How we domesticated humans

 This is a home for a cat circa 8,500 BC - one of the first that humans built when they became civilised and friendly to cats.

Before that time they wandered around the landscape without settling down in one spot. 

Once they settled, they had to store food. So house mice moved in.  So did sparrows. And so did we.... for the mice not the humans.

But the shelter from the weather suited some of us too. Admittedly building techniques in the so called Fertile Crescent were only mudbrick and the entrance door was in the roof... but better than a cold cave.

It was the beginning of the domestication of humans by cats. We moved in when we thought they had evolved enough.

• Photo shows early Neolithic mudbrick house, recreated at Asikli Hoyuk in Turkey.
  

Interventions for online addicts

Humans are strange creatures that get addicted to their computer screens. They are simply not present. Not here. Like drug users, they become more and more lost in their addiction.

We can help them get out of the online world and back into reality. But it takes tough love and a lot of purrsistence.

Luckily we cats have patience. We can wait at a mouse hole for hours and hours. This quality will be needed in our dealings with online addicts.

I recommend a sliding scale of action. Try these methods and then use the ones that work best.

• Mewing. Sound not scent is the best normal way to get your human's attention. They are scent blind but can be roused with noise.
• Purring loudly... you need to have jumped on the desk to make this rather charming intervention work. Purr as close to their face as possible. Lure them into looking at you not the screen.
  
• Desk roaming. Walk round the desk area, poking your paw at anything which might fall off the desk.
• Printer sitting. Sit on the printer and wait for the paper to come out. Treat this intervention as if you were waiting for a mouse to emerge from its mousehole. Printers are slightly warm to the butt, so this is quite an enjoyable intervention. 
• Printer take down. If the printer is a cheap one, your weight may stop printing altogether or even, if you are lucky, break the ridiculous item.
• 
  Keyboard paw work. Poking or sitting on the keyboard can produce a pleasing range of gobbledegook on the screen. Useful in vet's surgeries to prevent note taking.
  
• Screen blocking. Some cats do not bother with the above methods. They move straight to screen blocking. Blocking the screen makes online users unable to use. It is probably the best intervention going but comes with hazards if the online addict is likely to be violent.

 

Purrlease don't eat me....

 

It's been a worrying time for felines in Ohio, USA. An internet rumour suggested that some people there were eating cats and dogs. Then Donald Trump said this was really happening.

We cats want to put it on record that we taste absolutely horrible. We are appallingly difficult to digest too.

So if you suddenly go bonkers and decide to eat a dead cat, you will find it difficult to swallow even a single bite - because of the vile taste. And, if you purrsist, you will have awful indigestion.

You will be up all night being sick not knowing which end - face or butt - to put on the lavatory. 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED....

What do these capital letters remind you of? A certain style which appears on the ill-named Truth Social.

Oh and by the way there is a great song you can listen to on Youtube. You can even buy it here. All the money will go to cat and dog rescue.

So good comes out of harm....

PS. The blog is late due to my secretary being at The Cat Show in Birmingham. And it may be intermittent for a couple of weeks in Sept and Oct, as she is gallivanting around Turkey. You can't get the staff nowadays.

When all else fails - try a fly.

Hunting is what I like best but as an indoor-only cat I don't have many chances. I have been unable to purrsuade my human to supply living mice for me.

She just won't. She used to keep them as pets, and she thinks mice are rather nice.

Instead she plays games with me using a fishing rod toy. Now this is OK, but a fishing rod toy is not a mouse. And when I catch it, there is nothing to kill.

She tried lazer lights too. I quite liked these but I found them even more frustrating than the fishing rod toy. With the toy I could grab it and rake it with my back legs even if I couldn't give the kill bite. But with a lazer there was nothing to grab.

And besides, she never gives me enough play time.d

So I I decided it would have to be flies. Bluebottles, ordinary house flies, are best. They are big enough to see properly and when you catch them they are crunchy.

You can still enjoy being a serial killer, even if your victims are just small insects.

Wasps, those insects that are yellow and stripey, are a mistake. A big mistake. Bite a wasp and you find yourself in the vet's surgery. 

Rescue smarter... homeless cats need your help.

 This is the problem.... how can we help find not just any solution but the right solution for all of us cats. By all of us I mean the wild feral cats, the community cats and (of course) the homeless pet cats.

I've been researching this and my human is going to give a talk about it at the Birmingham Cat Show in the UK on September 14. She's also going to sell a few books -- with luck!

Purrlease get up to date on cat rescue. Don't put feral cats in "sanctuaries". Trap, neuter them and put them back where they belong where they can have a happier longer life, now that they are not worn out by kitten bearing or by sexual diseases.

Rescue smarter. The quicker cats get out of a rescue into a home, the more cats can be helped.

If you can't listen to Celia on September 14, go straight to International Cat Care for details of how to rescue smartly, take a course, and learn Trap, Neuter and Return.

Help us NOW.