NEW LOOK
£1,000 worth of cat goodies up for grabs! UK only
MOVING HOME August 2011 £3.25
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Featured breed: Maine Coon Fe
BUYERS’ GUIDE: insurance
Japanese cat café
TRAUMAS SOLVED
READER STORIES
“I saved the cat I ran over”
My wandering star
MEET TEMPLE KITTIES TARA & SHADOW
How to have a
Maeve Binchy & her cats
WELLBEHAVED cat
by top behaviourist Vicky Halls
SHOPPING FOR YOU, YOUR KITTY AND YOUR HOME
8 SAINT OR SINNER?
28 Meet the temple cats
Contents ntents 6 ON THE COVER COFFEE BREAK CATS Meet the feline café kitties helping Tokyo’s residents relax. 8 ON THE COVER THE SECRET TO HAVING A PERFECTLY BEHAVED CAT Top cat behaviourist Vicky Halls reveals all. 20 ON THE COVER I RAN OVER A CAT — BUT SAVED HER LIFE Jo Munroe’s re-lives every cat lover’s worst nightmare. 28 ON THE COVER THE CATS’ RETREAT Working cats Kala and Tara have found d peace at Jamyang Buddhist Centre. 98 AND FINALLY Blue Cross Chief Executive Kim Hamilton ilton shares her experience of starring in Channel 4’s ‘Undercover Boss’.
4 Your Cat August 2011
Cats@Heart
12 ON THE COVER SIX PAGES of celeb chat, feline goings-on, brave cats and purr power with best-selling novelist Maeve Binchy, Chris Pascoe’s confessions, Cat nav destinations, Mews round and Talking cats with Brian Blessed. 34 CHARITY SPOTLIGHT Celebs have fun volunteering, charity news and events, rescue stories and a day-in-the life of a volunteer.
Catcare
39 SEVENTEEN PAGES of help and advice including how to tell if your cat is stressed out, health news, a new online resource for cat behaviour students, and a special focus on feline dandruff. 52 ON THE COVER PACKING PROBLEMS Behaviourist Dr Peter Neville explains how he made moving home stress-free for Hands and Biffy and their owners. 54 JUST ADD WATER Weight control advice from experts at the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition. Cat care advice from page 39.
Photos: Jane Burton/Warren Photographic; Neil Hepworth; iStock; Alfie Goodrich
Features
You & Your Cat
58 ON THE COVER A WANDERING STAR Carol Anne Davis often finds herself searching for Vicky, her elusive cat. 59 IT HAPPENED TO ME: Jackie Goodrick’s cats proved the perfect match for a blood transfusion. 60 PET PAWTRAITS Your photos featured in our gallery. 62 IT’S CLIO’S TIME TO SHINE After years of playing second fiddle, Esther Newton’s cat Clio is enjoying a contented life alone. 64 THE SILVER STRAY Victoria Connelly’s fictional tale of a feline man-charmer!
Breeds & Showing
6 Have a coffee with cats.
67 ON THE COVER PURRFECT PEDIGREES Big and beautiful — the stunning Maine Coon. 95 SHOWTIME! Show news including a spotlight on the Singapura Cat Club.
Shopping
Comps & Puzzles
72 ON THE COVER Insurance buyer’s guide, shopping must-haves, The Lowe Down, beautiful feline fabrics, fun for kids, win Natural & Clean cat litter, get catwalk fashions and decorate your home with feline inspired accessories. 81 YOUR KITTEN Welcoming a kitten home. Plus: reader’s kitten, Abyssinian breeder Gina’s litter diary, feline focus, news, kitten selector, vet advice and hundreds of kittens for sale.
On the Your Cat website
● Weekly competitions ● Mini breed profiles ● Friendly forum — and web chat ● Cat care and advice ● Kittens for sale — and lots more! For contact details and web links for items featured in this magazine, go to: www. yourcat.co.uk/magazine
19 PET REMEDY SETS Win one of 50 Pet Remedy plug-in diffusers and refill sets worth £30 each. 31 ON THE COVER FREEBIES! Over £1,000 worth of cat goodies up for grabs! 63 PUZZLESPOT Kittyword puzzle, spot the difference challenge and fantasy feline.
Regulars
18 CATTITUDES DEBATE Should owners of lost pets be allowed to put up ‘missing posters’? 23 CAT CHAT Your letters, forum banter and tweets. 32 SUBSCRIPTION OFFER Check out this month’s money-saving discount! 99 IN FOCUS Photographer Mats Hamnäs’ cat Tiger.
95 SHOWTIME! Show and breed updates.
www.yourcat.co.uk www. w yo our urca catt. ca t.co t.co co.u .uk 5
Around the world
Coffee break
CATS Meet the café kitties that help Tokyo’s residents to relax.
Many people simply choose to sit while the cats just enjoy doing what cats do.
W
here in the world can you enjoy the stress-busting benefits of stroking a cat alongside your mid-morning beverage break? Only in Japan! Animal loving Tokyo residents pay by the hour to spend time with the 12 cats at Jalala Neko Café, which is just one of around 150 establishments offering people the opportunity to spend time with pets, not just cats, but dogs, rabbits and ferrets too. Neko means cat in Japanese and there are around 30 such cafés in the city. Dubbed ‘professional pets’, the café cats enjoy being stroked, are partial to play and offer a purring chin to tickle. Indeed, Jalala gets so busy visitors are advised to make an appointment and have to agree to the café’s rules before being admitted. Rules include moving quietly, not waking resting felines and washing hands before handling any of the cats. In the hustle and bustle of the city, where pet ownership is reserved for the lucky few, increasing numbers of people are discovering the benefits of cuddling a cat. ■
6 Your Cat August 2011
All of the cats have detailed biographies so people can choose the type of feline character they’d like to spend time with.
The café rules state that visitors must not disturb sleeping cats.
Photos: Alfie Goodrich
The cats of Jalala Neko Café give Tokyo’s residents some quality feline time. There’s a no flash photography rule, but it’s fine to snap away with your mobile, capturing your special cat moment.
Playtime is popular with visitors and felines.
In the hustle and bustle of the city,people are discovering the benefits of cuddling a cat.
Cats are helping Toyko’s residents to unwind.
www.yourcat.co.uk 7
Purrfect pedigrees
Personally I think ‘bundles of healthy, happy, easy-going, well-socialized semi-longhaired chirruping balls of fluff ’ sums these cats up quite well. There’s just one word missing, LARGE! Famed for their size, this breed puts on around half a kilogram a month when they’re young, so a four-month-old should weigh about 2kg! Jennifer Beasley, a member of the Maine Coon Breed Fanciers Association (MCBFA), bigs them up: “Maine Coons are chunky monkeys. They are affable, social and desperately easygoing, total ‘huggy-bears’ as pets. I love that they look like a cat and that the features have not been distorted or changed in any manner. Maine Coons are strong, robust animals who bond to their owners very quickly and vice versa. They are tactile and will always be up for a game, play or a cuddle.” Yes, despite their size, they are still big softies. Kerry Butterworth, secretary of The Maine Coon Guild, says it’s what she loves most about the breed: “Their gentle nature, along with their presence and their ability to help you even if you don’t think you need help! They are not like any other cat, but remember — one Maine Coon is never enough! They are a joy; anyone who has a Maine Coon will tell you that.” The Maine Coon has kept all the aspects of a typical hunter — GRRRRRR — including large eyes and ears for detecting prey, and his big round feet act as kind of snowshoe — BRRRRRR — especially as the paw tufts extend backwards to flick off soft snow, preventing it collecting between the pads and causing frostbite. As for his tail, it’s so long and flowing that they say the Maine Coon is a tail with a cat on the end!
68 Your Cat August 2011
The Maine Coon is the ultimate gentle giant.
Pedigree profile
A
ctually, it’s not just the girls who get in a flutter over this larger than life gentle giant, he’s very much ‘a man’s man too’! He’s also good with kids, dogs and other cats. So with enough specs appeal for everyone, with his muscular body and broad cheekbones, and a personality that will charm your socks off and back to the breeder for another one no doubt, you can’t go wrong with a Maine Coon.
Breed number: 64 Average lifespan: into teenage years. Temperament: friendly and affectionate, loyal and devoted, lively and good with children and other animals. Weight: males 6 to 8kg; females 4 to 5kg. Availability: easy. Colours: A variety of solid colours, plus tortoiseshell, tabbies (classic and mackerel patterns) with or without silver, shaded and smoke colours, bi-colour and parti-colour (solid/tabby/tortie/ shaded/smoke colour with white).
? With large eyes and ears, the Maine Coon has the look of a classic hunter.
Where in the world? Mystery surrounds the origins of the Maine Coon, the first longhair cat breed to emerge natural from the USA and still the official Maine State cat. It is doubtful that indigenous cats would have existed in Maine, but it cannot be discounted and such forest cats would have been large, hardy and with a shaggy coat, capable of withstanding the region’s cold winters. Some say the breed’s ringed tail indicates matings between domestic cats and racoons, which seems highly improbable. A more likely connection is that the tail might have prompted people to mistake the cat for a racoon at first glance. More likely is that cats used as mousers on the trading ships visiting the north eastern seaboard ports escaped and met indigenous cats. Inter-breeding gradually produced the early Maine cat. Others prefer the romantic notion that while Marie Antionette was planning her escape from France, she sent her six longhair cats ahead to America. They arrived safely, although, unfortunately, she didn’t! Maine Coons first arrived in Britain in 1984 and have won undying devotion from breeders and pet owners ever since.
Maine Coons are described as ‘a tail with a cat on the end!’
➤ www.yourcat.co.uk 69
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32 Your Cat August 2011
Featured breed: Maine Coon Fe
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BUYERS’ GUIDE: insurance
Japanese cat café
TRAUMAAS TRAUMAS SOLVE ED SOLVED
READER STORIES
“I saved the cat I ran over”
My wandering star
MEET TEMPLE KITTIES TARA & SHADOW
How to have a
Maeve Binchy & her cats
WELLBEHAVED cat
by top behaviourist Vicky Halls
SHOPPING FOR YOU, YOUR KITTY AND YOUR HOME
RSHIP
SHERS OF
N OWNE E T IT K O T E ID U EP G THE STEP-BY-ST
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