Fear Free Happy Homes
Reading Time: 3 minutes When Karma-Kat showed up on our back patio, the 8-month-old kitten had been on his own for some time. Starved for attention, and for food, he ate anything and everything. Karma chewed through the dog food bag to munch kibble and practiced snatch-and-grab attacks to gobble food from our dinner plates. Our last dog, Magic […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Want your cat to be healthier, more active, live longer, and interact more with you? There is a “magic formula” for that—a healthy weight. Fat cat memes are pretty funny, but feline obesity is no joke. Depending on which study you read, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of housecats in the United States are […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Cats are sensitive, and that is never more apparent than when something happens to upset them. Your kitty could be innocently window-watching when a stray tomcat tries to attack him through the glass, scaring him into the far reaches of your bedroom. Or an attempt at nail trimming turns your sweet fluffy girl into a […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Nemo is one of those gorgeous longhaired cats you just want to pick up and cuddle. Sadly, this has never happened. After 12 years, this fearful cat is still a work in progress. I rescued Nemo as a feral kitten being hunted by hawks and brought him inside to live with me. There were two […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes The Beagle came bounding into class, dragging a 7-year-old girl desperately trying to maintain a grip on the leash. “Ms. Teoti,” the little girl whined, “Bonnie doesn’t want to go for walks. She wants to go for sniffs!” Bonnie’s not alone. Dogs have more than 100 million sensory receptor sites in their nasal cavities. In […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes There’s nothing like the joy of a living with a new kitten: the wide-eyed wonder, the playful antics, the unabashed energy. We love our older kitties, but every so often, there’s the siren call of kittenhood. So how do you integrate a high-energy kitten into a household with a more sedate senior cat (or two)? […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes My first dog was thrilled to go anywhere and meet anyone. Crowds, children, traffic: she was calm in the face of it all. So I could not understand what was wrong with other dogs or, more to the point, their owners. You know the ones I mean: their dogs jumped and barked and were out […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes September is Happy Cat Month. It’s a special celebration created by—who else?—the CATalyst Council. The organization’s purpose is to help spread education and awareness about the health, welfare, and importance of our companion cats. Is your cat happy? We talked to an expert, as well as several cat-loving humans, about how to know if cats […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes About a year ago, when my veterinarian was unable to get a blood sample out of my reactive and extremely opinionated young Pug, I got to thinking. I have a background working in zoos, where it’s now common to train animals to cooperate in their own medical care. Animals of many species, including bears, hippos, […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes Capybaras were almost unknown in the United States a few years ago. Now the world’s largest rodents star in memes about how chill and friendly they are. There’s even a Tumblr of Animals Sitting on Capybaras. And if you’ve ever seen a photo of a pet capybara sitting on a sofa, there’s a good chance […]