by Mobile Pet Spa 818 755 7900, Aug 27, 2018

Cats and the Holiday Season.

Cats are awaiting  Christmas, Hanukkah and ending with New Year’s Eve. Black Friday on November 25, 2016 promises bargains and headaches. Consumers spent over 350 million on Halloween pet costumes alone this year and many pets will receive holiday gifts this year.

Before wrapping Fluffy in a hot dog costume or gift-wrapping Fluffy a new toy, stop to consider what the true meaning of the season is. Americans are naturally generous at heart and pets, more than ever are the recipients of their largesse. In our eagerness to please our pets it’s easy to lose sight of what the want and need.

Cats Mind Black Friday:  These are the six Holiday Gifts Cats Crave.

While cats enjoy new toys and treats any time, they don’t understand the concept of the holiday season. What is a fun, exciting time of celebration can be a stressful, over-stimulating or lonely time for cats?

This year in the collective spirit of joy and generosity let’s turn our thoughts to kindness, compassion, and gratitude towards our cats. The greatest gift we can give our cats this holiday season doesn’t cost a dime. It’s the gift of awareness and it’s the gift that keeps on giving in purrs of thanks from our cats. Awareness is the sister of compassion and the end result is a deepening of the feline-human bond.

Science has proven how simply petting a cat helps reduce stress and lower blood pressure. Cat lovers have always known a happy cat makes a happy home. Learning what makes our mysterious feline friends’ tick will help us gain self-knowledge as well.

1. They  are mysterious animals. Did you know that there are  71  cat breeds in the world?
2. They can sleep up to 15 hours a day!
3. They live on average 2-16 years, in the wild, although domesticated cats could live up to 20 years.
4. Cultivating the gift of awareness through a Cat’s Six Senses
5. Because cats rely primarily on body language to communicate to one another, they must be attuned to biological and behavioral changes in the other animals around them. This includes detecting weakness or changes in body temperature and odor. They are also intuitive in that they often know when they are about to die, sad but true!

They live in our world and homes but we also live in their world. They have invisible boundaries and territories (more so in multi-cat or pet homes) we aren’t privy to. Our worlds and their territories are in a constant state of flux. Behavioral issues often result when the two worlds don’t intersect harmoniously.

Feline senses are more developed than ours and it’s far too easy to over-stimulate a cat. An overwhelmed cat will react with a fight-or-flight aggressive or defensive response.  They will hiss, bite or scratch or run away and hide. It’s up to us to learn their language and be aware of changes in their moods and decode their body language. Despite living with humans for over 9,000 years cats are not fully domesticated. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis who recently sequenced and analyzed the cat genome discovered little had changed in a cat’s DNA during their evolution. All of the cat’s senses are designed for hunting prey and survival.

 Some other facts:

1. feline saliva is poisonous, and if the animals bites another small animal such a rabbit or a bird , they will die within a few days, the cat then will find it and eat it.
2. In cold seasons they can find warm spots under apartment buildings or houses, and survive.
3. They can easily find food and water in the wild and thrive.
4. They can find their way home, even if it is a hundred miles away, how? Only God knows.

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