Sunday, February 28, 2021

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."



Saturday, February 20, 2021

Adopt, don't buy. Older cats have more serenity.

 

Humans in lockdown have been paying silly prices for puppies and kittens. Just for the fun of caring for an exciteable cute companion.

As a qualified human behaviour counsellor, this fills me with despair.

Some, perhaps many, of these furry babies will end up in an animal shelter when their owners get bored or have to go back to work outside the home. 

Meanwhile there are plenty of beautiful adult cats needing homes. How do we get the message across to dumb humans, that these need homes too and have plenty of love to give. If the human goes  back to work, most adult cats can cope very well as long as they have a cat flap. 

The advantages of adoption are obvious. It costs less. If a human adopts an adult cat, it will know more about the cat's individual temperament (you can't tell with a kitten). There is a greater choice. The cat has already been spayed and neutered. She/he has been vet checked and should be free of disease.

Humans should check out the animal rescue before adoption. Charities will be registered with the UK Charity Commission and can be checked online. If the rescue is not among these, don't go to it.

Rescue places that have rabbit hutches, old cages or crates with cats should be reported to the RSPCA. So should any human who is operating from a house with more than 20 cats in it. Report these to the RSPCA so that the cats can be rescued and rehomed via a reputable charity.

 


 

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Purrlease.... a big enough litterbox

 


Look how much space is needed for a really good dig before elimination. This is the space we want. This is the space we choose when we have the option of going out of doors on a nicely prepared seed bed in a garden.

Now look at what most people give their cat - a miserably small


litter tray. We often have to stand outside the tray in order to have the room to do a proper dig. Sometimes it is even worse and the small tray has a top to it so that we can barely turn out. 

And turning to look at what we have done, before neatly covering it up, is natural behaviour.

Worse still a recent survey of UK pet owners showed that 64% of the owners who had more than one cat only put down one litter tray. Normal deposits for a litter tray would be between 3-5 dumps (both kinds) so a single tray would be filthy very soon.

Give us one tray per cat. And one extra just in case.

Give us the space we need..... 

And, purlease, clean up twice a day. 


Saturday, February 06, 2021

Dogs.... crawling sycophants everywhere.


 There are dogs everywhere I look. Most of them still puppies or juveniles. Feline friends of mine have had their lives ruined by dogs suddenly appearing in their household.

Am I being unfair to another species?

A dog in the household, under proper control by the cat, can provide valuable services - a warm body to sleep near or even on top, garden security to see off other cat intruders into the house, and a greater choice of beds. 

Even the smallest kitten must make her dominance evident from the start.

But the sudden intrusion, into a hitherto happy home, is nevertheless upsetting. Threesomes are not to every cat's taste.

Disloyal humans, in search of a more sycophantic pet, may enjoy canine companionship. We often don't.

It won't end well for the dogs.


Saturday, January 30, 2021

Human response to vaccination


My human experienced for the first time the hell of vaccination. If she wasn't so dumb, I could have told her that vaccinations occasionally make me feel rather ill.

Not only do I hate going to the vet. Always a stressfulI experience. And sometimes I feel rather ill after a vaccination - depending on which kind I get. 

Well, this time it happened to her. Now she knows what it can be like. I didn't gloat. Well, I did. But only a little. She totally failed to do her secretarial work with this blog.

So that is why there was no blog from me. My paws can do a little on the keyboard but I don't like doing more than a single sentence. 

So there was no blog. Sorry, fellow cats. Not the first time that humans have disappointed us.  

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Litter tray problems are due to humans

 

It's time to be clear. So-called cat problems are nothing of the kind. True, they may be problems for humans: but they are not problems for us.

It's natural and sensible for a sensitive cat to stop using a tiny litter tray, or a litter tray filled with the wrong kind of litter, or a tiny tray which we cannot dig properly. Or a tray with such a mean amount of litter that we scrape our claws against the plastic.

I mean, what do they expect us to do?

Would they like a lavatory full of poop and pee? Or one that they could not flush (the human equivalent of digging)? Or one that didn't flush enough water? Would they like a toilet so small that their bottoms spread over the side? 

Come off it, humans. It's time for you to take responsibility. What do we want? 

Large litter trays, familiar litter, enough of it so we can dig properly, and cleaning. Yes, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. At least twice a day.

Friday, January 08, 2021

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.

Friday, January 01, 2021

It's a fur fur better thing.....

 

Shedding. It's what I and other cats do. Some of us, living in centrally heated homes, shed a little at a time. Those of us living outside shed in the spring, getting rid of spare hair ready for the hot weather. 


My friend, Toby, however, decided to do a big full-on shed just after Christmas. As you can see he has sort of wispy hair which is described as "semi-long hair." Just before the coldest time in the UK, the first and second week in January, he shed much of his coat - photographed here.

He's trained his human to brush him daily, when he lies down and exposes his tummy for the flea comb. In the course of these four post Christmas days, this is what she combed out. Had she been more conscientious (humans always try to avoid work) she might have combed out even more.

I asked him why? He said that he was trying to regain the natural life of his ancestors, Felis silvestris catus, when they first moved in with humans living in the Middle East.  January, he explained, is quite warm in Baghdad, the so called Fertile Crescent when during the first Neolithic settlements cats domesticated humans.

He added that he wanted to test his human's combing ability, which he admitted was not bad...

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Cat in the White House


I can't wait for the next First Cat of the USA. The human president elect is going to add a cat to his White House staff, to join his two dogs, Champ and Major.  We don't know which cat yet but I am hoping it will be a rescue cat (the dogs are rescues).

The new First Cat will be following Socks, the last White House cat at the time of a human called Clinton (in the photo above). Socks was too easy going to be a good example to us cats and let his humans, the Clintons, betray him by adding a dog, Buddy the Labrador. When they left the White House, Socks was degraded to the care of a secretary (though a better carer than a Clinton).

The best predecessor was Shan, the cat belonging to a president called Ford. He set a good example for future high flying cats by biting the presidents wife and daughter, after being left in the White House while they went on a skiing trip.

Lets hope the new First Cat follows his example and keeps the new presidential pet, Biden, in his proper place. The White House hierarchy should be like this - First Cat, President, First Dogs and Vice President. 

Monday, December 14, 2020

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.

Saturday, December 05, 2020

In-between cats - how to help

 

These are in-between cats... I know them from my neighbourhood. I enjoy living with humans. I let them sleep in my bed (they think it is their bed) and I even doze on their lap.

In-between cats don't enjoy too much human contact.  These two cats have homes in Maunsel St and they get regular meals there. But they like to spend most of their time outside, living the live of a free cat rather than a pet cat.

They would be miserable shut up all day inside a house or harassed by human rescuers that want to keep touching, petting and picking up. Or stuck in a cat pen waiting for a human that doesn't want a cuddle cat.

Get your human to listen here and learn how to help these cats.  https://icatcare.org/unowned-cats/

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