Aggression is a fairly common behavior problem in cats. There are various forms of aggression. Triggers and targets can vary widely, which can make identifying and correcting the problem challenging for cat parents.Continue Reading
Ingrid King is an award-winning author, former veterinary hospital manager, and veterinary journalist who is passionate about cats.
Cats need to play. Play is vitally important to a cat’s mental and physical health, and it’s especially important for indoor cats. Even though cats may sleep up to 16 hours a day, when they’re awake, they need stimulation, and the best way to accomplish this is with play. In the wild, when lions, tigers, and other wild cats aren’t sleeping, they’re either hunting or teaching their young to hunt. And play is nothing more than channeling your domestic tiger’s hunting instinct into play.Continue Reading
Ingrid King is an award-winning author, former veterinary hospital manager, and veterinary journalist who is passionate about cats.
Veterinarians from UC Davis have discovered, in recently published research, that cats with calico and tortoiseshell coat patterns tend to challenge their human companions more often than cats of other colors. This certainly comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever been owned by a tortie or calico, but I found it interesting that we are starting to see studies that seem to confirm that tortitude is real.Continue Reading
Ingrid King is an award-winning author, former veterinary hospital manager, and veterinary journalist who is passionate about cats.
Your two cats are best friends. They play together, groom each other, and sleep curled up with each other. Then one day, you take one to the vet’s for a check up. When you return from the clinic, instead of receiving a warm welcome, the cat who stayed home hisses and attacks the other cat. Your two former best friends have turned into sworn enemies, and your formerly peaceful home has turned into a battle zone.
Aggression between cats is always a distressing problem for the cats and the humans involved. Whether it’s play aggression, petting aggression, or redirected aggression, dealing with feline aggression is stressful and requires commitment, staying power, and the help of experts such as your veterinarian and/or a feline behaviorist.
The cause of on-recognition aggression is not entirely clear, and the bad news is that it’s not easily fixed.Continue Reading
Ingrid King is an award-winning author, former veterinary hospital manager, and veterinary journalist who is passionate about cats.
It is heartening to me that we’re seeing more and more books on feline behavior that provide solid, actionable information for cat guardians. Far too many cats are surrendered to shelters, or worse, released into the wild to fend for themselves, because of behavior problems that often aren’t all that hard to fix. In The Cat Whisperer: Why Cats Do What They Do – and How to Get Them To Do What You Want, Mieshelle Nagelschneider explains cat behavior and provides easy-to-follow solutions to common behavior problems.Continue Reading
Ingrid King is an award-winning author, former veterinary hospital manager, and veterinary journalist who is passionate about cats.
