Ingrid King's Blog: The Conscious Cat, page 395

Allegra and the Muffin Tin Game

Puzzle toys are a great way to keep your cats entertained and mentally stimulated when you can’t play with them. The toys are designed to be filled with treats, and they challenge kitty to retrieve the treats through varied openings in the toys. Most puzzle toy manufacturers recommend using dry food with these puzzles. Since I don’t recommend feeding any dry food, not even as treats, I recommend using freeze dried meat based treats such as Pure Bites or Whole Life.

There’s a huge variety of...

Urban Paw: Stylish and Comfortable Pet Beds from a Company That Cares

Ruby was super excited when I told her that the folks at Urban Paw were sending us two pet beds for review. Unlike Allegra, Ruby likes sleeping in the various pet beds we have around the house, and she’s always up for testing new ones. I was also looking forward to getting a look at the beds because I was intrigued with Urban Paw’s company philosophy.

Headed by a mother and son team, Urban Paw’s mission is to improve the lives of pets and the people who love them. In addition to creating com...

Do You Suffer from Separation Anxiety When You Have to Leave Your Cat?

Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) is a well-documented psychological condition in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home or from those to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment. And while we usually think of separation anxiety in terms of pets being stressed about being separated from their guardians, I think it exists in reverse, too. For most of my adult life, I’ve felt anxious about traveling – and I actually like to travel. I’m not...

Conscious Cat Sunday: Simplicity

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the
wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit.
Henry David Thoreau

For most of us, life these days is anything but simple. We live in a world where being busy is considered a badge of honor. We’re drowning in information as we’re trying to manage the endless flow of it from our multiple devices. We’re urged to buy more stuff, get more done in a shorter am...

Mews and Nips: Japan’s Most Famous Cat Gets Enshrined as a Deity

When Tama, the famous Japanese stationmaster cat, passed away last week, she was given quite a send off. An estimated 3,000 mourners came to pay their respects, and Tama was enshrined as a Shinto goddess. Tama was appointed stationmaster at a Japanese train station in 2007, where she quickly became famous, attracting tourists, saving the station from being closed, and benefiting the local economy to the tune of an estimated one billion yen. For more about Tama, please read the Time Out Tokyo...

Review: Fatal Reservations by Lucy Burdette

Cats, a tropical setting, mouth-watering food (with some recipes included), and did I mention cats? As far as I’m concerned, Fatal Reservations, the latest in Lucy Burdette’s Key West Food Critic mystery series, has all the ingredients for fun summer reading.

Protagonist Hayley Snow looks forward to reviewing a new floating restaurant for Key Zest magazine. When she is sent to a city commission meeting to cover the controversy between the new restaurant and nearby land based businesses, she...

How to Recognize Deafness in Cats

Cats can lose their hearing for many reasons, just like humans do. Deafness can be caused by inflammation or infection, degenerative nerve changes, traumatic injury or certain drugs. Some cats are born deaf. It appears that white cats with blue eyes are particularly prone to congenital deafness. There is also a breed connection; some of the breeds that are at higher risk are white Persians, Ragdolls, Cornish and Devon Rex, Oriental Shorthairs, Manx and Turkish Angora.

Deafness that occurs as...

Naming a Fictional Cat

Guest post by Lucy Burdette

Cat lovers will understand that naming a new cat is serious business – even if the feline is fictional. One of my regular characters, Evinrude, is the handsome gray tiger who lives with food critic Hayley Snow on her houseboat. He steals the show and makes the cover every time a book comes out. In case you are wondering where he got his name, Evinrude is a brand of boat motor.

For my sixth Key West food critic mystery, Fatal Reservations, I had a new character eme...

PACT for Animals Finds Foster Homes for Military Pets

This Memorial Day, I featured a video showing the joyful reunion of two cats and their soldier mom after she returned from an overseas deployment (shown again at the end of this post.) Our military personnel make so many sacrifices when they deploy, and I’ve always felt that one of the biggest has to be leaving their beloved pets. Thankfully, there are organizations who assist members of the military in finding temporary foster care for their pets during deployments.

PACT for Animals helped...

What to Do When Your Cat Pees Outside the Litter Box

Dealing with a cat who pees outside the litter box is one of the most frustrating issues cat guardians may be faced with. It’s also one of the most common reasons why cats are returned to shelters. The reasons why cats eliminate outside the litter box vary, and include litter box aversion, urine marking, hormonal problems, and medical issues.

The difference between urinating outside the box and spraying

Cat guardians often confuse urinating and spraying. Cats who are urinating outside the bo...