Chiff and Fipple Forums

benhall.1 wrote:

Nanohedron wrote:

benhall.1 wrote:I must be unusually perspicacious...

Nah. Sesquipedalian, yes.

I find a tendency to sesquipedalianism to be useful when engaging in cruciverbalistic and quasi-cruciverbalistic activities.

I had to give that up. The intertesselations gave me vertigo.

Dan A. wrote:...not every pet is right for every person.

Likewise, do consider the proposition that not every person is right for every pet. It's a very important angle, because keeping a pet is a two-way street. This is not to be ignored. There's my friend who made a choice based strictly on looks and wound up with an ever-hiding cat who didn't really like him from the start. I'm entirely certain that cat could have met someone he liked, but it wasn't this guy. The cat's not to blame; the fact is that the guy went about it entirely wrong. If he'd done it right, I can tell you he'd have wound up with a different cat, one who liked him right away. First encounters won't tell you everything, but that's the best time to find out what chances there are of forming a good bond. And the only way to do that is to engage the animal as a person in its own right, and not as an object. Then you'll see.

Some people think it's stupid to talk to dogs, cats and birds, but IMO such people should never have pets in the first place. I've always talked to my mammalian and psittacine friends, because whether the breed in general is gregarious or not, its individuals are still social in some way, each and every one. It's wired in. It doesn't matter that they don't understand your words, because talk is part of the whole package through which human emotions and moods come through loud and clear. So for that reason alone, talk is reassuring to a pet, because you're not withholding and thus leaving things in doubt. Dogs and cats know when you're praising them. They know when you're displeased. They know when you're happy, curious, concerned, or in distress. And I am convinced they're even more certain of these assessments when you talk, because then you're being at your most complete and natural. If you have a good bond, they not only value the attention of being talked to, they need it emotionally. If you're going to be right for your pet, you have to do your part, too.

If you can't talk that's one thing, but so long as you engage your pets in other ways they'll make the adjustment. But if you obviously can talk, yet you won't talk to your pets, the difference won't escape their notice and it will affect the relationship. If you're not interested in a relationship but only in a possession, you can safely ignore everything I've said here and I'll go, shaking my head.

Hell, I'll even talk to a turtle, although I'm far less certain it matters to them. Fish? Not in any serious way. A bearded dragon? You bet.

s1m0n wrote:..Because we've been really boring for days.

Posted seven days after my phone line and Internet went down, and three before I finally got them back...

Though multiple pages of cat psychology, bikes, foxes and big words over those three days have surely been even more boring than the first week you had to make do without me?

Excuse me, who are you again?

Some erstwhile sequestered sesquipedalian anamnesis!

Nanohedron wrote:

Dan A. wrote:...not every pet is right for every person.

Likewise, do consider the proposition that not every person is right for every pet.

I should have added "and vice versa" after the passage of mine that is quoted!

And going back to the post in which said passage appeared, I stated that I sort of wanted a pet squirrel. That post was submitted mere seconds before I commenced to eating dinner. After dinner, I did some research on squirrels as pets. One thing I learned is that nature intended a squirrel's claws to be able to pierce tree bark. After seeing what squirrel claws can do to human skin, I'm cured of any desire to have a pet squirrel. Of course, if I find an injured squirrel, and a wildlife rehabilitator couldn't accept it immediately, I'd care for it until a wildlife rehabilitator could accept it. I was right when I postulated that keeping a squirrel as a pet would not have been a practical consideration

Peter Duggan wrote:Posted seven days after my phone line and Internet went down, and three before I finally got them back...

Did you lose TV service, too, or are you still stuck with dial-up Internet?

Dan A. wrote:Did you lose TV service, too, or are you still stuck with dial-up Internet?

I don't have a TV or pay for the TV licence that would also let me watch online. But have had broadband of sorts since August 2005 (before which, yes, the first village in the world to have every house connected to electricity was dial-up only!).

Peter Duggan wrote:Some erstwhile sequestered sesquipedalian anamnesis!

You're a cracker.

Dan A. wrote:Of course, if I find an injured squirrel, and a wildlife rehabilitator couldn't accept it immediately, I'd care for it until a wildlife rehabilitator could accept it. I was right when I postulated that keeping a squirrel as a pet would not have been a practical consideration.

When I was a kid, wildlife rehabilitators were unknown. We've cared for - to the best of our ignorant abilities, mind you - the odd injured wild animal or two. There was a cedar waxwing who had an injured wing, and fortunately after some time it was able to fly again. Until then, it would perch on our fingers as we fed it berries. We even took on a snapping turtle who'd been hit by a car and lost an eye for it. I was super-wary about that one, but it never menaced us. It was weak, and simply needed rest and enough sustenance to keep its life-force up so it could heal. That done to our satisfaction, we put it back into the wild. Good experiences.

Did I talk to them? I don't remember, but probably.

Peter Duggan wrote:But have had broadband of sorts since August 2005 (before which, yes, the first village in the world to have every house connected to electricity was dial-up only!).

I hope nobody is using an outmoded dial-up service anymore! And Kinlochlaven looks like quite a lovely place.

Nanohedron wrote:When I was a kid, wildlife rehabilitators were unknown. We've cared for - to the best of our ignorant abilities, mind you - the odd injured wild animal or two.

Did I talk to them? I don't remember, but probably.

I talk to my pets all the time. Sometimes they talk to me, too. Sascha usually gets talkative when he knows feeding time is coming up or I am eating something that smells really good!

Dan A. wrote:I talk to my pets all the time. Sometimes they talk to me, too. Sascha usually gets talkative when he knows feeding time is coming up or I am eating something that smells really good!

Food's a big one, all right. And treats? Good Lord, but things get noisy. But they ask for help and express opinions, too. One fellow calls his cat a tattletale because it is always demanding his attention in order to point out a spider in the tub (the cat won't even touch them - so much for the vaunted "killer instinct"), or a raccoon outside the window, or whatever discordant element offends it next. Not a day goes by, it would seem. But the fellow also knows that as vigilant as it is, his cat would alert him to an intruder or a fire or the like, too, so essentially he's got himself a dedicated watch-cat. You don't see that every day. Once Mubu objected to me paying more attention to the computer than she thought was good. Usually she'd just jump up on my lap and we'd have quality time that way, but not that day. I was tapping and clicking away as usual when, unexpectedly, behind me a big yowl pierced the quiet and made me jump out of my seat. I looked back and there she was, seated, suggesting she might well have been there a while, just watching. If cats could raise an eyebrow, that's how disapproving she looked. It wasn't a matter of food, because her food was always out for her, and there was nothing else pressing at the time. She could have simply jumped up onto my lap as usual, but this was more like telling me I was a sorry sight in need of an intervention. Which I'll not deny. What I really think it was, at core, was her letting me know that she wanted me to do more initiating of quality time instead of leaving it all up to her, and indeed, that had been the situation of late. For beings with emotional lives this is an easily understood feeling, and in a partnership context, a very reasonable position to take as well. If you pay attention to how the pet is behaving in that moment, which is to say that you also take the bigger picture into account along with it (and that includes you), mammals, at least, are not that hard to read.

Come to think of it, Mubu used that pointed, significant-looking expression on me various times, all consistent with there being good reason for it. It was very much like a look when one says, "Seriously?". If she liked a new tune and my playing was good she'd do antics in the armchair, but if it sucked, I got The Look. Happened every time. She had an ear, that one. Now, I know that sounds like nothing but projecting, but frequency and consistency do lead one to arrive at conclusions, because everyone knows that it is common for cats to have an affinity for music. So why not discernment between good and frankly bad, at least in some cases? There's room in my world for it. There are other times where she used The Look, too, and to proper effect, but there's no need to go into them here.

I grew up with a dog who had special bark that was only for 1) snakes, or 2) someone pulling lengths of garden hose through the lawn. We had (minor) acreage and several gardens and vegetable beds, so someone was constantly hauling hoses around. She found it both alarming and a lot of fun.

As always, I'm a little late joining the fray. I've had cats virtually my whole life. I've had indoor and outdoor cats. Some cats just WON'T let you keep them in. If a cat is continually clawing at the door, always trying to get out when the door's open, after some time we just give up. We've had a couple of cats that were barn cats before we got them, and one was a stray trapped at five months. The first barn cat was about two years old when we got him. He'd been left along for four or five months after his owners had died/moved away, and he was about 2/3 of his normal weight when we got him. He gained a lot of weight over probably two years. We put him on a diet at that point. Sure enough, he started hunting. He did lose a lot of weight from the worms he got.

We currently have one cat who goes out -- soon as he started going out, the former stray stopped. The outdoor one does get the occasional bird. Except for one cardinal, all of the birds he's gotten (we're talking maybe a dozen over 3-4 years) have been starlings and sparrows -- both invasive species. He also gets a couple of chipmunks a year.

I get where both Simon and Nano are coming from. Our indoor cats have NOT lived longer than our outdoor cats. They've all gotten metabolic disease and wasted away at 12-14 years. So I don't buy the standard line that well-cared-for outdoor cats don't live as long as indoor cats. We'd like to keep a bird feeder, but except during the winter, chipmunks and squirrels get into it. We did have a cat who used to camp out underneath it, but he's passed away and our current outdoor cat is an idiot and has never figured that trick out. In a perfect world, I could keep outdoor cats who didn't bother the local fauna, but the world isn't perfect.

I've never known a Persian (or other dent-facet cat) that was interested in hunting. There are other very very mellow breeds that would surprise me if they hunted or even liked to spend time outdoors. Some of the naked breeds, too.

chas wrote:I've never known a Persian (or other dent-facet cat) that was interested in hunting. There are other very very mellow breeds that would surprise me if they hunted or even liked to spend time outdoors.

My Sascha, as I've said before, used to "hunt" birds. He doesn't really do that anymore, though he does enjoy a good tearing around the house and sometimes playing with the other cats. I am certain he's a mixed breed, but I've always thought of him as a Himalayan.

chas wrote:I've never known a Persian (or other dent-facet cat) that was interested in hunting. There are other very very mellow breeds that would surprise me if they hunted or even liked to spend time outdoors. Some of the naked breeds, too.

You get all kinds. A couple that lived in my building had this big, hulking tom that you'd think would kick the world before him as he went, but he was such a - shall I say it? - pussycat, that he was dead-set against ever leaving the apartment. They'd coax him, but no. IIRC I think they called him Buster. An ironic name for a timid, gentle giant.

I'm not sure how ready I am to get into a discussion on selective breeding, especially as results in the likes of Persians and Sphynxes. Suffice it to say that I think unnatural extremes like that are a disservice to the poor animal.

Dan A. wrote:

chas wrote:I've never known a Persian (or other dent-facet cat) that was interested in hunting. There are other very very mellow breeds that would surprise me if they hunted or even liked to spend time outdoors.

My Sascha, as I've said before, used to "hunt" birds. He doesn't really do that anymore, though he does enjoy a good tearing around the house and sometimes playing with the other cats. I am certain he's a mixed breed, but I've always thought of him as a Himalayan.

Thanks -- I obviously haven't known a statistical sample.

Cheers,