Cat Care
Owning a cat is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. Here are some practical tips on how to go about it.
Just The Facts
- Despite the myths perpetuated by the cat media, cats are not "clean animals".
- Purring stops being cute when it's being done right next to your ear at 3 in the morning.
- Everyone should have a cat.
Cat Sources
Cats can be obtained from many sources. Be assured that no matter which source you choose, someone will look down on you. Here are a list of cat providers and who will look down on you for using each one.
Source: Pet Store
Who Will Yell At You? Pretty much everyone except the pet store owner. Pet store cats generally come from kitten mills, and are raised in terrible conditions with little care given to their health or well-being. Buying from pet stores puts money into the kitten mills and keeps them going. While it's true that cats are malicious creatures and deserve to be tormented, they should only be tormented by a caring owner who can craft individual torments tailored to the cats' worst fears, not by a faceless factory farming system.
Pictured: A kitten mill. As you can see, quality control is shoddy at best.
Source: "Free Kitten" Ad / Friends
Who Will Yell At You? Cat people (cat rescuers, humane societies) aren't really fond of this method either. New kittens created by cat owners' refusal to disrupt the operation of cat genitals are displacing existing cats already in need of a home. Also, shelters and rescues make sure their kittens get their rounds of vaccinations and spaying/neutering and FIV/FLV checks before they leave to seek their fortune, and worry that home-bred kittens will miss out on some of this.
Source: Animal Shelter
Who Will Yell At You? This causes a lot less yelling, but some people feel that an animal shelter cat may be a handful for first-time cat owners. Shelter animals sometimes have terrible pasts that cause them to be what you might call "at risk," but if you know what you are getting into and are willing to enter them into after-school programs and offer tough love and monitor their homework every night, you could make it work and also get a Stand and Deliver vibe.
Shelter cats from bad backgrounds are prone to self-destructive behavior.
Source: Animal Rescue
Who Will Yell At You? Why the hell would anyone yell at someone for adopting a cat from a rescue? There are people out there that for some reason or another have a vendetta against animal rescues and claim they are only in it to make a profit, since they charge adoption fees. However, taking a shelter cat and picking up the bill for its food and shelter and all its medical problems as well as its routine vaccinations and neutering in the hope of making a profit with a $100 adoption fee is one of the stupidest business models anyone could come up with.
Choosing A Cat
Kitten/Adult?
This is just making the choice between whether the cat already hates you now or will hate you later. Also, not all cat hatred is the same. It can range from passive aggressive hatred to spastic surly hatred. There's no way to know how a kitten will develop, so if you're set on one kind of personality, like you really want a passive aggressive cat, the only guarantee is to get an adult.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to becoming a mature adult cat.
Color
You also have a choice of cat color. The least chosen color is black. Why do people hate black cats? Because they're racists. Pick a black cat.
Gender
Male cats have the foulest smelling pee of any pet animal. Spayed females will get saggy boobs. If you've had their genitals cut off like a responsible cat owner, none of the other differences matter much. If you want some slyly referential jokes about the differences between males and females that are based on human gender stereotypes you will have to insert them yourself. This is a respectable website.
Cat Health
While it is hilarious to watch a cat suffer, cat diseases can not only torment the cat itself but can also spread to other animals and even yourself. A healthy cat is a cat that does not give you parasites or invite lawsuits from other animal owners.
Cat Vaccinations
Cats should be vaccinated against rabies and some diseases with long names. The best thing about vaccinations is that they make kittens sleepy for a while afterwards so you can finally get some peace for a moment.
Cat Leukemia / Cat AIDS
Cats can get FLV (cat leukemia) and FIV (cat AIDS). These are incurable and nobody has come up with an awareness month or a Cat AIDS Walk (couldn't keep cats going in same direction) so chances are they will stay that way. You should make sure your cat gets tested. Show it some brochures if it's refusing to go.
"If it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone."
Fleas / Ticks
Cats are great nesting grounds for fleas and ticks. Some kind of flea preventative/flea killer is a must. Some popular flea preventatives are Frontline, Advantage, Revolution, and the cleansing flames of purifying fire.
Claws
The problem with claws is that cats have them. Unfortunately they are entitled to them by their Second Amendment rights so declawing will probably send you to the Supreme Court. Seriously, declawing is a very controversial topic that we will bravely sidestep by giving you some tips on how to stop cats from clawing things.
Tools
You will need:
- A scratching post.
- A can of compressed air used for cleaning computers.
A cat owner's best friend.
Method
This is complex, so pay attention. Encourage your cat to scratch (1) the scratching post, possibly rubbing catnip on it. When your cat tries to scratch something it shouldn't, like the Mona Lisa, spray it with (2) the can of compressed air. This will stop it from scratching and also scare the living daylights out of the cat, which is an excellent bonus.
Trimming
Trimming the claws regularly also keeps them blunt which is good for when the cat decides to climb Mount You. While having its nails trimmed, the cat may scream like it is dying, which is just inexcusable whining. Unless you have cut the quick (blood vessel) in which case it is you who are the asshole.
Cat Litter
It doesn't take much training to get cats to go in the litter box (Step 1: Show cats litter box. Done.) which can lull you into thinking this isn't an area you need to worry about.
Shoddy Burying
The truth is that while cats will generally do their business in the litter box without incident, the aftermath isn't always so pretty. Many cats, especially when young, do not fully grasp the concept of burying their work and may try creative variants such as stepping in it, burying a completely unsoiled adjacent patch of litter, or pawing retardedly at the side of the litterbox.
Tracking
Even if the burying is done well, cats generally leave the box with some litter on their paws. Some make attempts to clean it off, some couldn't care less, but in all cases there will be litter all over your house soon enough.
Pictured: The excavation at Pompeii, a classic case of what happens when cat litter tracking goes unchecked.
Foul Stench of Hell
Cat waste is one of the worst smelling substances known to man. A concentrated male cat pee litter clump can knock out an elephant. Anyone recommending a "green" and "environmentally friendly" cat litter like recycled newspaper pellets that doesn't contain any odor control can go straight to hell. Pine-based litters and wonderful environment-killing chemical-soaked litters are a couple of good odor-control options.
ReplyLOL Trollface
One of my cats (I have 5 and, actually, 3 of them are solid black - there is no p***y racism in this household! ;p) not only scrapes the air and sides of the litter box rather than covering his poo, he also has invisible Saran Wrap, ala LOL-Cats style.
ReplyBefore eating the food in the bowl, he will paw the air over it multiple times, as if he is unwrapping it. After done eating, he will repeat the process as if he is covering it up to keep it fresh for next time.
I'm sure it's just an instinctual throwback to burying his food to keep it away from others (especially other cats - he's the alpha male 'round here) but it's hilarious to watch.
Cats are better than people
ReplyThe three people who down-voted this think you are racist.
Very funny article.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI would like to point out that female cats not only don't smell bad but actually smell really good. Also if the litter tray is a problem don't use one. A healthy, vaccinated adult cat should be allowed to roam freely outside - if you can't let your cat out because of a busy road or some such danger, consider the possiblity that you shouldn't own an animal without the facilities to care for it- anyway, so it's quite easy to teach them to go in the neighbours' flowerbeds.
Smells good? Maybe you should bottle the stuff. Spray a little "essence of urine" on yourself before your next big date. Could be on to a winner there.
Actually, it has been shown that inside only cats live up to 10 years longer than inside/outside cats. There are so many dangers outside that are not necessary if you provide good scratching surfaces, clean litterboxes and plenty of things for your cat to entertain themselves with inside. Also on a side note, if a male cat is neutered, his urine does not have the strong ammonia smell.
Crank: I said the /cat/ smells good, not cat urine.
Climb Mount You. lol that's a good one. C'mon, you know ya love 'em. ;)
ReplyKittens aren't the only ones retarded about litter boxes. My cat is over 10 years old, and often shuts herself into the closet. Our litterbox is in a closet upstairs with one of those doors that folds in half to open *don't know what that type of door is called*. My female cat will go in, and instead of digging in the litter box, she'll paw at the door until it closes, and then she keeps pawing trying to open it again. I love her, but she's f*****g retarded.
ReplyI was watching the cat care video at the bottom, when I realized that I was patiently watching a cat take a shit. There has to be something wrong with that.
Replyyou forgot to mention senile cats. they are the most annoying things ever. trust me. i've had mine for over 12 years now.
ReplyOur cat is just over 20, and he has walked under the kitchen table, gotten lost, and caterwauled until we rescued him.
I want to sue you for false advertising for CAT care. I had a problem with my CAT unit (it seemed to be leaking some kind of yellow lubricant), so I cut the blue wire and cut open the CAT in order to figure out what was wrong with it. When I tried to start the CAT up again, it would not perform any of its basic functions. I tried to call my local animal shelter to see if they could help me repair my CAT. I told them about the situation and now I'm facing a great number of legal expenses. I feel as the person who wrote this article, you should pay to cover my legal representation. I will be sending my fees in the mail, as well as the vestigial head of my CAT in order to prove what happened.
ReplyYou may not get very far: it DID say to wait until they checked which wire you were supposed to cut.
I got a kitten from a shelter that had FIV, got to pay around 1500 in vet bills trying to save a kitten's life, the shelter basically told me to pound the bill up my ass and that it was somehow my fault for that kitten being sick, so shelters can suck too, now i just take in the ones ive been finding, which has me up to 4 f-ing cats in just 5 years.
ReplyI'm sorry. That's rough. We recently had to pay $1200 because someone bashed our cat in the head, threw him in the dumpster and left him for dead. He was found with another cat, who was dead and in a trap. He's more or less back to his old self, apart from being blind. Before him, I had a cat with FIV, and he lived to the ripe old age of 18. He was diagnosed at 6 with FIP (feline infectious peritonitis) because they didn't know about FIV then. But it turns out the treatment is the same (corticosteroids), and he responded well enough to last another 12 years. It was agonizing in the end, though.
The random bold lettering bugged me, other than that, good article. Our cat got addicted to scratching our leather couches, we tried water but the little dick just took it. We now yell obscenities at him until he runs away.
ReplyHe also enjoys covering/uncovering his litter (used to, he is an outside crapper now) ten times then kicking any extra out of the box.
I will now buy a cat and train it to crap into the toilet, then paw toilet paper over its doings. It will have that one-ply public toilet "ghetto paper" and the humans can have the 2 or 3 ply. It will be done.
ReplyI noticed some commentary on the smell of poop. I currently operate a small mouse farm, and the smell of poop is certainly a huge issue! Some approaches I have found to be useful include allowing the mice to live in a box among a bunch of plants, including strawberries and other fruits, along with a few inches of dirt under which they tend to bury their poop, which also doubles as plant food, while also attracting bugs that the mice eat. Despite lots of plants, the poop smell was still winning, so I added a fan to the box area, along with some tape+aluminum foil ducting to bring air through both boxes from a sliding glass door to the outside to another window to the outside. Pulling air with a small fan for around 1 hour per day has completely removed the smell, although there is a burst of smell when the fan turns on, so make sure the room/area is ventilated! In practical terms, if you have lots of windy outdoor area this is a good place for the cat to poop, they will also bury their poop naturally under the roots of plants, typically without killing the plants. If you are stuck indoors you might try a liter box with a fan next to it next to an open window, possibly with a screen over it, although I should note if you have a fenced in yard with little wind, it will stink if you let your pet poop out there, although if you let them bury it the stink will be held off much longer, possibly indefinitely, also they will build a neat dog fort out of dirt, typically filling the entire yard if allowed to do so, down to the water table.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesOn a side note, I detected a lot of hate based issues. If your pet hates you, it's because you're doing it wrong. I would suggest making sure the pet gets plenty of meat and other foods, and that you try and understand why your pet hates you. Spaying/neutering pets usually makes them hate you, I mean how would you feel about a cat that bit off your genitals? Cat food is very cheap at the shelter, they can either use bulk animal feed, and I should note dead animals from farms sell for as little as $1 per pound, so $100 for a 15 lb. cat seems absurd, with "medical" costs probably being a lie, and neutering takes about 15 seconds and a pair of scissors. Boxes are also cheap, and it's not exactly difficult to capture and kill cats that have no collars, plus the dead cats can be fed to the living cats. I think the key to pet hate though, is a complete average lack of understanding of how animals, and in many ways all living things,actually are.
Shut up
Really? I slept with your wife.
Spaying/neutering does not make an animal haye you. They don't understand what's happened, they just don't feel like mating anymore.
I'm not sure whether you're being serious, but this is a common misconception which shouldn't be encouraged.
You sir (read madam), are getting close to becoming my favorite writer on this site.
ReplyPawing retardedly at the side of the litter box made me laugh like a moron at work.
Then There's My cat, Kiera. She had her claws removed, wears a bell on her collar, and STILL somehow manages to kill rabbits. f****n, how, man?
ReplyShe's super chill though. you can pretty much pick her up like, whenever and NEVER BITES. The opposite of my friend's cat, Kat (short for Katarina) who pretty much always tries to bite.
So DON'T declaw your cat. It's not pleasant for the cat, and it's pointless.
Rip your fingernails off - see how much you like it. I hope your cat takes a dump on your chest while you sleep.
The cat I own now is possibly the best possible cat imaginable. He smashed his little kitten face in when he was younger, got moderate brain damage, and now basically sits around all day blinking stupidly at shit. You can pick him up and put him anywhere and he'll just stay. Seriously we used to put him on ceiling fans (when he was smaller) and turn them on low speed.. watched him go round and round.
ReplyYou sir, are awesome
Brain damaged cats are the best kind of cats.
As an avid cat lover I found this article completely hilarious.
ReplyIf you want a companion that will warn you if something bad comes into the house, get a dog.
ReplyIf you want something evil in your house that scares away all other evil things, get a cat.
"My poop is not sufficiently covered! Must use moar toilet paper!"
ReplyGood work bro.
K9s FOREVER LULZ! CATS DROOL!!!11!1!!
Reply