Jablai

Monday, June 2, 2008

Cats Natural Instincts

Cats have a unique sense of smell. Cats have approximately 19 million nerve endings in their nose that makes them especially sensitive to smell. While not having nearly as many as some breeds of dogs these nerve endings in the membranes of the nose are considerably more than the 5 million or so nerves that humans have.

This sense of smell helps the cat to determine whether food is suitable for eating as the nitrogen given off by the chemicals of rancid food is picked up by their highly developed sense of smell, stopping them from eating the food.

Kittens love to play and they appear to have boundless energy. They are very inquisitive creatures and love to explore and giving them things to play with and look at will help to keep them occupied and out of trouble as much as possible.

There are lots of different excellent toys available to keep young kittens happy for hours on end, but there is nothing better than the time that you spend to interact with your kitten and develop a relationship that will ensure you have a lot of fun for its entire lifetime.

Kittens will go through various stages in the first weeks of their life, and they will learn about their surroundings and how to interact with other pets and people in the house, and more importantly how to interact with you.

Playing with your kitten will teach it a lot as it develops all the natural instincts from playing around to hunting. You will find that after about six weeks the cat will begin stalking and hunting and often jump out from behind things to attack your leg as you walk by. This is a natural instinct that needs to be developed for you to have a healthy happy cat.

If you find your kitten is jumping out and attacking you or others in the house it should not be reprimanded otherwise it will get confused about something that is only natural. It won't do you a lot of harm but it will do your kitten a lot of good to develop these instincts.

Naturally you will have to stop it from misbehaving, and that is something that it needs to learn as well as all its other natural instincts, but common sense will let you know what it should and shouldn't be doing. Just like children, kittens will test the boundaries and if left unchecked you can have a cat that is very difficult to manage as it gets older.

This is also one of the reasons why it can be quite difficult sometimes to give your cat pills or tablets. Due to their highly developed sense of smell they are aware of anything that has been added to their food and if they think it is something that they shouldn't be eating they will leave that food entirely and the tablets that you've attempted to hide in it.

This applies to various different medications, herbal or otherwise, and the fact that we can't smell or taste anything doesn't mean that the cat is unaware of a foreign substance.

Often it is a lot easier to give the cat an injection of meditation rather than trying to get it to swallow a pill or tablet. If there is no alternative but to give it a pill You will need to tip its head back and get the pill as far back in it's throat as possible then stroke it under the chin to help it swallow the pill. If you don't do this they will often hold it in the mouth until they have been released then spit it out.

If you do need to give your cat medication by pills then follow it around for a short while after you think they have had the pill, because they can hold it in their mouth for a while, until they believe you are not looking before spitting it out resulting in them not getting the required meditation.