They valiantly struggle to do what their instincts tell them; even though they are now in an entirely artificial environment.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures, and check out our Happy Kitten lolz!

Even cats who go out spend time indoors with us; where the rules have changed, but they have not.

So it doesn’t make any sense to get upset when they hang out on the furniture, insist on looking out the window, or don’t want to use a litter box in a noisy or non-hygienic environment. They can’t help it. This is how they do what they do.

Both cats and dogs adjust to this domestication change to the environment they evolved in, but in different ways. For dogs, the group camaraderie that would lead to running down antelope and eating them is transferred to vigorous daily walks and learning when and what to eat from us, their Pack Leader.

For cats, who are independent hunters, there are no such seamless transfers. They still need to observe the prey, anticipate the prey, and ambush the prey. Like dogs, they have disconnected what is in their dish from what they have to catch. Unlike dogs, their needed routines are not well known, and celebrated aspects, of their care.

Is there anything more sacred than the dog’s daily walk? Maybe it isn’t done with all the vigor and variety it should be, but day or night, in all weathers, it gets done.

While some people make a point of enjoying play with their cat, all too often the cat is left to amuse themselves. Some cats don’t even get much in the way of toys, and fishing their own out of the trash is something that upsets people. When the kitten’s driving energy wanes, people often decide the cat is lazy, as in “they can’t even be bothered to play any more.”

This contributes to the misconceptions about cats as a disappointing, low-interactivity pet. When, in fact, the cat would love to have some interaction.

Throwing a sponge ball or waving a wand toy isn’t just to get our cat needed exercise or make them stop bothering us. These games re-creates part of the cat’s natural environment for them. They use their imagination to turn the toy into prey. But at least they are chasing something.

While our cats have wonderful imaginations; we shouldn’t rely upon them exclusively.

We invented Herbal Cat Toys to help wake up the cat’s senses and recreate the feel of the wild for them. See all the varieties we offer.

Got here from a Link or Search?
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.

Many people regard this as a good enough reason to let their cats outside. Some even think it means they should!

However, they are operating from a set of faulty assumptions.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

It’s true that our pet cats mostly still have all the instincts and equipment they once used to survive in the wild. A lot of my cat training approach is to acknowledge this, and use it. But some things are distinctly different from when the Earliest Kitties started hanging around our civilization’s grain storage.

Our cats are different. Tristan looks very wild, with his tabby patterns and his ticked (frosted) fur. He nails flies with vertical leaps of twice his body length. Then he eats them with great relish. He’s quite the Mighty Hunter.

But he’s also highly affectionate. Even now, at five months, he’s either beside us, or asleep. The qualities that make our cats better pets actually work against them in the wild. Domestication has played up their relaxed, mellow, side. That is not the side they need outdoors.

It’s the nervous, suspicious, downright-antisocial cats who would fare best as solitary wilderness hunters.

Our learning environment is different. Chances are, the kittens our cats once were got raised to play with toys and use a litter box. That’s great; this makes them good pets.

But while instincts are very useful, they are only the beginning. In the wild, our kittens would have learned to sharpen their skills by actually stalking, killing, and eating their prey. They would have been shown which prey are good for eating, and which parts. They would have learned to hide from their own predators. By the time they got out on their own, at several months old, they would have been living wild, with supervision enough to have gotten the hang of it.

Unless our cat was raised as a feral, they would not have learned the adjunct skills their mother would have taught them.

Our wilderness is different. While there are wild cats found in many different types of climate; our domestic cat came from the desert. It shows in the long ear hair which screens out blowing sand, the way they love to sleep in the sun, their fussiness about water, their litter box habits, and the way their eyes dry out so little they can always win the staring contest.

While Siamese and other Oriental types have the long, lean body that lets off heat, Norwegian Forest Cats and Persians have the stocky bodies and thick fur of cats designed for colder weather. While Norwegian Forest Cats, in particular, spent hundreds of years in the Norway forests, chances are that our cats, of whatever lineage, are not especially adapted to the “wild” they will find themselves in.

Especially if that “wild” is not.

Our dangers are different. Cats have strategies that let them outwit or outrun their enemies. But they have nothing that would help them deal with cars and trucks or getting cornered in an urban environment with walls they cannot climb. Outside cats are always getting trapped because they curled up in a place that, in nature, would not change. But now a box has closed or a door has shut and they are unable to get out.

Ear mites are a case in point; they thrive in humid environments, and feral cats usually have terrible cases of them. Then it leads to infections; then the cat loses their hearing, then their eye, then their life. All because they evolved in a dry environment; they cannot begin to beat ear mites on their own.

An outdoor cat can use its superb reflexes to catch and kill prey, even eat it. They have an incredible homing system that usually lets them find their way back. They are accomplished climbers, their favorite way of getting to safety.

But our cats do not know… what they do not know. Yes, they love the outdoors, but they do not know its dangers.

That, after all, is our job.

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to care for our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on CAT CARE.

It’s a Room with a View when we add one of these to our home.

I’m pleased to say I was kind of a pioneer with what we used to call The Cat Environment. We used chain link dog kennel panels to build an open “room” on the side of our house when I had my cat rescue.

Our cats loved it!

It’s a gift that gives year ’round.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

The actual situation depends on the age and agility of the cat in question, and what is really keeping them up that tree.

Knowledge. Kittens probably do need some kind of help, if only verbal encouragement, to make their way down the trunk of the tree. That’s because cats go up a tree head upwards. They must go down a tree the same way.

Unlike the trip up the tree, going down backwards must be learned. When I had a carpeted climbing wall in my house, kittens could be found about face-high, mewing piteously. They had to figure out how to descend while still facing up, so that the curve of their claws would hold them up; not let them fall.

A kitten stuck in a tree is probably truly stuck. The louder they complain, the more daunted they feel about getting down.

What to do: If they are not that far up, a sponge mop is a good tool; they often welcome the chance to cling to something else besides the tree. Once they fasten themselves to the sponge instead of the branch, they can be lowered to the ground.

Experience. Our adult cat can find themselves in a similar situation if they don’t usually go out and have never climbed trees before. Instinct will get them up the tree in case of danger, but instinct will not get them down.

Even if we have “things they climb” in our house, even carpets and drapes; this might not give them the necessary skills. Trees need a lot more pressure on their claws to dig in and hold up an adult’s weight. Add in trepidation about whatever sent them up the tree in the first place, and we might have a cat stuck in a tree.

What to do: It’s not just getting to the cat safely, it’s getting the cat to grab something else safely, too. Strap a pillow or couch cushion to our arm or chest, and we will be able to get the cat down without us getting punctured, too. Once the cat stops clinging for dear life to the tree, they will need to cling for dear life onto something else.

Motivation. Sometimes, the cat’s not coming down because they don’t want to. Just seeing a cat in a tree does not mean a rescue situation. Cats climb down from trees all the time.

But sometimes the cat can’t climb down, because they are stuck physically, not just mentally. I’ve known of cats stuck in trees because they slipped and got jabbed with a sharp branch that they couldn’t get free of, or they stepped on a cracked branch that closed on their paw when their weight came off of it, or their non-breakaway collar trapped them.

These cats really need rescuing.

What to do: So many times I’ve talked to people who got their cat back after a long time, because they didn’t know their cat was stuck in a tree. So many people who let their cat out don’t look up when they are looking for their cat.

This is why all cats stuck in trees should be approached from a sturdy surface, such as a well-braced ladder. Get someone else to help. Be sure to protect ourselves with gloves and a heavy jacket, at the least, because a hurt, starving, panicked cat will not be their usual self.

Cats are natural aerialists. That’s why they climb all over our furniture and like to hang out on top of the refrigerator. When in danger, they take the high ground. So trees are actually their natural habitat.

But, like so many of their instincts, they don’t always work in the world we have made.

Got here from a Link or Search?
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.

A cat that had its back feet severed by a combine harvester has been given two prosthetic limbs in a pioneering operation by a UK vet.

The new feet are custom-made implants that “peg” the ankle to the foot. They are bioengineered to mimic the way deer antler bone grows through the skin.

This is Oscar. And he really is bionic!

Technically, they are intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthetics (Itaps,) which means they used naturally occurring processes to understand the engineering of replacing Oscar’s back feet. Noel Fitzpatrick, a veterinary surgeon based in Surrey, pioneered the process, and explains:

The real revolution with Oscar is [that] we have put a piece of metal and a flange into which skin grows into an extremely tight bone.

We have managed to get the bone and skin to grow into the implant and we have developed an ‘exoprosthesis’ that allows this implant to work as a see-saw on the bottom of an animal’s limbs to give him effectively normal gait.

Watch the video and see how Oscar wobbles for his first few steps. Then he’s off and, literally, running, even after months recovering from the original injury and waiting to heal from the surgery.

What were my thoughts on this event that made me, admittedly, teary-eyed?

Some jerk is going to complain. Sure enough, the story that goes into depth about how Oscar and his people got into this situation has, as the second comment, this:

While it is nice that an individual cat didn’t have to put down I would think it would be more animal friendly to adopt a cat from an animal shelter instead and then also donate the rest of the money which was not spend on a single cat for improvement to that animal shelter.

Perhaps “jerk” is a bit harsh, since this commenter at least wants to give this theoretical money to an animal shelter instead of starving children, as these kind of commenters are prone to suggest. However, I reserve the right to actually append “clueless” to whatever we might call this person, because this option certainly wouldn’t be animal friendly to Oscar, would it?

How would Clueless react to the suggestion that a child undergoing expensive treatment should be “put down” and the money saved goes to some orphanage? Where the people who just lost a child could find another one? I mean, isn’t that just a win-win?

People like Clueless don’t make suggestions like that, because they think of children as unique and irreplaceable. Which they are. But they think of cats as fungible; identical, interchangeable, mere moving ornaments. Which they are not.

I could tell Clueless that Oscar has performed a great boon to humanity; the surgeon is using this operation as the basis to move on to people from here, because humans who have lost their feet could reap the same benefits Oscar has.

That could possibly make an impact. Because Clueless obviously does not get that Oscar’s people wanted him back, with a good quality of life. That is why they agreed to let him live at the vet hospital for months; they were thinking about what was best for him, not what was best for them.

That’s what Clueless does not grasp.

That’s what makes it love.

Oscar’s accident wouldn’t have happened indoors. To keep our cat both safe and happy, see all my posts on cats and the great outdoors.

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to care for our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on CAT CARE.

Danger and gardens just don’t go together.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Don’t I know about all the pests and diseases that can infest a garden? Actually, I do. For over a decade I gardened organically, with over eighty rosebushes, along with all the other flowering plants and herbs I grew. While a complete guide would take a book or three, here’s some tips to get us started:

Perfection is not going to happen. Organic gardening is about enjoying the scent of the rose, even if the leaves are raggedy. Most of us are not going to put little hoods over the blooms to avoid rainspotting that will ruin our chances at the Garden Show. If we are used to thinking of toxic chemicals as inevitable, whatever we are growing, we might be surprised at how well the non-toxic alternatives work for us.

Enjoying the garden is the goal. If the only way we can do that is through a window, or wearing a mask when we work there, a lot of the point is lost.

Tailor the attack to the problem. There are few plants that are as fussy and disease-ridden as modern roses. Yet I found an organic solution for their woes. Aphids can be smothered with some sprinkles of flour. Growing garlic at their base helped them ward off blackspot. A quick rinse with Miracid changed their pH and stopped fungal growth.

These days, there’s a lot of other solutions that can be implemented, from more naturally distilled insecticides which break down quickly to new insights into how diseases and infestations start and stop.

Set a bug to catch a bug. Ladybugs and mantises are just two bugs that do not bother humans, only other bugs. Make toad houses and accommodate birds to encourage other helpers in the garden. I never had a problem with Japanese beetles, even though they can strip a whole garden in a day.

That was because I had wild tangled shrubs and birdbaths to encourage birds to hang out in our yard. When grub season peaked, my yard was covered with birds having a banquet. Every one they ate was one less beetle to contend with down the road.

Get multicultural. In gardening, a monoculture is growing only one kind of plant; which simply rings a dinner bell for the pests that love to attack it. Lack of balance in the natural world never lasts; it is inherently unsustainable. That is why growing a lawn, or growing only roses, is such a struggle.

While I had mostly roses, I also had a lot of perennials and herbs growing all around them, too. This provided havens for my natural allies, the predators who eat the bad bugs. Except for spring aphid season, I didn’t have to do a thing to specifically go after any other bugs who wanted to prey on my plants.

Here’s some great books to get started. Especially the one called Carrots Love Tomatoes. Companion planting can be very powerful!

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to care for our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on CAT CARE.

It’s spring. Things are waking up and running around all over the place.

Reverend Jim rarely leaves the window. He loves the scents and sounds and sights.

But just because he loves the outdoors doesn’t mean he wants to go out in it.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Spring fever affects us all, but especially cats. Even if they have access to the outdoors, winter in most places is not conducive to them having a good time in it.

So, indoor or outdoor or somewhere in between, seasonal changes like the earth waking up will usually have some kind of effect on our cats.

Usually, some kind of massively rowdy effect, resulting in mad dashes through objects. Even older cats will become more lively. That’s because our cat is being flooded with new sensory input, especially scents.

Cats have a much better sense of smell than we do. It’s a riot of sensory input flooding in from outside. They love to drink in this banquet, but don’t mistake this for wanting full immersion.

RJ would not have a good time if let outside. He has no street skills, for instance. He would have way too much information coming at him, and he would not feel comfortable in this new territory.

My task is keeping the cats exercised and supplied with snacks. They need both exertion and some extra food, because their metabolism is cranked up too. This will not only ease their hunger for all kinds of sensation, this will be what their body craves.

Completing a cycle of needs will keep our cats happy and relaxed between bursts of activity. Anticipate it, channel it, and have fun with it.

We all feel renewed at the beginning of every season.

For more about managing our cat’s energy level, see The Overcharged Cat.

Got here from a Link or Search?
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.

These are signs our cat might be cheating on us.

more animals

We might be surprised at how often and easily an outdoor cat can create a network of people they visit for food, attention, and love.

A friend of mine did not realize her distinctively marked cat had claimed another family until picking up her pictures at the local drug store. Another women in line caught sight of them, exclaimed over how much that cat looked like hers, and it turned out my friend was only this cat’s evening family. While the house was empty all day, the cat was spending time with his “other” family, who had small children and a stay at home mother.

Over the years, I have heard so many similar stories I can only regard it as yet another way cats, despite their reputation for aloofness, really do have a bottomless well of affection for those who treat them properly.

We might be part of a cat’s network ourselves. Is there a neighborhood cat who is willing to be petted? Has they convinced us they are hungry so we leave some food out for them? Do they seem to appear at the same times every day? Do we decide the cat’s fed and cared for appearance means they do have a home somewhere?

Well, they might. Or, they might not.

Intrepid, friendly cats can find enough welcoming spaces in a neighborhood so that they can stay warm and fed and petted, putting up the successful appearance of “being owned” so well that everyone assumes they are.

Often, this cat situation is only exposed when the cat is involved in an accident, and it is discovered that no one really owns this cat. Hopefully, enough people care to get them back on their feet again, and they are allotted a real home. I know a few people who got their cats this way.

Unexpected events can happen another way, too. When we move, we take our outdoor cat. If our outdoor cat has another family, they can move away, and take “our” cat with them.

Then there’s the famous case of the British cat nicknamed Macavity, who uses public transportation as part of his daily round. His destination? A local fish and chip shop.

These examples illustrate how little control we have over what our cat gets up to when they are outside and unsupervised. Some of these adventures can be benign, even amusing, but some are not.

After all, it’s the friendly cat who is most easily acquired by those who don’t have good intentions, as well as those who do.

Just another aspect of the indoor/outdoor argument.

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to get our cat to be affectionate in The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my CAT AFFECTION posts.

What can we do?

We must remember why the outdoors is dangerous.

Cats aren’t doing anything they don’t do in the house. They are just doing it in more dangerous places.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Help them not get lost. If they fall asleep in an obscure place in the house, nothing bad will happen. If they do it outdoors, it can be in a moving van or in a place that is now shut up for the night. So we should get them micro-chipped. It’s better than a collar and they can’t lose it. Never put a collar they can’t get out of on a cat; that could be the very thing that traps them.

There’s an extra measure of safety if we also use a breakaway collar with id tags. It shows the cat is owned, which can offer them extra protection in many states.

Offer sanctuary. We should make sure the cat always has a way of getting back into the house, or some other safe place, right away. Invest in a cat door, or create an outdoor house where they can stay warm and feel they can defend themselves. Many cats get lost because they got frightened and bolted into unknown territory to hide. If they know they have a good hiding place nearby, that is where they will bolt to.

Try to get them inside at night. Letting the cat out at night might be a time-honored tradition, but cats are in more danger from cars than anything else outdoors. Things that might hunt them down are more likely to hunt at night. So ration their outdoor times to the daylight hours.

Be ready to search for them. If they “break curfew,” don’t hesitate to go out and try to round them up. We can let them know which direction home is, and they can start heading back. It can draw their attention to some bodily needs which can be taken care of there. It will also show the neighborhood whose cat they are, and that we care about them.

Get an enclosure. The very best thing to do is create a “room outdoors” where they can have a good time without our worrying about them. The Kitty Store Online has some clever ideas and well-designed arrangements.

There are ways of helping our cat stay out of the trouble their wild side wants to get them into.

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more ways to care for our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See all of my posts on CAT CARE.

I’ve met a number of people who used to let their cats out. But, as they declare to me over and over, Something happened, and I can’t go through that again.

If a cat doesn’t go out, they associate “going out” with things like vet visits and being abandoned at the shelter, and staying inside is just peachy with them, thank you very much.

But this isn’t always the case. We might adopt a cat who was used to going out, or we might have changed our mind about them going out when we move to a new area, our present area changes, or we have a bad experience and decide we will make the conversion.

So how do we get cats to see the front door as danger, not delight?

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

We have two weapons: dissuasion and distraction.

To give the cat the idea that the outdoors is not the undiluted place of fun they imagine it to be, we can try conveying this concept with a psychodrama technique I call The Water Monster.

This is especially effective when we are making the change along with a move, either for us or for our new cat. They can accept that the outdoors they remember is different from the outdoors in their new place. But it can also be used to convince our present cats that Something Has Changed. Even if it is our mind.

We must turn off the dash-for-the-door reflex, or we risk hurting the cat with a hastily closed door, or not preventing the cat getting out, which just reinforces their efforts. Every person in the house has to commit to keeping the cats in while they are being re-trained. Every time they get out teaches them that they can get out if they try hard enough.

Then it becomes a game; one they will always win. They love plotting and strategizing. It’s what they do.

The distraction part of our new bargain is that we commit to making the indoors as interesting as the outdoors. We can’t expect the cat to stay indoors instead of going outdoors; and for nothing else to change. There is a lot of activity the cat is going to need a substitute for, whatever it might be.

If they like to climb and explore, get a cat tree, play tunnels, or just have a cardboard box in the living room for a while.

Sometimes, a great solution is to get them a buddy. We could give in to the children’s request for some hamsters, because the cat will enjoy them too. (Secure the cage and its door, of course.) A covered aquarium or a caged bird is another hobby we can share with our cats.

Involve them in more activities with us. Call them when we will be sitting on the couch for a while, get new toys that are just for certain times of day, such as mealtime or homework time. If the cat has not been around for these times, they might need to be shown the proper etiquette for when we are eating, cooking, or working with Superglue.

They will want to look out the windows, a lot. So clear off tables, install kitty shelves, and otherwise encourage them to continue their watching activities. A bird feeder or birdbath will create some traveling road shows to keep their interest. The Kitty Store has a number of delightful options.

Plant some kitty grass so they will leave houseplants alone. They might ask for a dripping faucet or having the water dish refilled more often. Getting them a pet fountain can help with these demands.

We might, or might not, see more activity in the litter box. Be prepared to add a box in another area, away from the other boxes, to ease territory concerns.

Remember, we did this to have the cat, longer. But we will also have the cat, more.

So that’s two good reasons.

Help our cat get over what they are missing. We invented Herbal Cat Toys to help wake up the cat’s senses and recreate the feel of the wild for them. See all the varieties we offer.

Got here from a Link or Search?
There’s more to raising and training a cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now. See my CAT TRAINING TIPS.