Kattaddorra responds to preset questions about how she cares for her cats….
Q. Where do you live? Which country and do you live in or out of town?
A. We live in the North East of England in a small town, right on the edge of a housing estate.
Q. Do you live alone or with a family? If so how many people are there in the family?
A. We are sisters who live together since Barbara was widowed, she works in funeralcare and I’m retired.
Q. How many cats do you live with? What is his name or what are their names?
A. We share our home with our two cats Walter and Jozef. Walter will be 12 in July and Jozef will be 12 in August.
Q. What sort of cats are they (moggie or purebred?)?
A. Both are DSH black and white neutered toms
Q. What sort of home do you live in?
A. Our home is semi detached with a large garden at the back, there are very tall trees behind the back fence and a path for walking, then an embankment the other side of the path.
Q. Does your cat go out and if so how the situation managed?
A. Yes our cats go out, usually via the window at the back of our living room and they come back to that window when they want to come in. They are kept in after dark and when no one is going to be home. They learned this routine from being kittens. They sit in the garden quite
often, they also go over the path to the embankment which is behind trees and has a high fence but space for cats to go under, it’s a cats safe paradise with trees and scrub and lots of mice to hunt.
They have little wooden huts in the garden which Barbara’s late husband John made for when it rains and they still want to be out in the fresh air, they also have a Catnasium with four levels leading to their ‘sun roof’
Q. What are the dangers to your cat?
A. As we live in a cul de sac the traffic can’t pass through here and the residents drive carefully but if our cats are out the front of our house one of us always watches over them just incase a stranger or a delivery man comes flying along thinking there is a through road.
Q. Do you have access to a veterinarian? If so, how good is she?
A. Our vets practice is 3 miles away, we have our favourite female vet, some of the other female vets are good too although we are not keen on the vet who the practice belongs to because we were informed that he expects his staff to meet targets of the number of tests done. It’s sad that many vets practices are more about making money through probably unnecessary tests than doing what is best for the client’s pet.
Q. What food do you feed your cat?
A. A variety of good makes of cat food and a few biscuits for nibbling on.
Q. Does your cat use a cat litter toilet or go outside to the toilet? What sort of litter is it?
A. Our cats have a patch of earth dug over in our garden for toileting, they do have a litter tray upstairs and downstairs for emergencies but they are very rarely used so we just use a basic litter.
P.S. from Michael
This is one of the world cat owner interviews that I would like to see. You can read about the idea on this page. Could you do one please? If so please use the form on the home page or contact me.
This is a very comprehensive and charming look at the world of the domestic cat and their caretakers in England.
Thanks for all the nice comments everyone, Ruth and I do have a happy set-up here, we’re lucky to have each other and our lovely boys. This morning the sun is shining, the birds are singing and the boys are going about their business outside, on days like this life feels good.
P.S just be a bit careful with Ivy, cats don’t normally bother with it but it can be toxic to them if they eat a sizeable amount, although I’ve never known a cat have Ivy poisoning, it’s best to grow it where they don’t sit or lie, as it started to want to grow onto the sun roof we cut it down.
Thank you Ruth. Our Jozef loves a belly rub too, but not Walt, he often rolls trustingly over but he’s not as confident about us touching his belly as Jo is lol
Thank you Marc, yes we are very lucky to live here and were really upset a few weeks ago when our new neighbour brought 3 noisy dogs to live in kennels in his garden but by some miracle it is all working out well now. Barbara got talking to him and he is a very reasonable man and very responsible with the dogs, he takes the big noisy one in everey night, we don’t mind a bit of daytime barking now nights are quiet. Live and let live is our motto.
Yes it’s frightening about vets pushing tests, remember our Jozef had tests earlier this year, we found out afterwards she was one of the vets who was pleasing the boss by pushing tests on clients pets. We don’t have much trust in vets to begin with, having worked for quite a few I’ve seen the good and the bad! Thankfully our favourite one doesn’t push tests or anything else they sell, we do hate having to go there but the practice we were with before let us down badly over Popsy who should have been refered to a cat specialist. It’s a minefield Marc, the same as it is for people nowadays, especially older people 🙁
Good luck with your Catio x
Thank you Michael, our cats are our sun, moon and stars 🙂