June 2009

June is Adopt a Cat Month

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A cat lover my whole life, I can’t imagine living without my feline friends. At one point in my life, I did have to give two beloved cats to family members when I brought my baby home from the hospital on oxygen, and it was a tough choice. But now that she’s a preschooler, we’ve got two huggable fur balls rolling around the house, and she loves them just as much as we do.

If you’ve been thinking about getting a cat, or you once had one and miss the company, now is the perfect time to adopt a new pet. Shelters tend to overflow with new litters in the summertime, and these cats and kittens could certainly use a new home. To find a shelter near you, click here.

Cat Intelligence Called into Question

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Do cats have a learning disability that dogs don't have? One researcher won't put it in so many words, but her research into the friendly felines has demonstrated that "cats do not understand cause and effect connections between objects".  Her experiment was not high-tech at all- she basically baited a string with tasty treats (fish and a biscuit), and placed them out of reach  to see "if the cats could work out that pulling on the string would pull the treat closer."

She used three strings: "a single baited string, two parallel strings where only one was baited, and two crossed strings where only one was baited."

Older Cats Need Love, Too

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We love kittens. There’s no questioning that a kitten is one of the top ten cutest things on the planet, and we always wish we could keep our kittens their size forever. Kittens tend to get adopted much more quickly than older cats for the same reason that human babies typically get adopted faster than adolescents—they’re cuter, they’re not yet conditioned to a certain behavior or way of life, and the parent feels that bonding with them will be much easier without so much history.