The human body starts out with 270 bones at birth. By roughly the age of 30, the majority of us have exactly 206 bones in our body. While we humans don't really have tails, our tailbone, known as the coccyx, usually starts out with 4 - though sometimes 3 and sometimes 5 - bones. By the time we reach adulthood, these bones typically become one singular, fused-together bone. In some humans, the ...
Enrich Indoor Cat Life on a Budget: Inexpensive Cat Trees (Big & Small)
Having moved to a house recently from a little studio apartment-for-three (my husband, my cat, and myself) has left me with a lot more empty space than I currently know what to do with. While my house cat, Avery, has been happy as a clam with the additional sprint space, I also know that the second I start think about human furnishings, if I haven't got a scratching post or a cat tree up in the ...
Cat Barbering: Why Cats Excessively Lick & Over-Groom ‘Til They Bald
Here's a frustrating behaviour to witness as a pet parent if I ever saw one: cat barbering. It's when your cat bites, licks, sucks, or scratches - basically excessively over-grooming to the point where he or she will begin to lose hair, end up with bald spots, or even worse, have little scabs on his or her skin due to the compulsive behaviour. It's a frustrating behaviour my fellow pet blogger ...
Outdoor Cat Tents & Tunnels: For Indoor Cats Field Trips Outside
I've been wishing for a catio since I first took in my cat Avery years ago. Alas, catios aren't wise to put up in homes you're likely to move out of soon - as was the case back when we lived in Canada; nor are they possible to have up in apartments without balconies - which we were in for a couple years before moving to the house we're in today. Now that our little family of three (my ...
Love Your Pet, But Resent or Even Hate Them Sometimes? You’re Not a Bad Person
I feel like in the past decade, we as humans have been airing our dirty laundry en masse, the world over. From YouTubers opening up about anxiety, depression, and other metal health issues, celebrities opening up about drug addiction, bipolar disorder, and even PTSD to less savoury thoughts and socially unacceptable opinions being printed in newspapers, aired over radio-waves, spoken about in ...
Multi-Cat Home? Best Litter Boxes for Multiple Cats + Solutions & Ideas
We pretty much all know the general rule of thumb for multi-cat households is to grab one litter box per cat + 1 extra, but surely that can't be the only trick in the book to make sure your resident felines stay happy in the loo department. Personally, I'd like to think there are a few more tricks we pet parents can have up our sleeve than merely grabbing the right number of litter boxes. These ...
My Cat Got Sick; He’s Better, but His Behaviour & Personality Changed: Help?
Roughly a week ago, a new reader, Rooksaar, stumbled across my blog while digging for information about behavioural changes in cats, and in particular, about personality changes that occur after illnesses. Her newly adopted shelter cat had taken ill with an upper respiratory infection almost immediately after being taken home, and on his successful road to recovery, he sadly transformed from ...
Flying with a Pet Can Be More Stressful for the Pet Owner Than the Pet
On Monday September 3rd, at roughly 6:00 in the morning, Thomas, Avery, and I were at the London Heathrow Airport boarding a plane for a flight headed to Lisbon, Portugal. This isn't the first time we'd flown with our pet, our super-snuggly house cat, Avery. We'd taken a flight from Toronto to London approximately two and a half years prior, since we were making a permanent move to the UK and ...
Stable, Durable, Sleek: Real Wood Cat Scratch Posts & Scratching Cat Trees
I'm pretty biased toward cat furniture that's durable and can last a pretty long time over pieces that fall apart within a year or two. Even if the longer-lasting cat furniture is more expensive than two, or sometimes even three, less durable pieces, there's just something about replacing cat furniture over and over that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's that it feels wasteful? I hate replacing ...