Best Jazz Album Name Ever

Do I need to tell you how great to have a cat actually playing guitar on the cover of Who Let the Cats Out?  Cats are a lot more musical than we imagine, if they can just calm down and not run out of the room when someone starts to teach them. 

Mike Stern’s Who Let the Cats Out is clearly among the great jazz album names that include cats in the name.  I’m not entirely familiar with all the cat jazz album titles in the world, so make sure to remind me with comments of the many I will probably miss.

I like that Who Let the Cats Out is both a funny riff and so very true.  Because we all heard Who Let the Dogs Out, but the truth is dogs that get let out are far easier to find than cats who get let out. An out cat can’t hardly be found if he wants to be, which he usually doesn’t.

Naturally, Who Let the Cats Out is a jazz album. If cats were a musical genre, they would be jazz.  And if cats played music, they’d play jazz.  My cat Brody plays the keyboard, and it’s improvisation at a very pure level.  No technique, knowledge, or musical score can impede him when he starts tickling the ivories.

Calendars Even Cats Must Love

Here’s a cat calendar that’s cool in myriad ways. First of all, it’s called “Cat Lovers Against the Bomb,” and if that weren’t already the bomb, then get ready for your dough to go to both cats and peace. That is, if you buy it at the Stray Cat Alliance. 

I like this calendar enough to pay full price.   My very favorite is January’s picture of a cat out walking in the snow.

>>This site offers more info about the calendar, which has been published now for 25 years.

The Greening of the Kitties (and their Mousies)

My cats love green stuff.  They adore catnip and wheatgrass.  They love to gnaw my houseplants and always find the lettuce in my grocery bag.  You could say green is their color, so it was only fair I brought back something for them from the Green Festival, a yearly pro-environmental fair which happens to be my favorite place on the planet to spend my green.

Cats in general need to green-up their acts, or rather, their people do.  This story on the San Francisco Chronicle’s website points out that cats can be as bad for the environment as anyone, so it’s a good idea to educate cats and their people on the effects of some of their choices.  Fortunately, what’s good for the environment is usually good for cats, like purchasing food with less additives from more-responsible producers.  

My Green Fest cat gift is another great example.  Dye-free, made from all natural materials, no plastic whatsoever, this hand-made mouse toy made by Purrfect Play was worth a little more green than your average mouse toy.  Not only because I got to support someone who is working to reduce my cats’ carbon paw print (i.e. kitties’ planetary impact), but because of how much my cats like this product.  Of course, the real product testing at the Self Help for Cats labratory is always conducted by the cats themselves.

Upon awakening in the morning, I presented Brody with the green mouse (actually white and tan), and to my surprise, it must be stuffed with some very powerful catnip (organic, of course).  Well, Brody went nuts - he immediately bit deeply into the mouse and lost his head, digging pointlessly into the sheets with a wild stare and flipping his body about as if trying to remove his fur suit over his head, feet first.  The verdict — Brody give two fangs up for the Purrfect Play mouse, which was immediately saturated in cat drool at a heretofore unheard of rate.

So you see, cats really do dig green stuff.  With enough organic catnip mice, cats will be well on their way to saving the planet in the most entertaining fashion the world has ever known.

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If you liked this post, you might also enjoy reading how cats can help sea otters in Kitty Toilet Training a Dream No More.

Kitty Toilet Training a Dream No More

Are you like me?  Do you dream of training your cat to use the toilet? Or is the subject of your salivation one of those fancy litter-flushing contraptions that promise to put an end to the great tootsie-roll treasure hunt? 

Well, the dream is off, everyone.  Apparently, of all the things you can put down a toilet, cat crap is where we as civilized people and cat lovers must draw the line.

That’s because of all the foul stuff that gets flushed down the crapper, cat crap is beyond even the beyond.  How is that possible, you ask?  By what cruel twist of fate could it be that little Foofie’s poops are so much worse than even our own?

Well, the marine biologists have spoken, and they think flushed cat crap is killing sea otters, or rather, the parasite it carries, Toxoplasma gondii, is.  In fact, even Governor Terminator is on cat poop’s case, signing a California law warning consumers that dumping cat litter into toilets or storm drains may harm otters.  

So while my dream of scolding the cat for leaving the seat up is all in vein, I am glad I didn’t already take the trouble to potty-train kitty, an activity I was neither looking forward to nor confident I could even accomplish.  Fortunately, I discovered before I tried that this cat toilet usage is, if not the incarnation of evil itself, at very minumum plainly and totally not okay. Especially when you consider how cats and otters are so closely related in the grand scheme of things. 

(Not that it would be okay if, for example, otters happened to be more closely-related to dogs. Even if at times I seem to suggest that dogs are spoiled media-darlings, I would never take that petty squabble out on a hapless and very cat-like otter. Also, some of my best frenz have been dogz.)

So for now, unfortunately, we’re stuck with litter-cleaning the old-fashioned way, which in my house pretty much means Hank is doing it.  That is, until one of them big cat-litter robot manufacturers gets a looksie at this here Website, then I figure me and Hank’ll have more litter-cleaning robots than we’ll know what to do with!  We may need to reprogram one of them to make the coffee, or something.

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

Spin, Spin Lollipops: Decorate to Stimulate

Herman and his mobile share a moment of peace.

I’ve said it before: Your house may be the place you land your sorry butt at the end of the day — but it’s your cat’s whole entire world.  That’s why you have redecorate everything with the cats’ needs in mind.

To that end, I recently purchases an Ikea mobile (second-hand for $2) that looks like giant red lollipops floating upside down in space and proceeded to attach it to the hook already present in the ceiling just above our two six-foot cat towers. The whole idea here was to have a little cat-interactive art to swat at. 

The Mobile Glamoros:

(Pronounced Glam Morose - Ikea’s tribute to goth?)

After the cats’ initial “we’re just going to ignore that thing” attitude wore off, well, let’s just say the lollypop mobile survived its inaugural battle last night.  I myself slept through the skirmish, but fortunately Hank left me a full report, in verse, which it satisfies me heartily to share with you here:

Spin, Spin Lollipops, a Poem by Hank.

    DARK, DARK.

Race, Race, Race!

     to the tower, to the top, to the towering tower top!

(thunder) (thunder)

Rub Rub.

Panther head on tower top.  Rub, Rub, Rub.

dark, dark,

spin, spin,

Lollipops, Red Lollipops go spin, spin.

Dark, Dark.

Panther.

thwock!  Spin, Spin     other direction.  Bap!

twing, bonk. Dark, Dark. Lollipops spin.

     Stand, stand.  Survey all, hit Lollipops with tail,

and descend.

(Thanks to Hank for allowing me to share his poem here on Self Help for Cats, where cats and creativity meet for expresso.)

A Bad Cat a Day

 The year may be almost a third over, but you still have time to enjoy the daily brilliance of the Bad Cat Page a Day Calendar by Jim Edgar.  If you haven’t seen it, Jim’s My Cat Hates You website has won the hearts and hilarious photographs of thousands of cats around the world.  In Jim we find the cat-human collaboration doing some of its finest work, even allowing him to go so far as to quit his day job. 

Every day is a little better with one of the 365 “not so pretty kitties and cats gone bad” on the Bad Cats desk calendar.  And that’s what Self Help for Cats is all about. Helping cats to help themselves to help everyone, so we can evolve, folks.

Don’t miss Jim’s site at Mycathatesyou.com.

Get Your Indoor Kitty Out of Doors

For cats, outdoors is so “in.” Once stuck inside by their careful owners, now more indoor cats are finding ways to enjoy a slice of the outdoors–and they should. So many problems, from obesity to behavioral issues like pissing outside the box, can be helped if a cat has access to the outdoors.

Whether you are ready to spare no expense to give your cats a taste of the outside or prefer to start with a cheaper solution, here are a few ways to get you indoor cat out:

The Leash: Yes, cats can and do wear leashes. It just takes them a while to get used to it, though, so start young and your cat will learn to love it. Remember, avoid dog parks and always let kitty set the pace.

Enclosures: Moving into more dedicated solutions, check out these outdoor kitty cages, not to mention these unusual cat enclosure tunnels for the lawn. Or try this hardcore Kitty Cell Block H anti-escape fencing. Hey, cat’s gotta get his yard on.