An appeal ...adopt or foster. Don't buy.

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.

Do cats mourn? The loss of scent harmony

 

Do we mourn, when we lose a feline or a human friend? Of course, we do. Some of us go round the house looking for the missing friend: others sink into depression.

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.

Liz, the lastest Larry rescue pet

 

Larry, the Downing Street Prime Cat, has a new rescue human called Liz. It is his latest attempt to find a pet worthy to live in Downing St.

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.

What my ears hear....

 

My ears are the amazing. I can hear more from low to high- pitched sounds than any other warm-blooded animal that human scientists have tested. My hearing range is remarkable.

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.

 

I think therefore I purr

Human scientists have had the audacity (and stupidity) to say that cats don't think. That we are mindless beings just driven by instinct  and unable to solve problems.

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.

 

What could be more beautiful?

What could be more beautiful than a cat? This is Holly, an ordinary black cat. Nothing special about her. No pedigree. No extraordinary colouring. Not particularly long hair. Just an ordinary cat.

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.

 

Every single cat is unique.... why?

Every single cat has a different purrsonality. Every single cat is an individual. There is no "average cat." No single rule for every single cat.

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.

 

 

I'm a street cat: don't rescue me to be a house cat

We, the street cats of the world, don't want to be tamed. We don't want to be put in a pen and forced to adapt to human society. We don't want to be made into house cats.

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.

P.S. Go to International Cat Care Cat Friendly Homing.

So many are homeless

 

There are so many homeless cats. One estimate says that one in every two cats living in the world do not have a human home. Even in the UK about five percent of cats are homeless.

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.

Cat deprivation in humans: the symptoms

 

Dr Roxy on her therapy couch treats a patient

 

A new syndrome in humans has been discovered - cat deprivation syndrome. Do you know a human who is suffering? Here is an outline of the symptoms.

• Intense loneliness. This emotion is felt despite socialisation between humans. In households with partners and children, it is still the primary symptom. In lone-human households, it can become seriously overwhelming.
• Purr deprivation during the night. The human frequently wakes and misses the purr. This leads to prolonged sleeplessness due to what we cats call "unnnatural night silence." More room on the bed does not compensate for purr absence.
  
• The breakfast gap. This occurs when the human staggers downstairs to put down cat food. Realises there is no cat. Has to fill the gap by making her own coffee first. Schedule disruption produces inner uneasiness.
• Empty-house ideation. The human's mind is full of images of an empty house. Empty armchairs. Empty beds. Empty windowsills
  
• Missing rituals -  such as the litter skitter, the move-over-you-are-on-my-chair, the belly flop, where-ie-my-dinner, the greeting-you scratch on mat, don't-interrupt-my-grooming-sequence. 
• Improverished cleaning rituals. Where has the hair gone? Paradoxical feelings of dismay rather than relief.

I could go on, but these are the main symptoms. If not promptly addressed, they can lead to severe mental psychosis.

• 
  

My scratch-post is too small

This is how I like to scratch most of the time -- standing at full length and pulling my spine upwards with my claws before a good downward stroke.. A lovely pilates stretch as well as an important way to leave a scent mark.

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.

Why lions can't purr but we can.

 

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.