Total Cat Mojo: The Ultimate Guide to Life with Your Cat

by Jackson Galaxy

For cats, Mojo is all about confidence. Mojo is proactive, rather than reactive. Cats’ source of Mojo is unquestioned ownership of their territory and having an important job to do within that territory. That job is a biological imperative that cats inherited from their wildcat ancestors, and I call it: Hunt, Catch, Kill, Eat, Groom, Sleep. When we create a rhythm that mirrors that of the Raw Cat—the ancestor—we’re there. When cats are at home inside their bodies, they can make the space outside their bodies their home as well.

Hunt, Catch, Kill, Eat, Groom, Sleep (HCKEGS).

Cats’ up-close vision is not especially sharp, so they rely heavily on information from their whiskers when prey is in or near their mouth. When in hunting mode, the twelve whiskers on both sides of the nose are held forward to detect the prey’s movement, so that the cat can make fine-tuned adjustments for the killing bite. These whiskers on their upper lip—combined with the whiskers on their cheeks, over the eyes, and on the chin, inner wrist, and back of the legs—all help cats “see” in 3-D.

However, their vision is not used so much for the up-close handling of prey, as their short-range vision is rather fuzzy and less detailed than ours. Instead, their optimal focal distance is between two and six meters—perfect for stalking a bird or mouse. If the prey is closer than a foot away, the cat’s eyes don’t even focus; at that point, the whiskers take over by pointing forward to pick up the details. That said, indoor cats are slightly nearsighted because the objects they focus on tend to be closer, while cats who go outside are usually farsighted, just like their Raw Cat ancestors.

Here’s where a major difference between cat eyes and human eyes occurs: cats have three times the number of rods as the human eye, but they have fewer cones than we do. So, although they can detect some color in daylight, colors aren’t nearly as prominent—or, apparently, important—to them. In dim light, they see only in black and white, but they can see much more clearly than we can. As always, everything boils down to “whatever helps the hunt.” They will take clarity over color any day of the week!

Behind the retina, cats have reflective cells called tapetum lucidum. These cells are like a built-in flashlight, providing cats with a signal boost under low light conditions. Incidentally, they are also what make your cat’s eyes “glow” when you take a picture of them with flash.

Generally, cats have a weak sense of taste, with fewer taste buds than humans. Their sense of smell is much more useful for them in hunting, and thus important for eating. That sense is so ingrained that congested cats often lose their appetite; it’s as if with one frayed wire, the entire machine will go on the fritz. That said, cats can still detect salty, sweet, sour, and bitter, and tend to show dislike for sour and bitter (this is likely a response that evolved to prevent the ingestion of dangerous toxins). Additionally, cats have a taste receptor for adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that’s a source of energy for all living cells. ATP is sometimes referred to as a signal for meat, and, interestingly, we can’t “taste” it.

You may notice your cat eating with her head tilted. This is an ancestral behavior related to eating their prey from the ground, not from a bowl. Harder-to-chew items usually increase the degree of head tilting. Cats pick up a small amount of food and give a quick “shake” of the head. This is another ancestral behavior that helps loosen meat from bones, and removes feathers from a bird’s body. Cats don’t do much chewing; their teeth are designed to tear meat into small strips that can be swallowed.

Cats are more active at night than we are, but they are not truly nocturnal. Rather, they are crepuscular. Their natural rhythm, devoid of other influences, is to be active at dawn and dusk, just like rodents, their primary prey animal.

Sonny at dusk.

If you took the species part out from the equation and just saw your cat as another member of your family, you’d be left with relationship. At the core of this relationship are fundamental elements that dictate your ability to successfully navigate that relationship, like: Knowing—Likes and dislikes, fears, aversions, how their history dictates their present behavior. Listening—When they are soliciting something from you, whether it is affection, protection, or just your time, you bring your attention to them, even if there is nothing you can offer in that moment. Compromising—In any relationship you come to the realization that it isn’t all about you and your needs. You bend to others when in reality it’s the last thing you want to do. Vulnerability—The nature of the relational two-way street is remaining present with the other being, admitting you don’t know everything, admitting that you don’t control the outcome of each and every moment of that relationship. You don’t have ownership over others’ reactions, the way they handle the world around them. You can learn from others just as readily as they can learn from you. In other words, you dare to make yourself available to another, without relying on a safety net of your design and under your control. And of course, the magic ingredient in all of this is loving—a deep knowledge that your life together is better than your life apart, which makes you embrace all of the above conditions (even if you don’t always joyfully do...

We, as individuals—and despite the intense protestations of our respective egos—are reduced to participants, and not directors, in our own story. Then there is the final element—surrender—and whether the relationship is one with a “significant other” or a parental one, it’s unavoidably a key ingredient in the soup. Releasing ownership and embracing relationship is, to be sure, a scary damn thing. But it is what makes having others in our life the most precious thing. It might be getting pretty obvious at this point that my aim for you is to bring a new outlook to your relationship with your cat, by seeing it as a relationship

Through the laws of relationship, you will be attuned to the “gut feelings,” the nagging “something just isn’t right” feelings that can oftentimes save a life . . . or at the very least, a couch.

those. That brings us to a final thought: all the tools in the world won’t do you any good unless you have a place for them to live in and to operate from—and that place is the empathetic core inside you. In other words, you are the toolbox: Welcome to it.

the Three Rs: Routines, Rituals, and Rhythm. Every home has its natural rise-and-fall energy cycles, based largely around when you get up, go to work, come home, then go to bed. As you begin to establish rituals and routines with your cat, and base them on your home’s energy spikes, you create a rhythm. This rhythm becomes the foundation for all of the primary, supportive interactions you have with your cat, such as when you play and when you feed. But it’s not just about getting your cat to conform to your rhythm. It’s about folding their needs and yours into a household rhythm. Just as human rituals define our confidence and sense of stability, cats need their own. So your day isn’t just about taking your kids to school, dropping them off at soccer practice and piano lessons, then helping them with homework and preparing dinner; I’m saying that HCKE, cuddle time, and cleaning the litterbox are all locked into that rhythm as well.

if your cat eats only one thing his entire life, and something happens to you, more often than not that spells trouble for him and those who need to care for him. If he ends up in a shelter or rescue situation, the combination of stress and his very limited palate provides an opening for a form of anorexia. In essence, consistently challenging your cat from a dietary perspective, and opening him up to new tastes and textures, is not only good for him but, in a way, helps to prepare your cat for different life challenges and changes.

This willingness to change the landscape of your home for your cat’s well-being is the very definition of Catification. The win for you in putting litterboxes front and center in these living areas, and not thinking for a second about your general aesthetic values, is that it will reduce or help to eliminate peeing that results from territorial insecurity (which is behind the majority of all problem peeing).

Our goal is to increase Mojo, to raise a cat’s confidence. There is nothing in humiliation or punishment that will raise confidence. Even worse is a practice I’ve seen where humiliation is disguised as an attempt to “prove oneself alpha” over a cat. I’ll say it again: any type of punishment, however clever the “concept” we cloak it in, is anti-Mojo. Anything that serves the purpose of enforcing your dominance over your cat is anti-Mojo.

There’s always a positive alternative, but using the spray bottle means your cat will fear you. There is nothing positive about your cat (or dog or spouse or kids, for that matter) fearing you. There is no upside. If you have to resort to fear, you are doing something counterproductive.

Do Animals Know When They’ve Done Something Wrong? People often describe their companion animals as “knowing they have done something wrong.” So Dr. Alexandra Horowitz set out to determine if what humans perceived as a “guilty look” in dogs was actually related to being guilty, or if the “look” was just a response to the dog being scolded. In the study, dog guardians were instructed to show their dogs a treat and then command them not to eat it with a stern “No.” The guardian placed the treat on the floor out of their dogs’ reach and left the room. Then the experimenter either took the treat away or allowed the dogs to eat the treat. When the guardians returned to the room a few moments later, they were either misinformed or told the truth about whether their dogs ate the treat. If the guardians thought their dogs obeyed them, they greeted them in a friendly manner. If they thought the dogs disobeyed them, they scolded them. Guardians attributed behaviors like avoiding eye contact, rolling over, dropping the tail, and moving away from them as signs of “guilt.” But these behaviors were only dependent on whether the human scolded the dog, and not on whether the dog was actually “guilty” of eating the treat when the guardian told him not to. The experiment showed that dogs weren’t experiencing guilty feelings about eating that treat, but that they likely experienced fear and anxiety when scolded by their human. And if you see those “guilty-looking” behaviors in your cats, the...

“See, that’s how it works. We either reward the noise or we reward the silence. Everyone learns the same way.”

Part of my personal process is rooted in my belief that we are all transient, we are all spirit taking a pit stop in physical form. The process of letting go of an animal companion is, in part, about shepherding him to the next place. When I think about “never on their worst day,” I am also thinking about their transition into another form. I want their last memories of this particular time around to be of love and light, not pain and suffering. I also believe that, unless they feel a bit of emotional detachment on your part when tuning into this sacred bond, they won’t feel “permission” to make that transition. If they feel like you’re still holding on, they might hold on longer than is good for them. Yes, that means that crying happens in another room, along with any other display that doesn’t serve them in that particular moment. I’m not in any way saying that there isn’t a place for science or medicine, that there shouldn’t be a measure of fight to help save their lives. That said, no doctor, no friend, no family member can know your animal’s inner emotional and physical life better than you can. It is often a solitary decision. You are their protector from fear and from suffering. That’s the deal you made with that animal the day you became his guardian, and in return he gave you his unconditional love. That love comes with a price, and this is it.