The Way of Cats helps you understand, train, and love your pet cat

The Cat of Destiny

Feb 7th, 2010

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How can we tell if we are choosing the right cat?

It helps if our cat also chooses us.

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If we extend a verbal or physical gesture towards a cat, and the cat becomes more friendly as a result of our efforts, we have answered our most important question: Will this cat like me? and know that the situation will get even better.

We can have our “ideal cat” in our heads, and know what cat we might like, but this is not a guide to the right cat for us. This is our imagination, conjuring up pretend cats for us. In person, the right cat might look, or even act, differently than we had imagined.

But this does not matter, as long as we and the cat can connect. It’s not just a choosing shortcut that gives us confidence about our new relationship. It is a way of choosing that increases our chances of success.

So we cannot let a liking for a certain look, breed, or size interfere with choosing based on social expression. Cats who are willing to meet us more than halfway on short notice are friendly cats who crave human contact.

Our imagination can lead us astray in another way. That’s when we feel sorry for a cat; and mistake that for being able to connect with that cat.

In the meantime, this traumatized cat needs more distance for a while, not less. We are setting ourselves up for a problem relationship. We should gain something from an encounter with our new cat, not feel that we are lacking feedback.

But it can make our hearts melt any time a cat manages to engage with us, and we feel confident we have already started connecting with this cat. That is a bond already forming that will make training, and loving, each other that much easier.

We already want to please each other.

For more about using our own instincts to choose a new cat friend, see the post Feeling a Connection.

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Posted in: motivation.
Tagged: bond of trust · choosing cats in shelters · making connections

Chemnutra Owners on Probation for Pet Food Contamination

Feb 6th, 2010

by WereBear.

1 comment

Any further penalty for the husband and wife owners of Chemnutra, the company which knowingly imported contaminated gluten into the United States, and maimed and killed tens of thousands of cats and dogs?

Probation and a total of $35,000 in fines, just as a commenter pointed out in this thread from Friday.

A last minute switcheroony of the judge means that none of the letters or emails that so many pet owners cried while writing ever mattered and may not have even been read.

That makes it seem both callous and deliberate. And officially, this was a triumph of the justice system.

“Today’s sentence sends a strong message that we will work tirelessly to stop dangerous goods from entering the American marketplace,” said John Morton, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “

It does? Just how much did these “businesspeople” make on this contamination deal, and what does the $35,000 fine stack up against that? Is our astute commenter right? Even that will be paid for with insurance?

They pled guilty.

“By pleading guilty, Chemnutra and the Millers admitted that melamine was substituted wholly or in part for the protein requirement of the wheat gluten so as to make it appear the wheat gluten was better or of greater value than it was,” Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, said in a statement released today. “They also admitted that the labeling of the wheat gluten was false and misleading because the wheat gluten was represented to have a minimum protein level of 75 percent, when in fact it did not. The labeling was also false and misleading because melamine was not listed on the label as an ingredient.”

If it didn’t happen to us, it still could have. For a personal view, read The Pet Food Scandal of 2007: One Woman’s Story. The volume of contaminated material, and the large factories which make it, gives such a deadly decision great range for harm.

With weak laws and pitiful enforcement, avoiding such a problem becomes less likely.

We were fortunate. We were not protected.

I know which one I’d rather rely upon.

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Posted in: news.
Tagged: animal cruelty

Cat Routines

Feb 5th, 2010

by WereBear.

2 comments

What is it cats love about routines? Because they do, don’t they?

Nothing creates a Cat Alert like a late appointment or a changed system. Cats, like many of us, consider an predictable existence more enjoyable.

They have a point.

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Cat routines appeal to a cat’s sense of anticipation and participation.

When cats think they know what will happen, and then it does, they feel that they are in control. They feel they understand how things work in their world. In the wild, they would create routines that maximize their food potential or let them visit their drinking spots reliably.

In our house, they can’t get as paws-on as they would like. And if they did, it wouldn’t work the way it would in the wild, where they are no cans or sink faucets. They need our help to make all this work for them. They need to know our partnership is reliable.

When we visit our coffee machine, we don’t expect to pour out hot chocolate. We might even like hot chocolate, but that’s not what we wanted when we went to the coffee machine.

This simple expectation has far reaching implications. If we start the day pouring hot chocolate out of our coffee pot, we will probably be cautious and apprehensive all day. When we change the routine without notice, this is what we do to our cats.

However, I’m also a big fan of shaking up the cat’s routine. What is the best way to do that? Well, suppose we went to our coffee machine, and instead of hot chocolate, and instead of whatever coffee we bought on sale, we actually poured out a cup of our favorite premium coffee, fresh-roasted just we way we like it.

This might be equally puzzling. But it’s far more welcome. We wanted coffee, we get a coffee upgrade.

So if we are going to be late, we should tell the cats. If the routines are going to be scrambled for a while, we should alert them to that fact. If we have to make them wonder what will happen next, let’s make it a pleasant surprise, instead of just a surprise.

This makes everyone happier.

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Posted in: Care.
Tagged: intelligence · natural instincts · training tools

What scares cats

Feb 4th, 2010

by WereBear.

2 comments

A couple of months ago, I gave poor Reverend Jim a frightening experience. He was apparently sleeping under the tub in the bathroom when I dashed in there, shut the door, and took a quick shower. When I got out, he was planted on the bathmat, eyes as wide as dinner plates, obviously horrified that I had taken off all my fur and gotten under running water.

Reverend Jim was not in any real danger. Except… in his mind. He suffered some disturbing thoughts.

This incident shows how our cats can develop real fears; of imaginary things.

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We understand when thunder, fireworks, or masses of snow rumbling off the roof frightens our cats. Heck, those can frighten me, and I understand what is happening. But it’s a lot more difficult to figure out what has spooked our cat when it is their own imagination. A cat’s own intelligence actually works against them at such times.

Cats have an instinctive bias to expect the worst.

This is certainly a survival skill; staying out of danger is vitally important to a lone hunter. But this can also make a cat prone to brood and become fearful; unless we can break their focus.

If we don’t know what spooked our cat, we cannot reassure with specifics. But that doesn’t mean we can’t reassure in general. Tell our cat it’s okay now, (and it probably is.)

I’ve had cats who expressed anxiety, were soothed, and had forgotten about it by the time I found the fallen can in the pantry.

It’s not quite like children watching a movie that is too scary for them, but it’s kind of like that. Cats can develop some challenging conceptual thoughts, and it can create anxiety, as when RJ was trapped in the same room as the running shower. It wasn’t like it was chasing him around the room, but for the first time, RJ probably wondered if it could.

When I realized circumstances had traumatized RJ, I expressed my sorrow as I hastily opened the door and let him scamper out. I told him it wasn’t anything that would hurt him, that I was sorry he got stuck in there, that I always announced I was taking a shower, so he should be okay.

Once RJ realized he was not trapped in the bathroom, and even more importantly, that the shower was not going to come after him, he bounced back in a few days.

He’s decided not to sleep under the bathtub anymore.

But I check there now, just in case.

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There’s more ways to understand our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on WHY CATS DO THAT.

Posted in: behavior.
Tagged: coping skills · shaping the response · survival instincts