We cats dread Christmas....

 

My idiotic relative Percy likes Christmas

There may be some cats that enjoy Christmas, but I don't. And  almost all the cats I am acquainted with simply loathe it. Except for Percy on the left.

 The only good thing about Christmas is the turkey. There is usually a lot left over at the end of the day, so I might get some as a treat.

Otherwise it is a nightmare of humans - babies, toddlers (ugh!), harassed adults. Young children may even try to "dress" me.

Strangers invade the house. They ruin the family scent that I have carefully created by rubbing against my normal human and the furniture.

They smell wrong, wrong, wrong... Worse still, some of them smell of dog. And worst of all, sometimes they bring a dog into my home.

Some of the humans get drunk too. That makes them vocalise loudly and sometimes leads to a vocal fight among the relatives. It is a grim time.

What can a self-respecting cat do? Well I retire to the spare bedroom (if it is unoccupied) or loaf around on my human's bed. 

I suppose I should be grateful that I am not put into a cattery. Some of my feline friends languish in solitary confinement while their humans go for a holiday.

Christmas is coming.... and I dread it.

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.

Giving a home to a homeless human....

No, this isn't Giles... but I wouldn't mind fostering a Aussie firefighter....

 I have just taken in a homeless human.... well, sort of. I have my own permanent pet human, Celia, and lately I added a temporary foster human, Giles. He won't be staying long only until he has found a new home! 

He's more or less trained. Not a stray. Puts out food when I ask him. Pets me when I get close enough. So now I have two human servants rather than one.

They more or less get on together - though there is some disagreement about TV programmes and both of them show an unhealthy addiction to smart phones rather than focusing solely on me.

Last Thursday was Homeless Animals Day. I have mixed feelings about that. Of course, I want more human homes for cats, but I don't necessarily want my own home invaded by another cat. I like living alone.

There is a pesky foster kitten in my spare room at the moment and I am not at all pleased. Foster humans I can bear: foster cats I hiss at when I see them.

Luckily the kitten will be going soon..... But I shall miss the foster human when he goes.

Yum, yum....

 I have decided to apply for a job in a Chinese pet food laboratory - as a taster. These humans have been testing what flavours we like best using chicken liver spray.

Now chicken liver - or other liver - is what I like almost best in the world, though my human says that it is toxic if I eat too much of it too often. Just a tiny taste is all that I should have.

But purrhaps if I was in that laboratory I would get much more of it....

So what were their findings? Only what we cats know very well indeed. We don't like sweet. We don't even taste sweet. We like savory or unami (as they call it.) The meatier the taste the more we like it.

That's why we have to train our humans to buy us the most expensive cat food - expensive because there is more real meat in it and less carbs.

And while I mention this, it's amazing that I can successfully train my human in this way. I don't have to go to the supermarket with her. She just does what I have told her to do

even though I am not there to make her do it. This is long distance training... we are experts at this.

Want to brush up on training techniques? Read my book, One Hundred Ways for a Cat to Train its Human. Buy it here. It really works.

Are we getting on together?

 Most humans are too dumb to read our body language. So they don't pick up the clues that cats are not getting on. Sure, they may recognise a cat fight but more sublte signs pass them by.

Take for instance these two cats. The black cat is arching his back and standing sideways to the tabby the white cat. His tail is bristling and is standing up then going down. He is making himself look as big as possible to threaten the other cat.

The tabby and white has his ears retracted showing anger and they are also slightly pulled down the sides of the head showing some fear. 

His body is stiff with tension because he is readying himself for fight or flight. Another sign of his fear is that his body weight is on his back feet.

Yes, some cats do get on.  But some cats definitely do not.

Now some human scientists have come up with explanation and advice to these dumb humans. You can download their guidelines here 

Take-home message for stupid humans is 

• Don't take in too many cats
• Recognise the signs of inter cat tension
• Make sure each cat has a safe haven
• Don't feed cats in a row. Feed them at a decent distance from each other.
  
• Be creative in helping cats avoid each other - cat trees, lots of cat beds, lots of food and water in different occasions, a litter tray for each cat and one extra.
  

Male or female humans which do you prefer?

Freya taking a nap after socialising with the male plumbers

 Purrsonally, I have always preferred females. For the following reasons...

• They are usually in charge of food in the kitchen.
  
• They vocalise in a higher voice more like a miaow.
• They have softer bodies to lie on.
• They take up less room in the bed.
  

But my friend, Freya prefers males. She says she likes them better because...

• They have bigger laps to sit on and she is largish.
• If they love cats, they are soppier than the females!
  
• They are less fussy about cat hair.
• She finds their snoring restful at night.

Which do you prefer? And why?

• If your human wants to know why, tell her/him to read chapter 3 in this book.
  
  
  
  

Crazy cat men?

Men don't diet themselves or us

We cats are not misogynistic. We don't much care whether are our pets are male or female - though sometimes I have wished that both could be neutered. Humans would be so much easier to control, if they were without romantic interests.

For years male humans have sneered at women for loving cats too much. Now the tables are turned in the UK. More men than women are adopting cats from Cats Protection!

Is this good news for cats? I think it is. Male humans have larger laps than women so we can really stretch out. They will spend hours watching sport on TV giving us plenty of lap time.

Male humans often earn more money than women, so we can probably get more expensive food. But they usually don't diet themselves... or us!

Their bodies smell differently from female humans' bodies, but nowadays they are just as likely to use scents: so that's not a problem.

Disadvantages? Well, it is said that human males are more difficult to train than human females. This is not true. The advantage of training males is that they have no idea that they are being trained (ask any human female!).

It's important only to use reward methods of training for human males, as they are more likely to injure us if we nip or claw them. They don't mean to. It is just male lack of impulse control.

So careful training must start immediately using rewards like loud purring, kneading (avoid tender male body areas),  plaintive meows near food, and generally charming behaviour.

Human males are putty in our paws...

 

Cat video travels from outer space.

 

A cat video (my human is a cat video addict) have now been beamed to the earth from outer space... well, why not? What other video would be sent?

It's another first for cats. We get everywhere. Every single place on Earth has cats - even above the arctic circle or on uninhabited islands. So space is not that new for us. We are natural explorers.

The spacecraft Psyche, currently 19 million miles away from Earth, sent the video starring Tater the cat. Psyche was launched in October and is on her way to metallic asteroid, circling the sun between Mars and Jupiter. You can read the whole story here.

And you can see the cat video here. Or, if for some odd human reason, you are more interested in space travel than cats, you can read about the mission here.

Think about this, when your human is being particularly annoying, refusing to let you put your nose into the Christmas cake basin or not giving you a single bit of the raw turkey innards. 

The first ever video from outer space showed Tater the cat. So we can afford to feel smug this Christmas.

Winter's here and cats need more than food.

 It's cold outside in the UK. Very cold. And there are homeless cats that may not survive the winter - unless humans help them.

I get impatient with humans that feed stray cats, but do nothing else. It's OK to feed my feline friends on the street. That's great. But stray cats need shelter too.

If you can't take in a cat to your home, and many humans can't, then feeding is not enough. If the cat is entirely feral, then put a cat flap into your garden shed or even put outside something like a dog kennel. 

We cats need a dry place urgently. We can survive the dry cold but we can't survive wet cold. So, humans should make sure we can shelter in the dry.

Better still - humans should take one more step. Find your local cat rescue people who can trap cats. Help them do this. Then the cat can either find a new home with humans or at least be neutered and spayed - this helps them survive better.

Don't just feed. Do more. Give dry shelter. Neuter and spay to help survival.

And for homeless pets, help them find a new warm home. Don't  let them freeze to death.

A purr gets more than a nip

 Do you want to get the most out of your human? Do you want food, or stroking, or an opened door? Think smart....

A purr may be more effective than a nip. A nip gets human attention immediately. Very effective in one way. But only in one way... And is is the right kind of attention?

A purr allied with rubbing against your human's legs might get attention just as well. And a different more rewarding kind of attention.

Humans are easily flattered. They respond to a show of affection even if it is not genuine. Try the following when you want something:

• Purr. Purr loudly and often. Humans fall for this one almost every time.
• Purr and croak. This is a purr that has a bit of a miaow in it which makes it more urgent. And louder. I recommend this when the human is not attending.
• Miaow. Loudly but not too often. If you miaow too much, the human may stop attending.
• Rub your body against legs. Always useful in the kitchen.
• Rub the face against your human's face. Very useful for waking them up in the night.
•  Paw poke without claws. This must be done gently and carefully. 
•  Slow blink. This only works with sensitive humans who pay attention to your body language. The stupid human won't get this or notice it. And most humans are stupid.
  

Act: do not react. Always ask yourself - what is the best way to get what I want...

 

 

 

Me and food

 I like my food - regular portions delivered at the right time of day by my human. In an ideal world, each portion would be about the size of a small rodent and it would be delivered about six times a day.

That is how I would eat in the wild. I would have to hunt for each meal and many of my hunting attempts, at least half, would be unsuccessful. So to get six rodents, I should need to patrol, find the prey, and steady myself then launch a pounce at least 12 times a day.

That's  a lot of effort with space and patrolling between each hunting effort. So the timing of my meals would be one small meal, then a gap, then another.

That's not how I am fed. My owner puts down food for me usually twice a day, before she leaves the house and when she comes back. She used to leave unlimited dry food so I could snack as often as I liked, but I got too fat.

So, she puts the food down, usually an envelope. Then I eat some of it and leave about half. I often then ask for more even though there is half the food uneaten.

This irritates her. Even when I eat most of the food, I leave a little bit. 

"Why do you always leave something for Mr Manners," she asks rhetorically. 

I just smirk and meow for a new envelope.

 

I know your name, human!

 

We aren't dumb, you know. I can recognise my own name when my human calls me. And, it seems, some of us can match a name of a fellow cat to their photo, even match the name of a human to a photo.

If we can be bothered, that is.

Japanese researchers named a fellow resident cat, and then showed us either the right photo or the wrong photo of that cat. We spent more time looking, if it was the wrong photo because that was unexpected. They did the same with a photo of our owner.

O, these human obsessives....  I notice that one of the cats refused to take part in this waste-of-my-time behaviour by the researchers! He had better things to do - like a nap or a bowl refill.

I think I would have had better things to do. I know I am purrfectly intelligent. I don't need to take part in clumsy human experiments to show off.

I purr, therefore I am.

 

 

Life before birth for a kitten

 

We all depend on our mothers, when we are young, whether we are kittens or human babies. She influences us by her mothering after birth but she also influences us before birth.

Feline mothers that are half starved produce small, sometimes slow developer kittens - that isn't unknown. But what you may not know is that our feline mother's eating habits can influence us as kittens in her womb. If she eats a cheese-flavoured diet, as in one study, we will prefer cheese flavoured food when we start eating solid food.

There are other sadder influences too. A highly stressed mother produces highly kittens that will grow up with the same stressy attitude to life. The stress hormones in her maternal blood will be passed on to the kittens in her womb and influence their prenatal brain development.

In a way it's nature's method of preparing us kittens for life ahead. If our mother cat lives in a world where there are many dangers, we need to be prepared for the same world. If a pregnant cat eats a particular diet, then this diet will be around for her kittens to eat safely too. 

And there is also the influence of genetics. If we have a fearful father cat we kittens will have a fearful temperament - even though most tom cats have nothing to do with us kittens. So it must be in the genes.

"They f... you up, your Mum and Dad," wrote a human poet. The same can hold true for kittens....

If I eat his, he can eat mine

Post breakfast nap. Toby has eaten her breakfast: she has eaten his.

 Food the other guy has always tastes better. Or so I am told by cats that live together. (I am lucky enough not to have to share my human pet with another cat.)

This gets complicated when cats have a special diet - as many of us now do at vast human expense. Take Tilly and Toby for instance. Tilly is on a special renal diet to delay kidney problems; Toby, who has a delicate stomach, is on a special easily digested diet.

Their bowls are in seperate locations. To begin with. What normally happens is that Toby stops eating his food and wanders off to Tilly's food. She stops eating her food and wanders off to his food.

So Toby eats renal food and Tilly eats a specially digestible diet. 

This is a good way to test human emotional composure before a coffee addict has had the first cup..... try it. Another good human tease.

Fat cat shaming.....

 "Fat cats" is a human insult towards other humans that are paid too much. That phrase has unfortunately been used in connection with my own shape. Inaccurate, because my boxy shape is just the fact that I am a pedigree British type.

Obesity - not just a bit of chubbiness - is a common problem for cats (and humans). Particularly those of us who live indoors and are not allowed out to go hunting and killing. There just isn't much to do except eat.

My friend, Boomer, pictured above was such a cat His human suffered from Alzheimers and couldn't remember if she had fed him or not. So Boomer ate many meals every day. 

He finally had to go on a diet. The vet prescribed a diet food that was weighed out every day and he got nothing extra. What he did get, however, was the fun of "hunting" it. Nothing was put in a bowl: it was scattered over the floor or put in a food dispenser.

He had to get his food from home made dispensers - a tennis ball with a hole cut in it, pizza package with wholes, a cardboard pill container with the food just put inside, a large box which he had to jump inside, the windowsill so he had to jump up to it, a plastic water bottle with holes in it and lavatory rolls with holes.

He frequently asked for more food and his requests were not ignored. Instead, he was offered games with fishing rod toys. 

His before photo is at the top of this blog: his after photo at the bottom. There are more photos at www.catexpert.co.uk under the heading of "Indoor only cats."

Are you suffering from whisker fatigue?

 

It's not generally known but we cats can suffer from whisker fatique. These wonderful strong hairs (so much more mobile and sensitive than the human beard) take important messages to the brain. And if they are over-stimulated they get tired.

Tired of what? Tired of being pushed out of place each time we eat or drink. In the real world this rarely happens. While we are drinking from a stream or a puddle our whiskers are not confined. When we are eating a mouse, we move the whiskers to where we want them to be - backwards if they are getting in the way of crunching up the rodent or forward to monitor its movement if our meal is still wriggling.

Humans don't get this at all. So they purrsist in putting our food in high sided bowls. We have to push our faces down to eat, and our whiskers are twanging and brushing against the side of the bowl. The same thing happens with bowls of water particularly if the water level is low.

Sensitive cats with sensitive whiskers dislike this. Does whisker fatique hurt us? Not normally, but it is unpleasant and sometimes even stressful.

So get your humans to give you shallow food bowls and water bowls large enough for our whiskers not to touch the sides. There is a vet article about this here.

Stressed humans and tender paws

My paws hurt from trying to use this laptop.

My human has let her  computer get too old and it is dying on her. That is why this blog is so late. She is frantic so I decided to help her with the typing. I don't usually offer help. Altruism is not a cat thing. But I don't want to disappoint my fans.

The keyboard is great to sleep on. It's fun to walk on too. I like leaving messages on screen like this - ssrr  44444 'lkp[0\]12. These cryptic comments enhance her efforts though she never appreciates them.But it is hard on the paws.  So my message is simple. And very short.

Christmas is coming. This means your human will be particularly difficult to get on with. She is tired and worried. Christmas really makes humans stressed.

At least this year she won't be able to fill the house with screaming kids and ageing parents. The fewer people the better for us cats.

And there may be more turkey leftovers!

PS. Don't eat the wrapping paper or ribbons. It usually means a trip to the vet.

Stand up for rescue cats..... homeless cats

I am lucky enough to have a home and regular meals. Many of my sisters and brothers lead wretched lives on the street - starving, flea ridden, and terrified. Please help them by

getting your human to wise up on what to do about them. Spread the word that these cats can be helped. International Cat Care has a lot online about how to help them - https://icatcare.org/unowned-cats/feral-street-community-cats/

Just feeding the cats, like the video above, isn't enough. But regular feeding is the beginning of a process. It is called Trap Neuter and Return - or TNR. Neutered cats are healthier than un-neutered ones. Females often die after endless kitten bearing and males die of diseases transmitted by fighting. Neutering means that the colony isn't full of diseased kittens, many of which will not survive into adulthood.

Feed regularly first. Then trap. Then neuter and euthanise those suffering from diseases. Rehome the stray cats that are used to human homes. Rehab, tame and find homes for young kittens. Return the adult feral cats to the site. Continue with regular feeding for a healthy colony and to keep an eye out for strays or feral cats that turn up.

That way, newcomer cats can also be trapped and neutered and the colony will eventually die out. This should please the people who want to see fewer cats. Their solution of merely shooting or poisoning strays and ferals usually merely results in newcomers taking over the empty territory.

We are reclaiming the streets...

 Humans are beginning to learn their place in life - in the kitchen with a large pile of food envelopes. Then ready to provide a warm lap for a nap after our meal.
Meanwhile we are reclaiming the streets.  The horrible roaring machines that terrify us and are so destructive, with their revolting smells, are few in number. The irritating human pedestrians tottering along on two feet in ridiculous high heels are no longer interfering with our street patrols.
We have taken back the streets from them.
We can loll where we like. Investigate where we choose. Stroll along without worrying about traffic. Sit in contemplation without some human idiot wanting to interrupt our contemplation.
Learn from us, humans. 
Cats are everywhere... purrhaps this is the beginning of a happier, more serene, feline world.  

• For advice on managing your human get this book here. 

Fear and loathing in the cattery

They go on holiday. We go to gaol. It's not fair. My human has swanned off to have a good time and I am stuck in prison.
They call it a cattery but it's really just a prison cell. No carpets. No sofa for scratching. Horrible disinfectant smells. Strange cats nearby. 
What's not to hate.
We do not deserve this. I have tried and failed to escape and I am miserable.
She, meanwhile, is having a good time eating fish in Normandy..... 
Sometimes humans are really vile. I shall make her pay for it later.



Want to know more of how to live with a human - read here