3 proof that cats raise their owners

“If you love to ride, you love to pull a sled,” says the popular wisdom. And if you like cats – you like to take the litter box out, comb out the hair, and sometimes even re-paper. The Mail.ru pet tells us what cats are accustomed to their owners and how to resist furry tutors not to dance to their purring doodle.

Putting things back

Because otherwise you can miss the dearest to your heart and in general… headphones, shoelaces, glasses, prescriptions, rubber bands, jewelry, and everything else that is so much fun to hunt and chew on.

Yes or no?

On the whole, yes, even if it’s hard to give. And above all for the health of the cat.

“When I walk into a room, I take a quick glance to assess what in the environment might be dangerous for the cat. Once my cat went to the vet clinic with a foreign body in the GI tract: x-ray with contrast, emergency surgery, a strict diet, special food. For the owners to keep track of everything, of course, is inconvenient. But it helps not only to save things, but also to keep the beloved pet healthy.”

Get up early

“Hehehe, master, get up for exercise, but let me eat first!” – you have listened to a rough translation of the morning cries of 90 percent of our country’s cat population. The cat’s working day starts at five in the morning, and he sees no reason why you shouldn’t start doing something useful, if only for him, the cat.

Yes or no?

For many owners this is a real disaster – the inability to sleep, which in addition provokes conflicts in the family (“your cat has absolutely cheeky!”), etc. Are a comfortable, revitalizing cat and a cat incompatible?

The lucky people whose cats live in the owners’ regimen share the following tips:

• Ideally, train your cat to sleep in a separate room from childhood or from the moment he enters the house.
• Going to bed at the same time, as cats are very sensitive to their internal clock, tune in quite easily and experience stress if the routine changes.
• Creating certain rituals before bedtime: 1) moving games and climbing: let the cat get physically tired; 2) feeding before bedtime; 3) putting him down.
• If the cat asks for food in the morning, it is better to put away the dry food for the night and buy an auto-feeder, which will give a portion of food to the cat while you sleep. This way the cat will form another psychological bond: the food is not given by the owner, there is no need to wake the owner.
• If the cat wakes you up in order to socialize, there is only one solution: stop reinforcing undesirable behavior. If you get up at the cat’s request and start interacting with it, that’s what you’re doing. Yes, psychologically not responding to yelling is not easy: earplugs to the rescue. It is worth once “to break” – and you will have to start all over again.
• Daily activity: do not let him sleep for a long time (if it is a kitten or a young animal). Opportunities for physical activity: vertical zoning, cat ladders, toys.

“”There is no guarantee that the cat will wean itself off waking you. But if you do everything right, consistently and with patience, the chances are good,” that’s what the cat behavioral correction specialist told us, and we decided to give it a try. We played with the cat at night, closed the door to the bedroom, covered it with pillows, plugged its ears – the cat screamed for a week. On the third day we got a feeding machine and artificial pheromones (“Felivey”) – with this set was immediately better: the screaming stopped more quickly. Result: the cat wakes up as before, about four in the morning, eats, and goes back to bed before we wake up at seven. The hardest thing was for everyone in the family to agree and act the same way.

To live in peace and harmony with a cat, not only do you have to understand and meet her needs, but you also have to respect personal boundaries.

Yes or No?

Proper contact between family members and pets is the basis of a cat’s health: stress makes them sick (the result of a change in hormonal background). One of the first signs of malaise in cats is uncleanliness (for example, due to idiopathic cystitis or simply because they want to surround themselves with their stress-relieving scent).

Zoopsychologists believe that higher primates (humans included) and cats have very different needs for tactile contact. The cat’s way of expressing affection is to be near. By comparison, primates spend hours grooming each other, cats in mutual trust also lick each other, but very briefly. Accepting a creature arranged differently than your own kind is a good exercise in patience and generosity.