… My two year old cat …was generally friendly as a kitten. She loved to play, was curious, and was happy to be around people. I got her from a friend whose cat had kittens, so she has a good early kitten-hood. The reason I am writing you is because as she’s gotten older, she has become quite unpleasant. She loves me, but she becomes easily overstimulated when I pet her. … If someone tries to pet her, she often bites and scratches and sometimes even starts to hiss. Is there any reason behind her aggression or is it just her personality?

Dear Readers,

This is often how a cat reacts when they have not been able to discharge their energy properly. Then they are overstimulated all the time.

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In this case, we have a cat without a playmate, so she won’t have an outlet to wrestle and chase away that extra energy. She also hasn’t grown up with other beings to interact with on a daily basis, and keep her tolerance for such companionship reinforced as a positive.

While I’m sure she plays, it might not be enough to really wear her out. Often, we see our cat playing, they seem happy, we don’t step into what looks like a working situation.

For an easy-going Gamma cat without a lot of drive, this would be fine. But it seems like this person’s cat got out of kittenhood, where all that growing energy pushes them to their limits without our help, and reached the quieter shores of adulthood without being worn out enough, or often enough.

When our cat’s “storage battery” starts overloading and hasn’t been drained, our cat feels great anxiety. Since they don’t know what it causing it, they will try to blame something in their environment for “tripping their alarms.”

With the naturally stimulating input of petting, such a cat will find their emotions getting cranked up; more than is comfortable, even from someone they love and trust. This is why cats will bite our hands or sink their claws in; they are trying to tell us it’s just too much input. They let us know by turning around and giving back too much input.

When it comes to beings they don’t know, their natural suspicion has found an outlet; it’s this person/dog/squirrel’s fault! So they are not inclined to be social, because it is now much too much input, and from an unknown source, besides.

So if we have a cranky cat, they might be anti-social. Or, they might need to relax a lot more than they do now. Creating a play routine that lets our cat wear themselves out is always good for our cat.

It can also be good for our relationship.

For more about a cat’s energy charge, see What makes our cats explode?

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It really isn’t optional.

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I regard carriers as safety devices, and that goes for everybody.

The humans don’t try to deal with a panicked animal who possesses a lot of pointy things. The cat has at least a safe place during a scary and stressful time. Without proper containment, the cat might desperately escape and hide, a survival trait which works against them in the modern world.

Here’s how to do the carrier thing properly:

Sturdy. This is the rule broken by pillowcases and cardboard boxes and grocery bags and other things not designed to hold cats. They don’t hold cats.

I have a soft carrier, but it’s heavy mesh with a solid bottom and thick straps. Reverend Jim weighs sixteen pounds. This is not a job for anything flimsy.

James Bond has never laid tooth or toe on me; but he’s popped the plastic door off its hinges on the old cat carrier a couple of times. He wasn’t freaked out; he just didn’t want to go.

Engineered. I have a sturdy metal and thick plastic carrier we got to foster Tristan in. It has a top door that slides open, large enough for me to get a hand in for Tristan to hug. This is a nice feature for use with kittens.

My soft carrier has a large, top-opening entrance. This is especially good for large cats and cats who are reluctant to enter; this is all my cats.

Try to consider the challenges of our cat. Large and reluctant might need a different setup than leggy and agile. Don’t neglect inspecting the door catches or other details. We want a door with gaps around it so we don’t pinch a toe or a tail.

We want some way of seeing in and letting our cat see us. But we don’t want too open a material; a cat will lose their sense of security and feel more vulnerable, and sometimes be more able to lash out.

Washable. It doesn’t have to be from “accidents,” though those are going to happen, too. Any cat, under these circumstances, can throw up or lose control. But there’s also medicine and food and toys and blankies that wind up in carriers. Anything that travels to the vet office will be sitting on their floor and being touched by their personnel.

Carriers always need washing.

For the most versatility, I like the thick plastic carriers with the grated metal doors that can be hosed out. One trick to get the cat into the carrier is to bundle them into a towel. This design lets the cat clump their towel into a favorite corner.

Multiple. I have a soft-sided carrier for short trips, or when someone else is driving. My cats seem to handle this kind better, especially if they are “in my arms” during the trip.

But if we are unable to attend to the cat in this way, we want something more roomy, and more protective. Getting a travel carrier is a good idea even if we never plan to ship them anywhere.

The benefit of the large carriers is that the cat can easily move around and not feel the panic of small spaces. We can position the carrier in the seat, looping the seat belt through the handle and around the body of the carrier, to fasten the cat into a smaller space with comfort and safety.

Another benefit of a good sturdy carrier is to prevent a cat from getting loose in the car. We don’t need the thrill of hearing a sub-standard carrier disintegrate as a cat buzz-saws their way through it.

So if we have more than one cat, we will do well to think of more than one carrier. From need to take two cats to the vet at once, to needing different kinds for different tasks, a good carrier (or two) is an absolute necessity.

For more help with carriers, see Getting the Cat to the Vet.

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Because, until they do, how can they be sure these are the same things?

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We can use this “check for change” instinct our cats possess to keep our cat constantly amused, even with the same toys. We adjust one dimension for them, and the toy can be renewed.

I used the dimension of location this recent New Year’s Day. When we got our cat tree last fall, I placed the Cheese Chase toy near it in our new Cat Play Area. It gradually lost popularity and got nudged under the dining table.

To celebrate the New Year, I moved the toy into the middle of the living room, and decorated it with some of our herbal cat toys. What followed was three hours of intense play, pairing up each of our four cats with every other cat, with a lot of wrestling and reviving of their favorite trackball moves.

To deactivate the Cheese Chase, I’ll put it back under the dining room table; where it will resume its previous, less attractive, state. If our cat has not seen a certain toy in a while, or has not seen it occupy this particular space lately, they feel compelled to determine if it has changed while they weren’t looking.

It really is that simple.

It’s not that our cat is simple. In their natural environment, anything that hasn’t been under reliable observation could have changed itself. It’s important for our cat to make sure they aren’t going to be surprised at a crucial juncture. So their instincts urge them to carefully examine it, even experiment with it, to become familiar with it again.

We can use this cat ability to our advantage. By periodically moving our cat’s toys in and out of hiding, we can mimic the shifting natural landscape our cat expects to be dealing with; even when living in our homes as pets.

In nature, cats use their considerable intelligence to study, plan, and implement their hunting strategies. When we supply our cat’s play needs, we do even more than helping them keep these abilities sharpened. We are offering ways for our cat to feel contented.

No cat can resist the prodding of their instincts. When we create ways for them to follow the urging of their instincts, they become happy and satisfied.

We have worked hard to make our indoor environment more comfortable, and predictable, than the natural world outside. Both we and our cat can take advantage of reliable softnesses to sit upon and dependable foods to dine upon.

But for the sake of our cat’s mental state, we should change up their playtime as much as we can.

For more about keeping our cat interested, see Toy Rotation.

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Teaching the Scratching Post explains why cats scratch things, how to choose a scratching post they want to use, and how to handle training in a way that meshes with their instincts.

Of course, all the cats helped. James Bond did a cameo, Reverend Jim displayed the wild enthusiasm that is his claim to fame, and Olwyn broke out with an extraordinary performance in “giving the sisal what-for.”

Yet, as always, our “Brad Pitt of cats,” Tristan, stole the spotlight.

One thing came up on this shoot that can explain why he is always so deeply involved in our videos. It’s not just that he’s an Alpha (though he is) or that he’s a natural ham (he’s that, too.) But I’ve figured out why the process of filming makes him so thrilled and, then, lively.

It’s my voice.

In the video, I explain how to use excitement in our voice to guide and train our cat to scratch in the right places. When we shoot a video, I talk and talk and talk. And it is my voice that revs Tristan up (and thankfully, wears him out) to new levels of interaction and activity. As he plays with the camera and ricochets off the cat tree right next to my head… I talk about him, too.

Just as I love the sight of him, he loves the sound of me.

Enjoy!

We rescued a tiny kitten, not knowing anything about him. See all my posts about Tristan.

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Here’s a typical sight on a weekend morning; the two younger kittens, Tristan and Olwyn, have been “removed from the field of play” by putting them in the bathroom, with their Mini-Kong filled with treats.

I have to do this because Reverend Jim needs the whole field.

It’s not just his size; while he is our biggest cat, he has played happily with Tristan since our Tiny Guy was very tiny. But also because RJ loves to do headlong charges; and sometimes our other two kittens don’t know enough to get out of the way.

What happens then is RJ just won’t play. This makes him frustrated. One of my duties as RJ’s Person is making sure that he gets worn out regularly.

Wearing out our cat has to be “another service we offer” because cats do not have the same stimulus in our home as they do in their native environment.

In nature, finding and chasing potential prey is excellent exercise. We fervently hope this same situation is not so abundant in our house.

Once I have put the two younger cats “out of play” RJ recognizes the safety signal, and he can follow the wand toy all the way across the living room and up into the cat tree.

Cats are not marathon runners, like dogs are. They are sprinters who need to expend their stored energy all at once.

That is how we get to worn out, happy, kitties.

Just as our cats are different, they can have different play needs. James Bond wears himself out all by himself, just by joining in during a play session.

But Tristan needs a big session at least every day, while Reverend Jim needs one of his marathon sessions a couple of times a week. If we have cats asking for something and we don’t know what… relief from their stored energy might be that something.

The more demanding our play with the cat, the more tired out they get; and that’s a good thing. Remember, our cats need to explode.

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Both emotionally, as in the cat keeps asking for food!

And financially, as in I’m throwing away expensive food!

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Ever since the Big Corporate Cat Food started making our cats sick, we’ve eliminated them almost entirely. By choosing cat foods with better ingredients, which turn out to be from smaller companies, we lose some convenience but reap great health benefits.

When we routinely offer a variety of different foods, we have fallbacks when something becomes unavailable. This also keeps our cats used to encountering new foods in the rotation.

Here’s how we managed:

Potholes. They would eat the new food one day, and ignore it the next. Mr WayofCats was driven crazy by their requests, so he would give them their treat food, Fancy Feast, out of desperation. Sometimes that worked… sometimes, it didn’t.

I had to explain to Mr WayofCats that this food wasn’t what they wanted, either. They wanted their old food. The problem was our cats were asking for something that no longer existed, so there was no “weaning off” period.

While divvying up a small can among four cats didn’t impact their nutrition much, trying to rely on it would. Mr WayofCats knew it wasn’t a long term solution; but the poor man has both a kind heart and a compromised immune system… when he doesn’t feel well, he wants to Turn Off The Cats. I totally understand.

These factors made the process longer, that’s all.

Patience. I knew this would be tough, going in. But I really had no choice. I would take down the basket where we store their cans, and exclaim over how Look, that kind of can isn’t there anymore.

This shows that I’m aware of their request, and would love to fulfill it; only I can’t. This helps get across the concept that the “old food” has gone away. Which, since the company changed the formula to make them throw up… it has.

Persistence. Remember the first rule of getting cats to accept anything:

If we keep offering it, it’s no longer new.

We would agree with the cats that it was new. We got excited over its newness. We would smell the can with great enjoyment. (And this stuff does smell like real food.)

To keep the cost down, we bought the big cans and only served small portions. Then, the rest of the can would be doled out on stoneware and heated up in the microwave, on low power, to take the “chilly curse of fridge” off of it.

This turned out to be a major selling point for Reverend Jim. He was eating out of the microwave just like the humans! It was pretty funny to see him do his Happy Dance in front of the microwave at mealtimes.

Bribes. Of course we bribed them: with tuna and bacon fat and bits of chicken and hamburger. All good food we eat ourselves, which also helps make our cats’ new food more appealing.

When we began bribing them routinely, they started eating the new food more routinely. Until this past week, it was still a process of bargaining and bribing. No matter what we did, they were On Strike because of the changes. We were still having to make special fusses over their meals to reassure them that it was okay stuff.

We’re back to normal. They still get their bribes and RJ gets it microwaved if he asks, because we like to fuss over their food with them. But finally, if I’m in a hurry and I just put food in the bowl, they just eat it.

So I’m declaring a breakthrough.

For the curious, this turned out to be the favorite flavor from the favorite brand, Holistic Select Salmon Shrimp. We also feed Wellness and EVO for canned.

Last year, Natura Pet Products was bought out by Proctor & Gamble. Keep tabs on their ingredients, and our cat’s reactions.

For more tips, see convincing a cat to eat the new food.

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I had been told that the training procedure with cats was difficult. It’s not. Mine had me trained in two days. ~Bill Dana

One of my favorite things about cats is their “ease of use.” They love taking care of themselves, by themselves.

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In the wild, cats run their own affairs. There is no group consensus of orders being taken, or given. Cats figure out what works for them, and then they do it.

The only snag in this plan is that, as pets, they live not only in our house, but in our world. They eat out of packages we’d prefer they not try to open. They “hunt” in territory we share. And, despite any wishes we might have in the matter, they cannot clean their own litter box.

So cat care isn’t something that can be solved by giving our cats their own “one click” account on Amazon. (Pawprint here please, the UPS driver says.) Perhaps it’s just as well. But cats do have a built in “instruction manual” that we can use… if we listen to them.

This works for their physical well-being. It works for their emotional well-being, too.

Realizing our cat asks for things, figuring out what our cat is asking for, and understanding the many ways they offer gratitude and affection in return is when cat owners become Cat Appreciators. We discover there is more to the relationship than opening a can and scooping the litter. Such maintenance takes only minutes a day. Once the bond expands to touch our hearts as much as their stomachs; cats are a different proposition.

Now, their well-being matters to us. Now, we realize they have a being; and we want to see it work out well.

Once I decided cat fussiness was to my advantage, I began treating expressions of cat dissatisfaction with gratitude for their feedback. Once we open the lines of communication, we never wonder if the cat wants something. Our task then becomes figuring out what it is the cat wants.

Sometimes, it’s an emotional need that is being expressed. If we check the food, check the litter, check the sleeping spots and everything seems okay, we can flap our arms and go stupid cat who complains about nothing… or, we can realize that the only thing the cat has learned to ask from us is physical care. And that is no longer enough.

But if we have not crafted a mutual emotional language with our cat, the only way the cat knows how to ask for something is through their physical care. At this point, all our cat knows is that they still want something from us. All our cat knows is this one way to ask for something.

So if we find ourselves baffled by our cat’s requests, we should expand our concepts of what the cat asks for. For instance, if we have not built the concept of human-provided, cat-requested, reliable play time; then our cat has not been able to build a way to ask for it.

Companionship, fun, and affection are all excellent reasons to choose a cat to fulfill our pet needs. Many times I have come across a situation where a cat was not chosen, but landed in a human’s care from happenstance. The development of the further relationship came as a pleasant surprise to the human.

But we can be unaware of just how far down the rabbit hole goes, so to speak. We can become aware of our cat’s emotional life, and their emotional needs, in many different ways.

But we cannot revel in anything that we are not open to discovering in the first place.

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How’s that working for us? Frankly, not so well.

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Of course there needs to be large and small companies helping us care for our cat. We gladly buy good products that will work when we need them. But when I see the same poor choices, from the same few companies, lining the shelves of my local shopping areas, I get indignant.

As recently reported:

Owners of animals affected by food contaminated with melamine received slightly more than half of the money in a $24-million fund established to settle legal claims stemming from the largest pet food recall in North America.

The balance of the fund went to lawyers’ fees and expenses, claims administration and public notices.

While this means people get some compensation for the medical expenses they incurred, it’s highly inadequate. If we are still upset (and I am) we can ask ourselves why the perpetrators of this crime:

“Just walking into the emergency clinic, right on the spot, it was $500,” she recalled. “I had to borrow that money from my friend that was there. I said, ‘We can’t even get home because my car’s on empty.’ They took $25 off (the bill) so we could get home.”

Maitland ended up with about $1,000 in veterinary expenses from two clinics. When she retrieved Michigan [her dog] after several days of medical care, it was with the thought that he should die at home. But he didn’t, not right away. He actually regained strength, although Maitland said Michigan never fully healed. He died 14 months after the poisoning came to light.

Maitland submitted a claim for $1,072.87. In August, she received a check for $587.

“I don’t feel like I got anything out of this,” she said. “I feel like it was a four-year wait and I think we all got ripped off.”

Wound up getting off so lightly:

The scandal led to the criminal prosecution of the American company ChemNutra, Inc., and its owners for their role in importing the tainted ingredients. They pleaded guilty last year to distributing adulterated food and selling misbranded food, both misdemeanors.

That’s right: selling tainted food that killed thousands of pets is a misdemeanor. But since the manufacturers were the ones who did not test their ingredients, and did not have safety measures in place, they did the responsible thing, right?

Asked if, in retrospect, he thought that the settlement fund was inadequate, Paul replied, “We pushed and pushed and pushed, and feel we got the maximum we could get.”

Paul described the case as extremely complicated. The litigation involved more than 80 lawyers for plaintiffs in two countries, more than two dozen defendants and several appeals that stalled the payout.

“It was three to four years of bitter fighting, from District Court up to the 3rd Circuit (Court of Appeals) and back to the District Court,” Paul said.

I guess not. And know what, folks? This WAS the system working:

Eble, the class-action expert, said such suits have value beyond the monetary compensation. “They do modify corporate behavior. They do prevent theft,” Eble said. “So many of these cases … they accomplish a goal to serve a public purpose. You don’t have to worry about getting dog food in the future that is contaminated with melamine because now they know they have to test for it. It’s too expensive not to.”

Fact is, companies have become too focused on the money they make… and not on their corporate reputation. Because when huge companies dominate the shelves, and run their business in a way that suits them, we consumers don’t have much in the way of choices.

I totally understand the challenge of trying to make our way through the maze of misleading advertising, opaque science, and compromised veterinarians who sell food in their offices… and make a commission on their recommendations. I don’t think feeding our cats should be so difficult.

We do have new food safety regulations from the FDA:

Thanks to the Food Safety Modernization Act the FDA also gained more inspection and recall powers. It can, now, for example institute a mandatory recall, if necessary. In addition, new rules boast stronger registration procedures for food companies with:

Updated registrations required every 2 years
FDA ability to “delist” companies, if necessary, which would prevent them from selling products across state lines

These regulations apply to both people and pets. It’s an excellent step forward… for safety. But what has been institutionalized, and still goes on, is a kind of shell game for the bottom line of nutritional adequacy:

The proof that commercial pet food is not necessarily balanced is found on the packages: consider the high level of carbohydrates (as discussed above) and the “wild card” of the rendering process. Plus, each time regulatory agencies meet, they debate all over again how much of which nutrients will constitute 100% complete.[211] If this is so, then how could the previous balance of nutrients have been 100% complete? The most honest solution would be to cease the “complete and balanced” claims and start to educate the consumers about nutrition and their pets’ specific needs. But this would not sell pet food…

Cats offer an additional challenge; new foods are greeted with negative enthusiasm. This whole year we have been transitioning our cats to new foods, from smaller companies. We’ve moved all our dry foods to grain-free varieties; the only ones from giant national brands are one of the tiny premium cans as a daily “treat” and occasional snacks when our internet-ordered brands run out before the next shipment.

I’m doing this with much the same hurdles as other cat parents; limited money, pressed for time, and having to deal with cats who are trapped by their own instincts about not expanding their palate. Mr WayofCats loves our little furry friends, but he also has a chronic illness which means he can only take so much begging and complaining. We have to move step by step.

We’ve gotten help from a most unlikely source; the giant companies, themselves. While the cats still look forward to the portions from the tiny can, the can itself is getting more and more disappointing. The pool of acceptable flavors is shrinking while the alternatives are getting eaten faster and faster.

I see this as a sign that the quality is further deteriorating. Our cats are puzzled about how their reliable treats are not the same; and of course, in many ways, we “feel their pain.”

From dicing up small portions of our own leftover meat, to test-driving new varieties, we continually offer our cats better choices.

Fortunately, eventually, they are choosing them.

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Yes, on the psychological level of interaction with another creature, cats are wonderful for companionship and have known positive effects on blood pressure and other stress markers.

Research shows that, unless you’re someone who really dislikes animals or is absolutely too busy to care for one properly, pets can provide excellent social support, stress relief and other health benefits—perhaps more than people!

But I’m also talking about physical health as studied by science. And specifically about cats.

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Part of folklore is the cat’s nine lives; but they might have gotten that reputation over centuries of humans observing how well cats survive, even thrive, when the odds are against them:

From The Felid Purr: A bio-mechanical healing mechanism:

Any veterinary orthopedic surgeon will tell you how relatively easy it is to mend broken cat bones compared with dog bones which take much more effort to fix, and take longer to heal. … There has been some research which that suggests that domestic cats are in general less prone to postoperative complications following elective surgeries. … Cats do not have near the prevalence of orthopedic disease or ligament and muscle traumas as dogs do. Additionally, Toombs et al. (1985) suggests that non-union of fractures in cats is rare.

Yes, when it comes to traumatic injury, cats have their own “veterinarian” built into their system. This is why cats purr even in stressful situations, such as when they are injured or unhappy; they are using their purr for its healing vibrations.

We humans have a good reason for finding our cat’s purr so soothing. It not only lets us know we have made our cat happy, it is also an actual healing frequency:

In Summary: Vibrations between 20-140 Hz are therapeutic for bone growth/fracture healing, pain relief/swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair/tendon repair, mobility of joints and the relief of dyspnea.

We think that this research could help explain why cats purr, and here is why:

Fauna Communications has recorded many cats’ purrs, at a non-profit facility and the Cincinnati Zoo , including the cheetah, puma, serval, ocelot and the domestic house cat. After analysis of the data, we discovered that cat purrs create frequencies that fall directly in the range that is anabolic for bone growth.

Experimentation on these “healing frequencies” has led to innovations such as the electrical stimulation devices that help stubborn bones heal. If we listen to music when we are in certain moods, or sing to our babies to get them to sleep, or take children for rides in the car to calm them down; we have experienced the power of sound on our own emotional, and physical, state.

In conclusion:

… it is certainly not a leap of faith to speculate that the cat’s purr is a healing mechanism. Having a natural way to increase strength, and decrease healing time, would indeed be very advantageous and would explain the purr’s development.

It fits snugly into evolutionary theory (the foundation for all biological knowledge we have to date) to agree that cats who purr are at a distinct survival advantage. They rebuild their bone even during times of low activity, they have a technique to heal themselves without medical help, and they can even pass this advantage on to others.

Like the human who is hugging them.

Listen to the purring of many different species at purring.org

For more about the healing power of sounds, see The Cat’s Purr and Other Sounds that Heal.

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It might not work that way in other homes. But everywhere, empty bowls, even not-all-the-way-empty bowls, have great power.

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Cats monitor our behavior and the behavior of our devices the way they would study prey habits in the wild. If we have cats who like to monitor the food status, we need to notice how they react to different routines. Some cats panic when there aren’t any food bowls down; some panic when the bowls are there, but empty.

Since can openers and food in bowls are not covered in a cat’s instinct manual, they rely on interpretation of signals to understand how these important devices work. A particular alarm is the ring of dry food that forms around the view of the inside of the bowl in the center. This “bottom of the bowl” signal activates the cats.

I find this an example of abstract thought. They are not reacting to an actual shortage of food. They are acting on a projection of a shortage, an anticipated one.

Since we now know how sophisticated and elaborate our cat’s prey behaviors can be, we should be able to pay more attention to how we present this important slice of their day. The food bowl behavior we create by our care habits can work to soothe our cats and help them through territory or dining upheavals that might occur.

In my cats, a period of kitchen floor bareness creates more appreciation for the next installment to appear. We feed small amounts more often so everyone has a shot at a full bowl. We get a shot at a cleaned plate more often that way.

Other cats need the bowl somewhere. They might be left alone for a long stretch. They might need to eat as needed, such as when they are a growing kitten. That is when what we put into the bowl becomes more important.

We should see about upgrading to a grain-free cat food choice. These have more nutrients, and the cats eat less. This makes our dry food more expensive; but the cheaper kind is not saving money.

Cats have trouble digesting grains, and can develop allergic reactions which lead to serious disease. Cat metabolic disease, like diabetes and kidney failure, can be traced back to a poor diet.

Removing the anti-nutrients of grains means we are automatically buying more real food. High quality food will not make our cats sick.

To keep interest in the dry food reassuring, we blend two different kinds so a shortage won’t mean a dry food that they do not recognize. We add Brewer’s yeast to their food, as a nutritional supplement, which helps any variation in the “house blend” seem familiar. We offer it in a small bowl so it gets refreshed often. All these moves will calm the cat’s distress signals.

Flexibility in our nutritional approach does a lot of good for both of us. Chances of something bad are lowered, and extremes of something won’t be so extreme. We also get a continuity of supply when many different sources contribute.

Canned is an important part of any cat’s diet. But if we need to fill in around its edges, a food that duplicates more of its good qualities, like high fat and protein content, will nourish our cat in what is ultimately the most economical way.

We have an indicator about how well our cat is responding to their new food. We can see it in our cat’s skin and fur. Almost a third of their metabolism is concentrated there. If it improves, we know our cat’s whole nutritional profile has improved.

Understanding our cat’s “table manners” lets us speak in their language about their food and what is best for them. Without the power of mutual negotiation, we would not be able to change our cat’s food habits when needed.

Then we both handle change better.

For more about our cat’s food delivery system, see Cats and Bowls and Cups.

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