How do you celebrate a cat’s birthday?

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Despite the fact that many people regard their cat as a family member, and despite the fact that they anthropomorphised their cat, treating them as a little human, you cannot celebrate a cat’s birthday as you would a human’s birthday. You can’t just buy your cat a present because often cats don’t really appreciate presents in the way that humans normally do.

How do I celebrate my cat's birthday? — How do I celebrate my cats birthday. Not like this! Do something that pleases your cat and which takes effort. Picture in the public domain and on Pixabay.

Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

Toys are not the best

You can buy your cat the best cat toy in the world and she might play with it for a day or two, if you are lucky, and then it’ll be in that box in the attic because she can’t destroy it (kill it). And, in any case, the best cat toys are home-made ones like a ball made out of wastepaper or a piece of string which you can drag around the living room. No, I wouldn’t give your cat a typical birthday present. And as for a birthday party type meal, that doesn’t really work either.

Your cat has probably got his favourite foods and they might not even be the best foods you can get but he likes them nonetheless and if you give him some really high-quality stuff, he may just turn his nose up at it.

How I celebrated the birthday of a cat living with a contributor to PoC years ago. Image; MikeB

Renew commitments and improve welfare

I think the best way to celebrate a cat’s birthday is to renew your commitment to him; to make a promise to him that you’ll do something which will improve his life throughout the next 12 months. This might mean playing with him for 10 minutes each day. It needn’t be much more because it has to be doable. So often promises fizzle out quite quickly.

Play is very important to a cat, as we all, know because it allows them to express their hunting skills. This is particularly so for full-time indoor cats who are unable to chase the real thing. Or you could promise him and commit yourself to the task of flea combing your cat every day for 5 minutes. Another thing you could do is allowing him to come into the bedroom 6 months every night if, at the moment, you ban him from that precious room which smells so good to him.

There are numerous other promises you can make and they are all tasks and activities which the human has to commit to, to improve the life of their cat companion.

Another way to celebrate a cat’s birthday is to give a little bit of money to a cat shelter where you can contribute to improving the lives of unwanted cats. Your cat won’t know it and he won’t understand if you tell it what you’ve done. But you can whisper in his ear that you’ve carried out the good deed and at the same time give him a sweet cuddle. He’ll appreciate the cuddle and ignore the whispering unless he knows that the whispering accompanies a cuddle, in which case he’ll be pleased to hear the whispering.

Those are the two things I would do if you really want to celebrate a cat’s birthday. I ignore my cat’s birthday. In fact, I ignore all birthdays because I regard them as artificial. They are designed to promote retailers of consumer goods. You don’t need to wait until a birthday comes around every 12 months to do something good for your cat, or for somebody else. You can make every day your cat’s birthday.

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