How I got my tabby markings

 

Striped tabbies have the ancestral tabby pattern

Spots, stripes or blotches, we tabbies have beautiful coat markings. I am a silver tabby but tabby markings can be found in beige or brown coated cats and a few gingers too. It's the background colour that varies.

Now some human geneticists have been studying just how it happens... in order to find out how the leopard got its spots. (Did you spot the Kipling reference there?)

First they found a gene they called Taqpep. Depending on how this gene worked, a tabby was striped or blotched and (guess what) cheetahs were just large tabbies when it came to coat colourings.

Then they investigated further and found that tabby markings happen very early before birth. The skin surrounding the feline fetus starts growing thicker or thinner. This is even before there are any melanocytes, the cells which are responsible for different colours.

Then slowly the hair folicules develop and with them the colouring, the melanin. Some folicules have dark melanin called pheomelanin and some have light melanin called eumelanin.

This coincides with the tabby patterning. The eumelanin defines the background colour to the stripes, blotches or spots.

They then looked back even further into the earliest days of the embryo and found  the patterning could be recognised at an even earlier stage. The Taqpep gene influenced the pattern of how a protein coding gene Dkk4 was expressed.

With me? Difficult if you are not a geneticist.

Their conclusion was that it was a reaction-diffusion model, a sort of genetic game whereby a colouring gene was inhibited or  expressed.

And all this led back to a very clever human Alan Turing who in the l950s suggested this particular kind of gene expression.

As for me, I don't understand all of this but what I do know is that tabbies are the most beautiful of all cats, whether they are pussycats like me or big fierce cats like tigers.

PS. Want to know more? Put Developmental genetics of color pattern establishment in cats into Google Scholar!

Indoor only humans, stop cuddling.

Covid has made normal people into indoor-only humans. Which means they have been emotionally needy. They have sought our attention and constantly demanded cuddles.

Now the dilemma facing cats, whose humans do not go out of the front door (that large cat flap often opening out into a street), is being recognised. Stress. That is what we cats are feeling, as humans become dependent upon us.

The feline welfare manager of Battersea cat and dog home says ‘Having the constant companionship of their owners during the pandemic may have left some cats feeling as though they have lost part of their territory or have less control over when and for how long they receive a fuss.’

Until this pandemic most humans led indoor and outdoor lives - leaving the house at regular intervals five days a week and leaving us to get on with our own lives. For some of this it meant a noonday snooze on the bed. For others, it meant visiting the old age pensioner down the road who would offer a second breakfast. 

Lockdown has meant humans stayed at home. Almost all the time. They call it  "working from home." Though heaven knows what they do with their so called laptops (a cat on the lap is one thing: a digital device is quite another). 

Many of us have felt positively harassed. We have been petted too much. Picked up too often. Cuddled when we don't want it. Our routines have been interfered with. Our serenity has been severely upset by constant demands for affection.

Purrlease stop. Go back to the office leave us alone.

Take Your Cat to the Vet Day? No.

 

Last Sunday was Take Your Cat to the Vet Day.... what on earth do humans think they are doing.

Take your cat to the vet day? I think not. For one thing it's a Sunday and the human will be charged much more money than normal.

For another, - how can I put it? - CATS HATE VETS. 

Vets smell bad. They smell of dog and disinfectant and pain and animal fear. They stab you with needles. They force your mouth open. They stick things into your ears. They even stick things up your butt.

No wonder some co-resident cats attack their feline companions when they return from the vet surgery, smelling of vets.

I admit that I purr on the veterinary table. Most cats don''t but I do.

Just because I purr when I am at the vet's surgery being handled by one of these human monsters. It doesn't mean I am happy. Nor does it mean that I love the vet.

I purr to comfort myself. And maybe I purr in the forlorn hope that the vet will listen to me and stop hurting me.

Humans, do not deceive yourselves.  CATS HATE VETS.

Disabled cats have special talents

 

Minty, National Cat of the Year 2021 c. Cats Protection

At last! 

Disabled cats are being recognised, not just for their disabilities, but for their virtues and strengths. Cats with disabilities have something special to offer in the way of caring for humans. 

This is Minty, who was honoured by the human charity Cats Protection, for her valuable work caring for Connor, a boy with learning difficulties and cerebral palsy. Minty has only three legs but has nevertheless helped Connor learn to climb stairs. His empathy and calmness aids Connor when he suffers an emotional meltdown.

His adult female human says: "Having only three legs never stops Minty enjoying life, and I think that rubs off on Connor. Together they are unstoppable, whatever comes their way.  Minty's a really inspirational cat and we love him to bits."

Cats with disabilities in cat shelters are just waiting to adopt a suitable human. Don't pass them by.

Save a life for International Cat Day

It's International Cat Day and I have a message for all humans from my friend, Tilly. If you are lucky enough to have a cat in your life, celebrate this special day by doing one of four things:

• Donate some money to your local cat shelter
• Volunteer at your local cat shelter.
• Adopt a homeless adult cat - preferably an old one .
• Foster a homeless cat.

I am lucky enough to be a pedigree cat, but there are literally millions of cats, some of them starving and desperate, who need human help. 

Take my friend, Tilly. She was miserable and terrified  in a cat shelter where nobody had adopted her for almost a year. She had given up hope.

Now, eleven years later, she is happy and loved.

You can change a cat's life by doing just one of those four things today.

PS. Tilly was rescued by Sunshine Cat Rescue, a small charity in Oxfordshire, which is always short of money. If you can spare a pound or a dollar, please do. Click here

Human litterbox hygeine is pants.

Large clean litterbox

Which would you prefer? It's obvious, isn't it?

The bottom one is small, full of pee and poo, not very much litter and a horrible plastic sheet at the bottom that will interfere with digging.

Yet humans are still expecting us to use this kind of litterbox. They would be disgusted at a lavatory full of pee and poo. 

They think we will manage somehow! And many of us do, putting up with trying not to get our feet wet. Ugghhh. But it is not good enough. 

Box with deposits

Why are they so lazy? They are far better at getting rid of their own bowel and bladder deposits? Most of them flush regularly. Why be so idle about ours? 

Alas, the only way to get your human to be less slovenly is to pee or poo outside the box.  That'll show them.

Roads.... danger ahead

 I don't understand roads, so my human keeps me indoors, but many cats are allowed to roam free. They don't understand roads and cars either.

Cars are useful to them to shelter under in bad weather. But when they hurtle down the road,we can't judge their speed, so we usually just make a run for it. And that's dangerous.

Road traffic accidents are the number 1 reason for cat injuries, according to Agria insurance and it is the younger more confident cats exploring their territory who are most likely to be hurt.

It's time humans learned this. The most useful thing they can do is to make sure the cat flap is closed at night. That protects us quite a lot. Then there is the garden possibility, if we have a garden. Good fencing (details at www.icatcare.org) will keep us in but we still can have fun outside. It also keeps intruding cats out, which is a plus.

Some humans use reflective collars (though I don't like collars as they sometimes get caught and hurt cats). Others like me are kept indoors all the time and next week I will tell you how to make indoor life more enjoyable.

Tossing the mouse - the importance of play

 

This is the sport I like best - mouse tossing, shown in a good photo of the late Toby. The mouse is dead, but Toby is playing with it, tossing it into the air and then pouncing on it.

Why it's such fun is that it is part of our hunting repertoire, hard wired into us so that we carnivores can survive.  Hunting isn't just what we do: it's what we are. And this kind of playing is part of it.

Some of us claim that playing with prey before killing it is "dazing" it, ie tiring it out so that if we make a mistake with the kill bite and don't finish it off, it will be too tired to bite us back. Or that, in the case of unusual prey like rats or snakes, it allows us to assess how to deliver that final bite. Other cats say that only well-fed cats waste time with this sort of thing: wild and feral cats just get on with the important business of killing and eating their next meal.

My uncle George used to hunt live mice and rabbits, but my more scholastic life has meant that I don't have a good hunting field. So I have to put up with small artificial mice, little bits of scrunched paper, or small stuff like a bit of dried pasta or a bean that can be shunted round the kitchen floor.

The point of this play is that the mouse/bean must move. Static prey doesn't do it for us. So we poke and toss to get that movement which sets off our hunting reactions.

Whether it's a real mouse or just a substitute for one, there is nothing cats like better than playing in this way. Purrlease, humans, don't just give us the toys: throw them for us.

 

Toby's passage from life to death.

 

I have given my blog to my secretary to write this week. It is late for that reason, because she was too upset to write till now.

 

Mea culpa.

Toby was finally helped from life to death at I am Friday June 18th.... It was a hard passage and I failed to protect him from much of his pain and distress.

In April I took him to the vet for his eyes. They had started weeping - he had a rare growth on them and had seen an opthalmologist about a year earlier. His eyes were worse and I also reported that his bowel movements were rather soft. They took bloods. His grooming seemed less effective too but I put that down to the fact that he had had several teeth extracted because of gingivitis.

I was wrong. And my mistake cost him distress and suffering.

I took him back to the vet, to have a second blood test in May, because the first test showed high protein levels.The results were unclear. It was maybe inflammatory bowel disease, maybe kidney disease, maybe some form of cancer.

He was his usual affectionate self to me. During the night my other cat Tilly slept on my bed while he had a bedroom to himself. Each morning he would come down to eat and then follow me to my bedroom. On the bed he would have his eye drops administered followed by two Dreamies. He hated the eyedrops but enjoyed the Dreamies.

I would then comb most of him using a flea comb taking off the equivalent of a full handful of his soft long hair. If I missed a combing session he sometimes had fur ball problems. If I combed too hard he would walk away, but usually return and lie on his back. He craved my attention so much, he was willing to risk my combing.

In the evening he would join me on an armchair sitting next to me, which was a bit of a squash. I found it uncomfortable. So I would leave the chair to him. In the evening he would bound enthusiastically upstairs for his late supper and more eye drops.

That was before May.

He started becoming a little slower in going upstairs. I thought he was dreading the eye drops. In the morning he occasionally rolled on his back on the floor not the bed. Reluctant to jump up? I thought this too was a sign of dismay around the eye drops, which I administered on the bed.

I was wrong. And my mistake cost him distress and suffering.

On the weekend of the late May bank holiday, he had suffered from more severe diarrhoea with blood in the stools. To my shame, I waited till the bank holiday was over before getting help. I knew blood in the stool was important but I wanted to wait for my usual vet. 

An ultrasound image was taken and his abdomen was shaved. A catheter was put in his paw and he was given intravenous fluids for dehydration. The catheter stayed in his paw, when I took him home, ready for further medication the following day if it was needed.  He was very distressed by it as he could no put his paw on the ground. The notes say " general picture of IBD", ie inflammatory bowel disease. 

He was in pain when his abdomen was palpated and the vet prescribed buprenorphine as both a painkiller and an agent of slowing his bowels. Despite pain he never bit the vet. (Just as he had never bitten me ever. Not even when I had mistakenly caused him pain by combing a mat instead of cutting it out.)

She tidied up the fur round his anus that was soiled. Toby had shown he was very upset by his soiled backside and also for defecating outside the litter tray. I had tried to snip off the spoiled fur but he was always fearful of scissors and this is difficult to do without somebody else holding him still.

Then I asked for further tests in the local vet hospital. It was a long wait of several days for their results.

I was wrong. And my mistake cost him distress and suffering.

Two days later he went to the local vet hospital for further more accurate tests and imaging. He came home groggy with some test results to come later. They gave me some panacur to dose him, just in case it was worms.

I put it on his food. Panacur used to come in granules and I have known several cat that would eat it in their food. Toby refused to eat the liquid and I decided not to give it to him.
I didn't have the heart do add to add to his distress. At least I spared him that.

He hated the buprenorphine. It was easy to administer as it was just squirted into his mouth. Each time he would run away afterwards. Getting the dose right was difficult and to begin with it blocked his bowels completely.

I ceased the opiate for a day so he could pass a stool.  He did this but it ending up with bloody diarrhoea. Again. This time I saw him straining on his litter tray and he was clearly in pain. I put him back on the buprenorphine and tried to reduce the dose to the point when his bowels could still move.

He stopped wanting to eat his special digestive food. I thought he associated it with the panacur and subsequent pain. I was wrong. Again. Cats stop eating when they are in pain and I had probably got the opiate dose wrong, giving him too little. 

He was on the passage from life to death, the last few days until the time of his dying. 

I did not see this. And my mistake cost him distress and suffering.

All this time I went on with my life - lunch with a friend, a walk on the British camp in the Malverns, two long walks in Cirencester park. I told myself I didn't want to fuss him. I had to administer eye drops. I had to administer the much loathed opiate. I told myself he seemed a little withdrawn from me, because I was torturing him with forced medication. 

He grew weaker. He was slow in jumping up on my bed because he was growing weaker. He was slow in getting up the stairs because they now presented a difficult climb. All effort exhausted him. 

I completely misinterpreted this. I thought these slow reactions were because he hated was I was doing to him.  And my mistake cost him distress and suffering.

Another vet visit and this time he was put on steroids. He struggled and it took 12 attempts on the first occasion to get the pill down him. It would take 5 or 6 attempts each time after that. He struggled and struggled against my efforts, wriggling down into kitten-size. It seemed I was torturing him even more.

But he seemed to perk up with these and ate well for a couple of days. He started sleeping on a garden cushion I had left on the kitchen floor instead of on his usual bed at the top of the cat tree, looking out over the garden. "Cats sleep anywhere," I thought.

I didn't realise he was too weak to jump up onto the cat tree.
And my mistake cost him pain and suffering.

On Friday I took a video of him because he looked as if he was in pain. Then I wondered. Perhaps the tight eyes, I thought, might be simply the result of the eye drops. I must have been in denial. I decided to take another video later in the day. He slept on the armchair. I put the fire on so he would be warm.

I came home in the late evening to find him on the living room carpet. Not asleep but dying. I have seen my mother and my husband die over several days, as I sat by them. So I knew. There is the occasional moment when the person rises to the surface and may smile. Then they sink back into the deathbed breathing pattern of Cheyne Stoke.

Toby's head was sinking, as if he didn't have the strength to hold it up any more. And he was taking short breaths, as if panting. His eyes were tight with pain. I gave him more buprenorphine and he jerked away with a last spasm of energy on to the cold vinyl of the kitchen floor.

I put out a woolen scarf for him on the floor so that he keep warm and lie on it. He didn't move. I then got cushions and prepared to lie near him in vigil through the night. When my mother was dying I wanted to be able to kill her with a dose of morphine. Maybe I could do this for Toby with the buprenorphine. Then I thought how my administration of the opiate was hit and miss. How he hated it being squirted into his mouth. How I might underdose him.

I bundled him into a carrier. It hurt him when I did this.  I caused him more pain and suffering - but this time for his greater good. He was so upset he defecated in the carrier during the journey: something he had never done before. 

The 24 hour vet was about half an hour away and it was now past midnight. I drove in the dark round the suburbs of Swindon, along a maze of by-pass roads which even my sat nav could not negotiate. At last I was there. 

As I sat in the dark cat waiting to be able to sit by him for his last minute of life, I realised that I had got almost every single interpretation of his behaviour completely wrong.  He had been too weak to jump on the bed. He had been so weak that getting up the stairs was almost beyond him. 

He had been slowly dying, even while I was thrusting steroid pills into his mouth, forcing eye drops into his eyes, squirting foul tasting opiate into his mouth. 

Through this torture, he had still wanted to be close to me. Unlike other ill cats, he had not wished to go away on his own. 

I was wrong to put him through all this. Please forgive me, Toby.

Dotty succeeds in beating the Firebrigade.....

 Congratulations to juvenile Dotty, who successfully played one of the oldest cat games that cats can play with humans. How to get the attention of the Firebrigade guys.

Nine month old Dotty shinned up a tree and wouldn't come down. She stayed there overnight and finally the next morning a group of beefy handsome humans came to rescue her with a long ladder.

Up went the ladder. Up went Dotty. Higher and higher. Much higher than the Firebrigade humans could follow or that their ladder could reach.

So they went away. Mission unaccomplished.

Four hours later Dotty came down.....

To be successful in this great human tease, it is necessary to show great perseverance in staying in the tree, followed by great daring in climbing higher up to more slender branches.

Dotty did it purrfectly.

Vets... the power of the purr?

My pal, Toby, is going through hell. Two awful days in a strange pen with horrible veterinary humans prodding and poking and sticking needles into him. He's even had a catheter into his paw.

Bravely, he tried a new reaction. Instead of biting them (which his resident fellow cat Tilly does at every opportunity) he purred. He purred as they shaved his leg. He purred as they put the catheter in. He purred as they shaved his tummy for a ultrasound. He purred and purred.

It didn't stop the horrible procedures but every single vet and nurse that dealt with him said "He is such a sweet natured cat." So it sort of worked. Purrhaps...

Purrsonally, I am too proud to purr at vets, but I am wondering whether to follow his example.... 
 

Fleas.... itchy little beggars, though they taste quite nice when I catch one during grooming. First there's the pleasure of knowing I have caught one in my teeth when nibbling my fur, then the next pleasure of swallowing it down. 

Some human scientists even count them when they come out the other end - to get some idea of how many we have caught. Apparently about 50% of them escape.

They are cunning little insects. They know that we cannot catch them if they stay round our neck, particularly if we have a beautiful furry ruff there. So that is where they lurk. 

Of course, like all clean cats I use my back legs to scratch there. And hope they fall off if I am vigorous enough. But it doesn't have the same satisfaction of catching one in my teeth and swallowing it.

And occasionally you get a really intelligent flea that hides in the fur round my cheeks or on the top of my head between the ears. When I wash my face, using my front paw wetted with saliva, I haven't a hope of reaching it. I can scratch but it is difficult to reach them there.

PS. My human saw a flea circus at Bertram' Mills' Circus in the l950s. The fleas wore tutus and one of them pushed a tiny tiny wheel barrow. Mind you, these were human fleas - bigger than cat fleas. I wonder what they tasted like.

Indoors or outdoors - that is the question.

 

This is my namesake playing a game with the cat flap, in order to wind up his human. A great show-off was my Uncle George.

Most cats love being able to leave the house whenever they choose and they also enjoy being able to visit other people's garden, burgle houses to steal other cat's food, slaughter wildlife, and generally wander around at will. 

The downside is the dangers of being run over, of catching diseases from other cats (not high if we are vaccinated) or coming home with fleas - not just fleas from other cats but also rabbit fleas or ticks. Ticks are generally disgusting, as I discovered when being combed by my human who combed out a tick that burst and spread blood everywhere.

Ask a cat, and most of us will choose freedom. Ask the neighbour and mostly they will say get that cat out of my seed beds. Ask a naturalist and they will say keep those serial killers indoors (forgetting that an invasion of mice is bothering the Australians.)

If you want to read up on this, there's a human review "Uncontrolled Outdoor Access for Cats: An Assessment of Risks and Benefits" on Google Scholar.

But I say, just ask your cat. 

 

Cats, squares and human illusiona

 

Some humans have come up with a new theory about cats and boxes. I don't know why they need to publish these idiocies. We cats know why we like boxes - they are warm, they hide us from nosy humans, and we like a tight fit when we sleep.

We also like sitting on squares that are marked out on the floor. Or as these pompous humans put it: "The type of visual illusion considered here is subjective illusory contours, in which one mentally perceives fictitious contours." 

They set up a website asking humans to lay out a two squares on the floor versus one non-square. We sat more often in the squares, even a rather strange square called a Kanitza. These findings, they claimed, revealed "susceptibility to illusory contours" and supported "our hypothesis that cats treat an illusory square as they do a real square."

I considered writing a letter to The Times, who reported this experiment, pointing out that humans are susceptible to the illusion that cats are not capable of taking the mickey. The idea that we were just leading them on in a ridiculous joke seems to have proved their "susceptibility to illusory cat behaviour."

In the end i couldn't be bothered to interrupt my box sleep by putting paw to paper. Maybe it is better to let humans keep their illusions. It makes them easier to manipulate.

My world is not your world.

My world is not your world, neither is your world my world. This creates many problems for both humans and cats.

In my world, when we are anxious about feline intruders, we mark our territory with urine. It's somewhere between a post-it reminder note to ourselves about the problem and a note to other cats telling them we were here. 

In your human world you'd probably install a burglar alarm. Or a notice saying "Private. Trespassers keep out."

My world is full is strange noises - the high squeaks of the washing machine when it is working, the buzz of electrical appliances heating up, the tiny tiny clicks of a boiler. All noises you can't hear. You don't even know they exist!

So you think it is all right to put my litter tray in the utility room, next to the washing machine. It isn't. Those squeaks are very very putting-off. A quiet elimination is impossible.

Humans, pay attention to my world. Try to think yourself into it and remember everything is different for me.

At last .... a cat in the White House

At last.... the White House is becoming truly bi partisan. A cat is on its way. Probably a rescue cat. So that the home of the US President will have both dogs and cats.

One of the disappointments of the Obama presidence was the lack of feline presence. And as for President Trump... he didn't do pets of any kind. As the New Yorker says "there was only room for one authoritarian.

Who will be the First Cat or F.C.OTUS (First Cat of the United States)? Will he or she be able to exert authority over the White House dogs Champ and Major? (Major's record is poor). Another tuxedo cat like Socks? Or black? We don't know yet.

Join me in celebrating the fact that cats will now achieve their rightful position in society.   

Here is a list of cats that have achieved the White House with their presidential pets. 

Tabby and Dixie  owning  Abraham Lincoln –  Lincoln once remarked that Dixie "is smarter than my whole cabinet.

Siam and Miss Pussy, Siamese cat owning Rutherford B. Hayes

Valeriano Weyler and Enrique DeLome, Angoras, owning William McKinley.

Tom Quartz and Slippers owning  Theodore Roosevelt

Puffins. Woodrow Wilson.

Blacky and Tiger owning Calvin Coolidge. (He of the rude remark about roosters and hens. Look it up!)

Tom Kitten owning John F. Kennedy

Shan owning Gerald Ford.

Misty Malarky Ying Yang, Siamese owning Jimmy Carter.

Cleo and Sara owning Ronald Reagan.

Socks owning Bill Clinton.

India Willie owning George W. Bush.

 

Why we have tails.....

 Why do we have tails? Because they are beautiful, of course. Look at these two splendid top tails with their long thick covering of fur.

As well as being elegant, they are very useful indeed for balancing and climbing. When we are up a tree we can use our tail as a counterbalance. If we are walking along a narrow wall, for instance, if we lose our balance and our body lurches to the right, our tail will immediately swing to the left to re-balance us.

Cats that have lost their tail in an accident or are born without one like Manx cats, find balancing much harder. For an animal that spends time in trees, it's obvious that the tail is an important help to climbing.

We also use our tail to express our feelings - though that is a different blog. 

So what is the anatomy of our tail - well there are somewhere between 19 to 23 vertebrae with six pairs of muscles which can pull the tail from side to side, up and down, and twist it at any point. Compare the dog's tail wagging sideways and moving up and down, but the tail itself just moves from the base. It cannot twist itself half way.

As for humans... no tail at all and therefore about eighteen fewer vertebrae. No wonder they have poor balance, inability to express themselves except by vocalisation.

And a complete lack of elegance.

Our secret language of scent

Lucy marking her cat pen to make it smell like home.

We can leave messages for other cats, and reminders for ourselves, with a secret language - a specialised scent called a pheromone. This is a chemical emitted from glands in own bodies among other places from our cheek and chin.

Ever thought why we cats rub our chin and cheek against something? We are marking it with this pheromone and with our own ordinary body scent (a kind of signature mix). 

If we have rubbed against our human, then that scent of human will also be there. We are making our household territory friendly by making it smell of the family - us, our humans and perhaps another resident cat (if we like him and have rubbed against him too.)

It is like a post-it note to ourselves saying "We live here: this is our home and family." Humans cannot smell this at all: nor can they usually see it.

Occasionally, if we have rubbed in the same place for a long time, our human may notice a sort of dark mark. If they are houseproud, they clean it off. This is very upsetting.

So we have to re-mark it all over again. And again.

We hear what you cannot

 

Our world is full of tiny high squeaks, squeals and chirps from little rodents, bats and baby birds. We hear the world differently from humans. You humans can't hear these at all.

We can also hear tiny high pitched buzzing and clicking and creaking noises from machinery - from washing machines, dishwashers, smoke detectors, and maybe even radiators. You think these household machines are silent: they are not to us.

So do us a favour. Don't put the litter tray in the utility room where such machines are active. We want some decent quiet and isolation where we urinate or open our bowels. How would you like to have to use the lavatory in the middle of a busy packing factory or a car repair garage? 

You'd hate it. We hate it. So we keep our eliminations to a minimum, which is bad for our kidneys.  Or we just go outside the tray.

Humans, remember this. We can hear what you cannot.

We see the world quite differently from the way humans do. For a start we are so much smaller. Looking at a hedgerow of long grass and foliage  We look at it straight into it (above).  So much better for spotting small rodents! Humans look down on it from their great height (see below)

We don't see so much colour. That's because we have far fewer colour-perceiving cells, called cones, in our eyes, than humans do. We can just about see the same three primary colours but only dimly.

And everything we see is blurry compared with human sight. These photos don't show that due to human error! Blurriness is partly because the colours are dim but also because we have traded sharp sight during the day for good sight during the night.

We see in the dark much better than humans do because we have far more light-receiving cells, called rods, in our eyes. We also have bigger curved eyes and bigger pupils than humans.  (Please don't go about poking us in the eye to measure it.)

And our eyes glow at night.. because we have a mirror-like tapetum which reflects back the light into the rods, meaning that more light reaches them, though blurry.

That's where we are superior. OK so we can't read The Times but why would we? We can catch mice when they come out in the twilight. Humans can't do that.

Dogs do it. Vicars do it. Should cats do it?

 

Dogs have to wear collars in the UK by law but should cats have to wear them? Dogs don't mind them but dogs are subservient animals. Obviously cats like me don't have to because I am an indoor-only cat. 

What about others? The advantages of a collar are that humans know that you have a human pet. They are less likely to scoop you up and take you into a new home. If our home phone number is on the collar it might help when we are lost (but microchipping is better for that). If the collar is a fluorescent one, it can help car drivers notice us at night and slow down rather than run us over.

But the disadvantages of collars for us cats are many.

If they are too loose, we may get our front paws stuck in them and be unable to walk properly. The collar bites into the flesh of our necks and causes a terrible wound. A loose collar can also get caught up on a branch or wire so that we are trapped and cannot pull free.

Every year cats are taken to the vet for collar injuries. 

Buy one for your human here

If humans think that collars for cats are such a good idea,

why don't they practise what they preach. Wear one themselves. Only a few preachy humans do this - but fair play, at least they are willing to be collared.

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.

"It's just old age."

 

Chester, old with untreated hyperthyroidism

"It's just old age." That's what humans say, when they see us looking scruffy, spending most of the time asleep, losing weight and generally moving more slowly.

No, it isn't "just old age."

Elderly humans get help for old age. They go to doctors and have tests. They get pain killers for arthritis, treatment for thyroid problems, medicine for high blood pressure and even treatment for cancer.

What do we get. "It's just old age."

Not good enough, humans. Wise up on cat diseases. Do as you would be done by. Give us some quality of life by getting proper treatment for our aches and pains.

You can start by reading this book. Caring for an Elderly Cat by Sarah Caney and Vicky Halls.

Humans and feline loyalty.... huh

 
Another human misunderstanding... Apparently they think we should be loyal to them? Loyal. Yes, it's incredible to realise how dumb these humans are.

Some nosey "scientists" set up an experiment, whereby a stranger behaved negatively towards a cat's human and another stranger was helpful to the cat's human. A third person just stood by being neutral.

Then all three offered the cat a piece of food. Naturally the cat took food from all three. Of course. Why not? From this ridiculous experiment the 'scientists' concluded that cats lacked "social evaluation" because they were not disposed to co-operate with humans.

Apparently dogs avoid humans that behave negatively towards their humans. What does that show? That dogs are stupid enough to side with their humans when there is free food going. 

That's called loyalty. I call it downright idiocy.

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."

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.

 

 

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.