Teaching the Cat to Meow

The latest news here is that I’ve started to give my cat Herman Panther meowing lessons.  I realize that because his older “brother” Brody rarely utters a normal meow, Herman never learned how to properly talk Cat. Instead, he learned to squawk from the crows who sit on the phone line outside our second-story window. With them he shares a glossy-black exterior, a mucho-mysterioso stare, and unfortunately an extensive crowing vocabulary.

After years of listening to him speak his own brand of squawk-talk, a tongue that impresses demand even at a whisper, I realized that providing Herman with a more melodic meow model, a sweeter sound to copy, would be smart.  Unfortunately, Herman seems to have moved on from his “picking up noises” stage in life.  What with the cat pushing a whole ten years, it’s another case of horrible timing on my part.

I’m just getting started, though, and I have a plan: I plan to catch him when he’s half asleep and plant the seeds of cat song into his fertile serenader’s spirit by singing meows to him.  I will be relentless, and one day, if I’m lucky I will be rewarded with those two familiar feline syllables.  

Barring that, I might also be satisfied with at least a more melodious squawk.

Think Outside the Box, Don’t Poop Outside the Box.

If your cat is getting creative with its waste matter, as you probably groked it’s not something you want to ignore. We humans can be mighty thick when it comes to cats communicating with us, but we always seem to understand the urgency of dealing with a BM issue, be it number one or number two.

Cats who do it outside the box are sending a message, although its not entirely intuitive for humans to understand. We don’t speak cat poop, but we can have it translated for us. Really, it could be many things that the cat is trying to say. Whatever is said its certainly being said urgently by the cat. It’s best really to try to look at it from the cat’s perspective, as pissed off as you may be.

Obviously, the very first thing any expert will ask you is how clean is the box? You need to keep the box clean, or you really can’t blame kitty pooping in your shower stall.

At the same time, you want to keep in mind that it could be a health issue. Cats don’t have a lot of means for telling you they don’t feel great. The only time my Maine Coon crapped on my comforter, he was clearly having a digestive problem. This is another good reason to keep the box clean. It’s healthier and if you cat uses it, you don’t have to worry that’s he’s trying to tell you he’s sick.

I’m just lucky I have ol’ Hank to help keep our box clean. Man can clean a litter box, I tell you, and don’t think that cats don’t notice. But even we occasionally get behind on our schedule, and we’ve had issues. Trust me. Since moving to our new place, keeping the litter and pee in the box has been a handful. But that’s another story for another day.

Bullet Train Borrows Cats’ Ears & More

A futuristic train in Japan will feature air brakes shaped like cat ears that retract like cat nails!  Of course, the retractable-claw cat-ear air brakes are superior to all the brakes people have made without involving cats’ design ideas, proving that cats should be consulted more often in the design-phase process.

What does it mean that a train of the future borrows so heavily from feline technologies?   Is this early evidence that cats are on the cusp of improving our lives Big Time?  

A minor point: Cats take no responsibility to the disco-tights quality of the train’s exterior. For that, I think you can thank manga.

Learn about the cat’s forthcoming bullet train here.

Cats on the Web: Best Info & Where I Buy

What a massive web of resources are devoted to the bodily care and feeding of the cat. But with so many sites available, most of them all-advertising, how is a reader to know where to turn for actual information?  What sites are really quality, which are just trying to net some of our cat cash flow with any old advice, and which are just some nutty humorist’s idea of a meal ticket?

I know from my Big Brother Blogger ability to read your search terms that some readers actually wind up at Self Help for Cats looking for bonified advice, and not just the kind of original help that we manufacture so well here at SHFC, which is “how to celebrate and elevate the cat in all new ways.”  But “help” is in the title here, and I do want to help you, so I have a few sites I can recommend that have worked for me.

As you can see, Self Help for Cats is presently commercial advertisement-free, so you can trust that I’m not that kind of huckster.  Dropped on my head at birth, possible, but not presently selling anything but my book manuscript and an occasional newspaper column.

That’s not the only reason to trust this advice.  I want to recommend Felinexpress.com mainly because this site won the latest Cat Writers Association award, and I promise you, this group only picks the very best cat writing for that.  How do I know? Well, my writing won one of their Certificates of Excellence, and that was proof enough for me.

As for making purchases Online, I have had good luck with DrsFosterSmith.com, and the prices are quite fair.  When I was researching for it, though, I read about problems with other online cat-product companies.  So please be careful and do a little research before you blow your cat budget on fraud.

If you know of a cat Website that you would like to recommend, please leave a comment, and let us know of your experience with it.  Word of mouth is much better than Google, yes?

Okay, I now return Self Help for Cats to its original intent, to improve and promote the cat in all its glory. 

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Here are those sites again: Felinexpress.com and DrsFosterSmith.com

Cats in the Doghouse: Crafty Souls Build Pads for Pets

Here’s a book that bears a look, and even a purchase if you happen to be one of those inscrutable do-it-yourselfers.  As for me, building a House of Catitude in all but a virtual sense is well beyond my crafting capacity, but I say, “power (tools) to you” if you find yourself creating, for example, an attractive Zen Cat Bed.

(Unfortunately, my cats Brody and Herman would tear the bejesus out of this framed-sisal station, its contemplative stone garden and living wheat grasses – first assassinating the greens and then spreading soil and sisal to my living room’s four winds.)

But just because Herman and Brody would destroy the Zen Cat Bed in no time doesn’t preclude some other cats from getting their zen on, doing the cat lotus posture there and such. Probably, the Zen Cat Bed just needs minor tweaking to be a place to chill and not where to lose one’s cat mind in such a destructive fashion.

But believe me, the last thing I want is to sound overly critical of this delightful book of projects.  There truly are some attractive ideas in Pads for Pets: Fabulous Projects for your Furry, Feathered, and ‘Phibious Friends (Chronicle Books, 2003), from simple stuff to the architecturally complex. Although I must point out, clearly the emphasis in this field has been on dogs and doghouses, and you can guess how we feel about that here at Self Help for Cats. (Hint – we aren’t purring.)

As the dog section is by far the most developed in the book, the dyed in the wool cat DIYer may need to borrow from the canine or goldfish sections to really find a project they can sink their glue gun into.  For example, I would actually even consider making my cats an Orphan Sock Bed – sort of a rag rug made of stuffed single socks, presumably the match of lost socks. 

Wouldn’t it feel great to finally rid oneself of the uselessness of those odd single socks for such a cool sock bed?! That is, until one of the matching socks turned up.  I’d have to make a whole other sock bed then, just to set things straight.  It could get ugly actually, and even snowball what with the likelihood of further bed-sock matches later developing. So you understand why it’s better if I never got started down that path, right?

Even if I happen to be a complete crafting catastrophe, that certainly doesn’t mean Pads for Pets doesn’t have some ideas you’ll really dig.  There’s a whole section about throwing a dog party, what with hats, a cake, party games, etc., and I don’t see why you can’t adopt that right over to cats, you know?  Why not, I ask?  Why the heck not?

(I’ll tell you why not, because probably a room full of cats made angry by their elasticized party hats with pieces of cake spread all about on plates – well, that just doesn’t sound like a good situation.)

Clearly, the creative nutkins behind this utterly original book have their hearts totally in the right place, in their left ribcage that is, and beating strong for a good cause.  Book sales help PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support), an organization all about animals helping people in their time of need.  And what’s the point of helping yourself if you can’t, in the end, turn around and help someone else?  Remember that, kitties! 

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Pads for Pets is by Elizabeth Quinn with Pets Are Wonderful Support (P.A.W.S.).  Photographs by Frankie Frankeny.