Earnest Hemmingway once said, “If you want to write, keep cats.”
I don’t know a ton about Hemmingway, but I agree with him about cats.
I love them so much.
I’ve never not had cats. We had cats when I was a kid, and I got a cat as soon as I could when I moved out on my own. Then my boyfriend and I moved in together, and we got more.
I only realized lately how very much I love them. Cats have always been a background noise for me, something that was always there that I didn’t really think about. Cats were good. Cats were there. What else did I need to know?
When our first clowder of cats grew old and died, my husband and I were without cats for a few months. A friend of mine had passed away, and she wanted us to take her cats. Her stepchildren told us we couldn’t have them right away, in case their dad wanted them.
Well, he was developing dementia and couldn’t take care of himself much less the cats. My husband and I knew that already, but it took his sons a while to figure that out. So the cats were released to us about four months after my friend passed away.
The first day I came home from work and had two sweet kitty faces at the door to greet me, my heart overflowed. I knew I liked cats, but I didn’t realize what a necessity they were for me until that moment. I didn’t realize how much I had missed them until I had them back.
My very first cat became overweight within a year or two of me getting her. I was talking to my boss at work about it, and she loaned me a book about cat health and nutrition. That book was my first foray into really learning about cats. Everything I had known until then had been told to me by other cat owners — mostly wrong, it turned out. I started reading more books about cat health. I changed all my cats’ diets, and quickly saw their overall health improve dramatically. Including my chubby cat losing weight without feeding her “lite” or diet food!
After that, one of my cats began to chase and attack one of the others. I asked for help from every source I knew, and no one knew what to do, including the vet. The aggressor had no health issues, and when she kept being vicious, the advice turned from shrugs to “rehome her.”
Most certainly not!
That was my foray into cat behavior. I had the nutrition piece, now I needed to learn how cats think and get my aggressive kitty to think gentle thoughts.
I tried to talk to a few actual trained behaviorists — did you know that in 2005, behaviorists were charging $300 per hour, and thought that asking me to pay for them to fly out from California to Minnesota, pay them a mileage travel fee, pay for their hotels and meals, and then also pay $300 an hour for assistance was reasonable?
Most certainly not.
When I tell you it took nearly three years, I want you to weep for me. But let me tell you, after much reading and studying, much experimentation and trial and error, I damn well figured those cats out on my own. My kitties lived out the rest of their days in peace. They never loved each other, but the aggressive kitty did indeed learn not to be aggressive.
And I learned so much! I started working at a pet store at that time, and I was able to help so many people get a better handle on their pets’ behavior. I know I saved a few lives, because people came back and told me with tears in their eyes that I had saved their cat, either with nutrition or behavior advice.
I really love cats!
