Fooling your human into buying expensive food.

This is fat Boomer being weighed. His owner was devoted to him.

 We depend on our humans for our food - unless we are lucky enough to be able to do a bit of mousing outside our home.

So how do we train our humans to get us the correct food, the food that we find most more-ish. And why we may end up fat.

We just don't eat up everything in our bowl. We always leave a bit for Mr Manners (as the human saying goes.). Our humans see this and worry.

Humans don't understand our natural eating pattern which is up to 12 small meals a day. They usually feed us twice a day. So the food on our plate is more than enough.

Giving food is a way that humans express their love for us so as we turn away from the bowl, having eaten enough for the time being, they think we don't like the food.

So they go to the supermarket and buy a more expensive envelope of food. The taste is different, so we probably do eat more of that food when it is first put down. The novelty of it makes it more delicious.

Stupid humans then feed us that new food regularly. It is no longer a new taste. So we go back to our normal pattern of eating, which is little and often.

So they try again..... 

 

•   My human tries to explain this to humans in her latest substack - published later today at https://celiahaddoncatexpert.substack.com 

 

 

 

 

I always land on my feet.... clever me!

 

Reference - Higurashi et al, 2026  

DOI: 10.1002/ar.70165

We cats are brilliant acrobats. One of our most mysterious and wonderful actions is the way we fall.... on our feet.

Humans just fall to the ground. They hurt themselves - particularly the oldies - because they crash onto their heads, or their hips, or their hands. There is often blood on their bodies or the crack of a broken bone.

We cats survive falls because we land on our feet. 

The trick is that we swivel our bodies, righting ourselves as we fall. 

How do we do this?

We have amazingly flexible spines. The top chest area of our spines bends first so that the front feet point downwards, then the lower spine (not quite so flexible) bends so that the rest of the body is poised to land on all four feet.

Beat this one, humans. You can't. You just can't, you clumsy two-footed dumb animals. 

Why are our litter trays so small?

 

NOT BIG ENOUGH.

We cats are clean animals.

This is an important reason why humans like to be adopted by us. They enjoy living with animals who know where to toilet and generally stick to the same place, the litter tray.

But humans also make life difficult for us. Very difficult.

They give us tiny litter trays and often trays with covers. Sometimes we can only manage by leaving half our body outside the tray.

We need space. Space to get into the litter tray and dig a hole. Space to turn round and position our backside on that hole. Then we need to turn round, examine the situation, and start covering it up.

So we need space in front of us and behind us. We also need space sideways for turning. 

AT LAST - BIG ENOUGH

Minimum requirement... A litter tray at least one and a half times our body length from nose to base of tail. AND wide enough for us to turn round in it.

Do we get this? Not usually. 

 

 

I sleep, therefore I am a cat.

 We cats know the power of sleep.When we have had a big meal, we sleep. When we are tired, we sleep. When there is a warm fire, or a warm cat bed, or a patch of sunlight, we sleep.

And then we sleep some more. Time spend sleeping is never wasted.  

We are never ever, ever, workaholics like humans. Humans waste their time rushing around, shopping for food (it's a boring variation of hunting), vocalising to each other (they call it gossip), watching that box of lights (to them it is a TV), cooking (for themselves not us), going out "to work" (whatever that is, perhaps it is like patrolling territory), getting high on liquid alcohol (their version of catnip.)

Most of them only sleep at night. What a waste of what is one of the most wonderful life experiences  - a good sleep.

I really pity them. 

Helping my local stray females

Pregnant 

I know that female cats living on the street are better off without repeated pregnancies. Humans feed stray cats and think they are being kind. Well, they are being kind but they could do better. 

Please help your local mom cat get spayed so that she isn't worn out with repeated pregnancies. Even females that are riddled with worms or suffering from diseases will still get pregnant.

Many of them will lose their kittens - up to 75% feral or unowned kittens will die before they are six months old. And then the mother cat will get pregnant again... and again... and again.

We cats do not have a population crisis. We don't need more kittens. There are too many unwanted kittens and cats in the world already - living on the streets, eating from dustbins or thrown away take-away meals, dying from traffic accidents, starvation or disease.

 

•  My human has a substack on why females are better off spayed - http://celiahaddoncatexpert.substack.com