Saturday, December 24, 2022

A feline Christmas in the White House


Christmas isn't always a good time for cats. But this year, there is some good news. 

There's a cat in The White House. You can see her enjoying the decorations here on YouTube.

So, fellow felines, with that in mind, be careful this Christmas. Do NOT eat tinsel. It will get tangled up in your gut.

Do NOT eat Christmas pudding or cake. The dried fruit can poison you.

Do NOT drink alcohol. If you are drunk and crazy you may fall off the mantelpiece or injure yourself. 

Go EASY on the turkey. A taste is fine but the cooked bones may cause internal injuries.

If the house is busy with too many humans or worse visiting dogs, fine a safe place to chill out - a spare bedroom, top of a wardrobe or some other hidey hole.

It will soon be over.


Saturday, December 17, 2022

Snow - seven rules for sensible cats.


  •  Rule no 1.  You cannot have too much heat.
  • Rule no 2.  Find a human with central heating. If your human doesn't have it, then a wood burning stove, a a gas fire, or an Aga is the next best heating device.  
  • Rule no 3 (see Rule 1).  Best of all is central heating, an Aga, AND a wood burning stove. 
  • Rule 4.  Snow is magical - but only when seen from the windowsill with a radiator  below.
  • Rule 5.   If you don't  have a litter tray, now is the time to educate your human by going behind the sofa.
  • Rule 6.  Do not go out.
  • Rule 7.  A snowy day is a good day for a very long nap.


Saturday, December 10, 2022

Why we nip the vet

 

Vets do horrible things to us. No wonder we nip them. We are trying to tell them to STOP.
Humans take us once a year, sometimes more often, to see these veterinary humans. They stab us with needles. They hold our head back in order to shave the neck.
Sometimes they even stick something up our backsides. It hurts and, worse still, it is humiliating and undignified.
There are cats that put up with this but, I am happy to say, many do not. They put a stop to it.
How?
With a nip to veterinary hands. 
Keep nipping, all you cats out there. Vets deserve it!

Saturday, December 03, 2022

Alas, poor little cat....

 


For three years, this little black cat turned up at a housing block to be fed by one of the humans living there. Another human from the same street walked up daily to feed him at 6pm.

He did well. He was seen mousing. His hair was glossy. He would sleep under a shrub in the sunlight in good weather.

The humans thought perhaps he belonged to somebody. We cats sometimes just go AWOL. After all, he had a collar. They didn't want to steal somebody else's cat.

Then this year his hair began to get matted. The humans started to feel anxious for him. A dry place was found for him at night, and he no longer seemed to roam away so much.

As the weather grew colder, they decided they had to do something, even if he did have an owner. He was picked up, taken to a woman who put him in her spare bedroom and took him to the vet the next morning. His matted hair was cut off; he was microchipped.

Underneath his hair, it was clear that he was very thin. Painfully thin.  Desperately thin. Despite being offered chicken and sardine, he ate only the tiniest amount over the next 36 hours. He drank a lot of water but was still dehydrated.


On his next visit to the vet, it was clear that he didn't have much time left. He had kidney disease, a heart murmur, something wrong with his liver. 

He purred when stroked. Arched his boney back up to the touch of a friendly hand. Then he was put to sleep for the last time.

Please, you humans, think of homeless cold cats this winter. Don't wait too long to help them find a warm home.


Saturday, November 26, 2022

Should humans have babies or kittens?


 Should humans have a baby? Or should they have a kitten? It is question I have pondered every time I meet a single human with a cat. Surely, the advantages are on the side of getting a kitten rather than a human baby. 

Humans enjoy thinking of their cats as their babies - witness the latest book Seven Cats I Have Loved.* "Deep in my heart I knew I couldn't really tell my feelings for my daughters apart from my feelings for my cats," admits the author.

Many humans lie about this. She doesn't.

So here are the advantages of cats or kitten companions rather than human companions.

  • Kittens are much faster to learn how to use a litter tray. No nappies. No potty training. No bed wetting.
  • Kittens and cats are much quieter than babies. No midnight crying (well, silence most of the time).
  • If neutered early enough, there is no teenage dating to worry about. Neutering is not available for teenage humans.
  • Humans will find kittens and cats much cheaper, even allowing for vet bills.
  • Kittens and cats never talk back. They just walk away with dignity. 
  • Kittens are so purrfectly adorable. All that delicious fur. Gorgeous whiskers. None of that bald skin.

The sensible human choice has to be kittens or cats. 

 

* Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit. Serpents' Tail. £9.99.




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