Cats Archives - Page 114 of 429

Checking in with the Cousins

The head peep has been cat sitting for cousins Earl and Shep this week. As you can see, Cousin Earl is doing well. He lost his collar somewhere in the house, but the head peep can’t find it anywhere. Paws up for the hiding job, Earl!

Cousin Shep would like to know when dinner starts. He’s a very sweet kitty, but when the head peep arrives, he thinks dinner should happen immediately. This is his “can we eat yet?” expression.

The head peep managed to capture a shot of Cousin Earl just after a bolt of lightning struck just outside. You can tell from Earl’s fluffed tail what he thought of that!

Our cousins are doing great, though they really missed Aunt O and are glad to have her home again. We’re kind of glad to not have to share her so much, too!

Black Cat Appreciation Day

It seems like every cat shelter or rescue has at least one, and usually several of them: black cats that everyone agrees are nice, but no one wants to adopt. On Black Cat Appreciation Day, rescue organizations take special effort to showcase these cats to help them find homes.

Black cat adoption is important today and all year around since 33% of the cats entering the shelter system are black. That means that 1/3 of all adoptions need to be black cats in order to get them into homes. That’s hard when many people already hope to adopt a white cat or a tabby cat or a calico or some other color.

So if you’re considering adopting a cat, there are lots of reasons black cats are awesome. They’re little house ninjas, and they never go out of style, like that little black dress.

But most of all, there are so many of them in shelters that there’s one whose personality is the perfect match for yours waiting for you right now.

Even though we don’t have any black cats living with us today, for many years we had three: Cyrano, Louie, and Talia, whose photos are in this blog post.

black cat

Reference and further reading:

ASPCA Professional, Black is the New White

Has Anyone Seen Pierre?

Where’s Pierre? Has anyone seen him?

Even in the middle of the summer when the house is warm, Pierre burrows under his kozy to nap. Or most of him does, anyhow.

Pierre: Do you mind? Somekitty is trying to get some of my eighteen hours of daily sleep over here.

About Ashton’s Table Manners

When we posted the other day about Ashton’s table manners, several of you said that you don’t allow cats to beg at the table. We thought we’d tell you a little about why Ashton is allowed.

Ashton is afraid of the manpeep. She is four years old now, and to this day, she won’t share a piece of furniture with him. Not the sofa or even the bed.

The only time that Ashton is willing to come within his arm’s reach is when there’s chicken involved.

So we changed our rule about no begging at the table and grill a breast of chicken for her every week so that it’s food that is healthy for her and safe for humans to handle at mealtime.

Ashton started by sitting in the windowsill and looking cute for her treats, but she learned the paw wave works even better than looking cute. The humans think they taught her the paw wave, but she knows that she trained them.

As long as she gets chicken, she isn’t going to argue about who trained who.

She doesn’t realize she’s also having a positive interaction with the manpeep who she wouldn’t otherwise approach. A very positive interaction.

We know that Ashton getting some extra chicken at the dinnertime isn’t going to make her fall in love with the manpeep, but he’s getting closer to being able to touch her when she’s on the cat three where she feels safe, so it’s a start. For a timid cat like Ashton, it takes a lot of little steps… and a little chicken.

Checking in with the Cousins

Black Cat Appreciation Day

Has Anyone Seen Pierre?

About Ashton’s Table Manners

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