Rachel and Jun are a couple living in Japan: he’s Japanese and she’s American, and they each post videos. They own three cats and Jun is an accomplished cook. When Jun makes meals, he allows his cats to watch and sniff the ingredients (they’re very patient). On occasion he makes special meals for the moggies, as he does here, and they’re prepared with as much care as with the meals he makes for himself and Rachel. Here’s Jun’s YouTube notes.
I tried to make a traditional-style Japanese meal for my cats! It’s a set menu (miso soup, rice with furikake, and fish) except the food is all made out of cat-safe ingredients.
Look at those fancy cat meals! And they licked their plates clean!
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From Canada’s National Post we hear of an unnamed Devil Cat who is terrorizing a neighborhood in Ottawa (click on screenshot):
An excerpt:
A cat with a bad attitude is raising hackles in the Glebe where one resident has taken to publicly begging its owner to keep the “predatory” animal indoors.
Forrest Hartman, 30, posted handbills along Powell Avenue that asked of her neighbours: “Do you own a stocky grey cat with a blue tag and a s–t attitude?”
“Please consider keeping your monster inside,” the handbill continued. “Your cat has attacked my cat at least a dozen times on my property.”
The public cat shaming was necessary, Hartman said Friday, because she didn’t dare try to read the cat’s collar tag to find its owner.
Hartman has lived in a ground-floor apartment on Powell Avenue for two years with her fiancé and their two cats, Schatzi and Yuri. For the past year, she said, the feline she knows as “angry satan cat” has been menacing six-year-old Schatzi — it means “sweetheart” in German — who likes to lounge on the property’s front and back porches.”
Here’s the “angry cat”. Note that he has a collar, so he’s not feral:
. . . and the handbill Hartman has put up:
It’s believed the offending cat lives on Renfrew Avenue, one street north of Powell.
Michael Slavitch, a dog owner who lives on Renfrew, said he often sees the cat in question. He defended its character: “He’s just a big old tomcat that’s territorial,” Slavitch said. “If he knows you, especially if you’re a 15-year-old girl, he’ll flop on the sidewalk and put his belly up in the air.”
Last summer, Slavitch noted, he did see the cat running down the street with a dead least weasel in its mouth, and he has seen it chase dogs that try to be aggressive around it. “He’s the neighbourhood zero f—s cat,” he said. “It’s actually a pretty cool cat.”
Another local dog owner, lawyer Shane Zurbrigg, said angry cat has menaced his dog, a German shepherd-Labrador retriever mix, and was not the least bit intimidated by the dog’s size. It weighs more than 100 pounds.
“This cat has chased after us,” Zurbrigg said. “I’m in the mood to run away but my dog is like, ‘We don’t run away from cats.’ It’s definitely a cat with a s–t attitude.”
Here’s a video of Hartman explaining her woes:
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And here’s an adorable one-minute video of a cat apparently realizing that its staff is pregnant. This has gotten over seven million views since it was posted on March 2 of this year!
h/t: GInger K., Christopher
“Shit attitude cat” sounds just like my first cat. Everybody who has ever known him — and that’s dozens and dozens of people — say he was the sweetest cat they’ve ever met. He never once bit, hissed at, or even made a slightly aggressive move toward a human, or toward the kitten we brought home when he was a few years old, who he treated like a little sister. You could give him baths, hold him upside down, a baby could grab his tail, but nothing ever fazed him. All he wanted to do was sleep in your lap and play with you.
Unless he was outside and encountering other animals out there (he was still always kind to humans). Once he went out the door, he was a cold-stone killer. We often say that the chipmunks in the area celebrated on the day of his death and that chipmunks talk about him to this day like Jews talk about Hitler. He took on every neighborhood cat and dog and would sometimes disappear for a whole week, off on some adventure. He was our first cat and we had a big backyard in the suburbs, so we didn’t know any better about keeping him indoors. He was, as we say, “a beast on the streets and a sweetie on the sheets.”
Anyway, I say that if other people are allowing their cats and dogs outdoors unsupervised, which they clearly are, they don’t really have much right to demand that this one person in the neighborhood makes their outdoor cat an indoor cat. The woman who left the owner a note clearly has an outdoor cat herself and is unhappy that her cat is getting beat up. These are the risks one takes if they allow their cat outdoors regularly. They can’t go around demanding that others keep their cats indoors so their own cat has a better time outdoors.
I’ve given this way too much thought. Well, it was more of an excuse to talk about my lovely first cat anyway.
With this description of your cat, you could be talking about my 16-year-old male ginger tabby who rules the neighbourhood. He intensely dislikes other animals, especially d*gs, but loves all people.
In the last couple of years, we have had a fox move onto the road (we are in a rural area), and my cat has chased it from the yard twice. I guess he just figures it’s a weird kind of d*g and treats it the same way he does all d*gs: “Get the f**k outa my yard!”
It’s amazing how different they can be once they think an animal is threatening their territory. And I guess they evolved to be nice to humans, as being nice to humans got them food and good treatment over thousands of years. And like your cat, it’s amazing how they can scare off animals far larger and almost certainly more powerful. The weird thing about my first cat is that he didn’t blink an eye when we brought a new kitten home after ten years of serving only him. It was like he knew that kitten was supposed to be his kin rather than competition.
One thing my first cat didn’t do was treat only the yard like it was his territory. He considered anywhere he could travel by foot as belonging to him and took on any animal he came across. And we only know of him losing just one fight, or at least we assume it: he came home after one of his rare week-long adventures with no voice and a rasp for a meow. He never meowed the same again. Must have been a hell of a fight, but I still think he came out on top, as he was otherwise uninjured.
We cat people sure do love talking about our cats, don’t we 🙂
EDIT: has your boy slowed down in his elder years? Our cat certainly did around fourteen or fifteen years old. He still went outside, but he mostly slept in the cool dirt under his favorite tree; Then again, he was also diabetic by that time, so he needed an insulin shot twice a day. He never strayed far after that condition cropped up.
Yes, he has slowed down a bit. He sleeps more now and stays indoors more at night. He doesn’t roam as far as he used to. But he still dominates the immediate neighbourhood. All the dogs who live around us are terrified of him and make a loop through the woods rather that pass by my house when he is outside. Like your cat, he used to travel far from the house and woe to anything that got in his way. He has a chunk out of one ear probably from a fight with another male cat down the road.
I wonder who your cat tangled with that caused the “meow” damage? We have fishers around here, which would be very bad news for my cat if he tangled with one, but so far so good for 16 years.
Now that he is older, I am thinking of getting a kitten, so that is good to hear that your cat accepted the newcomer with no problem.
And yes, we do love talking about our cats! But it’s even worse than that. Yesterday was his birthday, and I made him a party hat, took a picture of him wearing it and sent it to my kids and sister. They all responded politely, but I know they were thinking: “She has too much time on her hands.” Haha.
Our cats would never sit there and watch all the food preparation. Just would not happen. Notice the cats grab some food and then go down on the chair or floor to eat.
Will those guys ever deign to eating mere cat kibble again?! That man just signed up for a life of uber servitude. I’d eat what he cooked. The nasturtium leaves were a nice touch.
Jealous much?
You betcha! I love Japanese food! On re-reading the post, I see that he spoils the kitties only occasionally, with the fine cuisine.
Everybody should be keeping their cats indoors. (Exception for working barn cats, I guess.)
Build ’em a catio! https://www.catioman.com/gallery
Huge reach to say the cat “realizes its owner is pregnant”. Maybe he heard something in her belly or smelled something, doesn’t mean he knows she’s pregnant.
Clearly this hoomin does not understand that feline property ownership rules do not give one iota of consideration to hoomin property ownership concepts.
The solution to circling this square of conflicting ideas is to talk to the cat in language it recognises and understands : when it comes into what both hoomin and feline consider to be “your territory”, the hoomin needs to go out and confront the cat, back arched, tail up, hissing and growling. If necessary, go all the way to fighting nail against claw, tooth to tooth. Do that consistently, 24 hours a day, for several weeks and the hoomin might bring hoomin and feline property ownership registries into line.
Appeals to re-open the case are always admissible (at any time of night or day) , but may be vigorously contested by the other parties.
Ken, any other points of feline jurisprudence?
There are so many cats loose in my daughter’s neighborhood that there are no birds hardly. I agree, keep them indoors.