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 o...

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 them...

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...

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. Her...

“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, n...

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 gen...

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 ...