FurCoat Magazine

FurCoat Taking Care Of Your Cat’s Eyes 13 Things You Didn’t Know About Cats

Making a Cat Pet Door Easy to Open Bathing Your Cat— A Battle Of Wills?

Contents 4

Making a Cat Pet Door Easy to Open

6

Bathing Your Cat — A Battle Of Wills?

10

Taking Care Of Your Cat’s Eyes

13

13 Things You Didn’t Know About Cats

17

Celebrate your cat’s birthday

25

Cat Sitting in Barcelona

Publisher: Grayson Barber Creative Director: Vadim Makoyed Photography: John Smith

If you have a cat pet door and your cat is finding difficult to open, you need to fix it before your cat becomes discouraged and stops trying to use the door.

Check the Cat Pet Door Installation

Check any Door Magnets

Cat pet doors are designed to be opened by a smaller than average cat. The door has to be easy to use to encourage the cat to continue using it. If your cat can’t open the pet door, check that the door flap has been installed correctly. If the pet door is a new installation, the flap’s movement should have been tested as part of the install. If the flap has become stiff, check the suspension of the door within the frame to make sure nothing has distorted the pet door frame and caused friction against the flap. Check the suspension hinge to ensure it has not been gummed up by dirt or pet hairs.

Some cat pet doors are fitted with magnets so that the door flap will remain in a perpendicular position until the bolts lock home. Many non-electrical pet doors use these magnets as an alternative method of keeping the pet door closed. The magnets are seldom a problem. If the magnets on the pet flap actually make contact with the metal strip that they are aligned with, your cat will experience difficulty breaking the hold.

Move the magnets or the metal strip to cure the problem.

Check the Bolts

Pet flaps should only swing directly forwards and backwards. Any tendency to swing sideways can trap the flap against the pet door frame. If the flap can move to the side at all, check the suspension and correct it.

Look at the bolts that hold the pet door closed and make sure that they are all fitted to allow the bolts to withdraw completely out of the area covered by the frame of the door. It is possible that one or more of the bolts is not retracting fully. You may need to call in a specialist to repair the solenoid that operates the bolt.

Check the Door It is not unheard of for a pet cat door kit to include the wrong size door. Check to ensure that the door fitted to your pet door is the correct model and size.

Check the Weight of the Door

Check the Motion of the Pet Flap

Check Your Cat’s Behavior at the Door Sometimes a cat will fail to open a pet door because it senses danger. Watch your cat as it tries to open the pet door to make sure that the cat is not simply unwilling to leave the house or does not trust the door.

Examine Your Cat If all is well with the pet door, your cat may be too weak to operate the pet door. In this case you may want to consult with your veterinarian as soon as possible.

If you have added anything to the door, insulation for example, make sure that the added weight is not enough to discourage your cat. If it is, remove it.

...|5

Written by Anne Moss

Cats that are not used to being bathed will often panic, but consider that most cats will happily go out and hunt in the pouring rain.

M

any cat owners wince when they are faced with the prospect of bathing their cat. Past experience or lurid second-hand tales from traumatized friends - often conjures up images of wet chaos with the blurred shape of a soaked cat climbing the walls (or, worse, your arms) with claws fully extended. As a result, most owners avoid bathing their cat altogether.

In fact, cats can be accustomed to regular bathing professional cat breeders often bathe their cats as part of the grooming regime. A continuous repetition of the procedure accustoms the cats to water just as their larger jungle cousins learn to swim across rivers, wade in and fish for their dinners, and even play in the shallows of lakes and streams.

Cats that are not used to being bathed will often panic, but consider that most cats will happily go out and hunt in the pouring rain. The operative concept in bathing cats is to approach the event as calmly and relaxed as possible.

To help you do that, the following suggestions are offered.

They won’t work with every cat, but they will work with most.

Why Bathe Your Cat? Cats spend hours a day washing themselves. In fact, most can do very well to keep themselves clean without additional help from us. However, there are times when your cat may need a bath: • When she is covered with a substance you don’t want her to lick off and ingest, such as machine oil, pesticides, or cleaning powders and fluids.

• When you need to bathe your cat with medicated shampoo to treat the skin for fleas or other disorders.

• When you are showing your cats - a thorough bath a few days before the show is usually desirable.

For these reasons, it might be better to get your cat acquainted with the bathing concept when she is still young. Small kittens rarely take violent exception to slightly warm water if you approach the job with confidence and soothing talk. Then when you have that emergency need to bathe your cat, the procedure will be familiar.

How Often Should A Cat Be Bathed?

Even if your cat is comfortable with baths, make sure you don’t overdo a good thing. Washing the cat too often removes natural skin oils and may dry out the coat.

...|7

If your cat is calm and you have a lot of patience, bathing the cat may not be such a nightmare after all.

Tools and Equipment Going ahead with this? You will need several basic items to help you with the task.

• Shampoo - Choose a safe cat shampoo, especially if you use one that is medicated. If you must bathe the cat in a hurry, and you don’t have a cat shampoo, the only alternative is tearless baby shampoo. Regular shampoos for people are usually too harsh for feline skin and may cause irritation.

If you need to use medicated shampoos, such as antiflea solutions, make sure that they are cat-specific. Dog shampoos can be toxic and even deadly to cats!

• Towel - It should be dry and fluffy. You can warm it slightly before bath time, but make sure it’s not too hot!

• A soft washcloth - You will need it for cleaning the cat’s face.

The Bath

• A couple of cotton balls - These will go into the cat’s ears.

And now to the bathing process (don’t forget to make use of your assistant).

The Preparations Unless you are very experienced and the cat is particularly calm, you should probably get a helper. Choose a patient, cat-oriented person and let him or her know what bathing a cat is all about. Make sure it is someone your cat knows and likes.

Make all the preparations you need before you bring the cat into the bathroom. Get all the bathing equipment ready and get all breakable items in the bathroom well out of the way. Cats don’t like the slippery feel of the bathtub, so place a rubber mat on the bottom of the tub. Your cat will need it to grip onto.

Now for the guest of honor. A couple of hours before the bath, have a grooming session and brush the cat’s coat.

This is especially important for longhaired cats, since any mats and tangles are likely to shrink during the wash and become difficult to handle. Don’t forget to trim your cat’s claws some time before the bath, to avoid injury.

Get the cat into the bathroom and then close the door you don’t want a wet soapy cat running around your home.

Gently but firmly place the cat on the rubber mat. Use a low stream of warm water from a hand-held nozzle or a pitcher. Make sure that the water is neither too cold nor too hot. It should be at about the cat’s body temperature.

Wet the washcloth with some warm water (but no soap) and gently wipe the cat’s face. Never spray water directly at the cat’s face and definitely never dunk the cat’s head in water!Above all, if you want to try to bathe your cat, remember that the key word here is patience. Be very gentle and talk to the cat throughout the whole procedure in a soft and soothing voice. Never shout or lose your temper. Your cat is probably frightened enough as it is, so you don’t want to upset it even more. If your cat is calm and you have a lot of patience, bathing the cat may not be such a nightmare after all.

...|9

TAKING CARE OF YOUR CAT’S EYES

M

ost people often think that your cat’s eyes are not something you generally have to worry about. However, this is a misconception.

Cat’s eyes are very important and you do have to pay attention to their eyes as well. If your cat has healthy eyes, they are moist and clear. If your pet cat has eye problems, we can show you how to point this out and take care of it promptly by contacting your vet of course.

Your cat’s eyes are obviously too important to take any risks with.

Something that some pet owners don’t often think of is keeping your pet’s hair out of their eyes often and being diligent with this. Not only because it can impede their view, but for a reason you don’t often think of: cat hair causing scratches. Hair can cause scratches on the cornea of your cat’s eye. Of course this can be permanent eye damage. Longhaired cats must often have the hair near their eyes trimmed and certainly this is important for a cat such as a Persian.

Taking care of your cat’s eyes is very important to You need to keep your cat’s eyes under surveillance ensure they have healthy sight for their lifetimes. and try to pay attention for anything strange. Keep your cat’s eyes mucus-free at all times. Infection of There is also a problem for cat’s eyes that is the eye does happen and this typically happens called “tear staining”. Tear staining is especially when bacteria overgrows on mucus. Use sterile noticeable in cats such as Persians and can be eyewash to keep this area clean and this is very unsightly if not taken care of. Typically, tears flow important that you take time to do this several across the eye and proceed to drain through the times a day if your cat has mucus in the eye. This tear duct. The strange colors at the corners of a is vital in your little kittens who are susceptible to cat’s eyes following tear staining which occurs eye discharge resulting from an upper respiratory when tears spill out and lay on the hair. It is infection. You must pay attention to this most recommended that you purchase a tear stain certainly in all cats though. removal product and can be found in any pet care store. You will want to use this on your pet’s You can apply a protective ointment to your discolored areas weekly. cat’s eyes if they seem to be extremely sensitive to water, or shampoo (even if it’s pet friendly These are all important tips to taking care of your shampoo, some pets are still ultra sensitive to this cat’s eyes and the common problems that our furry kind as well). You will apply this under their top lid friends have with their eyes. Taking care of your to protect their eyes for the shampoo and water. cat’s eyes is very important to ensure they have This will also be imperative if your cat gets upset healthy sight for their lifetimes. when getting water and / or shampoo in their eyes.

...|11