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 - Understanding your Cat

Understanding your Cat

Tigger always talks to me, he always tells me things and not always by meowing. Sometimes he uses his body. Cats have body language just as humans have and I think theirs is much easier to understand.

First and foremost, verbal communication. I just wish I could understand Tigger fully, I wish I could talk to him. I can and do talk to him but its like talking to someone foreign. You don’t really know what they’re saying but you can usually understand what they mean. Its the same with Tigger, I can understand him, but I don’t understand the meows.

I know when he wants food, I know when he’s content, I know when he’s angry and I know when he’s on edge or nervous as if something big is in the yard like a dog. He tells me, and I can understand.

I can also tell how he is by his body language. I know to look for the little things, the little signals he is giving me. Its about loving your cat so you understand him (or her). 

I can tell when he is frightened, his ears are usually flat against his head and his eyes are wide open. I can tell his pupils are fully dilated which makes his eyes look almost black. His back is arched and his fur is puffed up. This is all to make him look bigger than he is to whatever is scaring him and is common with all domestic cats. His tail is usually swishing from side to side as well and the fur is puffed out on his tail.

Its a different story when he is relaxed and happy. His pupils will be normal sized and his eyes may be fully open or half closed is he is feeling sleepy. His ears are normal, pointing up and slightly forward and his tail will be curved down with the tip of his tail pointing slightly up. He is usually laid on me at this stage and his motor will be running at full blast, that’s what I call his purring, running his motor. I have read that this can be a sign of pain and cats will purr when they are in a lot of pain. Tigger has never done this even though  he has been injured before. I once couldn’t coax him off the garage roof and when I got up there to see if he was OK he was purring yet Tigger had a large piece of his skin torn back off one of his hind legs. He sure was glad to see me but boy must he have been in a lot of pain.

Don’t worry I sorted him out and took him to my local veterinarians. Cost me a fortune and I was told to take the dressing off in two days and take him back for the sutures out in a week. Within 3 hours of getting him home he had managed to get the dressing off and eat the sutures. He didn’t like them and wasn’t having them. still he was fine in a couple of days.

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 - Site Map

To see an alphabetical site map click here

• Home
  Welcome page about my little cat called tigger, who put me, his human, in emergency, twice in two days

• Understanding your Cat
  A brief look at how to understand your cat and helping you to figure out why cats do what they want when they want to do it and to make you realise that your ideas of controlling your cat do not matter when it comes to cats.

• Feeding your Cat
  This is a verfy important page, feeding your cat. Whatever you do, it will cost you. Just remember that yhour cat will eat what it really likes to eat, and you, being thre sucker you are, will buy your cat the best of what it likes.

• Loving your Cat
  It is important that you love your cat and if you do, your cat will return this love. Love your cat and your cat loves you.

• Cat Behaviour
  Whatever you do, however hard you try, your cat will behave in whatever way it wants and unless you are a cruel cat owner, forget about even trying to get it to change.

• Cats and Hunting
  Why does your cat hunt and what can you do about? Not a lot really, cats are, and always have been, hunters. It is how they always obtained their food before man came along and domesticated cats, and hunting is built into your pet.

• Cats and Fleas
  Even though your cat will be a very clean animal, it is very likely to pick up fleas at sometime in its life. There is not very much you can do about preventing fleas, but there is a lot you can do to try and get rid of the fleas which will find your cat.

• Allergies to Cats
  You become a cat owner and then you find you are allergic to it. What can you do about it? I became a cat owner after my marriage and then found out my wife is allergic to cat fur. What did I do about it? Well my wife still loves our cat but she will not let me have another one when Tigger has gone.

• Cats and Others
  How your cat reacts to other people. What you should do about it. Well most importantly never ever force your cat to be friends with someone. You cat will, and should, decide who it likes, just like you decide who you like and do not force your cat to be friendly with someone it does not like.

• Cats and Children
  How to deal with your cat and your child. Small children like cats but your cat does not always like your child. It is also very important never to leave you cat alone with your baby. Cats like somewhere warm and it does not know that a baby cannot breath if a cat lies down on a babies face.

• Neutering
  Neutering is not natural. You’re right it isn’t natural but I think neutering is necessary. Just think how many unwanted cats there are across the US today and many of these are there, scratching an existance, living wild because cat owners who are not responsible did not bother to have their cat neutered.

• Cat Insurance
  Do you need cat insurance, well no, not really, but is it advisable to have it, yes. Think about it, you have medical insurance so surely your cat needs it as well.

• Contact Us
  Our contact details should you wish to check anything.

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 - Neutering

Neutering your Cat or kitten

This is a subject, neutering, which many of us don’t want to think about but when I got Tigger and took him for his first vaccination it was one of the questions I asked. I actually asked about having him neutered when he was only 5 weeks old. I was told to bring him back at about 3 months old and the vets would neuter him but he was too young for neutering at 5 weeks.

Why, you may ask, did I want to have him neutered. Its not natural. You’re right it isn’t natural but I think neutering is necessary. Just think how many unwanted cats there are across the US today. I’d easily put the figure into the tens of millions and what happens to these cats. Well many of them are euthanized. If you’re not sure what that means they are destroyed, killed, and a lot of it is because people don’t have their cat neutered. Why are they then killed, well the simple reason is there isn’t enough people wanting to adopt kittens and give them a loving home. If every cat owner suddenly adopted 20 cats maybe, just maybe, we could sort the problem out by having them all neutered but it won’t happen.

So what happens to un-neutered cats which are not destroyed. I’m sorry to keep using the word destroyed and you may prefer euthanized,  but whatever word we use the cat is killed. Don’t try to sanitize what happens by using a clean word. Because cat owners are unwilling to have their cats neutered, millions of cats are killed. So just think the next time the subject of neutering comes up what the alternative is.

What happens to the cats which are just left to fend for themselves because no one wants them and they are not killed. These cats become wild and feral. All they are doing is surviving, eating, sleeping and mating, making more wild kittens. These cats, and your domestic cat, can have up to 3 litters a year of between 4 - 7 kittens on average. That’s 12 - 21 new cats a year if they all survive which is doubtful. Just think of the effect these cats have on your local wildlife population, they have to eat remember and as no one is buying food for them they have to catch it. They may also have a much higher rate of disease than ’owned’ cats and this disease can easily be passed onto your cat.

Domestic female cats will be on heat several times a year and male cats will call round at such times. Your female cat will also howl a lot when in heat and will want to spray its urine around. This is done to attract male cats but if you are keeping your cat in then she will spray on your furniture, all because you did not have her neutered.

Male cats who have not been neutered will go in search of females in heat as the mating instinct is high. They may go off for days at a time looking for females and some of them will forget their way home and just add to the wild cat population. Do you want this to happen to your cat because you didn’t have him neutered.

Neutered cats are more friendly and loving than un-neutered cats and you will have a better relationship with them.

OK, so what about the cost. Well its much more expensive to have a female cat neutered than a male, but neutering can help cut down on health problems in later life so it may well save you money by having your cat neutered early. If you find the cost is too much have a good look round your neighborhood and ask others. There are many places where you can get your cat neutered at a reduced rate or even for free as some people accept that it is something we need to do for the general well being of the cat and kitten society. If you have pet insurance then check this out but it is very unlikely that this will be covered. Your cat insurance is more likely to be for emergencies or illness and not something which is effectivly optional, (but highly important to think about). Don’t think about it too much, do it and do your cat a favor.

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 - Cats and Fleas

Fleas and Cats and Kittens

Don’t worry about your fleas, your cat isn’t going to catch them from you.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist that but fleas can be a serious problem for cats. Tigger didn’t like fleas. When he was bitten by a flea he ended up developing a scab for each flea bite and his fur wouldn’t grow on the scab so it fell out. I thought he was going to become a bald cat but it always grew back eventually.

I took him to see the vet who told me it was an allergy against fleas. He sold me an expensive spray which I had to spray Tigger with every day. As soon as the flea bit him it would die. I had to shake the can well before spraying him and hold Tigger by his neck while I sprayed from neck to tail and back. It felt very cold on him and didn’t smell too pleasant.

It didn’t work so I took him back to the veterinary practice after two weeks and saw a different vet who consulted Tigger’s file and told me the condition he was suffering from rendered the product useless. It may kill the flea when the flea bit but that was the problem, Tigger has already been bitten and that was his problem.

The solution was to try a couple of drops of liquid on his neck which killed the fleas on contact, but they never seemed to work well. In the end I had to use a traditional flea collar which I don’t like to see on cats and one day he came hopping home with one of his front paws stuck inside his flea collar. I helped him out of it but couldn’t find anything as successful so he had to keep wearing it, well a new one every 3 months. It worked though.

There was still a big problem with the spray though. I kept it for years but never used it again. The problem, well whenever Tigger heard any can being shaken he was off. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t for him, just shake a can of polish, hair spray, deodorant or anything and he hid. He wasn’t having that awful flea spray near him.

So what can you do about fleas. Well take a bath, shave all your hair off, douse yourself in flea powder and don’t go anywhere dirty again. Only kidding.

Fleas can be a major problem for most cats sometime in their life. It doesn’t mean they’re dirty though, all cats are fastidiously clean except one I once saw in a small mountain top village 2500 feet up in the Andalusian Mountains on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. He didn’t seem to be bothered about a little dirt. I took a picture of two of his friends but they were a lot cleaner. A couple of seconds after I took this shot in Comares a dog came round the corner, took one look at these two and scampered away with his tail between his legs. I kinda got the impression that in Comares, cats ruled and dogs didn’t. The guy whose villa I was staying at told me there was one deserted house there which had 26 cats living in it and a British resident went to feed them all once a day.

Cats who go outside can pick up fleas by mixing with other cats who have fleas. There doesn’t even need to be contact with other cats. They can still catch them from being in the same area where other cats have been.

Fleas can also get into your home on your clothing so even if your cat is a house or apartment cat they can still get fleas. Once the flea is in your apartment it will prefer your cat to your clothing.

Fleas lay their eggs in your cats fur. They can, and often do fall off, and will hatch into larvae almost anywhere but a favorite place will be your cat’s bedding. They will also get into your drapes, carpets, furniture and even your bedding so it is best to deal with fleas straight away. Fleas can also cause you problems if you are alergic to them so be careful.

So what are the symptoms. Scratching a lot more than usual, especially behind the ears and on the neck is a strong sign to look out for. Your cat will almost certainly be grooming itself a lot more than normal so be prepared to check for fleas. Having a good look is unlikely to show anything to the untrained eye but carefully grooming your cat with a very fine toothed comb may show you the eggs which fleas lay in your cats fur. If you find any small brownish black bits these could be flea droppings. An easy way to test this is to drop them on damp kitchen roll. If they start to ooze red, that means they are flea droppings and the dried blood, (which is what they are made of), is rehydrating with the water. The other place to look for fleas is in your cat’s bedding and here you may even be able to see them jumping.

So how do you deal with fleas. First you need to do your best to get rid of anything that will re-infect your cat. There are flea sprays which are available from your local pet store or veterinary which will help to get rid of fleas from your home. Before you start though you need to vacuum - everywhere, furniture, drapes, carpets, bedding, mattresses and then underneath all furniture as well and do it thoroughly. Once you have done that use the spray. Read the instructions very carefully on the flea product you have bought as many of them will be different and follow the instructions. Spray all the areas you need to and then deal with the other two problems.

The first is the cats bedding, and maybe yours. Wash your cat’s bedding in a high temperature wash, yours as well if need be to kill the fleas. If you have a proper cat bed which can be washed, then was that as well. If it is something like a basket which you cannot wash, spray it with the flea spray but keep you cat away for however long the instructions tell you.

You deal with your cat using flea spray, the drops I mentioned which kill fleas or a flea collar which I don’t like. Ask at your neighborhood pet store or your veterinary for the best flea product to suit your cat and remember to read all the instructions - fully.

Another suggestion is you can bath your cat with special flea eradication shampoo and then groom it on a regular basis to help get rid of fleas and bath once a week. Hell my cat put me in hospital for 5 days when I was playing with him so what’s he going to do if I bath him. I suppose some cats like being bathed but not Tigger. The only time I ever bathed him was when he came home from a trip round his territory in the neighborhood and his back was covered in oil. He must have been under a dirty truck or something but left to himself he’d have cleaned himself with his tongue as cats do but I wasn’t having all that oil inside him. So, I bathed him. He howled, he fought, he bit, he scratched and he spit at me, but I got him clean. After I had finished I put him down and laughed as he looked so pathetic, like he had no fur and was just a bag of skin and bones

You’re probably thinking he hid for the rest of the day. Well, you’d be wrong, dead wrong, it was me who hid. I hid in the study until nightfall and did some work. He was still mad when I fed him at night but at least I got the oil off him. I checked for fleas a couple of days later and he was clean so maybe the bath helped.

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 - Cats and Children

Cats and Children

Can cats and children mix. From my childhood I would say YES, very loudly, but before you get a cat you need to make sure that all your family wants one. Your kids need to realize that a cat is not like a toy doll or stuffed animal, something to be hugged and played with when they want and then just thrown down when they’re fed up. Cats are animals and they are alive, breath and have needs which need to be met.

Just remember though that it will end up being your responsibility to look after the cat not your kids. Older children will be able to take much more care of your cat but younger children are unlikely to have the skills or cat owning stamina they will need to care for a cat or kitten fully. Emptying the little tray is one chore children may do once or twice but they quickly tire of it.

One major point is that you may have the most laid back cat ever but DO NOT ever leave it alone with a baby or a toddler. You know that cats love somewhere warm and comfy to sleep and where better than a crib or a cot. Your cat doesn’t know any better and your baby cannot push a cat off its face. Cats and babies can be a very dangerous mixture so please be aware of the dangers.

We always kept a full sized net over the cot which my mother bought when she visited Australia once although these are available in the US as well. Tigger never bothered but it is never safe to take chances. I think he thought that babies are just machines which make screaming noises and he kept well away but you must make sure that you minimize all dangers.

Toddlers are a problem as well, as we all know how they like to pull things, put things in their mouths, bite things and hit things. Well to them a cat is just a thing and your cat will react with its defensive mechanism which starts with its claws and these are sharp especially with delicate skin. Cats will scratch toddlers, not out of spite but out of defense.

Another thing is cats are not really clean. They may spend ages grooming themselves but they stick their noses everywhere (and in everything) and remember they also lick their own bottoms to clean themselves. Fortunately, I have learned to wash my hands after touching my cat but in any case my immune system is well developed whereas a babies isn’t and a toddlers is at a very early stage of development. Just think of the diseases your ‘clean’ cat can pass on to a toddler.

Make sure that your cat has its own place away from toddlers and children when it wants quiet, and it will want peace and quiet just as you sometimes do. Just think how many times you want peace and quiet away from a baby. Cats are the same as well.

You need to introduce your children to playing with a cat or a kitten in a gentle way at first. A toy mouse an a piece of string is a great idea as it keeps a distance between your child and the cat. Table tennis balls are great as well and as a youngster I spent hours playing with my cats with table tennis balls. Kittens especially love them but kittens and toddlers are maybe not a good mixture. Just as babies are delicate so are kittens and a toddler may not realize how enthusiastically it can give a hug and how powerful that hug can be. Older cats are better than kittens for toddlers. Tigger was always very wary with my children and it wasn’t until my eldest son was nearly 3 that Tigger would sit on his knee.

Having said that teaching children to live with cats can help to build a lifelong respect in your children for animals but just exercise a note of caution. You can also use your cat to teach children about life and how to be kind to animals and help the anmial world. One of the ways you can do this is to help them understand about animal populations and other subjects such as neutering.

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 - Cat Insurance

Insurance for your Cat

Do you need pet insurance, well no, not really, but is it advisable to have pet insurance, yes. If you have a lot of money you can cover the costs of anything that happens to your cat but most of us would rather not take the chance that we are rich enough to cover any costs that may crop up so we take out pet insurance.

Cats are like humans when it comes to illness, its something that tends to happen, as they get older, just like us. For this reason it is usually much cheaper to take out insurance when your cat is younger. The insurance will not cover the early injections your cat needs. They are something classed as normal, but it should cover an illness or accident that your cat has. Not always though, it all depends on the type of policy you get and the more expensive is usually better but that is just like life, you tend to get what you pay for. It is very important t to read the policy document that comes with the insurance. Do not rely on a leaflet about the insurance this will not cover the fine detail you need to know.

Another thing to think about is be wary of going on the recommendation of your vet when it comes to pet insurance. They may be advising you buy an insurance package that they are making money on in commission. I know if I were selling something I would look at what made me the most money. This may not be true in many cases but you never know. Shop around for the best policy and look at web sites that compare different insurance packages.

As you cat grows older, the pet insurance will usually become more important. Some will pay for routine health checkups for your can and most will pay for the drugs your cat may need and remember that these can start to become expensive. Something else to think about is a pure breed cat. As these are, to a certain extent, inbred, they tend to have more medical complications than a crossbreed you are likely to pick up in a pet store. Mind you, having a cross breed is no problem, Tigger is one and he is the most loving cat I have ever had, except when he put me in ER, but remember that was my fault and he was only playing.

Anything else to think about, well do not wait until your cat is sick before thinking about pet insurance. The best time is now, as you never know when you will need insurance. Other things to think about is to read the small print very carefully. Some policies limit a claim to a set amount paid per condition. Some limit payouts to a set amount every year and some will limit the amount of times you can claim in a year. There are some which do not have limits but these are very expensive, fine if you can afford them but just think, can you afford not to have some kind of pet insurance.

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 - Cat Behaviour

Cat Behavior

Well I don’t know where to start on this one. What you need to remember is that your cat is a cat and not a human so it is very difficult to apply human behavior traits to a cat, except Tigger. I almost think he is human the way he acts. I can see it in him, what makes him happy and how he expresses it or what makes him unhappy and how he shows that. He sulks, sometimes for hours, and on one occasion for days. He ate all his food but otherwise he wouldn’t have anything to do with me and he hid all the time. If he hadn’t eaten his food I maybe would have thought he was ill, but it wasn’t that.

I can only guess he was feeling some form of anxiety or stress but I don’t know what was causing it. Nothing had changed in me or the house. There weren’t any new dogs in the neighborhood or for that matter cats, at least as far as I knew. He was out of his routine, like waking me at 3 in the morning to go out, he didnt sit in his normal place in the window to watch the world go by and he was not hunting as normal, which I was secretly glad of. I was just getting to the point of taking him to see the vet when he snapped out of it and was back to normal.

Never did figure it out and I don’t suppose I ever will. Still he’s back to his normal self and as I cannot ask him what was the problem I guess I’ll just have to leave it and I never will find out the answer.

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 - Alphabetical Site Map

Site Map (Alphabetical)

To see an ordinary site map click here

• Allergies to Cats
  You become a cat owner and then you find you are allergic to it. What can you do about it? I became a cat owner after my marriage and then found out my wife is allergic to cat fur. What did I do about it? Well my wife still loves our cat but she will not let me have another one when Tigger has gone.

• Cat Behaviour
  Whatever you do, however hard you try, your cat will behave in whatever way it wants and unless you are a cruel cat owner, forget about even trying to get it to change.

• Cat Insurance
  Do you need cat insurance, well no, not really, but is it advisable to have it, yes. Think about it, you have medical insurance so surely your cat needs it as well.

• Cats and Children
  How to deal with your cat and your child. Small children like cats but your cat does not always like your child. It is also very important never to leave you cat alone with your baby. Cats like somewhere warm and it does not know that a baby cannot breath if a cat lies down on a babies face.

• Cats and Fleas
  Even though your cat will be a very clean animal, it is very likely to pick up fleas at sometime in its life. There is not very much you can do about preventing fleas, but there is a lot you can do to try and get rid of the fleas which will find your cat.

• Cats and Hunting
  Why does your cat hunt and what can you do about? Not a lot really, cats are, and always have been, hunters. It is how they always obtained their food before man came along and domesticated cats, and hunting is built into your pet.

• Cats and Others
  How your cat reacts to other people. What you should do about it. Well most importantly never ever force your cat to be friends with someone. You cat will, and should, decide who it likes, just like you decide who you like and do not force your cat to be friendly with someone it does not like.

• Contact Us
  Our contact details should you wish to check anything.

• Feeding your Cat
  This is a verfy important page, feeding your cat. Whatever you do, it will cost you. Just remember that yhour cat will eat what it really likes to eat, and you, being thre sucker you are, will buy your cat the best of what it likes.

• Home
  Welcome page about my little cat called tigger, who put me, his human, in emergency, twice in two days

• Loving your Cat
  It is important that you love your cat and if you do, your cat will return this love. Love your cat and your cat loves you.

• Neutering
  Neutering is not natural. You’re right it isn’t natural but I think neutering is necessary. Just think how many unwanted cats there are across the US today and many of these are there, scratching an existance, living wild because cat owners who are not responsible did not bother to have their cat neutered.

• Understanding your Cat
  A brief look at how to understand your cat and helping you to figure out why cats do what they want when they want to do it and to make you realise that your ideas of controlling your cat do not matter when it comes to cats.

Home Page - Sitemap - Contact Us



 - Allergies to Cats

Allergies to Cats and Kittens

I’m sure that Tigger was often allergic to me. If I was spending money on him, that was fine. If I was feeding him, that was fine, if I was making him comfy and tickling him under his chin, that was fine but if I expected him to show me any affection he had this allergy towards me. Remember, cats don’t have owners, cats own humans.

One of the problems is that many humans who are owned by cats have allergies to them. This happened with Tigger and my wife who I originally got Tigger for but he adopted me remember and became my owner.

It wasn’t long after we had brought Tigger home that my wife developed a wheeziness when breathing. She went to see the doctor and after a quick examination he asked if we had a cat. That was it, he then explained about the skin of cats and how they shed particles of dead skin constantly, (as do humans), but my wife was breathing this in. It caused her to have to use an inhaler to help her breathing.

So what is it, well cats shed their dead skin and this gets into furniture, carpets and our bedding. When we walk through it, it stirs itself up as tiny dust particles and if a person is allergic to cats it gets breathed in and causes problems for humans. All cats produce this and not only is it found in dead skin but oil producing glands on the cat produce a protein allergen which causes the problem. Its worse in male cats but females and cats which have been neutered are not as bad as an unspeyed male cat.

What can you do about it. Well you could get rid of your cat but I don’t hold with that but it may be best for you but make sure you re-home your cat to a good home where it will be well loved. You could just accept you will have to use medication for the rest of your cats life or you could try a simple remedy. You may find that your breathing is worse when you lay down in bed and sleep with your cat. If this is the case try banishing your cat from his bedroom. Take control again. It wont be nice as your cat will keep meowing outside his room and scratching at the door trying to get in but this does work and after a few weeks he’ll be happy to sleep elsewhere. Try getting your cat its own bed and put this somewhere away from your bedroom. You have to be tough with this and if you have slept with your cat it is hard but you have to remember your health is important. Your cat wont be bothered about your health but you need to be.

Don’t think about this, just do it. Its better that having to re-home your cat as just think of the distress it will go through not seeing you again and having to adapt to a new family.

Your cat is very important but so is your health. Just remember this information should you need to even though it may not be nice to hear. Your cat is important but so are others in the house. How your cat reacts to others in your family is also important.

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