Keeping safe. Human killers or animal killers?

 We cats get very frightened when we hear about humans serial killers of cats. How can we tell the difference between a killer and a human friend? Now we can relax a little, if we live in Croydon, a suburb of London.

There isn't a human cat killer at large. The killers were foxes.

Hundreds of cats went missing there, but now a scientific study reported here says the deaths were due either to foxes attacking and killing cats, or foxes scavenging on the dead bodies of cats that had died from different causes.

However, how can we keep safe from foxes? 

The best way to do this is to stay indoors at night. Please, humans, lock the cat flap when you come home from work. 

Yes, we won't like it. Yes, we will complain at first. So call us in for a special meal or special treats, so that we are rewarded when we get indoors.

It's the simple way to keep us safe from predators....

Get microchipped

 So many cats get lost when they stray from home. They have to roam the streets looking for somebody who might help them survive. Or they end up in traffic accidents and their grieving owners never know what happened. Now, at long last, the UK government is going to do something about it.

Microchips can help all cats. That is the message from International Cat Care. But somehow many humans either just forget, or don't care, or feel it cannot happen to them. Why should you be microchipped?

• If you get lost and are rescued by a human, a vet can read the microchip and you can be re-united with your family.
• If you are injured in a traffic accident, a vet can treat you and find your home.
• If, (Bastet or some other cat goddess forbid), you meet your death under a car, your body can be scanned and your humans can get closure. It's awful for them, if you just disappear, and they never know what happened to you.
• Cat rescue organisations will be able to rehome stray cats immediately, if they are microchipped. That means they can take in more cats that need help
• Microchipping may help stop thieves who steal cats to resell them.
• Irresponsible cat owners, including cat hoarders, can be taken to court - which gives them the chance to be re-educated in cat welfare.
• Irresponsible or disorganised cat charities (and there are a few of them) will have to shape up to proper welfare standards. Just handing out cats without microchips won't be good enough.
  

Dumb humans call cats psychopaths.

 Humans shoot rabbits:nobody calls them psychopaths.

 All cats are somewhat psychopathic? So say the human newspapers in a gross slur on cats. Read it here. Psychopathic? Ridiculous. A typical example of dumb humans loading their preconceptions on to the feline species.

I am so cross about this that I would like to write a letter to the newspaper. But my paws just won't work correctly. What can I do? Well I could nip, bite or scratch to express my feelings of frustration against the human race.

Their "thinking" (if you can call it that) goes like this. Human psychopaths are 1) predatory: 2) manipulative and 3) without empathy. We cats are all those things because we have to be, living with humans.

Predatory? Yes. I catch mice and rats. This is what we do as cats. It is how we survived before the advent of cat food in a bowl. So we catch birds? They eat birds like chicken and turkey and duck.

Manipulative? Yes. How else am I going to get my human to do what I want? Or how else am I going to stop them doing what i don't want?  So I purr, rub, or nip or bite. It is my only option since I can't use the human language.

Without empathy or callous? Not fair. I try to understand their feelings, but they express them in such an odd way. They just keep blahblahing at me but I can't understand their language. Their vocalisations are too complex: their body language is not at all expressive: and they hide their natural body scent communications by standing under water, adding artificial scents and flushing away the urine and faeces which I could otherwise get a message from.

There are times when I despair of dumb humans. They are so STUPID.

Toby and Christmas

Humans start to go mad at this time of you. And I mean mad.

They order and pay for paper representations. They then make little scratch marks on them: place them in paper envelopes and take them to a red postbox (in the UK) which swallows them up.

And through a slit in the door, similar paper items come through in large numbers. These are then exhibited on a rope across the kitchen or placed on the mantle piece. Who knows what this is all about? These paper items are not good to eat. Or even to play with.

However, quite often these paper cards include cat photos, as well as fat male humans dressed in red, babies with mothers in blue, or pictures of people with alcohol. Now the cat pictures can be quite fun.

I have put one of these here since my human is going to send a card memorialising my late friend, Toby the Crossed Eyed Stray. The cat that she wrote a whole book about. She hasn't got over his death.

If I had to choose between a fat human dressed in red and Toby, I would choose Toby. I think you will all agree on this.

Growing old gracefully

This is my friend, also called George. He is a senior cat. He is happy, and healthy even if he does sleep rather a lot. He's not as sleek as he used to be, as his fur has thinned a bit and he's not good at grooming himself in the difficult parts to reach.

I think his human  should groom him daily, just to get to the areas where he finds grooming rather tricky. She told me that the next time she takes him to the vet, she will ask if he has arthritis that might be painful. It may hurt him to turn his body round to groom his back.

How does she know he is mentally still active and not suffering from dementia?

•  He is able to move round the house and garden without being disorientated. He can find his way around.
  
• Their relationship is unchanged. He is neither clinging nor strangely distant.
• He sleeps and wakes at his usual times. There is no middle-of-the-night waking and calling.
• He uses his litter tray without trouble
• His behaviour is normal. He doesn't pace restlessly.

Check that we oldies are not in pain from arthritis. Keep an eye on our behaviour - if we start behaving abnormally, it could be disease or the beginnings of losing it. 

We senior cats need to keep their dignity and wellbeing. Get your owner to read up on elderly cat care

 

Brian the cricketer cat.

I am not sure I understand cricket, though I think it's like hunting balls rather than mice.

Only cricket balls are very hard indeed. I couldn't pick one up in my mouth: though I could bat it with my paw, I suppose. 

But if you asked me whether the bowler was bowling a dibbly dobbly or bowling a googly, I couldn't tell you. And I'm not sure what is out for a duck, though it sounds quite tasty.

But Brian knows. He understands what is going on.

Brian, the ginger cat, is a regular attender at Somerset County Cricket ground. He enjoys watching the game, taking part in cricket teas, and socialising with the players.

And they love him so much they are going to build a house for him. A local building supplies firm, Bradfords, will do the work. One of their employees explained: "We know how loved Brian is within the Somerset County cricket community, so when we were approached to get involved, the answer was yes." 

Nobody knows where he comes from so now he has a new home.

Meowzat!

 

 

Purrfect nursing for your sick human

 

Tilly shows how purr therapy is done

I have been busy these last six days nursing my sick human. She has been suffering from some kind of stomach bug that has left her feeling nauseated and weak. 

That's why my blog wasn't posted last week.

So she sleeps a lot. Luckily I sleep a lot too. So in the past week I have worked really hard to help her. I have upped my sleeping time from about 80% of the day to 90%, only waking her up at meal times.

I aim to sleep elongated near her, my back to her, but near enough so she can rest her hand on it and feel the rhythm of my purr. She can also hear the regularity of purring. it seems to relax her.

Between meals, I have purred a lot. Purr therapy seems to work well on humans. When she goes to bed feeling sick, purring seems to help her fall into a healing sleep.

Fortunately she has been conscientious in her duties - cleaning the litter tray and making sure I have a bout 4 meals a day and renewing the dry food which is there for a snack.

It's been hard nursing her but I am doing well. She ate a cheese sandwich a few hours ago and gave me a bit of cheese as a thank-you present.

Pay attention, humans - we hurt.

We elderly cats do sleep more than younger ones but it's just old age, as some ignorant humans think. We may be in pain.
One estimate is that a third of all us cats suffer from arthritis. 

We don’t show pain like dogs do. We don't complain. We don't whine or wimper. Most of us don't even limp. We don't show that we are hurt, like humans do. We just suffer in silence and do more sleeping. If humans were more observant they would notice that we hesitate before jumping up, and we may have difficulties on the stairs. Some of us need to use a chair to get to our favourite high places. We don't play games like we used to.

Humans get painkillers from a doctor, but only 7% of arthritic cats get any treatment at all. Yet there are special diets and painkillers that would give us a proper quality of life.

Are you listening, humans?

The meaning of rolling

Rolling is what we do when we are happy and relaxed. So humans think. And that's where they are wrong. Rolling has different meanings.

This kind of roll, done by my friend Boomer, is just a happy relaxed roll in front of his human. It means something like "Look at me! I'm your friend."  It does not mean "Tickle my tummy."

If an ignorant human thinks its safe to tickle Boomer's tummy, he will soon be put right. Because rolling then raking with his painful claws is also what Boomer does to toy mice - as a kind of play-with-prey game. Human beware!

Rolling, or rather lying on the side of the body, is also something cats do in a play fight - or in a real fight.  So itl's not straight-forward. 

A roll might also be a roll in the dust to thicken the coat or change our smell. It might be a sort of floppy roll to expose our tummy to the sun.

Humans need to attend very carefully to what we do, how we do it, whether we look relaxed, playful or even fearful. They need to consider the context not just one single action.

So a roll is either relaxation with attention-seeking, a play-with-prey (human fingers too) move, a move in a play fight, a defensive move in a real fight, or just a chance to roll in the dust or in the sunlight.

Humans, don't make assumptions.

 

Are humans learning to talk?

Humans depend upon us cats for affection and we depend upon them for food and warmth. How can we encourage and reward their efforts to win our love?

The photo shows one very easy reward for a human - the slow blink. 

First do a few little half blinks to catch your human's attention, then do a long slow blink. This will be recognised as a sign of affection by any savvy human. 

Indeed some humans are beginning to do a slow blink, themselves. A few of these noisy chattering human pets are learning to "talk cat." They call them selves "feline researchers."

They started to slow blink cats and see what happened. Naturally the cats concerned were thrilled by finding humans who were trying to talk our language. So they walked towards them to find out more.

The humans concluded that the slow blink might be a "positive emotional communication between cats and humans."

We concluded that these dumb (though noisy) humans were at last beginning the first slow steps towards learning to talk. When will they learn to purr?

* Google "The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication"

We need choice

An essential for a happy feline life is choice... something which humans so often deny us.

Each morning I ask myself - shall I use the catflap or would I prefer my human to open the garden door for me?

Shall I use the human bed upstairs or shall I use the sofa? Or perhaps the cardboard box on the kitchen table? Or even the box that my human put for me on the top of the cupboard, after I used to spend time there without a bed?

Do I want a bed? Or shall I just lie flat out with my legs apart in a patch of sunlight in the living room? Or sit on my special cat lounge looking out into the garden.

Choice, you see. Make your human give you multiple beds and multiple resting places.

You know it makes feline sense.

Kittens with short lives

 

Feral cats and cats that have lost their home live miserably short lives. Kittens often die before the first winter, females are exhausted and half starved by constant kitten bearing, and males roam around looking for sex, risking their lives on the roads and picking up fatal infections. 

How different from our own lives as pampered pets. Regular meals, Warm beds. Central heating. And human servants. 

As cats we can't do anything much, as it is against our nature to share or give away our food (unless we have had our own kittens). Most of us do not want to share our homes with another cat. We prefer our humans to be totally devoted to us.

So it's up to humans to help. Out there are dedicated cat trappers who will help feral kittens find new homes, trap and rehome stray pets, and trap, neuter and return ferals.

My personal favourite is Sunshine Cat Rescue, a small devoted rescue in the UK. If your human knows a good one, purr in their ear till they send some money. 

Help kittens survive.