How much do cat owners really know about their feline friends? Do our pampered pets really want all that food and affection or is that insistent miaow trying to communicate something more complex?
Many cats and their owners co-exist in an atmosphere of polite misunderstanding, with each party blissfully unaware of the wishes of the other. The cat ‘says’ one thing and the owner hears another, but somehow it works. Until, that is, something goes wrong …
Renowned cat counsellor Vicky Halls has helped hundreds of owners and their problem cats. Why do they soil in the house, behave aggressively or pull out their own fur? Cat Confidential answers these questions and many more, and will enable all cat owners to reach a far better understanding with their feline companions.
In her fascinating, funny, heart-warming and occasionally tear-jerking book, Vicky Halls has finally revealed the innermost secrets of the feline psyche.
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: The New Kitten
Annie’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Choosing the right kitten
Kitten litter training
Introducing a new kitten to the household
Holidays and catteries
Chapter 2: The Scaredy Cat
Spooky’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
The development of personality
Living with nervous and timid cats
Physical effects of anxiety
Sudden-onset fear
Chapter 3: The Aggressive Cat
Bln’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Play aggression
Territorial aggression
Assertive aggression
Chapter 4: The Indoor Cat
Bakewell’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Stimulating the indoor cat
The ‘stir crazy’ phenomenon
The destructive results of ‘idle paws’
Chapter 5: The Multi-Cat Household
Lucy’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Multi-cat households – the pitfalls
Mitigating circumstances for indoor soiling
Urine spraying indoors
Cat flaps – curse or blessing?
Interpreting feline social behaviour
Chapter 6: The Weird Cat
Bink’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Bizarre and unusual behaviour
Pica, the cat that ate a Doc Marten boot and other stories
Self-mutilation and over-grooming
Chapter 7: The Human/Cat Bond
Zulu’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Over-attachment – the human/cat bond
Unsociable cats
‘Kitty Prozac’ – how a cat’s condition can mirror its owner
Munchausen’s by proxy – a distressing case
Chapter 8: The Elderly and Disabled Cat
Hoppy’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
The special needs of elderly cats
Night-calling and senility
Disabled cats – the cat with two and a half legs
Chapter 9: Coping with Bereavement
Puddy’s story with case histories and advice relating to:
Identifying pain and suffering
How pain can affect behaviour
Getting the timing right for euthanasia
Coping with bereavement
Epilogue
Picture Section
About the Author
Also by Vicky Halls
Copyright
CAT CONFIDENTIAL
Thank you for everything, Mum, this is for you
Thanks to my agent, Mary Pachnos, for her invaluable help at the beginning to make this book a reality and to Helen Newey at Good Relations for introducing us. Thanks also to Francesca Liversidge and the team at Transworld for their support and enthusiasm. I would also like to thank those veterinary surgeons who have supported my behaviour referral practice over the years. It is safe to say that this book would never have been written if it hadn’t been for all my wonderful clients and their cats. You all have a special place in my heart. A big thank you to Peter, the brilliant custodian of my own cats; I couldn’t have done this without you. Thanks to Sharon Maidment, Diane Sexton, Pat and Richard Shoebridge, Ruth Yates, Lee Boulton, Jean Perry, Danielle and Frank Gunn-Moore, Valerie Walter and Mark Evans for giving me confidence and encouragement and to Sharon Cole for laughing in all the right places. I mustn’t forget a real debt of gratitude to Janet Valentine, who started the whole cat-behaviour-ball rolling back in 1983. Lastly, a very special thank you to Nick Murphy, the best friend any woman could have, who never stopped believing I could write this book.
Cat lovers, or ailurophiles to be absolutely correct, like nothing better than to talk about their cats. They fill their homes with cat pictures and cat tea towels and cat books and cat calendars and cat jewellery. They live with the most pretty, handsome, clever and intelligent cat in the world and they have a thousand stories for anyone who cares to hear them. However, for most people these charming anecdotes are easier to narrate than to listen to. Not me.
I earn a living by visiting people in their homes, drinking tea from their cat mugs and listening to their stories about their cats. I never get bored. I love every one. Some are sad, some funny, but all are important to my work. I am one of a small band of missionaries who spend our days helping people understand their pets. I call myself a cat behaviour counsellor. Others call me the cat shrink, the pussy doctor (not sure about that one), cat therapist or behaviourist. Whatever the name, the job I do is the same.
Cat ownership has changed dramatically in my lifetime. When I was very young I had to ‘borrow’ my neighbour’s cat and concerned myself with the pleasure of the friendship without having to dwell on the responsibilities of ownership. Cat food was limited to a number of canned products and Jenny, my part-time pet, used to have some tinned cat food and some scraps from the table. I have to say that the ‘scraps’ Jenny enjoyed, being a pedigree Siamese of impeccable breeding, used to be tinned salmon and double cream! The rest of the owner involvement, as far as I could tell from my child’s perspective, comprised letting her in or out when she cried at the door and the occasional stroke or cuddle. A bit of chatting whilst making the dinner and the typical owner/cat relationship of the 1960s was established. There were far fewer cats around in those days and far fewer people. The family unit was strong, people worked hard without many of today’s labour-saving devices, and watching television was a half-hour treat rather than a major pastime. Neighbours were friendly, people were trusting and life ticked along. I am sure that I am looking back with the eyes of a child but people and cats appeared to be living a relatively stress-free existence. Cats were being cats and people treated them like cats. Veterinary care was limited in comparison to today, with far less emphasis on preventative medicine and general care. People rarely needed counselling and cats didn’t have psychiatrists; one could argue that they didn’t need them.
So what went wrong? What happened in the space of forty years that changed everything? Consumerism? Social overcrowding? Stress caused by the high expectations of modern life? The breakdown of the family unit? I have asked myself this question a thousand times whilst sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 on my way to see another emotional wreck of a cat. I believe a combination of many factors has led to a totally different style of pet ownership and care in the twenty-first century. We work harder than ever and often live in social isolation. There are now more single people living alone than ever before, myself included. Yet we still have a need for company and an even greater need to love and be loved, so we acquire a cat. We then place that cat with several others in the household (after all we can’t get enough of them and we have an awful lot of love to give) or put them in a territory full of other people’s cats. Or, worst of all, we demand an emotional relationship that the cat cannot possibly hope to provide. Inevitably, any of these factors has an enormous impact on this small carnivorous species and it develops emotional or behavioural problems that have never before been seen or adequately explored.
That is why cat behaviour counsellors like me exist. We are merely specialists with patience and knowledge who help the owner understand the problem and deal with it effectively and sympathetically. When I first started identifying and tackling these issues there were very few practitioners of the art. Many were academic scholars of veterinary medicine, zoology or psychology and the founders of the science of behaviour counselling. I am fortunate enough to have acquired a vast amount of practical experience in this field at a time when few others were out there in people’s homes resolving their problems. Since the early 1990s the profession has grown beyond belief. Hundreds of students study the science of pet behaviour at universities and through correspondence courses. There is a great interest in the subject through media exposure, predominantly television programmes such as Barking Mad and Pet Rescue. Despite all this, people still feel that I do a ridiculous job, with the two most frequent comments being ‘How can you possibly train a cat?’ and ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Other comments I receive are probably not worth repeating but I have to accept that it is a difficult concept to grasp.
I have therefore decided to write this book to explain what I do and why people need my services at all. Throughout the chapters it will become apparent that I use a great many human analogies to illustrate various points. I adopt this style in my consulting to enable difficult principles of behaviour in a complex species to be understood from our own perspective. Parallel emotions can thus be experienced, and the owner then remarks, ‘I’ve never really looked at it like that. How awful for him!’
I must however take great pains to point out that I don’t condone anthropomorphism: basically, attributing human thoughts to animals. This is of course wrong (cats are not small people in fur coats) but most of us can’t help doing it to a varying degree. It is often the basis of many inter-species relationships. If using examples based on it helps to resolve the pet’s emotional issues then I confess I am guilty!
Some problems that owners experience with their cats are not medical. They cannot be treated with tablets or surgery; this in itself is a difficult concept for many people. What remains are the behavioural, psychological or emotional problems that owners will constantly excuse and compensate for but which eventually come to control the household so that disharmony reigns. I am frequently amazed at how tolerant we cat owners are.
Many times I have visited people who have been living with a house-soiling problem for years. Suddenly, six years or so down the line, they decide they can bear it no longer and it becomes an emergency that has to be dealt with. Often they seek help after such a long period because they have only just discovered that help is out there. I visited a household in London once that had been experiencing a persistent problem with one of their Burmese cats. He had been spraying urine around the house for some time and they had come to the end of their tether. During the course of my consultation, I leant down and touched the wall just above the skirting board to point to the urine. As my finger touched the wall it disappeared into the plaster and ended up in the cavity beyond as the wall disintegrated. It was very difficult, as I recall, ignoring the obvious fact that I had just damaged my client’s property. So now we know. It’s official. Cat urine destroys plaster!
Another lady I remember with fondness requested my assistance with a toilet-training problem with one of her pets. As the meeting progressed and I discovered that this sweet little cat had been peeing in the hallway for sixteen years, I rather felt that this was probably the way the situation would remain. I have been accused of magic and witchery in the past but I’m not really up to miracles.
There is no doubt that problems identified and tackled quickly are easier to resolve. The fact that most cases I see concern behaviour that has been evident for years is testimony to the tolerance and forgiveness of the typical cat owner. We love them so much we can excuse almost anything!
Without exception the one thing that all my clients have in common is this enormous and generous love for their cats. It is a very specific kind of love. It is nurturing, self-sacrificial and utterly compliant. What the cat wants, the cat gets (with knobs on). Unfortunately occasionally something goes wrong and the cat behaves in such a way that it is quite apparent all is not right with his world. The owners are often burdened with an incredible sense of failure and guilt when they request my services. They feel that the problem has occurred as a result of some oversight or omission on their part and, somehow, they have let their beloved pet down. This is rarely the problem. If they are guilty of anything it is that they love their cat too much.
I had an initiation by fire in the early nineties when I was given an incredible insight into the ‘behind closed doors’ nature of the potential human/cat bond. The owner was a lady in her early forties; I shall call her Miss X because somehow that seems appropriate. She had requested my advice regarding her cat’s dependency. Miss X was soon to be travelling away from home and there was a need for her cat to have a short stay in a cattery. Since the two had ‘never slept apart in eleven years’ she felt this might be potentially distressing for him. I remember I found this admission about their nocturnal habits rather disconcerting and prepared for the meeting at her home with some interest but, naively, no trepidation whatsoever.
She lived in a small flat on the second floor of a large Victorian building. When I entered the flat I was immediately aware that this was not a typical cat lover’s home. No cat ornaments or pictures apart from one extremely grand portrait in oil of her beloved pet. As I went to sit down in the living room her cat was watching me closely and promptly nipped me hard as I put my hand into my briefcase to remove my notepad. It was afterwards that Miss X told me I was only the second visitor to enter her flat over the past year (the first being the gas engineer). As the consultation unfolded I was aware of the fact that it wasn’t going to go my way. It is extremely important in my job to maintain control of the discussion, otherwise questions that need to be asked get forgotten and the history-taking becomes incomplete. However, on this occasion it was clear that Miss X virtually had a script in her head about her relationship with her cat and nothing was going to stop her telling her story to a captive audience. So I sat back and listened.
Miss X was a very intense and eloquent lady who related her tale under the close scrutiny of her cat. She purchased him as a kitten from a local breeder and when she brought him home she provided him with a small bed on the floor in her bedroom and allowed him to explore. The first night he was very fretful and she gently lifted him into her bed for comfort. It was apparent that this had remained the sleeping arrangement since. A great deal of what she was saying was typical of an over-attached owner. She did absolutely everything for him and would rather spend time with him than with anything or anyone. She always fed him first and gave him bottled water and freshly cooked fish every day. When she spoke of him she used very personal terms and attributed many human traits and feelings to him; it was sometimes hard to remember that she was talking about a cat and not a partner. It was when she started to talk about her incredible love for her cat that I began to feel a little apprehensive. She felt an enormous sense of responsibility for him since she had taken him away from his mother. She said she believed she was his god and that his world revolved around her and the world she had created for him. She told me with some anger that her own mother had indicated that she was obsessed with her cat. She denied this vehemently and said their love for each other was merely that of one creature for another. It was love in its purest form and the lack of physical or sexual desire made it very special. It was his right to demand food, love and a cuddle. It was also his right to sleep in her bed and she should never deny it. She was also tormented by the thought that she would be punished in the afterlife if she died before her cat. This created a further dilemma for her, as she knew she would never be ready to lose him. Apart from a terminally ill mother in a local nursing home she had no other focus in her life.
This will always remain the most upsetting case I have ever had to deal with. Over the years I have seen a lot of cats in extreme distress and witnessed many owners crying over their problems with their pets. But Miss X’s life has taught me a very important lesson about the concept of the human/animal bond. We can all experience the most incredible sadness, despair and sense of isolation. A pet cat can be an important but potentially fragile crutch. They are largely ill equipped to cope with this.
I tried to provide Miss X with sensible and positive advice about encouraging a sense of self-reliance in her cat by promoting other activities for him outside the relationship. I had absolutely no hope whatsoever that this would resolve their complex problem. I hadn’t heard from her for several weeks when she made a telephone call to the veterinary practice where I was then working. She told me she was calling from her mother’s room in the nursing home. In the background I could hear a man talking and Miss X told me that it was the priest giving her mother the last rites as she approached death. She said I was her only friend and she wanted me to be with her when her mother died. I will never forget that day.
Not all of my stories are quite so tragic. Mostly they focus on the positive things that can be done in even the most difficult situations. My office is festooned with cards and gifts from owners who, almost without exception, make the comment that I have changed their lives. Unless you have experienced the distress of a loved pet ‘gone wrong’ it is difficult to comprehend the enormous strain it can put on relationships and day-to-day living. One couple, Joy and Ian, were struggling with a house-soiling problem that had dominated their lives for two years. They loved their little cat, Whiskey, dearly but he had started to behave badly. He had taken to the delights of urinating behind the sofa and no amount of punishment, reassurance or tin foil deterrents made any difference. Their social life had plummeted (who wants to have drinks and witty conversation in a room that smells like a urinal?) and their own relationship had suffered from frayed nerves and a sense of divided loyalties. Ian, like any man, wanted a solution that was black and white: ‘If he can’t be fixed, rehome him or put him to sleep.’ Joy could not even contemplate the implications of either option and in reality neither could Ian. They were both in utter turmoil and living in frustrated isolation from all their friends who wondered why they had withdrawn from circulation.
One day Joy read a magazine article about my work and immediately called me. We had a long chat on the telephone and suddenly Joy’s spirits lifted as she saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I made no promises other than that I would do my very best. We met later that week after she had consulted her veterinary surgeon and arranged for a urine sample to be analysed to check there was nothing medically wrong. The vet reported that Whiskey was physically well but after spending some time with him I realized he was, emotionally, very worried indeed. He had an ongoing battle with a neighbourhood cat and it would often stare at him through the patio doors and bang on his magnetic cat flap to try to get into the house. Whiskey was terrified of him and his nerves had gone straight to his bladder. He was retaining urine to bursting point and, when he was seeking sanctuary behind the sofa one day, his bladder just had to let go. This was the start of the whole problem and he had returned to the same place ever since whenever he needed to urinate because he felt safe there.
I devised a plan. With the aid of strategically placed litter trays, the removal of the soggy section of carpet and a little play therapy with a feather on a stick we were well on the way to a happier Whiskey. Joy and Ian were amazed; of course they had tried litter trays before but they just hadn’t put them in the right place. Over the next few weeks, following all the advice I gave them, Whiskey became relaxed and playful and they fell in love with him all over again. They felt their lives were transformed as they started to see their friends and restore a degree of normality to the household. Every Christmas Whiskey and many other ‘ex-patients’ send cards; I am probably one of the few people on this planet who receive more season’s greetings from cats than humans! It’s one of the many rewards for doing this incredible job.
Thousands of cats and their owners have touched my life over the years. Without exception they have all taught me individual lessons and every day, still, I learn something new. I hope this book will encourage you to really appreciate the nature of your relationship with your pets and to cherish them for it!
Annie’s Story
ANNIE WAS NOT the first cat I ever owned but she was the very first kitten. As with most things in my life I adopted an ‘initiation by fire’ approach to learning and decided that a well-adjusted domestic kitten from a loving home was just too easy. Surely it would be more challenging and beneficial to play surrogate mother as well? I was working with the RSPCA at the time when Annie came into my life. It was a shelter funded by the goodwill of the local people and it was always busy. I remember distinctly that a gentleman came in one morning clutching an old sweater containing a creature of some sort. We were quite used to everything from seagulls to snakes arriving in this way and usually took bets on the species the garment contained. In this particular instance it was a thousand fleas with a small ten-day-old black and white kitten attached to them. The poor mite was in danger of dying from anaemia from all the blood-sucking parasites to which it was playing host so my first job was to remove as many as possible and provide warmth and nourishment in the form of powdered kitten milk. Little Orphan Annie (Annie for short) had been found all alone in a field and the kind gentleman had driven some distance to bring her to us. My boss at the shelter, Rex, felt it would be good practice for me to hand-rear her. Looking back I can see how true it is that ignorance is bliss, but I really didn’t fully appreciate the enormous responsibility of providing a tiny new cat with a good blueprint for life. After all, I was far too busy feeding her at one end and inducing the necessary bodily functions at the other with the aid of warm water, cotton wool and a degree of gentle persuasion. At the time we were sharing our home with an elderly male cat called Hoppy (you’ll meet him later) who had agreed to take over the running of the household for the princely sum of a seat by the fire and a limitless supply of prawns. Hoppy became invaluable in the rearing of Annie as we discovered his extraordinary paternal instincts towards the tiny newcomer. He soon took over the toilet arrangements and bottom washing (that was definitely the last time I let him lick my face) and became a feline swing and activity centre for Annie as she grew. I can see him now, trying to look dignified with a small black and white kitten dangling from one ear like a piece of jewellery.
Hand-rearing is never the ideal start for any kitten but sometimes it is essential for the survival of orphans or those whose mothers reject them. A better alternative would be to find a surrogate mother with a litter of a similar age since these females often accept other kittens and rear them as their own. In the absence of a feline family the responsibility rests on the shoulders of humans to do a half-decent job. Rearing single kittens can often be a problem as they are automatically deprived of the ability to interact with siblings or other kittens of a similar age. Young cats also learn a great deal from their mothers. Cats are extremely effective observational learners, able to learn new behaviours by observing another cat’s actions. I wonder what they learn by watching us? Single kittens can lack social skills in later life and find it difficult to interact with their own species. Annie often seemed to get it slightly wrong when she bumbled up to my other cats and got a cuff round the head for her trouble.
There is also a rather disturbing incidence of adult aggression in hand-reared cats. Research indicates that this could be down to the inability of humans to accurately mimic the behaviour of the feline mother during the weaning process. As a kitten starts to eat solids there are going to be occasions when he still returns to mum’s milk bar for top-up feeds. These are allowed or rejected at the whim of the mother and this teaches the youngsters a very important lesson in life. Frustration! You don’t always get what you want and you have to learn to deal with it without going into a complete temper tantrum. If the process hasn’t quite gone according to plan when a human and a syringe play the role of mother then things can become problematical. Every time the adult cat doesn’t get what it wants it cannot look up the rule book on ‘how to deal with frustration’ because it never learnt it as a kitten. The results can be painful and disappointing.
Apart from the practical demands of being a surrogate mother there are many other considerations. When you see the incredible amount of growing that a kitten packs into a few short weeks, both physically and behaviourally, it is hard to imagine a more demanding and significant role than ‘mother’.
Just take some time to remind yourself how quickly a kitten develops.
Kittens’ responses are limited during the first two weeks of their life and their very existence is totally dependent on the mother. They respond to her warmth and her touch and there is a strong instinct to find a teat using scent. Kittens often form a preference for one particular teat, their acute sense of smell enabling them to do so. At this age the kittens are relatively immobile and they can only use a slow paddling movement to travel very short distances around their mother and within the nest area. For up to three weeks the kittens are totally dependent on the mother’s milk for nutrition. All nursing is initiated entirely by the mother. During the first two weeks of life the eyes will usually open at some time between seven and ten days, although any time between two and sixteen days is normal. Teeth are also starting to erupt at about two weeks of age to prepare the youngsters for rather more challenging mealtimes.
During the third and fourth week the tiny kittens’ vision starts to play a role in guiding them towards their mother, rather than relying on her warmth and smell alone. A rather staggering walk appears during the third week and by four weeks of age the kittens can move a reasonable distance away from the nest. Around this time they start to develop the body-orientating reaction that will enable them to right themselves in mid-air when they are falling (such a useful technique for all adventurous felines). Under free-living conditions, mothers start to bring live prey to their kittens from four weeks after birth onwards to enable the youngsters to experiment with the manipulation and consumption of prey. Four weeks is also the age at which kittens normally start to eat solid food (or at least walk through it and inhale it up their noses).
By the fifth week the kittens are all over the place, showing brief episodes of running, and by six weeks they have started to move like mini-adults. As the weaning progresses the kittens become increasingly responsible for initiating bouts of nursing, not all of them met with compliance from the mother. By this time voluntary elimination has developed, and kittens are no longer dependent on their mother to lick their perineum to stimulate urination. (This is the time when it’s essential to get the litter training right.)
Kittens have begun to show adult-like responses to threatening social stimuli. They will run, freeze or show aggressive behaviour just like mother to scary sights, sounds and smells. Weaning is largely completed by seven weeks after birth.
Complex motor abilities, such as walking along and turning around on a narrow fence, still take time to develop and may not be fully effective until ten to eleven weeks after birth. Visual acuity continues to improve until twelve to sixteen weeks. Sexual maturity can occur from six months of age (occasionally even earlier) and social maturity (adulthood) at any time between eighteen months and four years of age. There you have it! The kitten is all grown up in the space of two short years.
Social play with siblings plays a role in the development of later social skills. Kittens with no experience of siblings when young do eventually form social attachments but are generally slower to learn social skills than normally reared kittens. Solitary kittens also do not learn to hold back their bites in agonistic play behaviour if they target human hands rather than siblings. A person cannot possibly teach the boundaries of acceptable levels of physical force as well as another kitten.
Social play becomes prevalent by four weeks of age and continues at a high level until twelve to fourteen weeks, when it begins to decline. Social play fighting can sometimes escalate into serious incidents, especially during the third month. Play with objects develops at around the time when live prey is being introduced to the nest by the mother and kittens start to gain the eye–paw co-ordination that enables them to deal effectively with small, moving objects at around seven to eight weeks after birth.
Social play mimics agonistic social behaviour and predatory behaviour. There is however no evidence to prove that play increases successful predatory behaviour in adulthood. The latter appears to be influenced by observation of the mother, experience with prey when young and possibly competition between litter mates in the presence of prey. Despite early influences most cats become competent predators, albeit with particular preferences for the type of prey.
Anyone involved with cats will know how each individual has a unique character. The beauty of my job is that no two cats or problems are the same. Adult cats and kittens show considerable variation in their friendliness towards humans, whether familiar or unfamiliar. Even kittens from the same litter can differ markedly in this respect. If a group of six kittens, for example, is observed it will soon be apparent that one is shy, a couple are rather confident, one is exploring the room and knocking things over and the other two are seeking the company of humans and purring like trains. A different response to the same situation gives each cat its own unique personality.
A cat’s personality is developed as a result of both genetic and environmental influences. Genes ‘programme’ an individual with the potential to react in a certain way in certain circumstances. The individual’s life experiences then influence whether that behaviour is ever actually expressed and to what level. The most significant behavioural and emotional development takes place at a very early age. The sensitive period is considered to be between two and seven weeks of age. During this time positive exposure to humans and other species allows the kittens to potentially form social bonds with anything from chickens to chihuahuas. This process is referred to as ‘early socialization’ and is very much the responsibility of the breeder. Kittens should ideally not be placed in their new homes until they are twelve weeks old. This enables them to spend as much time as possible with their mother and siblings, from whom they can potentially learn a great deal.
Exhaustive research has been conducted into this sensitive period and the amount and type of handling that is required to give the kittens the best possible start. The conclusion of the studies is that handling by a number of different people during this time will tend to increase the sociability towards humans. Positive exposure to environmental challenges such as noise, children, dogs, different locations and even car journeys will better equip the individual to cope with life in the future. Don’t you wish, whilst you are driving to the vet and listening to the cacophony from the cat basket in combination with the heady aroma of a hurried bowel motion, that your cat had experienced car journeys as a ‘toddler’?
Whilst the period between two and seven weeks is usually outside the owner’s influence it is still important to stimulate the three-month-old kitten as much as possible with a variety of challenges since lessons and positive associations can be learnt at any age providing the appropriate genetic ‘blueprint’ is present.
There are numerous ways to scientifically categorize character and personality, but there are two basic models, ‘excitable and reactive’ and ‘slow and quiet’. Variations in excitability and timidity may well be caused by inherited differences, such as the amount of adrenalin released when faced with a challenge. (Cats have an instinctive ‘fight or flight’ response to danger and this is fuelled by the release of adrenalin that pumps blood into the muscles and away from non-urgent places such as the gut.) This variation in response can be illustrated beautifully by trying a little experiment when you are next sitting in front of the television. Move your foot quickly across the carpet a couple of inches from one side to the other. If your cat is now airborne then he is ‘excitable and reactive’. If he is still lying on his back snoring he is ‘slow and quiet’. Get the picture?
Certain breeds are often described by their temperament. For example, Siamese are considered to be sociable, affectionate, sensitive and vocal. They are also prone to eat wool, spray urine on their owners to get their attention, and pull their fur out, but that’s another story. Burmese are traditionally assertive and outgoing with a tendency to be aggressive and territorial, and the Persian is placid whilst having a very tenuous grasp on toilet training. Such descriptions must imply that these characteristics are inherited. With regard to the behavioural traits it has to be said that these are personal observations based on my caseload over the last ten years and not derogatory remarks about three of this country’s most popular (and highly delightful) breeds!
I would never recommend that potential cat owners start with such a challenging task as a two-week-old but there are many months of fun to be had when sharing your home with an older kitten. It is possible to go to a pet shop, breeder or rescue centre and purchase a kitten with little planning or preparation. However, I don’t recommend it! I would love to think that I could interest first-timers in the delights of cat ownership but it is a relationship that should be well thought out and planned for to reap all the potential benefits and avoid many of the pitfalls.
For example, we tend to take for granted that all cats will be clean indoors and that successful litter training is pretty inevitable. Whilst most cats remain exquisitely clean all their lives there are always those that fall by the wayside. Preferences can occur for rather inappropriate surfaces and if that surface is your goose feather duvet then I am sure you would do everything in your power to understand your cat and get the toilet habits right from day one.
The case I am about to describe was a joy for several reasons. It illustrates how badly things can go wrong and yet, with the right advice, resolve relatively quickly. It also was one of the few cases I have ever seen involving that delightful breed the Abyssinian (they just don’t misbehave in my experience). From a personal point of view the house was gorgeous. How I love to wander round the homes of the rich and famous! It was a beautiful and graceful place in central London built over six floors. The basement consisted of several family rooms and the ground floor was the kitchen and informal dining room. The other four floors were formal entertaining rooms (wow, even I wasn’t allowed in some of those), bedrooms and bathrooms. I remember getting a really good workout that day going up and down the stairs surveying the damage on the various floors caused by that most invasive liquid – cat urine.
Daisy and Puff were two delightful and friendly female Abyssinians. They were sisters of about five months old and they had been purchased at twelve weeks by the family as pets for their two small children. Needless to say the kids were more excited by the carrier box the kittens came in (well, they were very young) and the care and entertainment of the newcomers fell on the shoulders of Alice, their mum. She had appeared to do everything right. She had purchased numerous toys, scratching posts and food bowls and provided Daisy and Puff with a covered litter tray in a discreet corner of the kitchen. The family had decided to keep the cats as indoor pets because they lived in a very busy part of town and they felt that there was plenty of room for two boisterous cats. They had agreed to keep the formal rooms ‘out of bounds’ but the stairs alone represented a huge area for fun and frolics. The kittens were very bold and inquisitive and they were soon exploring all over the house while the family laughed at the thunderous sounds that eight tiny feet could make up and down the stairs.
After a few days the laughter waned somewhat when a small pool of urine was found on a bath mat in one of the bathrooms on the third floor. Mutterings of ‘babies’ and ‘accidents’ followed and the incident was forgotten until, a couple of weeks later, one of the kittens peed on the duvet on the master bed during an excitable early morning game. Alice and her husband were not amused, and were even less so when several pools and then piles were deposited on other beds, sofas and carpets during the course of the next few weeks. In an attempt to arrest the development of this problem, the kittens were soon confined to the ground floor and basement and provided with a further litter tray in the kitchen. Unfortunately Daisy and Puff continued to use the carpet in the basement as a random toilet arrangement and Alice called me in desperation.
It was easy for me to see the problem and the story provided an important lesson about those crucial first few weeks in a kitten’s new home. To a certain extent the desire to eliminate in a loose substrate is pre-programmed in every little domestic feline brain (their origins lie with the desert-dwelling African wild cat). When kittens start to control their own bowel and bladder function it is a relatively easy process for the mother to teach them the transition to voluntary elimination in a litter tray. If you watch a tiny kitten in a litter tray it is remarkable how it seems to know what is expected of it. This is the first step in forming a habit or conditioned behaviour to use litter, or similar loose rakeable substrate, as a toilet. Eventually there will be little conscious effort to decide where to go; it will be as easy as our trip to the bathroom in the dead of the night whilst still half asleep.
If you visualize the formation of pathways in the brain to create this sort of habit in an analogous way it may help to explain Daisy and Puff’s confusion. Habits are pathways that are well trodden; they are footpaths in the brain’s undergrowth that are so frequently used they are wide passages of bare earth. There is no question which way to go. When you create a new footpath there is a great deal of vegetation to cut through and the way forward is less well defined. When you are travelling down a new footpath it is easy to veer off in another direction and form new routes. Daisy and Puff had a new footpath in their brain that led to an appropriate toilet but there were occasions when, three floors up and having fun, they weren’t entirely clear which way it went when their bladders were full. So they had to make it up as they went along and, when the surface changed underfoot to a yielding one, their brains told them it was time to pass urine or faeces. Every time they felt the same change in surface they would think ‘Toilet!’ Hence a new pathway was formed and the more it was used the more likely it became that they would go down it. Can you see how young kittens can easily develop other surface preferences at an early age?
I explained this principle as best I could to Alice and she suddenly realized that the freedom she had given them had, unfortunately, not been the best plan after all. I devised a programme that concentrated on re-educating the brains of these tiny creatures to eliminate only in the presence of a suitable litter material. Sadly I can’t talk things through with my patients so I have to adjust their surroundings to create situations that cause them to display the desired behaviour. In this case we needed to make a litter tray the most obvious choice when they needed to pee. Alice continued to confine Daisy and Puff to the ground floor and basement (an area that was larger than most family homes anyway). She provided a total of three litter trays, one in the kitchen and two in separate areas of the basement, using my favourite calculation of ‘one tray per cat plus one’. I removed the flap entrance from the covered trays – we didn’t want to make it too difficult – and experimented with a large open tray in the corner of the basement. Alice provided a lovely fine sand-like litter material (after all they are desert-dwellers at heart) that they seemed to adore immediately.
Chapter 5