A new cat at the top....

 

Copyright and more info here

We've done it again. We cats have strolled into top paces. The Belgian prime minister has just adopted a special needs cat.

His name? Maximus Textoris Pulcher. That's Latin for "Maximus the beautiful weaver." A posh name for a posh cat living at the top of  Belgian society.

His ears look funny because he is a Scottish fold cat, a breed that has serious health problems. They have a genetic condition  called osteochondrodysplasia.

That means their joints are deformed and they are in chronic pain. Maximus is also FIV positive.

Here in the UK, we still breed them and they still suffer. But in Belgium, they have banned the breed. 

Oh, and by the way, the Belgian prime minister's name is Bart de Wever and he is not HIV positive!  So he has given his surname to Maximus.

If it's a man, meow louder

Getting human attention is always a problem. They just don't hear us. They are too busy doing the stupid little actions that their species seems to think are important.

Meow? They are staring into the computer and take no notice.

Meow? They are putting on the coffee machine for breakfast and take no notice.

Meow? They are reading a book in bed and take no notice. 

And the male of the species is worse than the female. The female will, if you meow AND wind yourself round her legs, probably remember that you need your  breakfast first.

And the female may put down the book and give you a cuddle last thing at night.

But the male staring at the computer? Not with us at all. Might as well be in another world. 

What is so funny about humans is that they have researched our meows and decided we meow louder when we are dealing with the male. Of course we do. We could have told them why, if only they had the wit to understand what we are saying. 

So Meow louder when it is a male human. 

 

• Want more info about humans? Buy my book for Christmas. 
• •  Buy it Buy it here.
  
  
  
   

The spy in the litter box.

 

So this is the future. No more decent privacy in the litter box. They call it "pet monitoring."

Some evil human has invented a robotic litter box which tells our pet humans what we deposit and when.

It spies on us and sends messages to their phones. 

And look at that monstrosity of a litter box - more like a spacecraft than a decent box. Elderly cats wouldn't be able to get up there anyway.

Would humans like it, if we monitored their lavatories. Would they enjoy the idea that we know exactly when they urinated and how much they urinated, the size of their stools, and the texture of the faeces.

Do we need to remind humans that going to the bathroom (as they call it) is a private act. Yes, PRIVATE.

Do not spy on us, humans. 

 

Crunch that cockroach? Swallow that fly...

Tommy hunting flies

 Crunch, crunch.... there is nothing so satisfying for me than hunting down cockroaches.

The crunch is a bit like the noise my human makes when she is eating crisps. And the flavour is just as good. Very moreish. 

And if I can't find a cockroach, then a bluebottle will do. My hunting technique is to use my paws to smash them against the window pane. Then I pick them up with my mouth when they have fallen down and are wiggling. 

Spiders? Well, the outdoor ones with long skinny legs are more difficult, because the legs come off and the spiders whizz away. Besides, if I am outside, I have better things to hunt.

Indoors, the spiders that are stuck in the bath are more worth my attention. Not really crunchy but often much bigger than a mere bluebottle.

Researchers have just discovered that cats catch a lot of insects!* Boy, these humans are dumb. We have been eating them for at least 1.6 million years when our ancestors emerged on this planet.

We are pest exterminators for cockroaches. And bluebottles. And spiders. 

Your pest is our fun food!

 

•  "Social media highlights the overlooked impact of cats on arthropods," Insect Conservation and Diversity, DOI: 10.1111/icad.70038

World Diabetes day - am I a fat cat?

Boomer before his diet. He lost a sixth of body weight (6 kilos before the diet).  

My human pet, Celia, has just been diagnosed with diabetes. Hardly surprising due to the fact that she has been eating too much cake and biscuits lately.

I have put her on a diet. No sugar, no cake, no biscuits, but as much fruit and vegetables as she wants. She has already given up alcohol and now she has stopped drinking fruit juice too. 

She is not very happy.

Today, Friday November 14, is World Diabetes Day, so I started worrying about my own weight. Did my tum look too fat in my fur? Was I developing love handles?

Perhaps I should give up Dreamies. I only eat about five a day. But is this too much? 

Should I stop eating so much cat food? Change from the most expensive and delicious envelopes to some horrible dried food which isn't so tasty? 

Reading up about feline diabetes here made me almost as depressed as Celia.

It says the symptoms are drinking too much water and urinating too much. I don't think I do that. 

Purrhaps I am just being a hypochondriac.

 

Cats in High Places. Royalty?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kattenstoet#/media/File:Kattenstoet.jpg

 Some good news, for a change, on the human front. We cats are slowly but surely changing human nature for the best.

I have just heard of Kattenstoet in Belgium, a cat festival. Humans dress up as giant cats, showing that they aspire to be as beautiful and as wise as we are.

Admittedly, these giant cats are wearing clothes not fur, but this is probably just due to the slow intellect of the organisers. Humans hoping (rather pathetically) to be like cats is nevertheless a step forward.

Why do I say this? Because the festival originally focused on throwing living cats from the church tower. An act of cruelty committed yearly by lowlife humans against their superiors, us. 

So fellow felines, our efforts to purrsuade humans to behave better, to accept our superiority, to act better towards us, have not been wasted. We are making progress little by little.

Indeed, this made me think further. I have been wondering whether we should not take over from the British Royal family. We would do a better job than the current Royals.

It is true that we slaughter wildlife. But so do the Royal family. They shoot and they used to hunt. The number of birds shot by a prince is far greater than the number of mice killed by a cat during the same period of time.  

We are far better looking than most of them. We are not money obsessed and do not take payments from spies. We do not have sex with kittens, and we know how to purr politely in difficult circumstances.  

King George V11 sounds rather good to me. 

Exciting news...my book may be chosen by a book club!

 

Yay, fellow cats... I have just had an email suggesting my book, A Cat's Guide to Humans, may be chosen by a Washington DC book club. At last, at long last, my effort at understanding humans may be taking off. 

As we cats know, humans are a strange species, misleadingly known as Homo sapiens. "Sapiens" is Latin for "wise." 

Which they are not.

Just to run through a few examples. Humans use alcohol and drugs and get hopelessly drunk and high. We use
catnip and after a little high of ten minutes get sensible again.

Humans don't have any fur. They have to cover their nakedness with artificial substitutes for fur. Our fur is one of the glories of being feline. We wear it all the time: we don't have to take it off or put it on.

Humans have kittens that are so slow to learn that they cannot walk for months and months. Our kittens are walking well after about four weeks.

Humans cannot purr. We can.

However humans, when they are properly trained, are very useful round the house. They make excellent servants - they feed us, provide laps, and warm radiators.

They are not bad: just very limited and of low IQ. 

 

Behind every successful author is a hard working cat

 

I have been a feline ghost writer for many years. My human, Celia, has published several books about cats. With her name, not mine, on them. My contributions have been essential but they have also been entirely glossed over.

I have toiled for months to help her understand cats. I have meowed. I have purred. I have scratched. I have nipped. All in the effort to get that dumb human to engage her brain in a proper feline way. 

Only one of "my" books has given me due credit. 

Even then, she insisted on having her name attached as well. A pathetic desire to get in on the act. Poor woman is so needy that she could not help herself!

Most cats would not have put up with this. Most cats would have refused to co-operate further. Many cats would simply have left home in search of a less selfish human.

I stayed. Why?

I stayed in the hope that eventually, with months of training, with endless patience on my part, that she would purrhaps fully UNDERSTAND CATS. 

She still doesn't. 

 

• If you want to buy iit, go to UK Amazon or US Amazon  It would make me purr with pleasure -- though your human might not like it.

Cats go walkies? Purrsonally, never.

Purrsonally, I have never allowed my human to put me on a leash and go walkies. It is demeaning, as well as unpleasant, to be treated like a dog.

We are not dogs. Most of us do not do walkies. 

Some cats - very few - feel OK about it. So they may be taken to the park or perhaps even down a street on a lead.

But is it safe? Will dogs in the street attack us? They might well. Will the human then be able to scoop us up and protect us? 

Do you trust your human to be sensible. Purrsonally I consider trusting humans to be a mistake. They are too stupid to be trusted.

But if your human insists, or if you would like to try it, get a proper training course - https://kittycatgo.com/cat-harness-leash-training-course/ 

• Also, remember that Christmas is coming up. My best selling book, A Cat's Guide to Humans, is available now here

  

• 
  
  

   

Look at the ears...

Maltese cat outside an archeological site - ear tip on left ear just visible.

With the help of my human I have been researching unowned cats in Malta. There are not many.

During a 6 day investigation, my human observed only 8 cats. Of these 7 appeared to be unowned - no sign of collar etc. And all 7 had tiny notches in their ears.

This was a sign that they had been trapped, neutered and spayed then returned to the site they belonged to. In 5 cases there were signs of feeding bowls and shelter suggesting a managed colony.

 It is called TNR - Trap, Neuter and Return. Malta are doing it wonderfully. 

Human blah-blah-blah

Celia and Mr Spangles watching a zoom meeting

Have you noticed how often humans talk to us? They seem to assume we understand human talk.

Which we don't.

But human talk does interest us. Their blah-blah-blah comes in different tones of voice. We certainly recognise an angry tone of voice from a loving tone of voice.

We also recognise various words. Like our names. When I hear the word, "George" I know it means something special is coming up ... like food, or strokes, or just attention. 

I love being the centre of my human's attention. Mostly attention means eye gaze in my direction: a laugh: a slow blink: and perhaps more blah-blah-blah in a baby sounding voice.

What about the "vet" word. Well, I recognise it but not all cats do. I make myself scarce. Under the bed is the best place because she can't get me out! 

 

 

 

The tail quiver .. what am I saying?

 

 

When do I quiver my tail and what does it mean?

Well, my tail quivers when I mark my territory by spraying urine. It's part of the sequence - back up against something vertical and let go a jet of urine. This is a scent message to other cats and to myself.

Now some people have noticed the tail quiver in this context. That's because humans agonise about my spraying and don't understand that it is just natural messaging for me. They particularly don't like it when I do this in the house, if I am experiencing social stress.

But my other tail quiver isn't part of spraying. It has nothing to do with urine. It is when I am happy and excited. I may quiver my tail when face to face with a human (like this video). Sometimes I actually put my butt towards the human and do it.

But most humans never notice this at all.... 

 

• For more cat behaviours go to my Youtube channel - https://lnkd.in/erz6fFpP Go to playlist and select Cat Signals - what is my cat saying. 

 

Relaxed sleep or terrified pretend sleep - educating humans.

 

Humans cannot read our body language, so they often fail to recognise when we are fully relaxed. True relaxation shows in the way our bodies look when we are truly sleeping (without even one eye open). 

If we are warm, we sleep stretched out - limb relaxed (not ready for action), belly visible, head on the carpet. The body is lying to one side. 

Or, if it is cold, we are likely to find a place where we can sleep curled up.

This looks different but is much the same. The legs are still relaxed (not ready for action) only this time they are closer together and the tail is wrapped round them to keep body warmth in.

The head is still limp - in the second video it is resting on the paw and the side of the cat tree.

The video below shows a stressed out cat pretending to sleep. Her legs are tucked under the body ready for her to spring into action and run away. Her eyes occasionally squint open a little bit. Her back is arched and her head is not limp. 

This is a very frightened cat. Would your human recognise this pretend sleep?

 

Eyeballing the slow blink - what does it mean?

 

We cats don't much like being stared at by strangers. Worse still is being stared at by an enemy. The direct gaze can make us feel uneasy.

But sometimes the direct gaze between humans and cats is different. This is when we feel completely safe with a human, who is our pet.

We gaze and we do a slow blink. Just to show that our gaze isn't aggressive. It is loving...

And after the blink, we don't turn away or stop gazing. We continue to gaze with confidence and affection. 

So, humans, if you get a slow blink from your cat, you know that she loves you and she feels completely safe with you.

Congratulations. You have become the perfect pet for a loving cat.

 

The playlist of what cats are saying is on my Youtube channel under Celia's name is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMH0Q-3hEcw&list=PLnwXtI1uuo884ABEOTorPYZNnIeTh04pV 

Am I an international cat?

 Last Friday was International Cat Day, according to International Cat Care. I began to wonder if I was an international cat? Or just a cat? Or a European cat?

As a British blue pedigree, it is obvious to me that I am British. But does this stop me being International too? I hope not.

I have done my best to be international. I have tried to educate humans, wherever they may be with this blog. Is this enough to make me International. I am still not sure.

Another thought? Purrhaps all we cats are international. After all, if I was transported to China, I would be able to talk to other cats without having to learn a new language. (It's only stupid humans that use different languages according to where they live!)

So I came to this conclusion. I am International because ALL cats are International
 

Eyeballing - the stare that says "Don't come closer."

When I meet a cat I don't know, I usually stop and stare. So does he. We can learn a lot by this simple eyeballing.

If he is in my territory, he will often be slightly uneasy. So instead of keeping eye contact, he will turn his head away to one side. He may even begin to retreat.

Then I feel as if I have won! It's a good feeling. 

But sometimes these staring matches can go on for a long time. So I just sit there and stare and stare and stare.

Of course, if I am intruding into his space, l may be the one that has to break off eye contact. I don't feel very happy about this, but it is a contest which is both silent (no cat yowling) and safe (no fights).

By the staring contest, we can both keep our dignity and stay w don't have to fight.  

 

Licking, more like wiping my lips... what does it mean. Educating humans.

We wipe our lips carefully when we are eating or when we have finished eating. Our tongue comes out and travels round the edge of the mouth.

This is a functional movement of the tongue rather than an expressive signal. We do this so as not to waste food. The tongue curls so that any food fragments are carefully put back in the mouth to be eaten.

So what does this signal to our dumb friends, the humans? It means either that I like the food and want to make sure I get it all, down to the last crumb or smear. Or it means I was so hungry I didn't want to waste any, even of food that I was less keen on.

If humans look carefully at us, the fact that there is food being eating should make them able to distinguish between this kind of lip wiping and the swifter tongue flick, which expresses stress.

This video is also on Celia's Youtube channel in the playlist of cat signals - what is my cat saying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxC12BbRB54&list=PLnwXtI1uuo884ABEOTorPYZNnIeTh04pV&index=26 

 

Educating humans ... the silent purr

 

Here is my friend Freya doing an almost silent purr. So different from the loud purr by Tilly which you will find on my Youtube cat signals playlist. I couldn't video a silent purr because listeners or viewers would simply assume that I had turned the sound off.

Some of us purr very very loudly. Some purr moderately. And some purr so silently that our dumb humans cannot hear us and think that we don't purr at all.

If they looked more closely they would see the slight movements in the chest. Some humans put their ear close to our bodies to see if they can feel the vibrations. They usually can.

Luckily I purr moderately. I feel that the loud purrers are giving their humans too much feed back. 

If I was unlucky enough to be a silent purrer my human would never know I was doing it. Because if she put her ear close to my body I would simply swipe at it...

You have to stop them taking liberties.

 

A new top cat ... in Canada

Join me, fellow cats, in welcoming the latest world top cat.... Nico Carney of Canada. Yes, he is Purr Minster, the owner of Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney.

If you take a look at his Twitter feed you will see that he has been recently consulting Larry, Britain's top cat in number 10 Downing St. Apparently they talked about tariffs.

I can reveal the real truth of those conversations... not about tariffs at all but about the stresses and strains of managing prime ministers. Larry had good advice for Nico.

Why? Because Larry has outlasted some of the worse prime ministers  Britain has ever had. The roll call is David Cameron (who dissed him for not catching mice), Teresa May, Boris Johnson (who imported an incontinent dog to no 10), Liz Truss (whose term was shorter than a lettuce), Rishi Sunak (who didn't have a chance after the last two) and now Starmer.

No wonder Larry is looking rather old and tired after that.

But we wish Nico well. It's tough at the top. Don't let Carney get away with anything.

And, purrlease, if you meet JD Vance who dislikes women with cats, bite him for me. You can leave Trump alone - at least he is a carnivore.

Why I arch my back... educating humans in our body language

 I arch my back, either when I am just stretching, or when I am trying to show how big I am -  hoping to intimidate an enemy. Turning sideways and arching the back makes me look more formidable. 

Here is a video to educate dumb humans in our body language. 

Tommy, a juvenile cat reacted to by fighting rather than fleeing. So he arched his back to show he was bigger and turned sideways to show that there was even more of him. He also growled which you can hear. All this was to intimate an enemy.

He was frightened of course. Which is why when he was trying to move away, he went slowly, cautiously, with the rest of his body lowered. His tail was lowered too! 

So his body language shows both fear and aggression.

 

• The playlist of what cats are saying is on my Youtube channel under Celia's name is https://www.youtube.com/@CeliaHaddoncats/playlists