A Michael Broad Blog
I was reading a section by Dr. Desmond Morris in his book Catlore and he suggested that sometimes domestic cats bite the hand that strokes them because of a traumatic experience they’ve had in the past and one example might be a visit to a veterinarian. Morris suggests that sometimes veterinarians, being fearful of …
I hope this two pages of an infographic helps in understanding domestic cat tail body language/signalling. It can be quite subtle. There is one cat breed, a rare one, with a curled-over tail called the American Ringtail. This cat will struggle with one or two of these tail signalling positions! And, of course, the …
A cat might be anxious because of something that is happening around them or not far from them. They might be slightly afraid and the normal reaction will be to run away silently and hide. If they are walking at the time, they will lower their body to tense the muscles of their legs …
Fear in a cat can be ‘trained in’ by bad experiences. This infographic is about ‘training out’ that acquired fear (fear developed through experience) through a sensitive, graded and progressive approach to desensitizing the fearful and anxious cat. It is training the brain to accept what once frightened them. The points I want to …
The sound and appearance of tin foil does not affect all domestic cats equally it seems 😃. The picture confounds the world view of domestic cats as creatures that are terrified of tin foil which it is used quite a lot as a cat deterrent in the home. An ugly deterrent I have to …
Do domestic cats sometimes defecate when they are scared such as when on the veterinarian’s consultation table? The answer quite definitely is yes. I have personal experience of this when I took my then three-legged black, male cat to the vet because of what transpired to be a tumour behind his eye. He was …
Thank God that the fireworks season is drawing to an end in the UK. Diwali and Bonfire Night are fizzling out. Let’s remind ourselves that these events don’t happen on a single day as they should do but well before the nominated day and well after it and it’s those big bangers which terrify …
There is not a lot to say in response to the question in the title because common sense applies. When a kitten or an adult cat hides it is usually because they want to feel protected against a perceived threat, just like humans. And/or they are ill. For a kitten the former reason is …
