Pamela

If we have a proven ignorer, like a senior cat who is over it all, or a Gamma Cat Type who happily stays on the floor and furniture cushions, we can be less cautious, but we should always be mindful of things we would miss the most. They have cat trees, access to all cushioned furniture (microfiber is our friend) and cat trees. But if we acquire a new cat, I will need to do a bit of feline-proofing and especially if this is a young cat. There’s more ways to understand our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now.

Since I know both general cat communication, and the specific ways my cats “translate human,” I get good results from focused requests like no cats on the counters and leave all wires alone. Whether our cat understands a lot, as when I explained to Tristan that we would be expanding into another apartment, or only understands a little, as with Mithrandir’s increasing exploration of how he can ask humans to do things, and then they do them, our cats look for signals from us. But when we make explanations, we are conveying good signals about the present crisis, be it a plumbing problem that will require strangers doing noisy things or a career change that will mean all these boxes are going somewhere else, and so will our cats. There’s more ways to get our cat to be affectionate in The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now.

I decided that, when it came to emotions, I was not that different from my childhood dogs. What if they have a lot of emotions bubbling in their brain that we can’t go back in time to fix, or even know what caused them? If we don’t know where it took place, see if we can pick up some reminders of the distress in their reactions. As I explain in Helping cats purge the database, we can’t always address our cat’s fears as well as we would like.

A few weeks ago, I bought a new toy for my M– because I still hadn’t found any toy that she’s really going wild for. It was a kind of wand toy, consisting of a wand with a bunch of different ribbons attached to it, some were made of synthetic leather or some glittering fabric, but most of them were just simple gift wrapping ribbons, the kind that can be curled up with a knife and scissors. Of course I had stored that toy away safely, never to be used again unless for warning purposes, so she’s had that ribbon in her stomach for 2 1/2 weeks! There’s more ways to care for our cat with The Way of Cats than the article you are reading now.