Having and living with a cat can be both eventful and uneventful at the same time. As many cat owners know, the life of a feline friend is to find things to do between naps. They sleep for so long, and can knock out for up to 20 hours a day! That’s over 80% of the day gone just sleeping! And for some devious cats, that’s probably not enough, because when they’re awake, they cause so much havoc and chaos that you can’t wait till they go back to sleep.
The cats here are not like that. They’re not destructive or challenging to handle, they’re just exceptionally catlike. Which means to say that their behaviours are very typical of a normal cat, and a normal cat just wants to be lazy, and live their life to the fullest in the simplest of ways. They’re also easily attuned and impressed by different things, like lamps and socks. No, really, there are cats out there that hoard bottle caps, so what’s wrong with the idea of one that hoards socks?
National Geographic did some interesting work on cat behaviour!
They are using behavior that they would use toward their mother—all the behavior they show toward us is derived in some way from the mother-kitten relationship. The kitten learns to raise its tail, rub on its mother, and knead and purr. Grooming is what mothers do back to kittens. So they’re using bits of behavior already in their repertoire to communicate with us. There aren’t very many behaviors—maybe half a dozen.
Cats can learn what they’re not supposed to do. If your cat has developed a habit [of jumping up on the kitchen table], there are limited ways to prevent it. You could use a spring-loaded toy, so when a cat jumps up on something, the toy goes bang and up in the air—the cat doesn’t like that and jumps down. Another reasonably benign [strategy] is to use a child’s water pistol. But make sure the cat doesn’t realize you’ve got it. Cats don’t forgive, and once they realize a person is causing them anxiety or hurt, they keep away.
Acknowledge that cats are sociable animals to a point, but not sociable to the extent that dogs are. A lot of people who have one cat decide they would like to have another cat, thinking two cats are twice as much fun. But the cats may not see it that way. The simple message I would like to get across is if you do want to have more than one cat, go about it in a careful way—and be prepared to give up on it if it doesn’t work.
Did this remind you of any cats you have? Tell us down in the comments!