making so hopefully it comes out okay. Anyway. Hi, I'm Anne. I have cats.
Well, I live with
cats. There are four in total. These are two of them. They are brother and sister.
The other two...One of them is another brother,
Brodie. He's sleeping somewhere I think. And also Nikki, who is Siamese, and she's not
related to the rest of them and is much older than them. She'll be nine years old this month.
And Shadow, Coraline, and Brodie are about -- they're just over a year old now.
They're
about a year and three months at the time of this filming. So anyway, what I wanted to discuss a bit
was approaching cats and interacting respectfully. Maybe this will end up being a series, but
in the first one I just wanted to talk about approaching them. You know, in the house.
Cats in -- when they
-- some cats are kind of solitary, but the majority I've noticed, even in feral colonies
that I've seen, are not. It's -- depending on -- feral cats are -- they are often very
social, but only with other cats. They are wary of humans. These guys here, and their brother too, were
-- they were from a feral colony.
They were adopted by me last year as feral kittens.
They've calmed down a lot. (Shadow doing something adorable) Aww...Anyway.
As you can see they're getting a little playful here. Shadow is trying to...Awww. Oh my goodness.
Okay, this is a good example of kitties being social right here.
With each other. They are
going to play-fight now. That or he's just kicking her off the bed! Anyway, um, sorry, tangent. Anyway, what I
want to talk about here is the fact that -- one thing that bothers me a lot when I
see it is -- it's something where people like, or humans, when I see humans, just randomly
going over to cats and picking them up and kind of carting them around like they're a
sack of flour or something.
Mostly -- granted, mostly this is children
I see doing this but either way, it's not -- it's some -- you know, if nobody ever
tells people not to do that then a lot just won't -- won't figure it out. So anyway um. I think it's important, when you um are privileged
to share space with an ambassador of another species such as these two fine felines here
-- is to respect them and respect their space and such. And part of what that means is knowing
when they're -- you know, they -- generally they, when you live with them, I mean, they
will eventually -- often times they will -- they like you, you like them.
I like my
cats, they like me. I think. But anyway um, in terms of approaching, for
instance right now -- right now Shadow is -- I'd say he is in a mode where he can be
approached respectfully by a human. Because what is -- he's kind of napping, he's kind
of, you know, fading in and out a little bit, but he's still alert enough.
Um, he's not,
you know, squirreled away somewhere. You know, by himself. He's out kind of in the open,
in the middle of the bed, in plain view. And he knows that I can find him here.
And so as you can see here, I just started
briefly petting him from the back, and then he laid down like this, and that's something
-- when I see that, I know that he is -- he's okay with this. Um, one thing I want all the cats to have
is self respect as well. And that means that if they -- the way I, you know -- try and
help them cultivate that, is if they show signs of not wanting to be bothered or something,
then I just don't bother them. And then they -- they'll learn over time, "oh well this
person is not going to force me to interact in ways I am not comfortable with".
So then,
that just seems like a good way to foster interspecies harmony in the household. At
least as I see it. So yeah. (Talking to Shadow, "Hey little guy").
Cora's kind of jumping around the room right now.
I guess she's done with her nap. She's
leaving the room right now. But um yeah. ("Hello", to Shadow, "Do you want me to come
up there?") Shadow is a very...He's a very kind of interactive
cat, in the sense that he's very -- he learns a lot of human words.
He's kind of surprisingly
literate. He's also very -- I don't know, it's not like -- I mean not like most cats
aren't, but he's just extremely. He learns words without me even trying to -- he just
picks up on things. It's like I have no idea where he picked this stuff up.
I remember
one time I was talking to my partner and I. Said to him something -- some sentence that
had the word "chicken" in it. And Shadow just looked up at me and went "meeeeew!" Kinda
like that...Shadow. ("Shadow, do you like chicken?") He doesn't always meow when you say it but
he generally -- I generally can see his ears move when he recognizes a word that he likes.
So, uh yeah, and he's a big fan of chicken.
So yeah, um, that's the first one. Hopefully
the next ones will be a little bit better planned out but this was an experiment and...Goodbye!.
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