cat care – Pain In The Bud

It’s Never Easy With Bud

Little man’s got acne and won’t let me use a hot compress. Will a topical cream work?

The gross picture you’re looking at is the underside of Bud’s chin.

I knew he’d gotten acne again, but was surprised to see it’s this bad.

So I turned to Google, read a bunch of stuff, and watched a video in which a veterinarian had her arm around calm cat, who allowed her to rub its chin with a warm compress and witch hazel.

These veterinarians with their calm cats! You never see them with a cat like Bud, and I know there’s no magic to their approach because I’ve warned vet techs about him before and have seen them still come away with scratches.

Buddy’s selfie, triggered by the little guy himself when I was trying to get a clear shot of his acne so I could assess how bad it is.

I don’t have any witch hazel, but figured a warm compress could help. I should have known better. He won’t let me do it, just like he won’t let me trim his claws, brush him for more than two seconds at a time, or do just about anything else for his benefit.

When it’s his idea, of course, I can rub his chin until his heart’s content, as well as the top of his head, his cheeks and around his ears. But at all other times? Terrible! Unacceptable!

He is such a pain in the ass. A Pain In The Bud, you might even say. I love him very much and he’s generally a good boy, but what a pain in the ass.

I already have stainless steel bowls for him, so unfortunately this may be my fault for either not cleaning them well enough or not running them through the dishwasher enough to kill off all potential bacteria with heat as well as soap. Normally I wash them by hand with soap between meals/water refilling, and once a week in the dishwasher, but it looks like I’m going to have to be a lot more thorough and really scrub the hell out of them.

In the meantime, can anyone recommend a good topical cream? Bud won’t let me apply anything with a warm cloth or even a soft tissue, but I think I may be able to distract him and apply a topical cream with a Q tip. Then hopefully he’ll realize I’m only trying to help and allow me to apply it.

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

RSPCA Wants Cat Cafes ‘Phased Out,’ Says Cats’ Needs Not Met

Cat cafes offer a unique way for adoptable kitties to find homes, as well as a stress-reducing experience for customers, but two groups in the UK say cafes are not appropriate living spaces for cats.

Two major feline advocacy groups in the UK are urging the government to stop issuing new licenses for cat cafes, arguing they’re not good living situations for the felines who are their main attraction.

Many people see the cafe model as a win-win for cats and people. The latter get to unwind and spend time with cute animals who have a knack for lowering blood pressure, helping the stressed to relax. The cats, who are adoptable, get to run, play and live in an environment much better than a shelter cage while they wait for their forever homes.

But the RSPCA and Cats Protection, the most prominent feline welfare organization in the UK, say its “almost impossible” to meet the needs of the animals, who may be stressed by living with other cats and, they argue, are used as “entertainment” for customers.

“We don’t believe these environments can consistently provide cats with a good quality of life and are hugely concerned that many cats will be unhappy as a result,” said Alice Potter, a cat welfare specialist with the RSPCA.

“Generally cats are not sociable, and many felines often prefer to live without other cats, or prefer to form social groups with their relations.”

A cat cafe in Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I’m not sure how I feel about this, and I’m not particularly familiar with how most cat cafes are run. The only ones I’ve been to were in Japan, and they were miraculously clean spaces with lots of things to climb, as well as nooks and private areas where cats could hide. The cats were well cared-for, staff were friendly, and the environments were relaxed.

Cat cafes also offer a unique opportunity for finding homes for the little ones. They’re much more likely to meow their way into the hearts of would-be adopters when they’re given space to run around, play and enjoy themselves as opposed to the often sullen, frightened state they’re in at shelters.

Are the UK cats groups right, or are they making perfect the enemy of good?

‘Relax, It’s Just A Cat’ Guest Says After Shoving Kitty Off Couch

A woman asks Reddit if she overreacted when she tossed her friend out over the way the friend treated her cat.

A Redditor has been assured she didn’t overreact after recounting a disturbing incident involving one of her friends and her cat.

Describing her cat as “super friendly, but a little skittish” and prefacing the anecdote by noting she always asks guests “to be gentle with her,” the Redditor relayed what happened when her cat jumped onto the couch near the seated guest.

“Out of nowhere, my friend shoved her off the couch. Not a little nudge—an actual shove that made her hit the floor hard. My cat ran and hid under my bed, and I lost it. I asked them what the hell that was, and they just laughed and said, ‘Relax, it’s just a cat.'”

“I told them to get out immediately. They acted like I was overreacting, saying they didn’t mean to hurt her and that it wasn’t a big deal. But my cat was terrified, and I don’t care if it was intentional or not—that kind of reaction to an innocent animal is not okay with me.”

The offending party is telling mutual friends that the Redditor “threw them out over ‘nothing,'” but others in their social circle have “admitted they never liked how this friend treated animals.”

Still, some told the woman she may have been too harsh for telling the cat-shover to leave immediately.

What do you think?

For what it’s worth, most people who responded to the AITA (“Am I The Asshole?”) thread sided with the poster, and others pointed out that someone who will casually shove a cat off a couch while the caretaker is right there might do much worse if no one’s around. In other words, don’t let that person watch your cat under any circumstances.

I have never had this problem, obviously, because no one would dare shove my incredibly ripped and meowscular cat.

Jokes aside, I can’t imagine anyone I’m friends with would harm him when they know how much little dude means to me.

And as much of a wimp Bud is when it comes to vacuums, loudly crinkling paper bags and Swiffers, he has absolutely no fear of people. If someone tried to shove or toss him off a couch, I’d actually feel sorry for them, because the next instant would involve 11 pounds of furball screeching like a furious Elmo while producing a tornado of claws.

Reddit’s AITA is a reliable source of insight into antisocial behavior and social faux pas, which makes it fun to browse, but it also offers people a chance to gauge if they’ve overreacted in heated situations.

What would you have done if you were in the Redditor’s shoes?