Dear LPG,  

I recently got a second cat.  I have always had two at a time because they keep me company and have each other when I am preoccupied.  I have had a few over the years and really appreciate their company when they have the time to share it.   I am sure that each cat owner will agree that everyone is different, although they go about their business for the most part only making time to interrupt their own plans to include a bit of time with you when it suits them.  

Having decided that my existing cat could do with a new playfellow, I made a point of getting her new housemate from a charity so that I could offer an older cat a new home.  To my mind, when an older cat moves in, they have usually already been toilet trained and I feel as if giving a home to an older one leaves the world with one less completely abandoned cat.  I want to tell you about my latest house guest. 

Hunter and I are getting along fine, and my other cat, Lucky, is getting used to him too.  Introducing a new cat to one you already have living with you is something you hope that you don’t have to do too often.  Even though I have done it a couple of times before, I have to say that I did find reading an old article on the LPG pages quite helpful (►►►).   

I think that most cat owners will agree that we get to know a bit about them pretty quickly.  When it comes down to his favourite lounging spot, what he likes to eat, and the tone of his meow, it did not take me too long to understand my latest house guest.  Hunter’s uniqueness has to be his really long tail.  Not only that, at times its colour blends perfectly with the carpet in my hallway and it moves around so quickly that, on a couple of occasions during our relatively short friendship, I have just managed to avoid stepping on it.  I thought that I knew all I needed to know about cat language and that I could pick up on most of what they have to say by simply looking at the whole cat, but the length of that particular tail got me concentrating on what it was trying to convey and I soon found myself tail-watching, and not only his tail.   

All that in-house cat tail avoidance must have been having a bit of an effect on me.  My habit of taking a lot more notice of other passing cats’ rear ends has got to the point where, while chatting to a friend one day not so long ago, she interrupted the conversation to ask me what I was looking at.  My practise of checking the behaviour of passing cats’ rear ends is becoming a bit excessive.   

I found myself on the internet doing a bit of research and, according to the experts there is quite a lot to learn about our feline friends depending on what they are doing with that bit at the back.  

I thought I knew all about the ‘tails’ cats tell, but I also learned that what I thought I always knew is not all as it seems.  After this revelation, I thought it might be a good idea to pass on what the internet experts have to say about the subtle wiggle of that tail just in case there is a reader out there who has been completely misinterpreting what their cat has been trying to tell them. 

PK, Forest Hill    

 

PK shares what she found out…

 

 

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