A Michael Broad Blog
Domestic cats are not born to love people and their default position with respect to other cats is to be suspicious of them. This is the nature of a solitary animal. I wonder, though, if this is entirely true after approximately 10,000 years of cat domestication. Perhaps the ability for domestic cats to love …
A kitten’s personality is dictated by inherited behaviours and environmental experiences; the nature and nurture argument, which has been around for donkey’s years. It is universally accepted that the important socialisation period of cats to people appears to occur between two and eight weeks, whereas it is less effective if delayed until after seven …
This is a concept, as you may have guessed by the title’s language, of Jackson Galaxy, the celebrated cat behaviourist. He needs to be listened to because of all the cat behaviourist he has the most experience both in cat shelters and in dealing with private clients. He spent many years in cat shelters …
Middening in cats is the depositing of faeces in prominent places as an alternative form of scent marking. The others are urine spraying, squat marking with urine (to be distingusihed from cystitis) and scratching. Scratching leaves both a visual signal because the surface is damaged and an olfactory message because there are scent glands …
Probably it should not be called feline idiopathic cystitis because a major cause of it is known. A cause which I discuss here. The word “idiopathic” means an unknown cause of a disease. Study In a study carried out in 2004 by Cameron and others, 31 cats with feline idiopathic cystitis (FIC) were compared …
There are rewards on the ground and in heaven in adopting a timid cat. Timid cats are likely to be left on the shelf at the shelter. They are reluctant to sell themselves to customers. Does this mean that they are more likely to end their days at shelters? Walked to the back room …
It may be natural for a domestic cat to be fearful of visitors because visitors enter the cat’s home range and may intrude on the most ‘intimate’ parts of their home range (the room where they feel most comfortable). They are intruders and as they are much larger than cats the default mentality is …
As a standard procedure, Laurel Pet Hospital in West Hollywood have a mini hand which is affixed to a person’s finger for petting nervous cats. Available on Amazon, the mini hand is normally used to entertain people. In the video you see Goldie, an orphan cat. She is shy. She prefers to stay in …
