What Smart Cats Know


Book Description

Smart cats are confident and like to play. They choose their expressions carefully, stay physically fit and always maintain good grooming. They are as content in an apartment as in a mansion. And they don't let their work get in the way of a good nap. Bestselling author Glenn Dromgoole shows, in warm words and heartwarming photos, what we can learn from smart cats.




Cat Sense


Book Description

Cats have been popular household pets for thousands of years, and their numbers only continue to rise. Today there are three cats for every dog on the planet, and yet cats remain more mysterious, even to their most adoring owners. Unlike dogs, cats evolved as solitary hunters, and, while many have learned to live alongside humans and even feel affection for us, they still don’t quite “get us” the way dogs do, and perhaps they never will. But cats have rich emotional lives that we need to respect and understand if they are to thrive in our company. In Cat Sense, renowned anthrozoologist John Bradshaw takes us further into the mind of the domestic cat than ever before, using cutting-edge scientific research to dispel the myths and explain the true nature of our feline friends. Tracing the cat’s evolution from lone predator to domesticated companion, Bradshaw shows that although cats and humans have been living together for at least eight thousand years, cats remain independent, predatory, and wary of contact with their own kind, qualities that often clash with our modern lifestyles. Cats still have three out of four paws firmly planted in the wild, and within only a few generations can easily revert back to the independent way of life that was the exclusive preserve of their predecessors some 10,000 years ago. Cats are astonishingly flexible, and given the right environment they can adapt to a life of domesticity with their owners—but to continue do so, they will increasingly need our help. If we’re to live in harmony with our cats, Bradshaw explains, we first need to understand their inherited quirks: understanding their body language, keeping their environments—however small—sufficiently interesting, and becoming more proactive in managing both their natural hunting instincts and their relationships with other cats. A must-read for any cat lover, Cat Sense offers humane, penetrating insights about the domestic cat that challenge our most basic assumptions and promise to dramatically improve our pets’ lives—and ours.




The Way of Cats


Book Description

The Way of Cats is a way of playing games with our cat. These communication, training, and affection games are fun and easy to learn. Then we have well-behaved and happy cats.




The Trainable Cat


Book Description

"I have to hand it to Bradshaw and Ellis: Once you suss out their basic cat-training philosophy, their methods totally work." -- Slate We often assume that cats can't be trained, and don't need to be. But in The Trainable Cat, bestselling anthrozoologist John Bradshaw and cat expert Sarah Ellis show that cats absolutely must be trained in order to enrich the bond between pet and owner. Full of training tips and exercises -- from introducing your cat to a new baby to helping them deal with visits to the vet -- The Trainable Cat is the essential cat bible for cat owners and lovers. "I doubt you'll find a more well-informed or scientific book on cats that better shows you how feline thinking works." -- Times (UK)




The Meaning of Meow


Book Description

Some of the world's top experts, including devoted veterinarians, open a window into the minds of our feline freinds. Cats have become so beloved in recent years that some 75 million live in American homes as family pets. Another quarter million are community cats, increasingly serving us in barns, breweries, warehouses and more to keep rodents and other unwanted wildlife under control. Yet the cat has often seemed mysterious—compared to dogs, our cats can feel bit more aloof and difficult to truly “get.” But new research into our feline friends now reveals their love for us, their secret language, including accents and dialects, and their inner depths. In a series of engaging stories featuring the world’s top experts, veterinarians and pet-owners themselves, this premium book opens a window into the minds of our feline friends. Among the features: How to raise a kitten to become a great cat; how to understand your cat's purrs, meows and body language; how to teach your cat tricks; and how to rescue a stranded cat and make it your own. A bonus feature covers favorite breeds and the advantages each confers.




Think Like a Cat


Book Description

America's favorite cat behavior expert, author of Catwise and Cat vs. Cat, offers the most complete resource for cat owners of all stripes, now fully updated. "The queen of cat behavior" - Steve Dale, author of My Pet World Think it's impossible to train a cat? Think again! By learning how to think like a cat, you'll be amazed at just how easy it is. Whether you are a veteran cat lover, a brand-new owner of a sweet kitten, or the frustrated companion of a feline whose driving you crazy, Pam Johnson-Bennett will help you understand what makes your cat tick (as well as scratch and purr). Topics range from where to get a cat to securing a vet; from basic health care to treating more serious problems; choosing an inrresistible scratching post and avoiding litterbox problems. A comprehensive guide to cat care and training, she helps you understand the instincts that guide feline behavior. Using behavior modification and play therapy techniques, she shares successful methods that will help you and your cat build a great relationship.




Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby


Book Description

Why My Cat Is More Impressive Than Your Baby is chockfull of comics about cats, babies, dogs, lasers, selfies, and pigeons! This book contains a vast wealth of never-before-seen comics, including informative guides, such as: How to comfortably sleep next to your cat 10 ways to befriend a misanthropic cat How to hold a baby when you are not used to holding babies A dog’s guide to walking a human being How to cuddle like you mean it Includes a pull-out poster of: How to tell if your cat thinks you’re not that big of a deal.




Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.




Know Your Cat


Book Description

This book investigates the world of the cat, allowing every cat lover or owner to experience and enjoy the complexity of this creature that shares so much of our everyday lives. The book examines cat behaviour and shows the motivation behind the actions, affection and eccentricities of cats. Based on the fact that learning to understand cat behaviour is a recipe for fulfilment in the cat-owner relationship, this book uses photography to capture the various moods of this animal. Bruce Fogle is the author of The Cat's Mind.




Feline Philosophy


Book Description

The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats--the animal that has most captured our imagination--than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.