cat lovers this will make you smile / haters go away

00opsidia Thanks. He was a beautiful tabby named Mr Cooper, and is buried in the garden with a few others. I feed a little stray (when he bothers to turn up)

Aww Mr Cooper is a lovely name It's nice you have them buried in the garden. Unfortunately our garden isn't deep enough to do that as there is rock under the soil.

It's nice you have a little visitor. My cat has gone missing before but I discovered he visits my neighbour. She thought he was a stray but now we share photos and spy on him together as she loves cats so much. We kind of share him although he's really ours, but I'd rather he visits somewhere he is kindly treated.

00opsidia Your cat must love the attention he gets from both you and your neighbour. The one I feed is intact (not been neutered) and his fur is rough and tatty. I also feed a fox and a hedgehog

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202409/medium-964106-20240613-080322.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202409/medium-356532-20240416-204506.jpg

Here are my two, Molly and Henry! I've just moved house and they will be following soon. Nervous about how they'll settle, but they've done it before, so they'll do it again. 🤞

00opsidia You misunderstand me, I have no where indicated my own view on cats. I grew up with cats so I am completely at ease with them.

I was merely pointing out that between cat-loving and cat-hating there are a vast range of attitudes to cats, many entirely positive, and whether people want to talk about cats and watch cat videos, cannot be attributed to how they feel about cats.

My sister is a cat obsessively, she never has less than three and has owned up to 6, but she would never watch a cat video and doesn't even like being given cat memorabilia.

PoppyFlower

Here are my two, Molly and Henry! I've just moved house and they will be following soon. Nervous about how they'll settle, but they've done it before, so they'll do it again. 🤞

The looks on their faces are priceless PoppyFlower!

They look as if they're thinking "I've sat here posing long enough and I have better things to do. Can I go now?" 😁

Here's my lovely Phoebe.

Thank you so much for this heart-warming thread.

Is Phoebe spoilt, by any chance?

MissAdventure

Is Phoebe spoilt, by any chance?

Whatever makes you think that MissA

Call it women's intuition.
Where and how did you get her, please?

She was a rescue kitten I adopted when she was only 5 weeks old. I had to have a bottle feeding kit from the vet, and I became mummy.

If that’s Phoebe’s bed, Sparklefizz your own bed must be truly amazing!

Sparklefizz

Here's my lovely Phoebe.

Thank you so much for this heart-warming thread.

Awwww!!!
How cute! How lovely! @Sparklefizz Phoebe looks so happy being tucked in!
I was thinking the same thing @SueDonim

Many years ago I was a breeder of Persian cats and at one time, one of my girls gave birth to two stillborn kittens.
She had always been such a wonderful mum, and I was fully aware that she would feel lost without her babies.
We are fortunate enough to have a large Cats Protection League centre just 10 minutes down the road, so the very following morning I popped in to see them, told them about what had happened the previous night, and asked whether they had any kittens that might benefit for having a surrogate mum.
My timing couldn't have been better. They had 3 kittens who'd lost their mum (the owner had let her outside when they were only a day old, and she's been run over), and the manager at the centre had been hand feeding the kitten's every hour, on the hour, 24 hours a day for the previous 3 days.
They were due a vet checkup that morning, but she said she would bring them to my home afterwards to see whether my cat would be interested in looking after them.
She arrived a couple of hours later. I say on the floor by my cat's basket and held out one of the kittens for her to sniff. She immediately scooped it out of my hands and pulled to straight to her belly. I took the second kitten and she scooped that one out of my hand to, as well as the third.
The CPL manager just sat and cried, she could barely believe how readily my girl had accepted these babies.
One of them did have a medical issue and hadn't been thriving whilst being hand fed and the vet had suggested euthanasia, but we said we'd like to try putting it with my girl. Unfortunately, we lost her after about a week, but the other two thrived and went back to the CPL at 7 weeks, and were returned to their original owner, who named one of them after my cat.
The same day they left us, I was asked whether I thought my girl would be prepared to take on another 3 orphans, but these were a week old.
We repeated the sit on the floor for a sniff as if don't previously, and my gorgeous girl just scored them to the warmth of her belly, and she looked after them for the next 6 weeks, before they went back to the CPL for rehousing.
I was so proud of my wonderful girl. She went on to have one more litter of 3 beautiful babies herself 18 months later.
It broke my heart when we lost her to an illness a few years later, and I felt I couldn't have more Persians after that, so I researched other breeds and changed to British Shorthairs instead.
One of my BSH girls was prone to very big liters (her first was 9!), so from her second litter onwards, I intentionally had another girl with kittens (usually 4 or 5) at the same time as her. They shared a massive bed in my nursery, and you'd see both mums forming a circle around a mixed pile of all the kittens (each time there were between 15 and 18!). They shared all caring, feeding, washing, etc, taking it in turns to have a little free time to eat, toilet, come to us for cuddles, whilst the other kept an eye on the sleeping pile of little ones.
It was so beautiful to see all my girls being so loving to ALL the babies they came into contact with.

This is Phoebe as a baby. How could I not fall in love with her??

Harmonypuss what a wonderful story, thank you for posting it 😻

I love that story Harmonypuss

what a lovely story, Harmony.
P
Phoebe, though, well, just too cute in that baby photo.

I love black and white cats the most, for some reason.

That’s a beautiful tale, Harmony. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if humans raised their babies in the same kind of way? ❤️

Vervet monkeys will adopt orphans.
I watch a sanctuary on YouTube that facilitate it, and it's just beautiful seeing a female scooping up a baby and loving it.

For Indigo, our first cat (tabby-tortie, very clever) discovered that if she lifted a 'draught-proof' strip at the bottom of the front door, (with one claw), then released it, the humans inside would hear a bang and come to open the door. And I remember seeing a cat at the Cyprus Cat Rescue who'd learned how to open doors that had the old 'lever' door handles (a flying leap to flick the handle down).

Re the Uni study about 'cats playing fetch', well, with some cats, you'd just get a look that said "you threw it, you go and pick it up". That same first cat, we discovered (I forget how), that she WOULD play with a ping-pong ball, if we threw it upstairs, she'd watch it bouncing down, and catch it when within reach.

She used to catch an occasional mouse, but it was only to play with it. She ate half of one once, that seemed enough, never bothered again (after all, nobody sells mouse flavour cat food?).

And a further distant memory, one summer evening, in the back garden, light fading she jumped up, like a football goalie, and caught something. We checked what she'd got, it was a bat, but it was undamaged, just slightly dazed.

Our present cat (#8 in about 25 years) came from Cats Protection 3 years ago, when he was 14. He's still quite sprightly, but is incredibly noisy ("chatty", they said!), wows all the time, we've very little idea what about! All other cats have given pointed little wows when they wanted something, but he just seems to give a running commentary as he's mooching about.

He's also quite weird, as he absolutely loves being brushed or combed (with most, it's a signal to turn their feet into chainsaws). Old Fudgie though (the name he came with) - you only have to say "brush" and he'll come over and push his face onto it. Quite weird.

My mum used to hoover her cat
(She was very house proud!)
He liked it, though and rolled over so she could get at his "tum tum".

DrWatson My cats have always loved being brushed, especially Phoebe who knows the word "brush" and will come running. I've never thought it "weird".

I wish I could find a tiny kitten on my doorstep, so I have to take it in.

MissAdventure

I wish I could find a tiny kitten on my doorstep, so I have to take it in.

Me too!
I've been thinking for a while about fostering rescue cats but at the moment our lovely all black girl is awaiting radioactive iodine treatment for an overactive thyroid gland which will require some careful management when she comes home from the centre. She came to us out of nowhere as a stray in very poor condition at a time when we weren't really in the market for another cat as our tabby girl was reaching the end of her days. But what a blessing she has been, the sweetest, gentlest girl. I feel she would be very good around kittens......