Cat Personalities

Cats can have all types of personalities, but it seems no matter what the personality, it is always strong. My older cat, Cleo, wants to do nothing but cuddle and sit on everyone’s lap. She wants attention 100% of the time. The younger cat, Gracie, plays hard to get. She will come up to you and act like she wants a pet, but as soon as you go to pet her she runs away. She also gets into everything in the house and is amazed with the other animals. She will sit on top of my turtle tank and reach her paw in all the way to her shoulder trying to bop him. Eventually she will give up and lay on top of his tank. Then whenever he moves even the tiniest bit she gets scared, jumps about two feet into the air, and takes off running to another room. She will also spend countless hours watching the guinea pigs and trying to reach into their cage. 

Here are a couple pictures of Gracie. One is of her laying on the turtle tank and the other her poking in at the guinea pigs.

Every time I think of cat personalities I end up on Youtube watching videos of cats doing silly things. Here are two of my favorite cat compilation videos that always give me a good laugh. I did not make these videos, I just enjoy them.

Begging and Jealousy

Most of the time, I get nothing but joy out of my pets. However, there are two things that I cannot stand and cannot seem to break. My dog is jealous. My cat begs.

I know exactly why my cat begs. When our past cat became very sick the vet told us to feed her anything she will eat including human food. Of course, you can’t feed one cat and not the other. At the time I did not care that Cleo was begging because I was just happy that the sick cat, Tinsel, was eating. Tinsel was 18 years old when we lost her so she had a nice long life, but we lost her over two years ago. Cleo now begs for not only food, but also pets. In fact, she is insisting she is going to sit on my laptop right now to prevent me from writing this. When I eat, she climbs on me over and over and has the guts to try and steal anything she can get to off of my plate. I have tried everything I can think of to break this down to spraying her with a spray bottle. No luck.

My dog is jealous of anyone or anything but him getting attention. People cannot even hug in my house without him whining and trying to squeeze between. His jealousy is the most extreme when someone wants to pet one of the cats. If you pet a cat, he will chase the cat away and stand in her spot. If there is a cat closer to you than he is, he squeezes himself into any space available. Anyone sitting in the recliner instantly becomes smothered by the cat and dog, who of course fight over who gets to stay. And trust me, a 48 pound dog is NOT a lap dog. I just need to convince him of that. Unlike my cat begging, I do not understand his jealousy. We got him from a shelter when he was only six weeks old. Although one of the cats is only two months older than him, they were both here before him. It is not like he was here and comfortable and then we brought the cats in.

If I could fix these two habits, my house would be much more relaxing. I could eat and recline in peace. I only have one picture of Dameous and Cleo sharing the recliner, so I will share that with you. Maybe there is some hope…

WKC Dog Show

The 2013 Westminster Dog Show started last night, 2/11/13. This dog show is the America’s most well-known dog sow. Although I have never had a show dog and my dog is not a pure bred, this dog show never seizes to amaze me.

The dogs in the Westminster dog show are the best in their breed. The way the dog show works is a chunk of dogs from each breed compete until one is picked best in breed. That dog is the one we see on television as it competes for its breed to win its category and then best in show.

The show always starts with the hounds, which is by far my favorite category. I was never a fan of toy dogs, however, I must admit these ones are gorgeous as well. I always think that my dog is well trained and obedient until I see these dogs. I know the time it took to train my dog and cannot imagine how much time, love, and effort the owners and trainers put into these dogs.

The second night of the show airs tonight on the USA channel at 8 eastern on USA. One feature that is really neat is the use of Twitter during the show. WestimsterDogShow was tweeting in real time the entire show. There were also many people using the hash-tag #WKCdogs tweeting about what dogs they liked and wanted to see win. This made the dog show a very interactive event.

Here is a clip from last year’s Westminster Dog Show best in show for anyone who has not seen a part of the show or would just like to see it again.

Clothes on Animals

When it comes to pets, it seems one thing most people seem to have a strong opinion on is pets wearing clothes. I always said I would never be a person to put clothes on my animals, then I discovered how much it helped my dog.

When Dameous was a puppy he was never left alone. Schedules changed when he got a bit older and he spent some time home alone. When he would see us about to leave, he would start panicking, whining, and become very anxious. That is when a family friend suggested getting him a Thundershirt to help with his anxiety. A Thundershirt is a shirt fit for dogs that wraps tightly around them and is meant to help with dog anxiety.

Since I thought this would never work, I decided to buy him a normal dog sweater before dropping the $40 on a Thundershirt. I figured I should spend much less on a normal sweater first to see if he would even let me put it on him. He loved it. Surprisingly, it helped calm him down so I figured it was worth my money to see how much a Thundershirt helped. Amazingly, it calms him down even in stressful situations for him such as Christmas when there are lots of people coming in and out of the house. Now if he is home alone or gets anxiety we know how to easily calm him down.

Dameous got to the point that he will bring you his sweater if he is "naked" and wants to have something on him at all times. This also started a bit of a trend and he now is almost always wearing a bandanna and has a coat for when we go outside since his hair is so short.

Here is a picture of Dameous relaxed with his sweater while we are home. My Great Grandma is sitting in the chair so he is lying on the arm of it.

As far as other animals go, I have found no benefit in putting clothing on them. My cats will not even wear bows when they come back from the groomer. We also got collars with little bells on them for when the ferrets run around the house, but to no surprise they have the collars off in less than twenty seconds.

If you have a dog that gets anxiety or gets worked up easily, I suggest trying a dog sweater or even a Thundershirt on them. For any other animal, I would not suggest it.