Laugh. Learn. Love cats.
Pierre: Newton isn’t looking, so it’s my turn to party with his pink mouse. Hey, Mister Mouse, are you awake?
This will wake you up. Just a little nibble.
Okay, fiiiine, if you’re going to…. wait, did you just MOVE?
Oh, you’re a sneaky little thing. Get back here!
You aren’t getting away from me that easily!
**GOBBLE** **SNARF**
I’ll make you a tailless mouse!
Do you have tailless mice at your house, too?
Ashton: It’s a special day today: National Feral Cat Day. I want to tell you about it because I started out as a feral cat. I’m one of the lucky ones. I was rescued as an injured kitten and live a safe and well-fed life.
That isn’t how it is for a lot of other cats, though. An estimated 70 million cats just like me or Newton or Pierre live outdoors, getting by the best they can, often in social groups called colonies. Feral cats aren’t socialized with humans, so they are afraid of them, kind of like I am with men. So you can’t just adopt a feral cat that happens to live near you.
If you can’t adopt feral cats, what can you do for them? You can help take care of your local colonies by making sure they have food and shelter. And this is important: you need to get them neutered to prevent their having lots and lots of kittens. Areas like Florida where I was born have kittens all year round, and overpopulation can happen in a hurry. Feral cats can be trapped, neutered, eartipped to identify that they are neutered, and then returned (TNR) to their colonies where they can live out their lives but not continue to reproduce. Groups like Alley Cat Allies can teach you more about how that is done.
I’m not just lucky to be living life indoors, I also live in a community with an a group, CARE Feline TNR that actively helps organize affordable spays and neuters for feral cats going through the TNR process. They also have an agreement with our county shelter that they can get the ferals out and return them to their colonies. This is really unusual, and animal control in most areas of the country doesn’t make extra provisions for feral cats. In fact, feral cats usually die in shelters because they aren’t adoptable.
What can you do where you live to help feral cats? First of all, you can spay and neuter your own cats so that you don’t risk accidentally contributing to the feral cat population in your area. You can feed feral cats. If you do feed them, check to see if you have an organization in your community to help you with trap, neuter, and return.
Also, if you live in a cold climate, you can build shelters for feral cats. Winter is coming, and feral cats will appreciate a place to escape the weather.
Most important, spread the word that feral cats are part of the community, too, and that they deserve our care and concern.
Big winks and thank you from the bottom of my once-feral heart for helping raise awareness of feral cats!
Portrait of a Street Cat image courtesy Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr
Is there any left for me? image courtesy Beverly Goodwin on Flickr
The nice people at Petmate reached out to us and asked if we would be interested in trying out the line of toys designed by cat expert Jackson Galaxy. You probably know him from his television program on Animal Planet, My Cat From Hell, but he has been observing and explaining cat behavior for a long time. This is his first line of toys for cats, and we were pretty excited to check them out.
Two of the toys in the package were the Mojo Maker – Air Prey and the Mojo Maker – Ground Prey These are both variations on the “cat fishing pole” design you’re probably familiar with. Both of them use telescoping wands rather than long, fixed-length ones, which is great for storage, and also for adapting them for play depending on the size of the area you are in.
The Mojo Maker – Ground Prey has a sturdy wire connecting it to the wand. The head peep liked this because she thought it would survive repeated attacks and wouldn’t break like a string would if we chewed on it. It arrived partially unassembled — the lure wasn’t attached to the little loop at the end of the wire. This didn’t look like a big deal, since the loop is kind of like the end of a safety pin, but she really struggled to get it open to put the lure on, then to close it again. This is probably good because a cat can’t accidentally open it up and then cut or pinch themselves with it, but if you’re gifting it to somebody with arthritis, make sure you help them assemble it so that they can use it.
Once it was put together, we loved chasing it around. Because it’s on a wire, it’s easy to have the little caterpillar-looking thing on the end lie still, then wiggle invitingly. Pierre really liked that. Once he had hold of it, he didn’t want to let go!
The Mojo Maker – Air Prey is a little different. At the end of the telescoping wand is a retractable string with a feather lure on the end. The lure is attached with the same safety-pin end that the Ground Prey version is, but this one came already attached and ready to play. And boy, did we play!
We have a video below showing a little of how much we enjoyed the Mojo Maker – Air Prey.
(If the video doesn’t display above, you can view it directly on YouTube.)
In the video, you can see that Pierre quickly started to figure out that he could use the cat tree for extra height when going after the lure.
The video also showed that Ashton will not play with it as long the boys are occupied with it. She usually plays with toys when no one else (especially the boys) are around, and she got some serious pouncing in on the Mojo Maker – Air Prey later, when they were not keeping it to themselves.
We also got a Twisted Kicker to try out. This is made of a velvet-type material and must be stuffed with some premium catnip, because we couldn’t resist grabbing, kicking, and biting it. Newton was so excited that he got it soaked with drool, but that didn’t stop Pierre from trying out his moves on it, too.
The last two toys we got in the package are kind of special. They’re called Natural Playtime.
Even though we never seem to touch them when any humans are looking, they seem move around at night, every night, on their own. Of course, this is because we love to play with them on our own at night. We can’t explain why we don’t play with them during the day — or while the camera is around — but they are in a new location every day, so they are fun, but we don’t like to be caught having fun with them.
In case you can’t tell, we give the Jackson Galaxy Petmate collection toys our high paws of approval!
FTC Disclosure: We received the Jackson Galaxy Petmate toys for free as part of our agreement to run this review and giveaway. It didn’t influence what we say or our opinions. All opinions expressed on this site are our own.
