Sometimes it is nice to look at some funny cat pictures as a respite from the serious stuff. Here is a small selection with a few comments. You may have seen some before.
Put a harness on a cat that has never worn a harness and what is likely to happen? The cat rolls over and is uncooperative. Cats don’t really like harnesses unless they have been trained to accept them by wearing them since kittenhood. People have different views on cat harnesses. For some sorts of cats they are essential, such as F1 Savannahs. You can’t let some cats wander around free.
Sometimes when cats rest they rest in what we would consider to be uncomfortable positions. My cat sleeps in this sort of position sometimes. I am not sure where it comes from. Perhaps it is just comfortable for a cat.
This has a serious side. Cats do wait for their human companion to come home. I know mine did. She would be just inside the front door. Bless her. I loved her dearly. It all becomes history as she died about 18 months ago.
We can all relate to this; giving our cat a pill. There are umpteen different ways of doing it. My preference is a pill gun. It is pretty effective. Or putting the pill in food but cats are very sensitive to that. It does not always work. In fact it tends to fail. Has anyone got a clever idea? Vets have a easier time giving a pill to a cat because cats are more pliable and cooperative in a vet’s surgery.
We all have our ways to stroke our cat. Whatever way it should be gentle and it should be a way that pleases our cat not just us.
The nope picture isn’t the least bit funny to me.
I hate to see any animal harnessed,horses,dogs,particularly cats.
A lot of people have no patience at all with animals and jerk them along and how I’d love to harness those people and give them a taste of their own medicine.
I love the Spunky’s medicine cartoon though had seen the rest before.
Funnily enough Rose, what you suggest is one of the most effective ways I have of showing horse owners, exactly how damaging to their horse rough handling methods are. Not just leading, but for grooming, bridling, saddling, handling their limbs to pick out their hooves.
Yep, I put a rope on people and lead them around doing exactly to them what they have shown me they do to the horse. They are amused by it, but shocked and it gets the lesson across efficiently.
Nothing like experience for true learning.
Good on you Jane do as you would be done by and all 😉
I hate collars on dogs, I still see people using foul choke collars too, made of chain or leather, they are evil. Most people who have a dog on a lead (of any type) haven’t the remotest clue how to use it kindly. I see “respected” trainers on TV STILL promoting jack-knifing to pull the dog around or make it “heel”.
Dogs suffer from what people consider to be normal handling on the lead. Their cervical vertebrae are often hurt, their muscles bruised, their confidence shattered.
I also detest those Haltis which loop around the dog’s upper and lower jaw and when pulled crunch up into the lower eyelid. One of our vets commented that before Haltis she never saw dogs with tear duct problems that weren’t a result of breeding.
The thing is, dogs without a harness can run out into the road, so can cats when they are running free, so can any animal. The dogs I grew up with never needed to be on leads unless I walked them up to the village where there was a road. Not one of our dogs ever attacked a human or other animal, they would stay with me or my parents because they chose to. They were very well socialised.
Unfortunately dogs today, don’t get much in the way of kind training.
For my cats, harness wearing has never been part of the norm, it’s been used humanely as a short term means to an end. The end being, their safety, especially in Teddy’s case and initially with Mungo due to his FIV status. I’ve never had one cat struggle or fight the harness, the key is how you introduce it to them. With animals, approach everything like you have all the time in the world and whatever you are aiming for will take far less time and be achieved without harm to either party.
Patience with animals seems to be a forgotten concept to many.
I have seen cats walked like dogs in cities and for some cats, they seem to enjoy it. I don’t think it’s ideal by any means, but depending on the cat and the competence of the human, it can mean the difference between fresh air, exploring an environment or a life inside without a whiff of nature.
The cats I have used a harness with have never been treated like “mini dogs”. That’s because they are cats and have a completely different set of behaviours. Who’da thunk it?
The world we have created is complex for us and the animals we are stewards for and it’s up to us to learn the most humane ways to carry out our stewardship to the highest standards.