Cat thread

[Brennik]

[Signe]

 

[Signe]

[Mosesandstick]

That's the kind of photo that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I hate it.

[Sjofn]

Eeeeeeeeee. <3 <3 <3

[tgr]

Those PAWS!

[tgr]

[Bunk]

This made me laugh, considering how true it is for me.

[Signe]

[Sky]

So, getting tired of waking up every morning at 5am to feed the cat....no matter how much he gets all lovey cuddly. So we got a timed release feeder unit. Yesterday was the first run and he ran and hid from it, I worried because it was loud enough to wake me up, nullifying any positives.

This morning I woke up at 8:30, most of the food had been eaten. Win! First night I've slept all the way through in a couple years.

[Hawkbit]

Can you link your model?

We have the conundrum of having one super finnicky 8lb girl who only eats dry food and a 17.5lb orca cat that hovers.  The orca is a tom who lived the first five years as s stray, but now is 100% indoors.  He's used to eating and grazing all day long, thus he weighs about 5 lbs over what he should. 

So a few days ago I started feeding times instead of grazing, and it's tough.  The girl may or may not eat during a meal, and I'm concerned the change will adversely affect her.  But I wonder if I can get a automated system for every six hours if that would help. 

Let me know how it goes over the next week or two as they adjust. 

[Signe]

Can you link your model?

We have the conundrum of having one super finnicky 8lb girl who only eats dry food and a 17.5lb orca cat that hovers.  The orca is a tom who lived the first five years as s stray, but now is 100% indoors.  He's used to eating and grazing all day long, thus he weighs about 5 lbs over what he should. 

So a few days ago I started feeding times instead of grazing, and it's tough.  The girl may or may not eat during a meal, and I'm concerned the change will adversely affect her.  But I wonder if I can get a automated system for every six hours if that would help. 

Let me know how it goes over the next week or two as they adjust. 

Good grief!  Your cats are my cats!  Except the big boy wasn't a stray as long as yours.  He's the one who had the urinary problem and had his teeny weeny magic twanger whacked off... well, more like filleted.  He's still all boy, though... ish.  Anyway, after his surgery he STILL wanted to eat everything in sight but we have to ignore his complaining for his own good.  As soon as someone opens an eye, he wants feeding.  It doesn't matter how early it is.  The problem being that since he had this surgery, he can only have special wet food and even if it were possible to use some sort of automated thingy, he would eat his food and her food and she's tiny enough.  He eats so fast that we have to elevate his food or he'll regurgitate immediately.  We have to either watch them eat or feed them in separate rooms.  He even tries to push the dog away from her food! There is no hope for my cats.  :(  We are their slaves. 

[Hawkbit]

Ouch!  I understand completely. 

I'm a cat person, but I think from now on I'm a one-cat person, not 3.  I always feel bad when it's just one, because I think a single cat will get lonely.  Invariably, I get another cat and they never really hang out together.

[Sky]

Can you link your model?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00428TOBC/

I just have one cat, though. Not sure how it would help multi-cat competition.

[Hawkbit]

Thanks!  I'll have to try it. 

Now if someone would make a easy to clean pet fountain, I'd be set.  Our drinkwell was great in theory, but had too many nooks and crannies that gathered bacteria.  Kinda defeated the purpose of having it when I was spending 30+min per week cleaning the damn thing.

[Sjofn]

Ouch!  I understand completely. 

I'm a cat person, but I think from now on I'm a one-cat person, not 3.  I always feel bad when it's just one, because I think a single cat will get lonely.  Invariably, I get another cat and they never really hang out together.

Jack and Lizzie don't hang out, exactly, but something about having a second cat around has been good for Lizzie. When it was just her, all her play-fighting would be directed at us, which was ... not good for my arms. I'm sure if Jack were a single cat, he'd be even worse than she was, AND he's already needy as fuck (he loves Lizzie, Lizzie just doesn't love him back) so I can't imagine how much he'd be crawling up my ass if there was no Lizzie for him to pester.

That said, yeah, it does make the feeding part suck a lot. ><

[Signe]

We got Magenta for Lister.  He was a frightened shy kitty when we got him.  We played with him a lot but he needed more exercise than we could provide.  I'm sure he would have become frighteningly chubby (yes, I said chubby) if it weren't for Magenta and the crazy chasing up and down stairs and wrestling they love to do.  He would still hide when people came around though.  It got really bad when Gordon and I split up... he absolutely ADORED Gordon... and hid in my sister's basement and demanded constant attention from me when I moved in there.  Since then, what with other people around all the time he's become pretty social although he pretends to be aloof.  I thought he would go back to hiding after his tragic de-dicking because he was sequestered in my room alone with me for more than two weeks,  but he's done wonderfully and is even down to a almost svelte 14 1/2 lbs last I looked.  If it wasn't for Magenta, however, he'd be entirely too fat to properly clean himself.  I almost renamed him "Jabba the Cat".  I'm so glad it didn't come to that.

[rattran]

My cats all play nice, sleep in piles, groom each other etc.  (Though Dagmar did spend a few months trying to eat the kittens when they were small)
Gf has 3 cats, all 4 years apart, who never even touch each other.  I've been trying to get them to socialize with very little success, but they all do okay with my cats.  She's getting annoyed that 2 of her cats love me more than they love her, but what can you do?

[Signe]

We love who we love.  Even cats.

[MrHat]

Let Taco have his free roam of the house for the first time, usually confine him to a room during the night (still new!).

Woke me up at 2am to say "hey what's up check out how sharp my claws got".

Cute bastard.

[Hawkbit]

I thought you stole my cat for a minute. 

[Furiously]

Thanks!  I'll have to try it. 

Now if someone would make a easy to clean pet fountain, I'd be set.  Our drinkwell was great in theory, but had too many nooks and crannies that gathered bacteria.  Kinda defeated the purpose of having it when I was spending 30+min per week cleaning the damn thing.

We just got one for my cat, who liked to wake us up at 2am demanding water from the tap.  He likes it, I have yet to have to clean it after 1 week so I'm happy so far. But yea, I can see cleaning it being a pain, but probably worth a good nights sleep.

[Signe]

I LOVE YOUR LITTLE PUSSIES SOOOO MUCH!!!!  And the kitties, too!   

[rattran]

A set of test tube cleaning brushes (1", 1/2" and 3/8") make cleaning a drinkwell easy and fast. I switched to the platinum version, even easier.

Having 2 in the house didn't stop Oscar from learning how to turn on the bathroom faucet for a drink though. Wish he'd ever learned to turn it off. And not taught the kittens how to turn it on.

[JWIV]

Thanks!  I'll have to try it. 

Now if someone would make a easy to clean pet fountain, I'd be set.  Our drinkwell was great in theory, but had too many nooks and crannies that gathered bacteria.  Kinda defeated the purpose of having it when I was spending 30+min per week cleaning the damn thing.

We just got one for my cat, who liked to wake us up at 2am demanding water from the tap.  He likes it, I have yet to have to clean it after 1 week so I'm happy so far. But yea, I can see cleaning it being a pain, but probably worth a good nights sleep.

I've tried a few different fountains and finally just gave up.  They all became clogged or just in general a pain in the ass.   I did however just make something last week - We were on vacation and my friends are completely terrible about remembering to give the kitties water.  Rather than trust that maybe this time they'd remember, I made a little DIY gravity fountain that the cats seem to like, and was shockingly 1)not empty and 2)not disgusting when I got back last night.  It was pretty straight forward to make - just a large plastic tray (got it from the Ace Hardware garden section) and a gallon jug of water (careful of the diameter, some of the jugs are too wide and the kitties can't get to the water).  Basically, all I did was use a glue gun to glue the cap of the jug down, and then drill a few holes around the base of the neck of the bottle.

[Engels]

That, my dear sir, is freakin' brilliant.

[Miasma]

I hope you're a good DIY flooring guy too.  For the inevitable day you come home to discover your cats have knocked that over and flooded your kitchen.

[Lantyssa]

Petsmart has a $6 gravity fountain that does well.  Dancer took a little while to get used to it going "glug, glug".  It's good for about a week and not hard to clean.

[Nebu]

Petsmart has a $6 gravity fountain that does well.  Dancer took a little while to get used to it going "glug, glug".  It's good for about a week and not hard to clean.

I used a salad bowl for water when I leave my cats for 4-5 days and it works just fine.  You guys just like to over-engineer things. 

[Ingmar]

As an FYI, we had a plastic gravity fountain thing and our cats were getting some acne on their chins. Got rid of all plastic dishes (they have ceramic/metal only now) and the problem went away. So, not sure plastic is the best choice for making your fountain out of (but maybe a thing specific to the kind of plastic we have, or to our cats, etc.)

[rattran]

The acne thing varies by cat, and how they drink. Having the waterfall fountains solved the chin acne problems for the 2 of 6 cats that had an issue with plastic bowls.

[tgr]

Chin acne can be due to how they drink? Odd, because one of my cats (the longhaired one) did get chin acne, and in the end, after swabbing her chin with antiseptics for a week or so I ended up just pinning her down on the floor, taking the hats off the worst of them and just gently coaxing out the puss. Everything resolved itself within a few days of that, and hasn't shown itself since.

[Nebu]

Chin acne is typically caused by herpes brought about by stress.  It has nothing to do with plastic bowls or containers.

[Hawkbit]

Unless the stress is being caused by plastic bowls or containers.

[Signe]

Who is Freddie in the jar?