked perfectly. Sounds great.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Not so much a horror story, as a ghost story I had one of my Tele's plugged in to my spider jam, I left it hanging on a stand to go answer the phone. My dog follows me everywhere, so as I go downstairs so does he. I was on my way back up after the call, my dog bounded upstairs ahead of me. I heard the guitar make some strange noises I stopped outside the room, and sure enough it happened again!!! I freeked out big time, I hadn't a scooby what was going on! I pushed the door open, and observed Charlie's big tail brushing against the strings

Ah, so even your dog wants be a Fender player.

Well...having 3 dogs and 3 cats, this is a thread I can really sink my teeth in to! LOL!!! I'm pretty lucky really...I've always had animals and I've never had any major disasters but there have been a few minor events. The worse isn't really instrument related but definitely music related...one of my cats decided to use my vinyl collection as a "scratching post"! No damage to the records themselves, the all of the edges on a full rack of records have the ends of the covers pretty well shredded...and some of those old LP's are worth a bit of money. On a lesser note, most recently, my youngest dog Mariah...a shepherd/collie/golden mix, decided to walk on my Digitech RP-50 during a practice a couple of months back...right in the middle of a song. She was only on the thing for a moment but somehow she managed to changed the presets on the patch I was playing!

Many years ago, my wife and I used to have a couple of "house rabbits" (this was before we had dogs)...they were litter box trained and usually had free run of the house. Well, rabbits like to strip things with their teeth...like guitar chords and such. I still have a number of chords downstairs that have gobs of electrical tape covering all the little bunny nips! LOL!!! Also, when we still lived back in the apartment, one day I had a friend come over to jam for a bit...our one rabbit "Magick", a little black and white dwarf, proceeded to start chewing on the guy's guitar case. This was really funny in fact as they guy was really happy about it...said it gave his case a bit more of a "road worn" look...years before Fender came out with the Road Worn series of instruments! LOL!!!

I've also had many a guitar knocked over by a dog or a cat...again quite lucky there as no major damage other than a ding or two. Typically I keep most of my gear down in the basement studio (now at least). The cats almost never go down there and the dogs are only down there during practice when we can keep an eye on them. That said, they do still manage to knock things over from time to time...one of the girls took out one of the drummers cymbal stands...fortunately, it was my drum kit and again there was no damage, but it could have easily cracked a cymbal or something. Just left a hefty dent in the cymbal stand. Also, once when our oldest Kara (chow/elkhound mix) was younger, she was down in the studio for a practice...while it didn't cause any damage per say, apparently she felt she wasn't getting enough attention and promptly crapped on the floor next to my amp! It was rather embarrassing to say the least.

There is one simple rule I've learned over the years...people who prize their inanimate objects beyond all else, simply should not have pets -or- children. A guy I used to work with a few years ago had came in to work screaming his butt off...it seemed his 6 month old spaniel puppy had crawled INSIDE the engine compartment of his jeep and ATE THE WIRING HARNESS! Of course the Jeep was leased so he HAD to get it fixed and it cost him around $1500 to have a new harness put in. Personally, I have dozens of horror stories about other things around the house that have happened...typically as a result of a puppy. Our current "middle child" Myeisha, a 6 year old Collie/Rott mix ATE the linoleum floor in the kithen! Earlier this summer, Myeisha actually put her head thru the plate glass window in our bedroom!!! Our first dog, Mirage...a Golden Retriever/Long Haired Dachshund mix in her first year was just hell on wheels...she ate VCR remotes, chewed up the check book once, batteries, cigarettes and one time I had to call the vet at home at 2 in the morning because she had eaten an entire box of Contact Severe Cold Medicine!!! Once her and our other dog at the time, Holly had proceeded to eat the wall paper right off the kitchen walls! Damn dog was part goat I think. We also had one dog who had dug a hole in the middle of the couch, another who ate a pack of disposable razors, we've had countless holes dug or chewed into blankets and comforters and we have countless holes in the carpeting from those infamous "digging phases". Certainly we've had a few curtains "shredded" from the cats and the cats have been known to use the furniture as scratching posts as well.

Now I will add (at the urging of my wife) that with the dogs at least, they -do- learn. Our Myeisha is in fact, very careful around things like the cables, my guitars, the drum kit etc.. My wife will often throw a ball around for her during practice and such between songs and Myeisha is always very careful around the gear. In fact our second dog, Holly (shepherd/beagle mix) used to curl up under the drummers floor tom and go to sleep...while he was playing! Cats on the other hand...well...they simply just don't care! LOL!!! As they say, you can NEVER own a cat...the best you can do is "co-habitate" with a cat and if you're VERY lucky and you're kind and you feed them well, eventually they may come to see you as an equal........

When you have animals or kids, very simply sh*t happens. I guess you could say that it's part of the "joy" really. No matter how well you go through the house and try to "puppy proof" things, they'll always find something. That said, I guess I've been very lucky that I haven't had more problems with them and the music gear...of course...there's always tomorrow! LOL!!!

Peace,
Jim

Well...having 3 dogs and 3 cats, this is a thread I can really sink my teeth in to! LOL!!! I'm pretty lucky really...I've always had animals and I've never had any major disasters but there have been a few minor events. The worse isn't really instrument related but definitely music related...one of my cats decided to use my vinyl collection as a "scratching post"! No damage to the records themselves, the all of the edges on a full rack of records have the ends of the covers pretty well shredded...and some of those old LP's are worth a bit of money. On a lesser note, most recently, my youngest dog Mariah...a shepherd/collie/golden mix, decided to walk on my Digitech RP-50 during a practice a couple of months back...right in the middle of a song. She was only on the thing for a moment but somehow she managed to changed the presets on the patch I was playing!

Many years ago, my wife and I used to have a couple of "house rabbits" (this was before we had dogs)...they were litter box trained and usually had free run of the house. Well, rabbits like to strip things with their teeth...like guitar chords and such. I still have a number of chords downstairs that have gobs of electrical tape covering all the little bunny nips! LOL!!! Also, when we still lived back in the apartment, one day I had a friend come over to jam for a bit...our one rabbit "Magick", a little black and white dwarf, proceeded to start chewing on the guy's guitar case. This was really funny in fact as they guy was really happy about it...said it gave his case a bit more of a "road worn" look...years before Fender came out with the Road Worn series of instruments! LOL!!!

I've also had many a guitar knocked over by a dog or a cat...again quite lucky there as no major damage other than a ding or two. Typically I keep most of my gear down in the basement studio (now at least). The cats almost never go down there and the dogs are only down there during practice when we can keep an eye on them. That said, they do still manage to knock things over from time to time...one of the girls took out one of the drummers cymbal stands...fortunately, it was my drum kit and again there was no damage, but it could have easily cracked a cymbal or something. Just left a hefty dent in the cymbal stand. Also, once when our oldest Kara (chow/elkhound mix) was younger, she was down in the studio for a practice...while it didn't cause any damage per say, apparently she felt she wasn't getting enough attention and promptly crapped on the floor next to my amp! It was rather embarrassing to say the least.

There is one simple rule I've learned over the years...people who prize their inanimate objects beyond all else, simply should not have pets -or- children. A guy I used to work with a few years ago had came in to work screaming his butt off...it seemed his 6 month old spaniel puppy had crawled INSIDE the engine compartment of his jeep and ATE THE WIRING HARNESS! Of course the Jeep was leased so he HAD to get it fixed and it cost him around $1500 to have a new harness put in. Personally, I have dozens of horror stories about other things around the house that have happened...typically as a result of a puppy. Our current "middle child" Myeisha, a 6 year old Collie/Rott mix ATE the linoleum floor in the kithen! Earlier this summer, Myeisha actually put her head thru the plate glass window in our bedroom!!! Our first dog, Mirage...a Golden Retriever/Long Haired Dachshund mix in her first year was just hell on wheels...she ate VCR remotes, chewed up the check book once, batteries, cigarettes and one time I had to call the vet at home at 2 in the morning because she had eaten an entire box of Contact Severe Cold Medicine!!! Once her and our other dog at the time, Holly had proceeded to eat the wall paper right off the kitchen walls! Damn dog was part goat I think. We also had one dog who had dug a hole in the middle of the couch, another who ate a pack of disposable razors, we've had countless holes dug or chewed into blankets and comforters and we have countless holes in the carpeting from those infamous "digging phases". Certainly we've had a few curtains "shredded" from the cats and the cats have been known to use the furniture as scratching posts as well.

Now I will add (at the urging of my wife) that with the dogs at least, they -do- learn. Our Myeisha is in fact, very careful around things like the cables, my guitars, the drum kit etc.. My wife will often throw a ball around for her during practice and such between songs and Myeisha is always very careful around the gear. In fact our second dog, Holly (shepherd/beagle mix) used to curl up under the drummers floor tom and go to sleep...while he was playing! Cats on the other hand...well...they simply just don't care! LOL!!! As they say, you can NEVER own a cat...the best you can do is "co-habitate" with a cat and if you're VERY lucky and you're kind and you feed them well, eventually they may come to see you as an equal........

Honestly, I've had more problems with "people" than I have with my animals when it comes to the music gear. I've had guys knock my amps over....recently one guy we were auditioning knocked my Lab L5 over and busted the damn speaker jack. He just looked at it laying on the floor, shrugged it off and walked away. I once had a guy who had a habit of just "ripping" chords out of an amp from across the room. I could not have cared less if he did this with his own gear but he used to do it to mine as well! A couple of months back I found out that the headstock on my old Kay P-bass clone had been busted. I can't prove it, but I -know- that the one old guy we had been auditioning had knocked it over and busted it while I was in the bathroom and then quietly just put it back on the stand as though nothing had happened. Fortunately I was able to fix it, but still. I can forgive a dog or cat for being a little klutzy sometimes...things happen. But for a supposedly mature adult to break someone else's gear...even by accident...then "pretend" that nothing happened...that's just unforgivable in my book. Especially since the guy was playing on a '67 Fender Jazz...no really...let me bust the headstock off that sucker and see how he'd feel!

Anyways, when you have animals or kids, very simply sh*t happens. I guess you could say that it's part of the "joy" really. No matter how well you go through the house and try to "puppy proof" things, they'll always find something. That said, I guess I've been very lucky that I haven't had more problems with them and the music gear...of course...there's always tomorrow! LOL!!!

Peace,
Jim

My Yorkshire Terrier insists that his heritage demands the presence of a Marshall Stack in the house.

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"Another day in paradise!"

That must mean that our Tuxedo cat was the reason for my Blackface amp. Hmmmm John.E

Mmmmmmm.......could be.

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"Another day in paradise!"