A Michael Broad Blog
I’ve decided after a quick search on the Internet to declare to the world that hair bobbles are very dangerous objects from the domestic cat’s point of view. It’s a product which is very useful to humans but a product which is very dangerous to cats. A clash of two different worlds. This kind …
Yesterday I was reading an article about a woman who habitually eight matchsticks for years. Yes, she ate unused matches. It struck me, as I am sure it would other people, as bizarre and disturbing. But she was diagnosed with iron deficiency. There was a simple cure. A sad story. In feline terms she …
I had never seen a cat playing the guitar with his mouth before. Plucking the strings with his teeth. I don’t expect you have either. It has a certain musicality about it, which I am sure you appreciate 😉. It seems that the cat’s owner placed his camera inside the guitar, in which case …
It’s become quite well known that the family of Oriental cat breeds which includes the Siamese, Javanese and Oriental shorthair and longhair (and other breeds), are susceptible to developing eating non-nutritious substances, which is called pica, and in particular fabric. The big question is what causes it. And the small answer is that the …
A small-scale study conducted in Norway came to the conclusion that one in ten Siamese cats were regularly aggressive towards people, compared to one in twenty random bred cats and one in sixty Persian cats. In this study the cats’ personalities were recorded by their owners rather than objectively observed by a third party. …
What does pica eating disorder stand for? Answer, it does not stand for anything in this context. It is a word rather than an acronym. Although it is an acronym for a dozen or so organisations such as ‘Prudential Insurance Company of America’. The origin of the word confirms that it is not an …
“Wool-sucking is the act of feeding at a ghost-nipple….[and] lanolin acts as a powerful unconscious reminder of the mother’s belly…” – Dr Desmond Morris. I think by now, most experienced cat owners understand that wool-sucking by domestic cats is most commonly seen among young cats who have been orphaned for some reason and deprived …
Why does my cat eat soil? Dr Fogle DVM tells us in Complete Cat Care that, ‘Some anaemic cats lick bricks or concrete, or eat litter or soil’. There you have it; your cat might be eating soil because he/she is anaemic but what is the link between anaemia and eating soil and what …
