Are we doing right by our furry friends? The latest issue of New York magazine takes a deep dive into the concept of pet “ownership” and the ethics of keeping animals in our homes.
Almost the entirety of New York magazine is devoted this week to what its editors call “an exhaustive exploration of the ethics of pet ownership.”
There are also articles about what veterinarians really think of “pet owners,” whether runaway dogs deserve to be free, and even a story asking whether the word “owner” is appropriate to begin with. (You’ll notice PITB almost always avoids that word, unless we’re quoting others. I refer to myself as Buddy’s servant and his caretaker, words that feel more honest than owner.)
The stories are worth reading. Some are free for a limited time, others can be read as part of the weekly article limit. And if you can afford it, supporting a magazine or two during these brutal times for the publishing industry is a good way to help quality publications survive, so we’re not all drowning in a sea of clickbait garbage tuned for algorithms instead of human readers.
Regular readers of this blog are likely familiar with the story of Bud’s one and only “escape” as a kitten. When I found him, this cat who hates being picked up leapt into my arms, holding onto me like a terrified toddler, and his relief was palpable as I felt him purring into my neck. We were both relieved.
He’s had the opportunity to leave since, but he won’t. He’s got a good thing going here, living like a little king with his personal servant. He gets tons of attention, he’s allowed to do pretty much anything he wants as long as it isn’t dangerous for him, and he loves his Big Buddy.
I know he does from the way he approaches me, purring and meowing happily as he bunts his forehead against mine. I know it from the way he makes biscuits on me and falls asleep in my lap, feeling content and secure. And I know it from his refusal to leave my side the two times I was so sick I could barely move.
He’s got his own site, awesome retrowave logos and online admirers, but Buddy only cares about the snacks.
We shouldn’t feel guilty for giving cats a home.
I think we tend to forget that as domesticated animals, cats don’t have a natural habitat. The process of domestication made them friendlier, more trusting and more capable of reading human body language, facial expressions and tone of voice.
But those changes came at a cost, as they always do in domestication. Felis catus looks like its wild relatives and retains many of the amazing abilities of wild cats, but compared to them the species has lost a step. Domestic cats are not as quick or agile, they’re too trusting, and they’re not well suited to providing for themselves. The statistics on life expectancy reflect that, with ferals and strays living short, miserable lives.
Although it’s usually very difficult to tell a domestic cat from felis lybica, the wildcat species seen here, there are major differences in their respective survival abilities and instincts. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
So if felis catus has a habitat, it’s our living rooms. When our ancestors welcomed them into human settlements ten thousand years ago, they formed an indelible bond and made a pact, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.
Consider it a debt we owe for the survival of our species, when nascent civilization would have likely been snuffed out were it not for cats protecting the grain stores over long, cold winters.
Without cats, rodents would have eaten their way through the season’s rations, starving out the early settlers before the next harvest. The great agriculture experiment would have been over as quickly as it began with people returning to the nomadic life of hunter-gatherers, and it’s likely that everything after — from the first cities, to the birth of western civilization in Greece, to the remarkable achievement of putting a human being on another world — would have been jeopardized or taken radically different paths otherwise.
So you can thank your cat for your house, your car, the medicine that keeps you tip top, all the comforts of modern civilization, and all the stories and songs of humanity. Without cats and their heroic willingness to eat their way into our good graces, we wouldn’t have gotten here. Thank them often. You can’t go wrong with treats.
A cat’s affection has to be earned, but the good news is it’s not rocket science. A little patience and consideration for your fluffy little pal goes a long way toward building trust and a strong bond. Once you do, you’ll have a loyal friend for life.
“How do I make my cat like me?”
That question comes up regularly on social media posts, in cat-centric discussion groups, Q&A sites and even in our inbox. People adopt a cat, and whether the little one dives under a bed and refuses to emerge, or just seems reluctant to snuggle the way people imagined, they turn to the internet to find out why they don’t have a purring, contented feline in their lap.
The short answer is you can’t “make” your cat feel anything, and it’s best to dispense with that notion as quickly as possible so you can acknowledge the truth: cats are individuals with their own thoughts and feelings.
The good news, however, is that you can earn your cat’s affection with patience, respect and love. Our patience and respect for our little buddies leads to trust, which in turn creates and strengthens the special bond we share with them.
The love of a cat isn’t as easily won as the love of a dog, and in many ways that makes it even more special. Cats don’t love just anyone.
It starts with acknowledging your cat has feelings, and understanding that you have to respect those feelings as you would those of a person.
Don’t make your cat do things she doesn’t want to do.
Despite what you might think or what you may have been told, most cats don’t like being picked up, held or feeling restricted. The majority of felines don’t like belly rubs, and people have a habit of mistaking a sign of trust — a cat showing her belly — as an invitation to pet.
A cat showing its belly is a sign of trust. It’s a vulnerable position for a cat, and not an invitation for belly rubs. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Every cat is different, but generally the best way to make sure your kitty doesn’t want to approach you is to ignore her personal boundaries and treat her like a stuffed animal.
Those “cute” videos you see on TikTok of terminally online people spinning their cats to Taylor Swift songs, holding them like phones to reenact scenes from The Princess Diaries, or forcing them to wear ridiculous outfits?
Don’t do that. It destroys your cat’s trust in you, and the cheap dopamine hit you get from strangers “liking” your content isn’t worth stressing your furry pal out and damaging your relationship.
Don’t do this. It’s not funny, the meme is lame and you’ll teach your cat to fear you. Credit: TikTok
If you tend to restrict your cat and hold her in your lap, you’re discouraging her from sitting there in the future. If you give kitty unnecessary baths, you could create a situation in which your cat fears you.
Even if you think you’re not doing anything wrong, if your cat is reluctant to approach you, there’s something that needs fixing, and it’ll require patience.
Don’t subject your cat to forced petting sessions.
Unlike dogs, cats have a limited tolerance for physical affection, and they don’t always want to be touched.
Your pal will be much more likely to regularly approach you for physical affection if you let him come to you. Ignore the impulse to reach out and start petting him like you would a dog. Instead, put your hand out and let your cat initiate the petting. You’ll develop a physical shorthand in which he signals he wants chin scratches or head rubs by leaning in and rubbing his face against your outstretched hand.
All felines have scent glands in their cheeks, and the initial contact of a cat rubbing his cheek against your fingers is an olfactory signal that says “This human is my family. I like this human.”
Even though our noses can’t detect those pheromones, they’re still important to our cat(s), and they’re the reason why cats will scent-mark objects by brushing past them in your home, just like tigers will mark their territories by scent-marking trees with urine. Same concept, but thankfully our miniature house tigers generally don’t feel the need to do the latter. (If yours does, take him to the vet. If he’s not “fixed,” get it done ASAP.)
Less is more when it comes to petting
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “I just don’t get it! I was petting my cat and she was purring and loving it, then without warning she bit me!”
Pro tip: A bite like that never comes without warning, it’s just that most of us don’t see the signs right in front of us.
Cats communicate by tail and whisker, and we communicate by making noises with our mouths. Adult cats don’t meow to each other. The little ones are smart enough to understand how we exchange information, so meows, trills, chirps and grunts are their way of trying to speak our language, to communicate on our terms.
But sometimes — like, say, when they’re purring and relaxed — they’re distracted and forget to meow, or they meow and we ignore them.
That’s when they bite, or swipe at us with their paws.
If you pay attention to non-verbal cues, you’ll notice your cat getting overstimulated when her tail starts swishing and her pupils dilate. If those signs aren’t enough, there are others: twitching ears, shifting positions, moving away.
The best way to avoid misunderstandings is to give kitty a few head rubs and chin scratches, then stop. If she wants more, she will let you know. If she doesn’t, she’ll be content to remain on your lap or by your side, knowing you’re not going to keep going indefinitely.
No harm, no foul, no bite.
This cat is not enjoying selfie time with her human. Credit: imgur via Reddit
Don’t take your bad day out on your cat
Remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad came home from a bad day at work with a storm cloud hanging over their head? Maybe they snapped at you for apparently no reason, or made family dinner miserable with fraught silence. Maybe they unfairly got on your case about something minor.
Either way, the tension in the house was palpable because, as kids, your parents controlled your lives and you were dependent on them for everything.
That’s what it’s like for our pets. Whether we call ourselves “fur mommies” and “cat daddies” or not, the fact is that the pet-human dynamic absolutely shares some elements with the parent-child relationship.
Our pets are utterly dependent on us, they’re subject to our moods, and they’re deeply attuned to our emotions.
As a result, how we’re feeling has a big impact on them, for better and worse. Unlike children, who at least have some concept of redirected frustration, cats and dogs have no idea why we have bad moods and no way to insulate themselves from the consequences.
We’re all human and we all get frustrated with our feline friends at some point. If you’ve been sitting in traffic for three hours and come home to find Socks pooped all over the rug or threw up on your comforter, frustration is a natural response.
But for the sake of the innocent little ones we share our homes with, it’s up to us to be mindful of our moods and do our best not to let external factors impact how we treat our pets. Things as seemingly small as our tone of voice can have a major impact on their emotions.
A cat chowing down. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Don’t feed them crap
This has been covered exhaustively elsewhere, so we’ll direct you to catinfo.org if you have in-depth questions about feline nutrition.
In general, wet food should make up the majority of your cat’s diet. Cats don’t have a high thirst drive and they’ve evolved to get most of their hydration from meat, so a cat who eats mostly — or only — dry food is in danger of developing serious health problems.
Aside from that, more expensive doesn’t always mean better, and the important thing is that your cat’s food has real meat as the top ingredient. If the primary ingredient is a filler like corn or grain, or poultry/beef byproducts, steer clear and find a better alternative.
Feeding quality food means kitty will be happier, healthier, less prone to health complications and more active.
Keep things interesting
You don’t have to spend a lot of money on toys, and everyone who’s ever lived with a feline knows the fluffy little guys are just as likely to take a shine to a new box or the little plastic ring from a milk bottle as they are to the $10 new toy you bought from the pet store.
That said, there are certain toys that are almost universally beloved by felinekind, and the more you keep things interesting for your cat, the happier your furry overlord will be.
You can never go wrong with wands for interactive play. Keep it simple and manipulate the toy at the end of the wand like prey so your house panther can feel like a mighty hunter. Track toys with balls that cats can bat around are good for relatively quiet solo play. Cat tunnels are great too, especially if you toss treats inside them for kitty to find randomly.
A cat playing with a toy mouse. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
You don’t need a special occasion to surprise your little buddy with a catnip and play session, and you’d be surprised how enthralled felines can be by “cat TV” on Youtube. There are dozens of channels that provide hours-long videos of birds eating seeds from outdoor feeders, aquariums filled with interesting fish, and critters like squirrels and rodents.
You can also engage your cat by training her to do simple things like come when called, sit on command high five you. Those “tricks” are very easy to teach and require no more than two or three practice sessions a day, maximum 10 minutes each. Your cat will love it, especially with rewards for learning, and it’s fun to show skeptics that, yes, cats can do tricks just like dogs.
Sometimes “fun” is just something unusual, something your cat rarely gets to do or see. On occasion, I let Buddy walk up and down the hallway with me in my apartment building late at night when chances are low we’ll encounter anyone.
Elevators: products of foul sorcery that swallow humans and sometimes spit out Korean rappers.
He loves to stop at each door, listen and take in the strange sounds and scents. If anyone emerges from one of the doors or the elevator opens, he just makes haste back to our apartment, where I leave the door slightly ajar for that reason. As for the elevator, he seems to think it’s some sort of product of foul sorcery — it rumbles, the doors open by themselves, and when people walk in, they don’t walk out. Sometimes they enter only to emerge as a different person a few minutes later!
I’m happy to indulge his paranoia with regard to the elevator, because it means I don’t have to worry about curiosity getting the better of him.
If you’ve got rooms your cat doesn’t normally have access to, a yard with cat-proof fencing, or an activity you only do sometimes, consider breaking up your cat’s day with a little exploration or some ‘nip-fueled fun.
“Extremely accurate portrait of the Buddies” commissioned by Buddy the Cat in 2024.
Treat your cat as a friend
Your cat may not have legal personhood, but he is a fully sentient being who feels emotions just as strongly as people do. Cats experience the full range of primary and secondary emotions, but not tertiary emotions. That means kitty can feel happy, sad, excited, anxious, jealous, bored, depressed and overjoyed, but she’s not going to be embarrassed if another cat’s wearing the same collar or fret over whether people and other cats like her.
The important thing is remembering cats have feelings.
It’s not rocket science, and it doesn’t cost us anything to treat our cats with respect, patience and love. Bonding with a cat requires more than just feeding, watering and scooping, but the effort is always worth it and you’ll have a loyal friend for life. Good luck!
Top image of incredibly sexy beast (Buddy) copyright Pain In The Bud.
Misty the Cat “was an agent of chaos and misrule,” had a Krameresque entrance style and was deeply loved by his people.
With inflation taking a major toll on families over the last few years, one of the most frequently cited reasons for surrendering pets is that their people can’t afford them anymore.
A vet tech in Ohio is trying to prevent that from happening to people in her area with The Little Black Cat Collective, a pet food pantry she founded in honor of her late rescue cat, Lila, who died at 16 years old.
Laura Zavadil founded the pantry — which also helps people with dogs, guinea pigs, ferrets and rabbits — in 2021, and since then it’s grown, serving “30 to 40 families and more than 200 animals each month,” she told her hometown newspaper, the Vindicator of Warren, Ohio.
“I wanted to do my part to help the community through struggles,” Zavadil told the paper. “The pantry’s main goal is to get the needs of these animals met and help the people, but also — considering the limited amount of shelter space in the area — if it means the animals can stay in the home, that’s just icing on the cake.”
Remembering Misty the Cat, whose death “drained all the colour from the world”
Speaking of honoring deceased pets, Keith Miller has a heck of a tribute to his cat, Misty, in The Guardian.
It’s been six months since Keith Miller’s beloved cat (pictured above), came up to him “with a series of unusual cries, stretched his mouth wide like a yawning lion, shivered, collapsed and died.” Misty, Miller wrote, “was a fortnight shy of his ninth birthday,” and his absence has been keenly felt.
Tributes are difficult to write, and tributes to pets may be harder still. It’s tough to feel you’re doing justice to an animal you loved while conveying their personality, and in the back of your mind you’re thinking of the people who don’t get it, who don’t have pets and might find your tribute saccharine or melodramatic.
Miller strikes just the right notes and makes the reader feel Misty’s loss without knowing the little guy.
“I have thought a lot about this particular cat and this particular loss. I think what most pains and enrages me about it has something to do with the role Misty played in our life: a larger-than-life vibe, faux-heroic and mock-epic (and so often richly comic). He used to skid on the floor when he came into a room, like Kramer in Seinfeld. He was an agent of chaos and misrule, knocking objects off surfaces with gallumphing carelessness one day, dead-eyed precision the next. He was gormless yet prodigious, a fluffier cousin of Homer Simpson. He didn’t shyly solicit affection, as his sister does; he demanded it by right, thrusting his jaw up and out like Mussolini to accept strokes on his throat and chest.
All in all, he didn’t really have the makings of a tragic character. And he wasn’t a will-o’-the-wisp, either, on loan from another world, as most cats are. His unscheduled exit wasn’t just an emotional body blow; it was a violation of the rules of genre.”
The Mussolini bit resonated with me, since I’ve referred to Bud as “a furry little Genghis Khan” on occasion, and often joke that he’s a tyrant ruling over the place with an iron paw. Miller’s homage to his pal isn’t overly long, and I recommend reading the whole thing.
Lupita Nyong’o not only shares the screen with a feline co-star in the new film A Quiet Place: Day One, she’s also a devoted cat mom to a ginger tabby named Yoyo.
Although I haven’t seen most of Lupita Nyongo’s movies — I really liked her performance in Us and her voice work in Disney’s Jungle Book remake — I’m a big fan now that I know she’s a cat lover.
Nyong’o took to the red carpet for the premiere of her newest film, A Quiet Place: Day One in London on Wednesday, and her plus-one was a cat named Schnitzel, who also stars in the movie. Photos show Nyong’o posing along co-star Joseph Quinn, smiling as she cradles Schnitzel in her arms.
Lupita Nyong’o with her cat, Yoyo. In addition to posing with a cat on the red carpet premiere of her new film, Nyong’o proudly dotes on Yoyo and mentions him often. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram
A Quiet Place is a 2018 film about a family that lives a completely silent life on a farm after the civilization has fallen to monstrous creatures that can’t see but are exceptionally sensitive to sound.
The film received nearly universal positive reviews for its use of sound — and the complete absence of it for long stretches — as a tension-building device, and a 2020 sequel continued the story.
Day One, which hits theaters on June 28, promises audiences a look at how the creatures appeared and civilization collapsed.
Schnitzel’s role isn’t entirely clear, but if it’s anything like 2022’s Prey, cats will fill their usual niche as predators, highlighting the difference between terrestrial and extraterrestrial hunters.
Caring for a cat in a world like A Quiet Place could be a double edged-sword: a super vocal cat like my Buddy wouldn’t last very long unless he quickly learned to keep a lid on his constant commentary, but cats are also incredibly sensitive to things that pass beneath the notice of us humans.
Thanks to their incredible hearing, exceptional sense of smell, the advantage of an extra olfactory organ and whiskers that pick up even the slightest stirring, felines are keenly aware of their surroundings.
As for Nyong’o, while Schnitzel is not her cat, she’s the proud cat mom of Yoyo, an orange tabby she fostered in late 2023. It only took her three days of fostering the little guy before she realized “I could not give him up,” she said last year shortly after the adoption was made official.
“I never understood people whose phones were full of photos and videos of their pets — now I am one of those people,” she wrote when she adopted the tabby. “It may look like I saved Yoyo, but really, Yoyo is saving me.”
Lupita Nyong’o with Yoyo. Credit: Lupita Nyong’o/Instagram
Matt Damon rescued a stray living on the periphery of a Costa Rican jungle.
Matt Damon stopped by the Late Show With Stephen Colbert this week, and somehow they got on the topic of Damon’s cat.
The Oppenheimer actor described how he and his wife gained the feline’s trust while staying at an AirBnB in Costa Rica. The cat, who was living on the edge of the nearby jungle and “fighting for his life every night,” gratefully accepted food from the Damons and grew to trust them over the month they spent at the rental.
“By the end we were like, ‘We have to take this cat. This guy’s gonna die. Now he’s relying on us.'”
It turns out the little brawler was done with living rough and enthusiastically took to the life of a pampered house cat.
“He moves into our house, and I’m thinking ‘I have a little yard out in LA, it’ll be great out there [for him],'” Damon told Colbert. “He never went outside ever again.”
Damon’s cat had a serious health scare, but the story has a happy ending and it’s better to hear Damon tell it, so turn up your speakers/headphones:
Yes, Damon’s cat may be “jacked,” and he may even be the Arnold Schwarzenegger of felines, but surely he doesn’t compare to the OG of ripped and meowscular cats.
Pain In The Bud 