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Cats Life at Home New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Choosing and Caring for a New Cat: What to Know

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Reading Time: 4 minutes When I graduated from college a few centuries ago, I wanted an apartment, a car, and a kitten. (I was lucky enough to have a job lined up.) While cats were a part of the family when I was growing up, this would be my very own cat. I adopted a kitten from a college […]

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Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Better Together? A Kitten Combo is Fun and Smart

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Reading Time: 3 minutes Thinking about a kitten? Consider adopting two. Acquiring a pair of kittens is good for their physical and emotional health and fun for their humans. Here’s what to know. Anne is a curious caramel tiger kitten, who chirps sweetly to herself as she goes about her day, jumping in and out of laps, proudly carrying […]

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Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Remedial Kitty Socialization: Smoothing Rough Edges

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Reading Time: 4 minutes If kittens don’t receive appropriate handling and socialization early in life, they can develop undesirable habits. Here’s how to help tame their behavior. Mollie was turned in to the shelter when she was approximately 4 weeks old, a singleton with no mom in sight. She languished in a cage until we saw her photo posted, […]

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Cats Fears & Anxieties Life at Home

Is Your Cat’s Litter Box Stressing Him Out?

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Reading Time: 3 minutes A mantra for cat caretakers: You can’t scoop the litter box too often. While there’s a litany of tips for successful litter box training, if the box isn’t scooped often, the prettiest setup is useless. Cats have extremely sensitive noses, and while they find comfort in familiar scents, a box full of urine clumps and […]

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Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home Training & Grooming

Zoom, Zoom! Agility Training Gets Cats Off The Couch

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Reading Time: 3 minutes A video circulated around the internet of a little girl leading her kitten through an agility course in her backyard. The girl’s energy and the tails-up, fearless enthusiasm of Suki, the kitten, were endearing. For most of our cats, their best sport is competitive napping. But the Suki video shows that cats can indeed be […]

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Cats Fears & Anxieties Life at Home New Pets

Fearless Kittens: Are They Made Or Born?

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Reading Time: 3 minutes Stories abound about kittens who are adopted into new homes, then promptly disappear for days at a time, coming out only at night to eat and use the litter box. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s how to improve your chances of bringing home a confident, outgoing kitten who will be comfortable in […]

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Cats Holidays Life at Home New Pets

A Kitty for Christmas? Preparation is Key

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Reading Time: 3 minutes Your child has been begging for a kitten for Christmas. It’s on her Christmas list – at the top – and you heard her tell Santa that she wanted one at the outdoor holiday event you attended. There are pictures and drawings of cats on her bedroom wall and fridge. Without a doubt, kittens become […]

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Cats Life at Home Training & Grooming

Clawful Behavior

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Reading Time: 3 minutes For many cat owners, redwood would be a good choice when selecting living room furniture. While we all bemoan that rip-rip sound of claws on fabric just as we’re dozing off at night, we can’t change the fact that nature intended cats to have claws. The act of scratching serves a number of purposes for […]

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Cats Training & Grooming

Advanced Cat Grooming: Taming The Longhair’s Locks

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Reading Time: 2 minutes Experts agree: When it comes to grooming longhaired kitties, starting young is the key to acceptance. A kitten who learns early to love and accept being groomed won’t have the fear that develops when grooming is rough or painful. The first thing to know about grooming longhaired cats is that not all their coats are […]