cat health – Page 2 – Pain In The Bud

Do You Speak Cat? This Quiz Tests Knowledge Of Real Feline Language

Studies show most of us are pretty bad at interpreting our cats’ moods. A research team in Australia wants to change that.

Cats are constantly telling us how they feel, but many of us aren’t listening.

We’re not talking about chirping, trilling and meowing, although those are some of the ways our cats try to communicate with us.

While they might seem protective of their own thoughts and feelings, cats are actually transparent, and they can’t lie.* Their tails, ears, whiskers, facial expressions and body language all broadcast a cat’s mood.

The question is, are we picking up that broadcast?

In The Conversation, the University of Adelaide’s Julia Henning introduces us to a quiz she designed to answer that question, and invites us to take it.

The goal: to correctly assess each cat’s mood. What I liked most was that we’re asked to evaluate videos — clear, well-lit high resolution clips — instead of the low resolution stills that are often used for quizzes like this.

Henning has been studying the human-cat communication issue because when we misread cats, there’s a good chance we’re stressing them out. Henning and her team published the results of a study in September in which 368 participants from Australia were asked to evaluate a series of clips human-feline interaction.

It turns out they didn’t do so well at reading the signs that a cat is agitated, stressed or doesn’t want to play.

“For videos of cats who weren’t playing and were showing subtle negative cues (such as sudden tension in the body or avoiding touch), participants only recognised the negative cues about as well as chance (48.7%),” the authors of the study wrote.

Even when study participants correctly read a cat’s ears, tail, whiskers and body language, some of them indicated they’d do things that would unknowingly make a cat more agitated and stressed. A classic example is trying to pet a cat’s belly and misinterpreting their derpy way of trying to block you as a playful gesture.

Did you know? Approximately 96% of Buddy’s communication is related to yums.

In the paper, which was published in Frontiers in Ethology, Henning and her colleagues lay out the case for making sure we — the people who take care of cats — are sensitive to what our little buddies are feeling.

It’s not just about strengthening the bond, although that’s an important part. It’s about reducing stress and miscommunication, and increasing quality of life.

Cats are incredibly sensitive to our actions and moods because we are the most important living beings in their lives. We feed and house them, and we’re their pals. If we’re constantly subjecting them to play they don’t like or overstimulating them, they get stressed, and stressed cats can become depressed, sick or resentful cats.

If we want to make sure our buddies live their best lives, we have to understand what they’re trying to tell us.

(*) Except when it comes to food. When food is involved, these innocent, cute little furry creatures become master manipulators and can convince anyone they’re starving.

Note: The first version of this story linked to the study page twice when the first link should have pointed to the quiz. It’s fixed now, and email subscribers can follow the link through this version of the story. Apologies for the error.

Header image credit: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Morbidly Obese Cat Completely Transformed After Shedding Half His Weight

Patches was the biggest cat the staff at a Virginia animal shelter had ever seen, and was within snacking distance of the all-time record.

When Patches was surrendered to a Virginia animal shelter in mid-April of 2023, the staff — including longtime veterans of cat rescue — were taken aback.

The six-year-old feline weighed in at a staggering 40-plus pounds and was so big, the shelter staff had to keep him in an office because the largest crates they had were barely large enough for Patches to turn around.

“We thought we had seen big cats before, but he was definitely the biggest that we’ve ever seen,” Richmond Animal Care and Control’s Robin Young told the Washington Post at the time.

Patches was in dangerous territory for his personal health, and if allowed to continue gaining weight, he’d threaten the world record for a domestic cat, which is more than 46 pounds. (Guiness World Records stopped recognizing the heaviest cats decades ago because the organization didn’t want to encourage people to overfeed their cats in pursuit of the record.)

Top row: Patches in the early days shortly after his adoption. Bottom row: Patches after losing a significant amount of weight.

Last week, Patches reached a new milestone, weighing in at 18.94 pounds after more than two years of eating healthy and getting exercise with the help of Kay Ford, a retired businesswoman who adopted him.

It’s an incredible achievement, and one that was hard-fought, as anyone familiar with cats will know. Many well-fed cats can convince almost anyone they’re starving.

Ford’s pitch to the shelter made it easy for them as they fielded a flood of adoption applications for the chonkster, who had attracted plenty of attention as soon as the shelter posted about him online.

Ford told the shelter she was experienced, committed to helping Patches get down to a healthy weight, and would look forward to the challenge. She’d put on a few pounds during the pandemic, she added, and would lose weight alongside her new pal.

“I’ve had cats all my life,” Ford told the Post at the time. “It just seemed like the right thing.”

Ford with Patches shortly after meeting him. Credit: Richmond Animal Care and Control

She agreed to meetings at the shelter to review a weight loss plan and began documenting Patches’ progress on a Facebook page, Patches’ Journey, which now has more than 53,000 people following the feline’s transformation.

His diet isn’t over, and it’s a lifestyle change meant to be permanent, but there are a lot of people who are proud of the (much less) big guy, who now looks like a completely different cat.

Images via Patch’s Journey/Facebook

California Becomes 6th State To Ban Cat Declawing

Three states have banned declawing so far in 2025.

Six down, forty four to go.

California became the sixth and latest state to ban cat declawing this week when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 867, which makes it illegal to remove a feline’s claws unless it’s medically necessary for the health and survival of the cat.

Declawing may sound like a sort of kitty manicure, but the neutral name disguises a cruel form of elective mutilation that involves amputating a cat’s toes at the first knuckle.

It’s the equivalent of chopping off a third of each finger, all to prevent potential damage to inanimate objects like furniture. The procedure has been condemned by every major animal welfare group including the Humane Society and the SPCA.

Declawing inflicts a lifetime of pain on cats, changes feline gait and posture, leads to early arthritis and causes a long list of secondary problems. For example, declawed cats are much more likely to bite because they have no other form of defense when they feel threatened, and they’re also much more likely to stop using litter boxes because it hurts to walk on the sand-like and granule texture of the litter with half-amputated toes.

Lawmakers haven’t worked out the details on how the new law will be enforced or what the penalties will be if veterinarians illegally perform the procedure. Other states have implemented a system of increasingly harsh fines and the suspension of veterinary licenses for repeat offenders.

New York became the first state to ban declawing in 2019. Maryland and Virginia followed in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and in 2025 Massachusetts, Rhode Island and now California have all passed similar laws.

Declawing Banned: Rhode Island Becomes 5th State To End Cruel Procedure

Rhode Island’s law has some teeth: veterinarians who violate it will have their licenses suspended or revoked.

Five down, forty five to go.

With a new law going into effect in the fall, Rhode Island joins New York, Maryland, Virginia and Massachusetts in banning the declawing of cats.

Declawing may sound like a sort of kitty manicure, but the neutral name disguises a cruel form of elective mutilation that involves amputating a cat’s toes at the first knuckle.

It’s the equivalent of chopping off 1/3 of each finger, all to prevent potential damage to inanimate objects like furniture.

“Declawing is painful, unnecessary and inhumane. It’s no way to treat any pet,” said Rhode Island state Sen. Melissa Murray, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. “Fortunately, there has been growing awareness of the risks and cruelty of declawing. Our state must recognize that declawing is animal abuse and prohibit it altogether.”

Rhode Island’s new law is more prohibitive than some of the others: veterinarians who declaw cats once the law goes into effect on Sept. 1 will have their licenses suspended or revoked entirely.

Declawing doesn’t “just” cause short term pain from the procedure. It forces cats to change the way they walk and move in general, altering their gaits. As a result, declawing leads to early onset arthritis among a host of other medical problems.

Declawing also results in psychological and behavioral problems. Cats who are declawed often become depressed, and they’re more likely to avoid the litter box since standing on litter is painful for them.

Since the procedure also takes away their primary defensive mechanism, declawed cats are much more likely to bite, which along with litter box avoidance means they’re more likely to end up abandoned in shelters.

Bud’s got this one, which is sold as the Ultimate Scratcher, which is about 3 feet tall and sturdy, offering an optimal place for cats to literally scratch their itch.

Cats should never be declawed!

There are several viable options for keeping them from scratching furniture, including nail caps and redirecting them to scratchers. The latter are a bare necessity if you have a cat, as scratching is a natural feline behavior and our little friends will find something to scratch if we don’t provide them with appropriate scratching surfaces.

Since cats like to stretch while they scratch, I highly recommend getting a large tower scratcher with a secure base. Bud has one, he uses it constantly, and he does not touch the couch or the chair in the living room, nor does he touch any other furniture. It can be done, it just requires patience and consistent redirecting, with positive encouragement.

Negative reinforcement, such as yelling at your cat, will not achieve results. The only thing it will accomplish is damaging your relationship and trust with your cat.

Since New York became the first state to ban declawing in 2019, more states have considered similar legislation. Although routinely opposed by state Veterinary Medical Associations — special interest groups that represent a portion of veterinarians who see declawing as a reliable money-maker — lawmakers have allied with veterinarians in support of bans, as well as groups like the Humane Society, the SPCA, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Paw Project to overcome opposition and get bills passed.

Let’s hope the trend of declawing bans continues.

‘Swift And Lethal’: Cats Have No Defense Against Bird Flu, And It Keeps Showing Up In Their Food

Bird flu is killing cats domestic and wild, in captivity and in nature. Experts are sounding the alarm, warning people not to feed their cats raw food, allow them to drink milk, or let them roam outside where they can easily catch the virus by going after small prey.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, the clinical name for bird flu, is a danger to all animals, but for cats it’s a virtual death sentence.

Only a handful have survived infection thanks primarily to early diagnosis, intervention and round-the-clock veterinary care. In the vast majority of cases, the virus burns through its feline victims in three or four days.

Bird flu has become even more deadly for felines of late. Of the 126 domestic cats killed by H5N1 since 2022, according to the US Department of Agriculture, half of them have have died in 2025 — and it’s only been three months.

Notably, that total doesn’t include captive wild cats and big cats, such as the 20 pumas, bobcats, tigers and other felids who succumbed to the virus at the Wild Felid Advocacy Center, a sanctuary in Washington state. Nor does it include cats living in the wild, like two pumas in the same state that died in December.

To appreciate the true scope of the problem, the more illuminating statistic may be 82 million, which is the number of chickens “culled” — killed — in the US since 2022 because they were infected or raised at facilities where other birds tested positive for the virus.

Factory farming compounds the matter: more than 1.6 million egg-laying hens and 337,000 “pullets” — chickens less than a year old — were “depopulated” at a single facility in Texas last year. As staggering as those numbers are, Texas’s Department of Agriculture noted the figure merely “accounts for approximately 3.6% of the company’s total flock.”

Per the USDA:

“To provide context on the overall size of the U.S. poultry flock, there are more than 378.5 million egg-laying chickens in the United States. In 2023, more than 9.4 billion broiler chickens and 218 million turkeys were processed in the United States.”

If there ever was an example of putting too many eggs in one basket, this is it. American food supplies are vulnerable with so much concentrated in the hands of so few companies, a lesson the general public is learning the hard way now after eggs peaked at record prices last month. Things have cooled off a bit since then, but shoppers aren’t getting any benefit as grocery chains continue to charge a premium: the nationwide average for a dozen eggs was $5.90 in February, but stores in some states are still charging $10 or more.

It also raises questions about the sustainability and ethics of eating animals. Humans slaughter more than 75 billion chickens every year, and projections indicate there will be three billion more of us by the mid-2080s.

Meat from infected chickens can still end up in your cat’s bowl

Media reports about culling give the impression that those birds are removed from the food chain, but that’s not entirely true. The pet food industry has always cut corners by harvesting meat not fit for human consumption, a category that includes everything from the carcasses of sick animals, to “meat by-products” that can include beaks, hooves, eyes, hearts and other organs.

So while the culled chickens won’t show up in shrink wrap at the grocery store, they are making it into the pet food supply chain. Most pet food is “rendered,” cooked at such high temperatures that potential pathogens have been destroyed.

But an increasingly bigger slice of the market has been claimed by companies selling “premium” raw food — and that’s been the primary infection vector for domestic cats, particularly indoor cats who otherwise would have little or no exposure to the virus. (Cats who spend time outdoors can catch bird flu by preying on infected animals, just as wild cats do, and barn cats have caught it by drinking the milk of infected cattle.)

Cats are mostly lactose intolerant, and should not be given cow’s milk, despite the common misconception that it’s healthy for them.

“The animals that were depopulated could potentially have ended up in the food chain for pets,” Laura Goodman, an assistant professor at Cornell University’s Baker Institute for Animal Health, told NBC News. “It’s not uncommon for substandard meat to end up in the pet food chain.”

That’s what happened to Tim Hanson’s beloved cat, Kira, who died in February after eating raw food from a company called Wild Coast. The company has recalled the product, Boneless Free Range Chicken Recipe. It’s one of four recalls in the last month alone.

Hudson is suing Wild Coast for the veterinary bills — about $8,000 — and said he was devastated that Kira, whom he called “the happiest cat,” is gone. He said he thought he was doing right by her by feeding her the expensive raw food, but now urges people to avoid feeding their cats raw food at all costs.

“I don’t want any more cats dying,” he said. “Hopefully people can learn from Kira’s passing.”

Top image via Pexels. All other images via Wikimedia Commons