Photographer Terry Deroy Gruber’s 1979 release of Working Cats is a cat self-help classic, a book-length photo-documentary of the modern economic lives of cats. Everything from fruit-selling cats to porno film company office cats are brought to light in this bold study of felines in their work-a-day environments.  There are cat careers I would never imagine documented here!  Here are a few examples:

Outdoor jobs: Race track cat, stadium cat, taxicab cat, shoe-shine cat.

High profile career tracks: boutique kitty, public tv kitty, talent agent kitty.

Nontraditional careers: fish-shop kitty, butcher kitty, taxidermy kitty.

Artsy cat jobs: Opera wig shop cat, theater cat.

Special-case cat jobs: Penitentiary cat, disco kitty.

Gruber’s photographs are timeless, full of personality, and each evokes the cat’s engagement with the workplace.  In an Internet bio, Gruber is credited for changing the way cat pictures are seen by the world.  We at Self Help for Cats appreciate that! 

First came the house cat, then came the house designed for the cat.  Progress, no?  Please send your cat architecture examples here.  Cat architecture IS the future.

The blood-curdling howl ripped me from dream state, and I awoke knowing someone was doing something horrible to something else out there in the night.  Then it all snapped into place like two Legos and my feet flew out of bed bringing me along running with them.  It was five AM and I had to stop the painful sounds of torture — if not any actual torture itself.  I had to consider, what would the neighbors think?

Sure enough, I had awoken to the horrible sounds of another battle-supreme between the two cats who otherwise can’t get enough (sleep on top) of each other.  The “brothers” who are not related, the boys who fill our days with joys have lately become a troubled duo.  Call them Paul and John, they ain’t getting along, at least not all the time like they used to.

As a result of this recent conflict, Brody has developed a cat scream so ludicrously pained and tortured that you are sure he’s being subjected to the kitty equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition or similarly perverse torment event.  But instead of on the rack, I always find him after one of his cacophonous battle screeches locked in a mere stalemate with Panther, and I wonder: how much of my work in the performing arts have really effected my cats?  Is he really getting hurt or is he acting the drama kitty queen to send us running?  Or, possibly, have my interludes into aria singing led to the beginning of a new art form altogether — the cat opera!?

Well, it all has me and Hank singing the battling-cat blues, and wondering what to do with a spoiled little fat cat named Panther who has turned into a raging bitch over his new need-to-slim-down-or-get-sick diet.  Damn cat doesn’t know a pecking order if it came and nailed him on the nose, which it has, ala Brody, more than once.  Panther is a good case for kitty prozac, possibly, but first we’re gonna try every holistic approach we can find.  The problem is serious, and humor only helps so much.

So, we’re going to seek some professional help with all the loads of cash we have lying around over here, what with the economy being so good. In the meantime, I found this list of “holistic approaches” to cat aggression.  I’m going to try some of them, although holding a magnet to Panther’s head for 20 minutes a day also seems fairly extreme as far as home remedies are concerned.

Seeing as a large segment of my modest readership finds me care of “pooping outside the box” or similar cat search terms, I realize an update on the topic is in order. Let’s just say, it hasn’t been all wrapped-up pretty like a Martha Stewart episode.  Fact is, the Army Corps of Engineers would have a tough time containing my recent cat urine problems, and in case you were wondering, I don’t have an Army Corps of Engineers lying around to work on this urgent matter. What I have is one guy, and I call him Hank.   

Karmically, I believe Hank and I can trace our current problem back to an Abyssinian named Denial.  Denial had the messy habit of pissing directly backward out of the litter box door, an act that confounded his human companion, my apartment mate, who would complain about it often.  I clearly recall being really, really glad that my cat didn’t do that.  Well, that kind of thinking never pays off in the long run, because now I have a cat who does the very same thing.  

It wasn’t always like this, but somewhere along the line a litter box got moved facing the wrong direction.  Herman changed his orientation inside and wham-o, now we can’t for the life of us keep that cat’s piss inside the box.  Who knew our dry, contained reality was so fragile? 

That single change of direction soon set in motion a cascading avalanche of new litter box technologies at our house, each tried one after another and soon dismissed.  Finally, Hank was forced to invent his own “solution,” and this current set-up is by no means ideal.  What Hank has brought into the world is nothing short of a litter-box mansion, a box within a box, which if you ask me (and Hank did not) is a rather extreme response.   Yes, the litter mansion has solved the issue of escaping piss, but it’s caused its own problems, not least of which being that it’s ugly, it’s huge, it stinks, AND it’s in my living room.

Outside on my patio lie the wreckage of boxes that didn’t work.  The closest one to working, The Buddha Dome Deluxe, is a lovely lavendar dome with stairs spiraling up to the box proper.  How, you may wonder, did Herman Panther manage to twist his piss out of this arrangement? 

I don’t know how, I only know that at some point Herman became a horizontal urinator.  And the force of his stream can seep right through seams, around corners, down stairwells.  It’s remarkable really.  It’s made mince-meat of the best litter-box architects of our time, and I have the pile of defeated attempts to prove it.

So for now, the new litter mansion keeps the problem at bay, so to speak, and creates more problems, like all the time it takes Hank to clean the various litter-mansion rooms.  I did manage to find a nice grass mat to hide the hideous thing with, and that’s about as resolved as we can get on that topic.  Sorry, Martha, the truth ain’t too pretty sometimes.

Just because I channel my cats’ self-improvement tips here at Self Help for Cats does not mean my household is beyond having its own seasonal and other feline challenges.  The trouble started a few years back…

When Herman saw Santa Claws out the window on our first Christmas morning at the house where I now live, he went utterly ballistic and turned on his very best friend, Brody.  I had to jump out of bed to separate the fighting madcats with a broom and sweep Herman Panther into another room, closing the door on the devil cat he had become.  Peace on Earth it wasn’t.

Herman, we have since learned, was suffering from his first case of displaced aggression. He saw a cat outside (ever since known by the name Santa Claws) and got so upset and confused, he failed to regonize the friend he sleeps on top of every day of the year.  After a short while apart, he calmed down and was absolutely fine again with Brody.

Now, after a few similar episodes ever so often, Herman did get better.  After he got used to the house more and that one time he got outside  for a few hours. That seemed to really help him, even though it scared the hell out of me when I realized he’d escaped. (He was found sauntering the sidewalk looking supremely confidant for an indoor cat).  For a blissful year, Herman’s occasional aggression seemed to be cured.

Unfortunately, Herman also struggles with Catfood Gobbling Syndrome, as I named his need to inhale food.  He’s had some see-sawing weight issues that have finally landed heavy on the unacceptably-fat side.  Herman is dangerously overweight, putting him at risk for bad cat diseases, including diabetes and more. He needs to lose several pounds.

Unfortunately, our efforts at weight-loss, like taking the food away so it’s not available at all times, has stirred Herman’s animosities.   He complains loudly and has even taken to going outside the box.  Once, he started pissing on the bed when we were in it!  Herman’s stress has also led to a couple of aggressive incidents with Brody. 

Clearly, Herman is upset about getting his food limited.  And because our other cat needs more food (he’s older and has not adjusted to food not being left out), Herman is very likely mad at the sense Brody is getting preferential feeding. It all came to a head with the cats fighting at 6 am starting a yelling argument between me and Hank. So we got cats fighting now AND people fighting.  Peace on Earth doesn’t stand a chance.

Well, we’re all just trying to chill now, and make sure everyone gets enough grooming, doting, feeding, and playing to feel like we can make it through these holidays. Between this month’s traffic accident, totalled car, big pay-cut, roof leaks, not to mention the residue of stress from larger bad news sources, my cats haven’t had it easy being my dharma protectors of late.  In fact, I better end this sad report and go wake them up and get them to play.  I’m on a mission for World Peace and feline weight-management, if I have to accomplish it one cat at a time.

I welcome your stories, ideas, and solutions.  May many Happy Chill-Out Days come to you and your humans!  Peace and purrs to all!

Picture a quiet night by the Christmas tree. You sink into your comfy recliner and think about how nice it is to feel so relaxed, and then, wait, what’s that?  The Christmas tree starts to shake violently, all the baubles banging and clanging. “What the hell?” you blurt!  The tree is absolutely possessed.  Like at any moment it could split open and give birth to the alien.

You stare deeper through the pine needles and the tinsel and something is –staring back!  Then you recognize it.  That’s not the alien glaring back at you;  It’s the very wide eyes of your cat having the closest thing to a back-to-the-wild experience he is ever going to have in your living room. 

Now you see him ratcheting his way up the Christmas tree trunk, branch by branch, causing the entire tanenbaum with trappings to undergo something like a 6.0 catquake. The moment you realize it’s your cat causing the localized hurricane is the moment your cat finds your extremely-precious heirloom ornament. You watch in horror as he winds up to give it a good bat with his paw to send it flying across the room.

“Nooooo!” You yell, hurling yourself into space like a wide receiver to save the small piece of family history.

Okay, maybe this hasn’t happened to you.  But whether your cat ignores the Christmas tree, climbs it, or silently sabotages it by drinking all its water, you can watch other people’s cats climb their Christmas trees at a little place called youtube.

Just don’t place your cat in the Christmas tree like some you-tubers obviously did, because this is just asking for trouble.  These people would open Pandora’s Box if they came upon it at a garage sale.

Snow banks are one effective
and pretty way to keep kitty from climbing the tree.

What cat said the Internet was good for nothing?  Someone tell that cat that everything has changed, and all the time humans waste tap tap tapping at their little screens isn’t completely useless after all.  Not when even a monumental day-waster like Facebook can reunite even one cat with their human, as it did this past Friday the 13th.

This single life-saving event completely justifies the millions of human hours spent social software-izing.  Now cats everywhere are ushering in a new era of computer-toleration by cats, for cats.  Today’s computer-savvy feline feels even less guilty sleeping the usual 25 to 27 hours a day while his human taps away….

I don’t know about you, but it’s hot enough here to shave a Maine coon cat.  Hot enough to give a cat a bath.   But why go to such extremes during such extreme temperatures?  It is much better to simply send your cats to camp, where swimming, running through the sprinklers, and riding horseback will give kitty all the cool stimulation he could want, and without the messy razor residue.

Ask yourself, what kind of city cat summer camp fits into your busy summer schedule?  Does the Fluffster need a basic day camp to tramp through the parklands, make friends and mud pies, build forts and chase flags? Or does your cat prefer to feed his own special creative habit?  If so, possibly explore a specialty camp, like cool cat-art camp or kitty outward bound. The possibilities are endless when you make them up yourself as you go along!

Whatever camp you choose for your cats, the important thing to do is remember to always wake up every morning and get your cats ready for another day of fun.  Do this and everyday will be a huge success.  I hope this helps clarify matters during this thought-smashing heat.  Thanks for your time, and as always, feel free to please share your cat’s own summertime aspirations and pursuits, if you like.

Cat airline travel, formerly a feline right of passage, may soon go the way of the Hindenberg, if what the lady from Southwest says is true.

In a recent phone conversation with my partner Hank, the Southwest lady said the airlines are “straying away” from companion animal travel on their passenger planes.  I swear, that’s what she said and that’s the words she used. 

This news comes as a major shock to me.  It just can’t be true.  How are Brody and Herman ever going to see Niagara Falls, the Big Apple, and the remnants of the Berlin Wall if they can’t fly?

Anyway, maybe it’s not true, because I just read another story about how incredibly misinformed some airline employees are about cats and travel.  In fact, as it turns, one new worker was actually telling folks they would have to get their cat fingerprinted if it traveled through Los Angeles International Airport.  Read about it here.

 Well, I obviously need to get to the bottom of this one.  How about you, do you find that the airlines are “straying away” from pet travel, or has your little kitten been wracking up the free flyer miles no problem visiting a hot little Persian they met in Miami?  

I’d love to hear what the real story is for jet-setting kitties, and the people who pack for them.

In East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, there’s a lot of cats.  How many cats? Well, this sentence from the local paper might illustrate:

According to [animal control], scenes of cats roaming around town are more than a usual occurrence in East Longmeadow.

Yes, those roaming-cat scenes, played out more than usually.  Wait, what?  More than usual, for what?  Who is to say what a usual occurrence of roaming-cat scenes is?  What does this tortured sentence mean, and is it going to lead to other tortured sentences, like kitty behind bars?

Okay, sure, this is a serious topic.  All kitties need to get their shots, I suppose, whether they be Tommy B. Homekitty or Felicity Free-Me-or-I’ll Freak Feral.  But if the Universe had meant for kitty to need a license, couldn’t it have furnished him with a neat little back pocket? 

Anyway, animal licenses are so dog.   If we start licensing cats, I think we need to find a way to felinize the entire process.  I’m not sure what that would look like, but the best minds of our generation should be able to come up with something.