Hello, Dr. Catsby blog readers! I’m Hannah, Dr. Catsby's blogger living in upstate New York. And this is Jade.
Jade came to me from the snowy streets of the Bronx after following home my friend one sub-zero, January day. She was so thin from lack of food, I wasn’t sure if she was a kitten. I was 22 at the time, and living in a tiny, overpriced studio apartment in Harlem. In the four years since, Jade and I have become inseparable. Every day when I settle in to write, she snuggles up next to me with her head in my lap. When I lay down to sleep, she lays flush against my head and grooms me.
My sweet Jade has always been such a blessing, I’ve never minded the occasional mess on the floor, claw marks on the carpet, or spilled food around her bowl. I did always wonder, though, why she was knocking kibble out of the bowl and eating it off the floor. And, why was she crying for more food even though the bowl wasn’t empty?
When her Dr. Catsby bowl arrived, Jade rubbed her face on it right away, claiming it as her own. Then, she did something I’ve never seen before – she emptied it. Without spilling any food, she ate until her meal was gone.
I guess the deep, wide-lipped, porcelain bowl she’d been using for years had irritated her whiskers. And no wonder it did. Whiskers are hyper-sensitive by design. They’re embedded into follicles filled with blood vessels and sensory nerves. That’s what allows cats to feel their way around in the dark, estimate whether they can fit into small spaces, and even register vibrations in the air as they pursue prey. With her old bowl, those sensitive whiskers got pushed against Jade’s furry little face day every time she ate. No wonder she was forever knocking the bowl over.
When we understand our pets’ anatomy and traits, we can start to understand their behavior. Then, we can develop elegant solutions – like the Dr. Catsby bowl – that make our furbabies happy and our lives easier.
That’s why I’m so excited to write the Dr. Catsby blog! With the guidance of a veterinarian, we’ll answer questions about why cats act the way they do and how we can take better care of them. I hope you’ll find these articles as useful as your Dr. Catsby bowl. And I hope you’ll write in with any questions or topic suggestions you’d like to see us tackle.
Wishing you peace, love, and catnip,
Hannah and Jade
