So I’ve got a young adult (not fixed) male cat who has reached that point in development. He has so much energy that he runs around all night, knocking things over and getting into things he shouldn’t. He also REALLY enjoys playing with the blinds above our bed. Our window has a pretty large space between the 2 panes of class that he likes to sit on. Me and my partner have both lost a lot of sleep because of this and in my desperation I started spraying him with water a few weeks ago. Any time he goes where he shouldn’t, jumping on the tv, pulling out random things, we spray him. Going into this I had the thoughts of “oh this might actually be harmful” but in my idiocy I neglected to look this up first. Cut to today, my cat is looking outside at the birds and I reach over to pet him. Bro nearly jumped out of his skin. I think now that I’ve personally seen what this can do to an animal it pretty much solidified it for me. Spraying your cats with water is incredibly harmful. Ig what I’m looking for here is validation from any experts who might be lurking in this subreddit or people who have a lot of experience observing and deconstructing the behaviors and psychology of cats. I want to understand the full scope of why it’s harmful, what the observable internal experience is, and how to better move forward. My little guy has an appointment next week to get neutered and I’m hoping he will calm down after that. Any advice is greatly appreciated.