I AM THE THE AUTHOR OF "A-Z. A CAT'S GUIDE TO HUMANS. "A must read for all felines,"-- Tilly the Ugliest Cat in the Shelter. "Saved me from so many mistakes with my new human,"-- Toby the Cross-Eyed Stray.
Unbelievable?
No, this is the latest trend in Australia, where the fire fighters calendar has decided that male muscles need the help of cats to be popular.
Worse still... not content with using adult cats for this adult human calendar, they have added kittens
Innocent little kittens.
Kittens that are not old enough to give a good claw swipe in order to say No to Porn.
Where will this trend end? How vile can humans get? Don't let your local firefighters get involved.
Say no to kitten porn.
There's a cat in The White House. You can see her enjoying the decorations here on YouTube.
So, fellow felines, with that in mind, be careful this Christmas. Do NOT eat tinsel. It will get tangled up in your gut.
Do NOT eat Christmas pudding or cake. The dried fruit can poison you.
Do NOT drink alcohol. If you are drunk and crazy you may fall off the mantelpiece or injure yourself.
Go EASY on the turkey. A taste is fine but the cooked bones may cause internal injuries.
If the house is busy with too many humans or worse visiting dogs, fine a safe place to chill out - a spare bedroom, top of a wardrobe or some other hidey hole.
It will soon be over.
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He did well. He was seen mousing. His hair was glossy. He would sleep under a shrub in the sunlight in good weather.
The humans thought perhaps he belonged to somebody. We cats sometimes just go AWOL. After all, he had a collar. They didn't want to steal somebody else's cat.
Then this year his hair began to get matted. The humans started to feel anxious for him. A dry place was found for him at night, and he no longer seemed to roam away so much.
As the weather grew colder, they decided they had to do something, even if he did have an owner. He was picked up, taken to a woman who put him in her spare bedroom and took him to the vet the next morning. His matted hair was cut off; he was microchipped.
Underneath his hair, it was clear that he was very thin. Painfully thin. Desperately thin. Despite being offered chicken and sardine, he ate only the tiniest amount over the next 36 hours. He drank a lot of water but was still dehydrated.
On his next visit to the vet, it was clear that he didn't have much time left. He had kidney disease, a heart murmur, something wrong with his liver.
He purred when stroked. Arched his boney back up to the touch of a friendly hand. Then he was put to sleep for the last time.
Please, you humans, think of homeless cold cats this winter. Don't wait too long to help them find a warm home.
Humans enjoy thinking of their cats as their babies - witness the latest book Seven Cats I Have Loved.* "Deep in my heart I knew I couldn't really tell my feelings for my daughters apart from my feelings for my cats," admits the author.
Many humans lie about this. She doesn't.
So here are the advantages of cats or kitten companions rather than human companions.
The sensible human choice has to be kittens or cats.
* Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit. Serpents' Tail. £9.99.
Take Herculaneum for instance. A feline guide is available for cat-human encounters. She enjoys human company and is willing to engage in shared meals whenever possible.
The local human cat lovers have ensured that she is neutered and those employed on the site make sure there is regular cat food and water available.
It's a great lifestyle. Dry shelter in the roofed Roman houses, plenty of lizards on the walls to catch, and of course rodents are available.
Best of all, there is freedom in being a community cat, not a house cat. Freedom to roam all round the site. Freedom to ignore tourists or to engage with them.
Pay attention, humans. Read our paws.
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| My ears hurt. Don't touch me or I will nip |
Humans just don't understand this. They think we are being vicious. They should remember that they get grumpy too when they are in pain.
This is Mr Nipper Spangles. He has ear mites or something similar. So he is worried about being petted anywhere near them.
He nips if he sees a hand coming close to his ears. It's the only way he can avoid the risk of being hurt. It hurts if his ears are touched.
Purrlease. Check us out for pain if we get grumpy with our humans.
Worse still, in countries where healthy cats are killed if nobody wants to adopt them, black cats are more likely to be put down. Humans want white cats, tabby cats, ginger cats and even black and white tuxedo cats before they want an all-black cat.
Humans can help black cats in many ways.
Sometimes we do it just because it is fun to work off surplus energy that way. Sometimes we do it when we are playing with another cat. Sometimes we do it because it gets the attention of our humans, who laugh at us. Sometimes we do it the same time every day, because the daily routine has sort of space for this kind of thing.
But.....
Sometimes when we zoom away from the litter tray it is because we want to get our paws away from that disgusting mess. Human hygeine can be very thoughtless. We want a litter tray that is cleaned at least once a day and preferably twice. Or even more often.
We don't like getting our paws wet with damp litter. We don't like an overwhelming smell. We want out as soon as possible. So we zoom away to shake dirty litter off our paws.
So clean up more often, you human servants.
To no avail. All that emerges on the screen is a series of meaningless scribbles.
True, when he stands on several keys at a time, the computer makes several strange noises. Clearly it is attempting to communicate vocally. But, says Spangles, it makes no sense at all. It cannot mew or miss or wail in the correct form.
What is the secret of my success at the keyboard? I want to be modest so I shall not mention my immense intelligence or my amazing patience. I will not even mention my days of practice when I was a kitten.
No. All I will say is that the secret of my success is delicacy. The delicate way I have learned to pat with my paw. Gently, Delicately. But with a feline firmness.
My paw work is so fine, so nicely judged, so precise that I am able to write this blog. To encourage other cats here is a photo of me at work. Note the delicate left hand paw.
Just use the keyboard to interrupt her when she is not paying you proper attention.
We cats need human help during this difficult winter. As humans decide they cannot afford to feed us or neuter us, because of heating bills, there will be more homeless cats and kittens.
Purlease do not even think of buying a cat. We need adopters to step forward and give a homeless cat a home.
If a human wants a pedigree cat, then look online, find the cat breed club, and look for the rescue section. You might have to wait a little but pedigree cats become homeless too and you should be able to find the breed you want.
And if they can't afford to adopt, then foster. Most cat charities will pay the cat food and vet bills for cats that are fostered in a human home rather than a pen. And for many frightened cats, older cats or just cats that have never been in a pen, being fostered in a human home is emotionally much less upsetting.
We cats don't like to rely on human charity: but for once, we need you.
Of course, if it was a cat with whom we were not friendly, we probably go round looking for them - to make sure that they have left forever. Then we can take their place on the bed or under the warmest radiator of the house.
Any change is upsetting, of course. The scent profile of the house, so important to our feelings of security and harmony, changes. This family scent is made up of our signature scent, the scent of all the house occupants and of the house itself. We make it by rubbing ourselves against places, people and other cats - both depositing and picking up scent.
Any change is upsetting. Sometimes it leads to conflict between us remaining cats. The missing signature scent of the departed may have been a bridge between us and an acquaintance we did not care for. Now the bridge is missing, hostilities begin...
So like humans we may experience not just loss but also anger. And that too is part of mourning.
PS. My blog was omitted last Saturday in respect of the mourning for Queen Elizabeth 11.
It's been really hard to find one that hasn't got behaviour problems. It started well with Dave, who seemed to understand his role as companion animal to Larry.
The only problem was that there were three in the relationship - Cleggie being the third. Admittedly even Cleggie seemed to realise this menage a trois wasn't working out so he left for the USA.
Larry and Dave settled down well - until Dave disappeared. So next time Larry tried to find a better rescue and came up with Theresa. She had a taste for leather trousers, and two unfortunate human pals, but she too disappeared.
The worst pet of all was Boris. There were terrible behaviour problems - drinking in number 10, caterwauling in the Downing St flat, lack of truth in the meows. It was chaos and, to make everything worse, a dog with a personality disorder.
Now Larry is trying again. Will Liz become the purrfect pet?
I can only cross the digits on my front paws and hope.
At the low range my hearing is about what would be expected from a small animal. But what is unexpected is the high pitched sounds that I can hear. I can hear the tiniest little squeaks of small rodents and insects.
What usually happens to animal hearing is that the higher an animal can hear, the less it can hear at lower pitch. But that's not happened to us cats. We can hear low and we can hear high.
It's obviously why we need to hear high pitched sounds. These are the sounds in the undergrowth that alert us to mice, rats and other rodents. These are our prey in the wild.
But why do we need to hear the relatively low sounds? That may be because we have a dual role in life. We are hunters and predators but we are also prey to larger animals. We may need to hear the low sounds to keep us safe from animals like coyotes and dogs.
We are both prey and predator.
Sometimes it is difficult to grasp the full stupidity of the human mind!
Of course we think. We learn, don't we? We learn how to hunt rabbits. We learn that if we wind ourselves round the human legs and purr loudly, we may get a treat.
We learn to avoid the neighbour's horrible yapping dog. And we work out how to sneak into the cat flap four doors down, where the owner provides ad lib food for their own cat - which we then steal.
We learn to recognise the name that a human gives us. When they call us, we turn our heads to see why - if we are not too busy. Sometimes, just sometimes, we even come when called.
Do we think? Of course we do. And it humans thought a little better than they do, they'd know that.
But what is ordinary about a cat.? What is ordinary about her? Just look at the grace of her body, the curve of her paw, the gloss of her coat, and the linear loveliness of her tail.
August 6, tomorrow, is National Cat Day. Humans can celebrate it by celebrating the beauty of all cats. Not just the special ones, not just the ordinary ones, but also the scruffy ones, the elderly ones, the starving ones and the disabled cats.
So, if you can, give a pound or a dollar to your local cat rescue, and next time you want a cat, adopt a rescue cat.
We cats say thank you.
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So, humans, live with it...
And why is that? Well for a start, look at the picture. Five kittens of three different colours. Maybe three different fathers! Three different sets of genes.
Then there's the way our mum coped during her pregnancy. That affects us in the womb. If she was stressed out, we will be stress-prone kittens when we grow up.
Next there is the influence of our first eight weeks of life. If we meet gentle loving humans, we love humans. If we don't meet humans, we grow up as wild cats without humans in our lives.
Finally, there's what happens to us. A single shattering experience can change how we act and feel - just as it does with humans.
So humans. Study each individual kitten. Study each individual cat. Only then you will know what we want and need.
Yet some cat "rescuers" are trying to do just that. They think it's the right thing to do.
Or, if they don't try to tame us, they confine us to some kind of enclosure where we are fed regularly but we don't have the kind of freedom we used to have.
Being a street cat is a rich and varied life. If we are lucky we get fed by passersby, and there are always thrown out take-away wrappings, often with food in them. We can forage and hunt. We can lie in the sun. We can burglarise food left out for house cats.
All that is lost if we are stuck in a cat pen or confined to an enclosure - a so called "sanctuary." Only it can be more like a prison. Are two meals a day worth the loss of freedom?
So please don't. Trap us and neuter us. We will be healthier without fighting and kitten bearing. Then let us go back to the streets where we live.
Oh, and appoint a regular feeder. Freedom and food. That's what we want.
Of course some of them live reasonable lives as farm cats, working cats or cats that have a regular feeder. These are the lucky ones.
Others have lost their homes and have to learn to live on their wits. Some are just abandoned when their owners move house. Others leave home if the home is unsuitable or frightening.
They may be able to live out of refuse bins, restaurant waste, thrown-away take away food, or break into human houses with a cat flap and steal another cat's food.
Purrlease spare a little money for your local cat rescue. There are a lot of homeless cats around at the moment and not enough money for the rescuers.
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Dr Roxy on her therapy couch treats a patient |
What do humans do?
They give us a tiny scratching post that wobbles. We can't get a proper stretch on it. We can't get a strong downward stroke with the claws. It's rubbish.
So what do we do?
We use the furniture, stupid. What else. Sometimes there's a door in soft wood to scratch on, but usually it has to be the sofa or an armchair. At the back it is high enough to get a good stretch and a firm downward stroke. L-o-v-e-l-y.
Then our humans have the cheek to object.
Lions can't purr.
They can roar because they are big animals with no real enemies except humans. They can make all the noise they like - to see off rivals or attract a mate - without having to worry that a bigger animal will hear them and hunt them.
But they can't purr.
So we are superior to lions in purring.
We can purr like a contented universe humming to itself. It's a long low sound that mother cats and kittens make together in the safety of the nest, knowing that quiet hum won't arouse any predators. It's the sound of safety, of happiness, and of love in that blissful nest.
Why can't lions purr? It's a bit of a mystery. It's not just size. Cheetahs can purr, for example: so can snow leopards.
It used to be thought this was something to do with small hyoid bone in the throat and whether it was rigid enough to make a roar but too rigid for a purr. Now scientists have started to argue against this, saying it might be something to do with the folds of the vocal tract.
Purrng is still a wonderful mystery.
We purr without pausing for breath because we purr continuously on the in-breath and on the out-breath. Not many animals can do this.
Humans can't purr. We are their superior in purring.
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| What a human sees - sharp and coloured |
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| What a cat sees - less colour slightly blurred |
The other reason why we don't see colour like you do, is because we are designed to be twilight hunters. Our eyes specialise in low light, where there isn't much colour anyway. They also specialise in motion. If something moves, we notice it. If it stays very very still, like a mouse freezing, it's more difficult for us to see it.
Our vision is a bit narrower and more blurry too.
Twilight is our world.
We can smell home. It smells of every human in the house (each with an individual scent signature), of every other cat or dog in the house, the regular cleaning fluids used, the regular food eaten - and our own scent.
We apply our body perfume by rubbing against corners, skirting boards, human legs, other cats or dogs, and furniture. That mixture is important. It makes up the family scent and reassures us that we are in a safe place, our core home.
So when you humans ruin it, no wonder we get stressed. Strangers coming into the house to service the boiler: new cats plonked inside the home: new smells you bring home after being in hospital (yukk smells like vet surgery!), spring cleaning (oh no!), or a new boyfriend/girlfriend with a strong perfume habit, or you add a floral plug in (purrlease....).
It smells wrong. The mixture is wrong, wrong, wrong.... to sensitive cat.
Try not to disrupt our important family scent mixture. It's our home, stupid.
So no wonder we don't like it, if the litter tray is placed near the washing machine in the utility room. Would you like to have to sit on the lavatory right by the noise of men drilling through the tarmac? That's what the machine sounds like to us!
We learn to ignore the TV noises most of the time - even though they are far louder in our ears than in yours. We can hear the faint scrabble of a rat or the tiny hum of a very small grasshopper. They are clear as a church bell to us.
When we are put into a cat shelter, one of the awful stresses are the noises. We can sometimes hear the barking of frightening dogs in the kennels nearby. We hear the clash of the food bowls being washed and the noise of the grass outside being mown -- and we can't get away from the din.
We nervous cats suffer most. Please put us as far away as possible from noisy machinery or the rattle of food dishes. Cats in pens need as much silence as they can get!
Boomer has to search for his food - and it's fun
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| Elderly Sam |
If I have arthritis and moving is painful, I just spend more time in my bed. I usually don't limp or show that I am stiff. I may also bite you when you pick me up, if it hurts.
Why do I behave like this?
I am a small animal with big enemies like dogs, coyotes and wolves. These predators are always on the lookout for an easy meal, so they will single out any cat that looks as if it is sick and will not be able to run away or fight back. Therefore evolution has programmed me not to show pain.
I get scruffy because I can't turn round to groom myself properly. I may lose weight because my teeth are bad. But my carers often say "It's just old age."
Please don't do this. I need painkillers from a vet.
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| STRESSED |
If I'm stressed but my human doesn't seem to care maybe she just doesn't recognise what I am feeling. This is the dilemma us cats face. Humans cannot recognise the signs of feline stress.
Take
our body position. If we are stressed we are likely to be hunched up,
paws under the body ready for flight, the body stiff and tense. Our
pupils will be enlarged. Our ears may be lowered out of fear, or lowered
and swivelled back because we are both fearful and frustrated. We may
blink rapidly.
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| RELAXED |
But how many humans can read us properly? Their ignorance is at its worst if we are in a rescue shelter. They may not realise how unhappy we are.....
Life on the streets is a natural life for cats that have always lived on the street, even if it is dangerous. Life in a cat pen is like solitary confinement. Even life in a "sanctuary" is a diminished life - rather like a human life in an old people's home rather than their own home.
Unowned cats will be happier if they are trapped, neutered and then returned to their own territory - with a regular feeder if possible. After neutering they are protected from male fights and endless kitten bearing - and they still have the rich and interesting life they enjoyed before being trapped.
No cat should be worse off after human intervention. Get your human to read about unowned cats....
