Plus: The awesome and terrifying cats and proto-cats of prehistory!
OMG, you guys! No cap, you gotta totally check out this adorbz video of a sweet widdle kitty witty becoming best fwiends with this mountain lion!
Phoebe the cat sees this cute AF puma near the back door of her home, curiously looking inside. It’s love at first sight as kitty and kitty see each other! Per Parade Pets:
“[T]he kitty in this TikTok video is completely fascinated by the big kitty outside her window. There’s no getting her away from her new friend!
On Sunday, August 25, @cricketandstrawfl shared this footage of her Tuxedo Cat posted up at the back door in their house, where a cougar was hanging out. It goes without saying that the cougar in question was many times bigger than Phoebe, but that didn’t seem to scare her at all.
It seemed like the cougar was pretty curious, too. He didn’t appear to be aggressive; instead, he was staring at Phoebe and gently pawing at the glass, trying to figure out who the tiny cat in the window was.”
OMG-hee! Look at the big kitty gently pawing at the door! He wants to give the little kitty a huggy-wuggy!
SO ADORBZ! The puma pawing at the door wasn’t testing its strength to see if he could snag a quick meal, those were totes signals of love! Teehee!
Felid predators of pre-history: They will eat you
If you’re in need of a palate cleanser after all that sugar, the BBC’s Discover Wildlife has a rundown of prehistoric cats and their particularly fascinating proto-cat ancestors, some of whom looked more classically cat-like than several species of true cats. Isn’t convergent evolution cool?
There’s the famous smilodon, the saber-toothed cat, xenosmilus, the so-called shark-toothed cat, and homotherium, the scimitar-toothed cat. Outdoing each other with increasingly sword-like teeth was apparently a big thing in the felid world back then.
There’s also the cave lion, the last of the UK’s big cats, and miracinonyx, the American cheetah, but did you know that simbakubwa, the “great lion” of Africa, topped out at almost 3,000 pounds?
Simbakubwa was massive, making modern lions look almost like house cats in comparison.Dinictis looked like a cat, behaved like a cat and hunted like a cat, but was not part of the felidae family. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Simbakubwa and dinictis were examples of “false cats.” That is to say, they were not part of the felid lineage, but closely resembled cats in body plan and behavior through convergent evolution. Nature found a niche, and several different species filled it for a time.
Dinictis in particular looks strikingly like modern big cats, which makes it even more surprising to learn it’s not part of the genetic lineage of the felid line.
Finally — or firstly — there’s proailurus, the first cat or “dawn cat,” from which all true felidae species can trace their lineage. Appearing almost 31 million years ago proailurus enjoyed napping, climbing trees and eating Temptations. Okay, we made that last part up. But still. If proailurus were around today, it would probably go just as crazy for the kitty crack as our house panthers do.
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.
The respondents also admitted they “forget” to feed their furry friends an average of three times a week. Say what?!?
Americans don’t know basic facts about their cats, fail to properly care for them and overestimate how well they do as pet parents, according to a new poll.
The survey of cat owners commissioned by PetSafe found most people in the US who have cats in their home don’t know their feline friends typically have 18 toes, for example, and don’t realize cats purr when they’re content as well as when they’re trying to soothe themselves.
Respondents said they frequently forget to refill their furry little buddies’ water bowls, but the thing that really blew my mind is that people supposedly forget to feed their cats an average of three times a week.
How is that possible?!?
The number of times Bud has missed a meal in 10 years is precisely zero. Even when I had COVID, even when half my face was frozen with Bell’s Palsy and I was throbbing with the worst headache I’d ever endured, I fed the little guy according to his schedule.
It’s not just that he reminds me. There’s a whole ritual around it, an elaborate series of increasingly affirmative and urgent meows that quickly give way to panic if Buddy doesn’t see activity associated with a bowl of fresh wet food and water delivered to his nook.
The pre-reminder reminders begin about 45 minutes to an hour before feeding time, with Bud’s infallible internal clock signaling upcoming meal time.
At the 30 minute mark Bud will put himself directly in my line of sight and stare at me. Then he’ll start to meow at regular intervals, and if I’m not up and heading to the kitchen by T-minus 15 minutes to yums, the meowing begins in earnest.
Even the act of retrieving a pack of wet food from the Buddy Cabinet is highly formalized and ritualistic: the little dude grunts and trills excitedly as I open the seal, dump the food in his bowl, mash it up and pile it in the middle the way he likes it.
Then he leads me back to his nook, looking over his head every few paces to make sure I’m right behind him, even though we’ve done this song and dance literally 7,318 times as of today. (It’s probably more than that since I fed him more than twice a day when he was a kitten, and doesn’t include his bowl of dry food for his late night snack/overnight emergency supply so he doesn’t have to wake me up if he’s hungry.)
I realize Bud’s a bit of a tyrant and there’s no peace until he gets what he wants, but still. Cats are cats. So really, how does anyone “forget” to feed their cat?
Cats have exceptional hearing abilities and can detect sounds in frequencies well beyond what the human ear is capable of hearing, but can they appreciate music?
The question of whether cats appreciate music is an interesting one, and we still don’t have definitive answers despite attempts to make music for our furry friends and study the way they respond to sound.
We’ve mentioned the ongoing efforts to make tunes for felines on this blog before, and previously experimented by playing composer David Teie‘s “Music for Cats“ for our brave volunteer, Buddy.
Excited by the possibility of music specifically designed for cats, and a study in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery that found it had a calming effect on the species, we queued up a track and watched the Budster’s reaction:
“Using Buddy as my test subject, I went to Youtube, selected the track Cozmo’s Air from “Music for Cats” and sat back, expecting Bud to start nodding his furry head at any moment.
Instead his ears pricked up, did their radar-dish swivel toward the speakers, and his eyes went wide. As the song gained volume and intensity, Bud’s ears and whiskers snapped back and he let out a clearly anxious “yerrrrrrrrrrppp!” I tried to calm him down, to no avail, and a second track didn’t improve things.
He wasn’t having it.”
Over at Catster, Christopher Bays writes about his cat, Olga, and her relationship with music.
Olga “has listened to classic rock, jazz, blues, classical, heavy metal, punk (or new wave?), and accordion tunes from Hungary, and it all sounds the same to her,” Bays concludes.
“Spinning the megamix, bro.”/PITB
Noting that our tastes change as we age, Bays said he’s thankful Olga wasn’t around during his teenage punk and metal phase (ditto), and notes she’s not particularly interested in any sounds coming from electronic devices, with the exception of the roaring MGM lion. (Fun fact: The famous “lion’s roar” is actually a recording of a tiger played over footage of a lion yawning. The creators apparently felt lions don’t sound sufficiently badass enough.)
Bays points out our cats don’t exactly have control over what we play, and while that’s true, if you’re a genre-hopper like me, you’ve probably observed your furry friend’s reaction to various types of music.
Given the fact that the small amount of research done so far indicates cats do respond to tunes — and the existence of music-loving animals like Kiki and Snowball — I think felines probably are capable of enjoying the organized, rhythmic arrangements of sounds we call music.
I can’t say whether a favorite track can unleash a wave of emotion, nostalgia or energy the way it can for us humans, but I’ve played a lot of music around Bud and even played music for him on my guitar and keyboard.
He seems very comfortable with old jazz, soul and funk, he comfortably loafs when I’m in the mood for classic 90s hip hop, and he seems to tolerate the prog rock of Coheed and Cambria well enough. More recently he’s been on a 90s nostalgia trip with me: Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, Nirvana, Oasis, Better Than Ezra, Letters to Cleo, Ash, Weezer, Blur, The Roots.
And he seems especially chill in the sonic presence of synthwave, also called retrowave, an EDM-inflected genre that evokes nostalgia for an era that never really existed outside of 80s retrofuturism. It’s highly rhythmic, with steady 4/4 beats and vintage synthesizers cranking out arpeggios that rise and fall like waves, which may be a source of comfort to a species that likes things just the way they are without any big surprises.
Have you noticed your cats responding to music? What’s your kitty’s favorite genre or song? Is there anything they clearly don’t like?
Is there any evidence to support claims of a longer kitten season?
Is kitten season getting longer because of climate change?
Some rescuers in California think so, according to a story in Santa Rosa’s Press-Democrat.
“Heat and warmth is what it’s all about,” said Mary Pulcheon, trapping coordinator for Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County.
Pulcheon and the executive director of Forgotten Felines, Pip Marquez de la Plata, told the Press-Democrat that strays in their care had given birth as late as December in 2023 when kitten season generally runs from late March through October.
They say the typical kitten season has shifted and is now longer due to rising temperatures caused by climate change.
It’s an unverifiable claim for several reasons.
First, we don’t have reliable estimates for how many cats there are in the US, let alone stray and feral cats. Any estimates are guesses, and they vary wildly from 20 million on the low end to 120 million, which seems an excessive and unrealistic number.
To date there’s been a single comprehensive feline census in the US, the D.C. Cat Count. It took three years, several million dollars, hundreds of trail and trap cameras, and the efforts of an army of volunteers and staff.
The final tally: 203,595, with only 6,533 unowned cats fending for themselves and drifting between managed colonies.
Credit: Ejov Igor/Pexels.com
The DC Cat Count is historic and has already proven its value by facilitating informed debate, showing rescuers/TNR volunteers where to direct their efforts, and yielding valuable data on local ecological impact.
Alas it’s a one-off, so we don’t know anything about how the population has changed over time.
Secondly, while there absolutely is scientific consensus that human activity is driving global temperatures up, there’s debate about how much temperature flux is directly attributable to modern civilization. We’re also looking at planetary timescales here, tracking changes that happen not just over decades, but centuries and millennia.
Attributing shifts in kitten season to climate change is a bit like attributing single storms to climate change. These are single data points from which we can’t draw conclusions.
Credit:Cats Coming/Pexels
Lastly, there could be dozens of factors skewing “normal” kitten season, and that’s assuming the March through October season is normal by historical measurements. We don’t know that for sure, and we can’t know it without data.
I’m limited by a lack of imagination here, but changes in kitten season could be regional, reflect non-climate weather patterns, or adjust according to cyclical patterns. Things as seemingly unimportant as ambient light pollution can have a profound effect on animal behavior, and it always helps to remember that felines are sensitive to stimuli that we literally cannot detect. Cats can pick up high frequency sounds we can’t hear and smell things beneath the notice of our own weak noses. They even have a second form of olfactory input, a literal sixth sense that is unmatched by anything in human biology.
We understand very little about how those things impact feline behavior.
With all things considered there could be hundreds of reasons for changes in kitten season, and that’s assuming the changes are real and people aren’t mistaking outliers for trends.
Ultimately we don’t need to draw conclusions about whether there are more kittens born each season. We know TNR, while imperfect, is the best way to humanely reduce stray and feral populations, and we still have a way to go before cats are no longer euthanized because we can’t find homes for them.
Pain In The Bud 