Getting the most from your CatZ

To get the most benefit from sharing your home and living with a cat, or cats, it is essential to build a bond between you and your animals based on total trust.

Your cats rely on you for everything: food, water, bedding, toilet facilities, warm dry, and safe accommodation, and your love and affection.  It’s easy for them to take this for granted; that you’ll always provide according to their requirements and that they’re not your cat, you’re their ‘person’, or butler, slave, or Goffer!

The trick is, not to take your cat for granted, and not to let him or her do the same.

Every time I walk into the room where Dino is sitting or sleeping, I say, ‘Hello Dino’ and give him a gentle stroke or tickle.  I call him by name all the time and talk to him in a gentle soft voice.

Whenever he comes near, I greet him and call him up onto the sofa for a chat.

If I’m preparing meat or fish for dinner, I’ll call him over and offer him a tasty treat.

When I see him looking outside, I know he wants to go out, and so I let him.

When he looks at me, then at his dish and back again, I know he wants something to eat, and he gets it.

We’ve established a routine for both breakfast and bedtime.  Breakfast follows a brief walk in the garden, then a quick fuss and tickle before morning knap.

Bedtime is announced with ‘Up-Up!’ and we head upstairs, after a late-night snack of course.

After dinner, I pull up a chair for Dino to join us at the table for after-dinner conversation.  He never jumps up on the table because he knows we are, or have been, eating.

The benefits of having a cat with whom you have total trust come pleasantly when you least expect it.  After a hard day’s work when I collapse into a comfy chair in front of the TV, Dino will appear from nowhere and jump up onto the arm and say ‘hello!’, and it’s such a pleasure to greet my feline friend.

When your cats want to be with you, and they come to you not for food, but just for simple, mutual affection, you know you have total trust, and being a cat’s person is so worthwhile!

Enjoy your CatZ!