Advice on Living with and Loving Your Cats

I am kind of an expert at living with cats. I bred Somalies for 20 years. If you don't know, a Somalie is a long haired Abyssinian.(see picture) My first cat was an orphaned Silver Persian when I was in grade school so I have years of experience. Here are some tricks that I have learned through the years.

The most important thing for you to figure out when you have a cat, is how to get it to come when you need it to, on a reliable basis. While a cat may come when you call it at dinnertime, it may not come when it has snuck up into the attic, or worse, outside! This is how you teach it to come. First decide on a "treat." Some cats like baby food, some cats like purchased cat treats. Whatever it is, make sure that you can make it make a noise. I have had cats that would come whenever they heard a baby food jar pop as it was opened. Our current three cats come when I shake the treat package and call "treats." I do this every night before bed. This means that I am sure that no one is shut in anywhere and they know what those sounds mean. It comes in handy when I have to gather them up to go to the vets.

When I hear people complain about their cat getting them up early n the weekend, I ask them when they feed the cat during the week. Inevitably, it is in the morning before they go to work. So what do they expect? Leave dry food down all the time and feed the canned food in the evening. Although you will have to endure cat food breath, you won't be nagged out of bed by the cat on the one day you can sleep in.

An issue that often arises is how to keep a cat off the table. Well, you can't, unless you pile it full of things and then you can't use the table. While you can keep the cat off while you are home, when you leave there is nothing to prevent the cat from spending the whole day there. So deal with it and be smart. Clean the table before and after you eat on it. You clean it after, so that there is no attractive smell to lure the cat up there. Take away the temptation and shame them when you find them on the table. Hopefully it won't be so attractive if the cat knows you don't want it there.

Where you feed the cat is for some people an issue. The only hard and fast rule is that food should not be near the litter pan. Other than that its location is pretty much up to you. We feed our cats on a kitchen counter. We used to have a dog and needed the cat food to be out of her each. While this may horrify some people, it really works well for us. It means that I am not trying to clean spilled food off of an obscure corner of the floor. We can see easily when the dish is empty and the water dish is easy to fill since the sink is right there. The deal for our cats is that they are allowed to be on that side of the sink. They very rarely sneak across the sink. If they try, they get wet.

A way to stop a cat from doing something is to squirt it with water. Get a plant mister and fill it with water. Open the nozzle to the fullest stream. It works like a squirt gun only holds more water better. If our cats start pestering a dinner guest, I only have to turn the squirter bottle and they stop. They know when they are being bad, they are just hoping the rules might have changed or looking for attention. If you want your cat to stay inside, you can try to find someone to wait outside with a hose to soak the cat when he tries to sneak out. Of course with my luck he won't try as long as they are there. Fortunately none of our cats have ever really wanted to go outside.

Another important thing to do is to get your cat used to being combed. Don't start on the knots under the belly and then wonder why the cat hates it. Alternate a stroke of your hand, with a stroke of the comb. Begin on the back and gradually add more areas until your cat believes that you aren't trying to kill it when you comb it. After all if every time the cat sees the comb, it experiences the pain of having hair pulled out, why would it like to be combed? If you comb your cat regularly, it won't leave cat hair everywhere, or worse yet hairballs. Start small and give lots of praise and treats. Cats work for food.

About buying toys for your cat, the best cat toy is you. If you have to be away for a long time during the day, then it is better to have two or three cats. But that is an article for another day. I have sucked up enough of your time. Go pet your cat.