Top dog is now . . . the cat

American Pet Products Manufacturing Association showed that more Americans had cats as pets than dogs. According to the survey, more than 60 percent of households in the United States owned pets. The tally was 77.7 million cats, 65 million dogs and (in a distant third) 17.3 million “small animals” (rabbits, gerbils and the like). Gone are the days when cats were considered second place (in numbers, affection and so on) after dogs. Couple this bit of news with another bit of trivia: it’s inevitable that there are a lot more feral cats in the United States than there are wild dogs.

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Butt dragging

legs. Simply put, the animal’s anus itches terribly, and she doesn’t have fingers to scratch it. The itching is caused by worms, so your cat requires medicine, administered either by you or your vet. (But by all means, get your camcorder out while the cat is still dragging, for it makes a great video.)

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The last to be domesticated

horse for transportation and cattle and swine and sheep as sources of food and hides. Apparently our human ancestors were slow to realize cats’ potential as rodent exterminators.

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The burning house scenario

kittens, carrying them out one by one (by the scruff of the neck, of course), not giving up until they are all safe. What impresses people most is that sometimes the mother loses her own life in the process.

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“Honest as the cat”

Some people hate cats because of their habit of snitching meat—and “meat” might also include pet birds and fish. Well, why not? To a cat, if the meat is available, it is there to be eaten, even if you had intended to have it for your supper.

Essentially, no cat can be trusted if meat is within reach. Hence the old proverb about someone who is “honest as the cat when the meat is out of reach.” In other words, that person can be trusted only when there is nothing around to tempt him.

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Do they recognize their mother?

kittens in the same litter can have different fathers). But it does strike some people as odd that kittens, once grown and separated from their mothers, do not seem to recognize her if they meet her again.

This raises a question: would a male cat ever mate with his own mother? The answer is yes, though some experts say there is some “incest instinct” that prevents this from occurring often. In the interest of breeding for specific traits, humans will sometimes create an incest situation, a practice called backcrossing.

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Cat meets skunk

Wild skunks are the most easygoing, amiable animals in the world. They can afford to be, for they don’t need to bite or scratch their enemies, since their malodorous spray is excellent protection. Occasionally a cat gets sprayed by a skunk, and removing the smell is no picnic.

First the cat needs a good water bath (which most of them will resist tooth and nail), then a good thorough soaking in either milk or tomato juice, which needs to stay on the coat for at least ten minutes before being rinsed with water.

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Cat massage

Massage is very “in” these days, with people sometimes paying high prices for the supposed benefits of getting a relaxing massage from a professional. Humans have a way of pushing their trends onto their pets, of course, so there are books explaining the “right” way to massage your cat.

The less trendy among us are more inclined to do what people have done for centuries: rubbing and stroking our cats without giving a thought to “technique” just being aware that the cats enjoy it tremendously, and so do we.

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Poor excuses for mothers?

kittens are about fifty days old, a mother seems to realize they are ready for the world.

Her work is done, and there is no anxiety about being separated from the kids, nor are the kittens sad at leaving home. However, breeders as a rule don’t separate the mom cat from the kittens all at once but generally remove one kitten at a time from the litter, one kitten per day. This makes it easier for mom to return to her premother life.

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Claw caps

old nails grow out. The cat still goes through the motions of clawing (as do declawed cats), but the claw caps keep the claws from doing any serious harm.

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Multiple meanings of “litter”

English word “litter” is rooted in the old French word, and it has two related meanings that apply to cats. A “litter” of kittens reflects the idea that a cat “took to her bed” to give birth. The “litter” in a litter box is a sort of “bed of soil” (or recycled newspaper, pine or whatever you use for litter) for the cat to deposit its waste discreetly.

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Some good ole chemical additives

food, including vitamins and minerals. Some people are fussy about such things, not even wanting additives in their pets’ food. But pet food manufacturers haven’t been shy about adding nutritional supplements to cat food.

One amino acid that has been added to most cat food since the 1980s is taurine, which has been found useful in preventing blindness and heart disease. As time goes by and we learn more about animal nutrition, it is likely that more additives will be found in pet foods.

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Bowl and collar technology

If you have more than one cat in your home, you may be aware of the problems of feeding them: one cat may hog the food, one may insist on eating before the others, they may (because of age differences or other factors) require different types of food and so on.

In past times, owners worked out their own ways of dealing with these problems, but, of course, the pet product manufacturers have come up with their own clever high-tech solutions. One is a food bowl that links up electronically with a special collar worn by the cats you don’t want eating from that bowl. If a cat wearing the collar nears the bowl, the bowl emits a tone that makes the cat skedaddle. (Are human beings clever, or what?)

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Social skills

person who grew up in large family generally may have better social skills than someone from a small family. This is, in a way, true for cats, too. Every cat is part of a litter of several kittens, and the general rule is that the longer a kitten stays with his littermates, the more tolerant he is of other cats while growing up.

None of this information is very important if you own only one cat and don’t want another. But if you’re thinking of having two or more cats in your home, it might be useful to learn about the “adolescence” of the cat you are thinking of taking in.

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The lactose problem

milk. The end result (pardon the pun) is usually diarrhea, for either the person or the cat.

This needs to be kept in mind by doting cat owners who like to reward their pets with milk or cream, which all cats love. Most cats have no persoalan at all with milk, but owners who notice a milk-diarrhea connection ought to do the obvious thing and cut back or eliminate the milk they give to their pets.

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Little boys and their toys

Both male and female kittens will happily chase after rolling objects, just as they will swat at suspended objects like strings and strips of paper. There is some difference in the sexes, however, as males seem to engage more in “object play” than females do.

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The dreaded hairball!

digestive tract.

Some cats never get them (my own hasn’t—knock on wood); some cats get them rarely and vomit them up with no harm to themselves (though perhaps some harm to your upholstery or carpet). The reason owners need to monitor hairballs is that occasionally they can lead to serious digestive problems, sometimes requiring surgery. Pet store shelves are well stocked with hairball preventatives, and most of the pet food manufacturers now market certain foods as “hairball preventers.”

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Pedigreed puberty

neutered, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this blog.

The usual rule is to have the cat neutered before the cat reaches sexual maturity, but owners of pedigreed cats sometimes wait until after that time. The assumption is that the animal will not develop all the attractive traits of the breed if neutered before puberty.

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Then on to real preying

mothers. So how old is a cat when he can do his own killing? Roughly two months, by which time most kittens can catch and kill a mouse. Here’s a curious thing: a minority of cats seem to be afraid to hunt, and those cats are also fearful of humans. In short, a cat who doesn’t like to hunt makes a poor pet. Cat owners who are angry at their pet for bringing home birds or mice ought to consider that a good hunter is also a warmer companion.

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“Cat on a hot tin roof”

The playwright Tennessee Williams immortalized this phrase in the title of one of his dramas, even though the cat in his play was a woman, not an actual cat. The meaning of the phrase is obvious enough: an extremely uncomfortable or unpleasant situation. A cat on a hot tin roof would not be able to stand still for more than a second.

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Playing to prey

Roughly about the time of weaning (three weeks or so), kittens find a new source of pleasure besides nursing, namely play. It begins with gentle swatting at each other with their paws, then progresses to biting, chasing and rolling. (Kittens do bite each other in play, but less often than puppies do.) As their muscles grow and coordination improves, kittens learn the joy of leaping and pouncing and of standing on their hind legs. This is all good pleasurable fun, of course, but also is training for the hunt.

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Chatoyancy

Here’s a fancy French word, and if you know that chat is French for “cat,” you may have a clue what chatoyancy means: “shining like a cat’s eye.” The word refers to a quality of certain gemstones, not only cat’s-eye but moonstone and many others.

Something that is chatoyant possesses a changeable luster and has a narrow band of white light. If you change the position of the stone, the band of light seems to move across the surface.

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Polishing the cat

silk or chamois—the cat show equivalent of a “wax job.” Owners who fuss over their pets sometimes use this technique at home, too.

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Oral fixation

kitten is weaned, his sucking days are over—but not always. Sometimes older kittens, and even adult cats, can be seen sucking on another cat’s teat, on a human’s finger or on a piece of cloth. It does no harm, though it strikes the owner as peculiar. The author has known of a few cases where a fully grown cat would “nurse” on the teat of a dog—in some cases, a spayed dog that had never produced a drop of milk in her life. In every case it appeared that both the cat and dog enjoyed the arrangement.

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“Rusting” of black cats

black car, you know it isn’t going to stay very sleek if you leave it outside where it will experience all kinds of weather. In effect the same thing happens to black cats, specifically the long-haired ones. If exposed to the elements—including sunlight—a longhaired black cat’s fur tends to “rust”—not literally the rust that forms on iron, but the effect is the same in that the cat’s hair turns a kind of reddish-brown. It’s bound to happen to any black longhair who spends a lot of time outdoors. Needless to say, folks who exhibit their pets in cat shows are fussy about keeping black longhairs indoors and away from too much sun.

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