Cats 101

Knowing how crazy his wife is about cats, my husband records every TV program that has cats in it.  Of course when Cats 101 came out on TV not too long ago - unfortunately I don't remember if it was shown on Animal Planet or Discovery Channel - my husband promptly recorded the series for me.  We found the series very entertaining as we both enjoyed watching the cute kittens of all the different breeds of cats.  Some we had never seen before.  We were just amazed at some of the tales that were told in between the sections that listed the traits for each particular new breed. 

For example, I was totally appalled and amazed at the same time by the story of the cat that got trapped in a container and was shipped all the way to France.  The cat survived for an entire month in that container without food or water!  That would be torture to a human being, not to mention to the tiny creature of a  feline.  If it was a human in that condition, the person would probably have perished in less that time.  The story had a happy ending though with the cat being found finally.  It was even returned to its owners in the US, safe and sound. 

It taught me a lesson that if we loved our pet cats, we shouldn't let them wander outdoors too far away.  If like me, you let them out so they can at least enjoy a little of the freedom that cats used to enjoy when they were wild, you should always make sure that there are barriers to stop them from straying any further. Such as a kitty fence or an enclosure.  We have a kitty fence up now but prior to that I was always at the end of my wits trying to find my very athletic, fence-jumping orange kitty, scared he would be lost forever. Even with the fence, at the end of the day, to this day, I always do a head count and make sure that none of my kitties are missing. 

I couldn't bear it if one of my kitties (the one I mentioned above often did) jumped the fence and got run over by a car while on the loose on the streets in my neighborhood.  I've seen too many dead cats on the roads and it would simply kill me if due to my own human folly, one of my beloved cats was struck by a terrible and fatal accident.

House Cats' House Calls

Cat owners nationwide have by now, I'm sure, seen the TV show House Cats House Calls. The host of the show is Aussie vet "Dr. Katrina" and she consults two other featured vets for her cases. Being owners of four cats, my husband and I watch this show regularly not just to admire the cats belonging to other people but to find a solution to a major problem among our cats. We must have watched 10 or more episodes and each episode consisted of three "cases".

To date, however, the show has failed to present a difficult problem such as ours which involves three of our four cats spraying in various parts of our house. All the cases in this show are very easy to solve and invariably in every case Dr. Katrina recommends a kitty condo or a tree and some toys and presto, case solved.

Animal Planet has a much better show called "Barking Mad". Produced in Britain, the show does not concentrate only on correcting behavioral problems of the felines species but those of other animals as well. But when it does make a house call for a house cat or cats, the show makes the bold effort to tackle the most challenging issues faced by the cat owner/s.