Free Kitten to good home.

[TimO]

... His history of being an adult entire male will have given him a wanderlust that he probably wouldn't have had if he had been neutered as a kitten and that probably increases the chances of him doing things like this. ...

Yes, I'd guess it's likely something like that, especially now the weather is warm and dry, so he doesn't necessarily need a nice warm cat bed to curl up in.

... Some cats simply rehome themselves somewhere with no other cats and an elderly person home all day who feeds then tuna! They tend to pop back to their previous place to sample the cuisine from time to time though. Fingers crossed he shows up very soon.

That's also possible, especially since he does seem to be a social cat, and likes to be near to where I am.  I guess even in that scenario he may yet reappear if he gets taken to a vet, and they check him for an RFID chip (if for example someone wants to get him chipped).

I'll be in the house most of this long weekend (excepting the FNRttC tonight), so he may pop in at some point, if he's still in the vicinity.

[Pingu]

Fingers crossed, Tim.

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

We used to have a male cat who'd been neutered as a kitten and he still had wanderlust - he'd quite often be away for several days at a time, then come back with new battle scars. So don't give up hope. He might just be off having cat adventures.

[TimO]

Well, that was a little odd.

I just got in, a little earlier than I have been this week, and he was waiting for me by the front door!  That's a little unusual in itself, I think that's only happened once before, normally he'll let himself in via the cat flap around the back.

He came in, and scoffed down some supper, with Zev, who seemed ambivalent about seeing him.

Then he wandered up to the front door, and waited for me to come and let him out, which isn't something I've ever really done.  I've let him out very occasionally when I've been going out, but mostly he'll come and go via the cat flap.  I wasn't going to open the door, but needed to get something from my pannier (and the bike was by the door), and he became quite aggressive, very unusual for him, growling, and even gave me a small scratch on the arm.

Eventually he got the idea about the cat flap, and left that way.  I opened the back door, since neither of them is exactly keen on the cat flap if they can avoid using it.  He came back in for a bit, having a brief wander around downstairs, before going back out again.  He growled a little at Zev, but neither of them did any paw waving or proper arched back and furry ball of fuzz.

I wonder if he's been in someone's house, where he's been dependent on them letting him in and out of the front door?  He's still wearing his collar and tag, so it's not as though someone's taken him in as their pet.

I guess he's been wandering about, getting food where and when he can, and possibly in houses along here, similar to this one, but going in and out via the front door.

I think I'm just going to have to get used to him appearing and disappearing a lot, when the weather's nice and pleasant as it is now.

[PaulF]

Happy to hear he's back

[andrewc]

Glad to hear he's back Tim.

Time to get the soldering iron out & molish a kitty tracker...

[barakta]

Glad to hear he's back and hope he doesn't wander for too long as that does sound stressful for you.

[TimO]

I suspect he's gone off again for a while.  Once I get back from the FNRttC tomorrow, I'll be in the house most of the time until Wednesday, with the long Jubilee weekend, so it'll be interesting to see what he does.  Having now had two progressively longer wanders, I guess I'll just have to wait and see, and just assume that he likes going off like this, so may only drop in from time to time.  It does save on the cat food expenditure though!

[rusky]

This is interesting as of 3 weeks ago, one of mine has suddenly taken to disappearing for the entire day. She would go out when I got up & not return until night 16-18 hours later. Her sister gets quite anxious when it's dark & is in & out looking for her.

I took to locking them both in for a few days & whether a coincidence or not, it's helped.

Neither of mine are chipped, have collars or have been spayed :/

[TimO]

... or have been spayed :/

So, when are the kittens due?

(or have you developed some form of feline contraception?)

[rusky]

They are both over a year old & still not pregnant!

We do want one to have kittens, if they both end up with a litter, we'll easily re-home them!

[rogerzilla]

Tim, check if he smells of perfume.  Josh was a right tart and used to go in other people's houses for the evening to be fed and stroked.  He also used to stretch himself across the pavement and wait for the post lady at a certain time in the morning (when we had an early delivery).

[Kim]

Tim, check if he smells of perfume.

Or cigar smoke.

Or cannabis.

[rusky]

Tim, check if he smells of perfume.

Or cigar smoke.

Or cannabis.t

You seem to know a lot about this!

[Kim]

I was befriended^[1] by a cat that smelled of cigar smoke in our Sheffield house.

Barakta has the story of the cat with the cannabis habit...



_{[1] Or, to be more precise, while moving in, I sat down for a rest after unloading the first van load, and found her sitting in the middle of the living room like she owned the place.}

[TimO]

They are both over a year old & still not pregnant!

We do want one to have kittens, if they both end up with a litter, we'll easily re-home them!

That's a bit miraculous, if they have outside access.  I know three people who recently adopted kittens, only to find that they were already pregnant (one is Valiant of this parish).

I wonder if your two either have some sort of medical issues, or do you live very isolated from others ? (although male cats will travel miles to find a female in heat).  Cats generally get very easily pregnant.

[rusky]

The vet was surprised too!

[TimO]

I'd say that a female domestic cat who couldn't get pregnant, would be a valuable animal to breed from ... except ...

[rogerzilla]

Face it, you have lesbian cats.

[barakta]

Cannabis cat story as told to me by the owner during a mutual stay in hospital.  Middle aged woman mother of 2 teenagers noticed that whenever anyone visiting had a smoke the cat would become very friendly and start sniffing at the smoke.  Eventually her sons told her why, the cat had been theirs for a while in a shared flat before being given to her when they couldn't keep it for landlord reasons.

Basically teenaged/early 20s young people as they may be inclined to do having a fair amount of cannabis had had a lot of it about and someone had decided to see what happened if the cat was given a blowback.  It liked it so whenever they had joints they'd give the cat some and that cat learned how to ask "mither" for a blowback! 

The cat couldn't tell the difference between joints and cigarettes so would jump on anyone smoking a cig thinking it was weed. The woman realised this was why the cat had been quite so jittery when it moved in with her at first as it was probably suffering nicotine and cannabis withdrawal.

No idea if this is true or not, or even if cats can even get any reaction from nicotine/cannabis as they have very different metabolisms from us. 

[rogerzilla]

Fat Freddy's Cat?

[TimO]

I just had a brief Google to see if there's much information of the effect of cannabis on cats.  There's quite a lot of anecdotal discussion that suggests cats are reasonably often exposed to cannabis smoke without any short or long term obvious toxic effects.  There's some suggestion that cat's do like the smoke, but also some discussions that suggest THC (the predominate psychoactive constituent of cannabis) is very rapidly absorbed in the primary user, so that the exhaled smoke will have relatively low levels left in it.  Given that cats are so small, compared to humans, it's possible that even these relatively low levels may have some effect on cats.  Of course, it's also possible that cats simply like the smell, and it may have no psychoactive effect on them, but that's going to be hard to measure, short of giving cannabis to a cat, and plonking it inside a scanner to see what the effect on it's brain activity is!

Of course, a lot of the discussions degenerate into arguments which are clearly partly related to the relative pros and cons of cannabis use by humans, and I doubt there have been many people who have done formal studies on the effects on felines and canines, when it's hard enough to do this sort of work on humans.

On the face of it, however, it's plausible, since the brain of most mammals are going to be biochemically similar, I wouldn't be surprised if the effect on cats was similar to humans.

Neither of my two is going to get any chance to get access to anything more psychoactive than alcohol, and that only by accident if they somehow manage to drink my beer or whiskey.  Whenever I've let them sniff a bottle, they've looked quite disgusted, so I don't think either of them is likely to become an alky!

[TimO]

Kai has just come back again, and is hanging around a bit longer than would be necessary just to eat lunch.

He actually popped in via the cat flap, about half an hour after I gave Zev a sort of late brunch, early lunch, so it was probably spontaneous, and not in response to the clanking together of bowls.

He's been wandering about, checking out things, and just stopping to watch me, or have a wash, so fairly normal cat behaviour.  He seemed unhappy at the front door being closed, and growled a bit at the cat flap, even though it was unlocked, and he could have gone out through it, having just entered that way.

I unlocked the back door, and have left that open, which seems to make him more comfortable.  It may be he wants an easy exit if Zev starts being trouble.  He's made a few small growls towards her when she's got too close, but there's been no outright warfare yet.  She's been following around, and keeping an eye on him.

[TimO]

I wish I knew what cats use as logic.  So after spending several days away between visits, he's spent a fair amount of today in the house, wandering off, and then reappearing.  He's had several meals here, except breakfast, and is now curled up asleep in his favourite cat bed.

To all intents and purposes, he's resumed normal service, pretty much where he left it off.

I suspect at some point he's going to do the same thing again, and bugger off for a while, and I have no idea what's likely to trigger that.  I just hope he doesn't do at some time where I'm about to put them both into a cattery whilst I leave the country for a week or two, because he's going to potentially find food a bit thin on the ground if he does.

Maybe I should start building an automatic RFID metering cat feeder for just such an eventuality.

[Feline]

Don't take it personally Tim! Just remember you are his pet human (or one of them), and not the other way around