Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Is my huma getting too clever?


I love sitting on the windowsill. What cat doesn't. I am an indoor cat so I need to spend time enjoying sight.
 

But I am not sure that I like my human writing about it (here). She seems determined to give away various cat secrets. 

Do we want our humans to understand us? In one ways, yes, of course we do. We want them to notice when we are hungry for food. We want them also to understand when we want to be petted and when we want to be left alone.

But, if they begin to understand us too much, it might not always work to our advantage. They might begin to refuse us food, when we tell them we are starving (and of course we are not starving at all!!). 

If they began to read our body language (not just our meows), they might know when we were deceiving them. So I worried a bit about the latest substack Celia had written about windows and cats.

Then later on, I began to think my anxiety was not justified. Humans are just dumb animals, with the emphasis on the dumb. They are stupid. Let's face it, everything about the way they are messing up our world proves that.....

Celia is just showing off. 

Saturday, March 14, 2026

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. 


Saturday, March 07, 2026

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. 

 

 

Friday, February 27, 2026

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. 

Saturday, February 14, 2026

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.

 

 

 

Help for cats whose humans show behaviour problems.

This blog is devoted to the study of human behaviour. We cats, who live with this sometimes unpredictable and always feeble minded species, can benefit from seeing their behaviour in its proper scientific context. The study of feline dilemmas, training problems, and difficulties with humans, can only benefit all of us. All of us train our humans - to buy the right food, for instance, but many of us do not have knowledge of how to improve our training methods. The human species is obviously not as intelligent as the cat, but nevertheless can learn quite a lot - if properly managed. Topics of interest include the use of claw and order, purring as a human reward, rubbing your human up the right way, when to bite, spraying as a method of making our wishes known, ignoring the human, human harassment, human inattention and sheer human stupidity. I welcome your questions. Photos can be sent via my secretary's website, www.celiahaddon.com This blog has been chosen as one of the top 50 feline blogs by Online VetTechprogramms.org