Consigli e considerazioni

It is a comonly held belief that cats are independent, self-reliant creatures, very little attached to their cohabiting human, and therefore, creatures that suffer less from removal from home. This couldn't be further from the truth! We are used to often think about the issue of abandonment of dogs, especially as the summer holidays approach.

It's Christmas time and the rush for gifts has started. We go around stalls, stores, and online, to look for the perfect gift to give the people we love and some of us are thinking that the perfect gift could rightly be a little furry friend. Why shouldn't we give a kitten as a gift to a person we love? Let's look at some reasons why this decision could be wrong and, in many cases, detrimental to both the animal and the person who receives it:

What is the most effective tool to solve a problem of cohabitation between man and cat? Knowing how to listen.

Like every year, we approach a season with many holidays, which starts with Halloween and ends with Epiphany. Since october we begin to see around social media images of cats dressed up in costumes ranging from Batman to Freddy Krueger, to Santa Claus, not to mention the endless variety of hats and headbands.

Why is it wrong to have a cat wear a costume? Here are some reasons.

I always hear all sorts of people say: "my cat is crazy!" or "my cat is unbearable, he spites me on purpose!” and so I listen carefully to the description of the misdeeds of the cat in question expecting to hear something really problematic. Yet, most of the time, it's nothing like that: at the end of the conversation I know the cat has no problems, while his human really needs help to understand what it means to be a cat.

There is a growing desire to learn more about the cat and its characteristics; the number of articles, seminars and conferences on the subject grows daily. More and more people are committing their lives to better the coexistence between humans and cats. This is an amazing accomplishment from which to keep going forward with renewed vigor and interest in the cat's well being (and ours too!). But, there is a 'but', and it's about what I like to call the “anthropocentric traps” that hide in the feline behaviour studies.