Holidays Coming? Gifts For Cat Lovers!

Places to shop for for Cat Lovers:

Drs Foster and Smith
all manner of fun and useful gifts.

Felinerina has kitsch black cat oriented gifts.

Moggies: Home of the Online Cat Guide in the U.K. for those who don’t know, Moggies is a term that means mixed breed cat. Notepads, calendars, cards, jewelry, soft toys and more.

When I went to Pricegrabber.com I typed in “Cat Lovers” and found over 70 books, and some other things. I go there to find the lowest prices on various items, especially expensive ones. Searching under “cats” gave me over 8000 results :-) Cat furniture, Feline Pharmaceuticals, gifts etc. Keep in mind that not all of products suppliers are listed by them.

Teezz sells beautifully embroidered cats images on shirts, caps, bags, etc. (U.K.)

Gifts that Keep on Giving — For buying human gifts that help cats:

The Animal Rescue Site has lots of clothing, jewelry, household goods many cat themed. Supports many shelters in the U.S. Great service, I have bought lots of gifts and things for myself :-) from here.

Best Friends Gifts of Life and Love you can sponsor a cat, make a donation, or buy a gift membership in this animal rescue group.

Endangered Species Chocolate supports wild cats through donations

The Mountain Lion Foundation supports intelligent conservation and public education for those of us who live in mountain lion territory.

Purina’s Pet Hug Fund when you order a plush cat or dog toy, Purina donates $1.00 to the Pet Hug Fund which gives money to many animal therapy organizations. These groups help people (and pets) by bringing them together for the emotional and physical therapy they provide.

Funny Books For the Cat Lovers on Your List

While browsing for possible gifts I found these:

The humorous Ultimate Cats Catalog is a make believe catalog of things a cat might want to buy.

Night Before Cat Mass
is a children’s book and a parody of the famous poem.

Catmas Carols contains many of the most popular Christmas carols rewritten with fabulous felines in mind.

Enjoy!

Online Places To Shop for Cats (and Other Pets, Too!)

We not only have cats, we have reptiles and fish at our home. Since I work full time, time for shopping and especially for browsing is limited. My solution, like so many others is to surf the Internet. A lot of these places have email newsletters that I have signed up for, so I know about sales and special offers.

Some of my favorite commercial web sites for pet products are:

Amazon.com this is a direct link to Home and Garden, keyword cats

California Veterinary Supply over the counter remedies, treats, can also order with a prescription

Drs Foster and Smith

Collections inexpensive, but of varying quality, too. Worth looking at.

Improvements

Petsmart

Only Natural Pet Store
A lot of good information and products. Warning: they carry Wellness which has GARLIC that is unsafe for cats and dogs. Garlic adversely affects red blood cell production.

Steps for Pets they donate money to shelters for each item your buy

See my previous post about Shopping While Helping Cats.

More Places to Find Pet Related Freebies and Coupons

Free Stuff Channel’s Pet Page

Cool Freebie Links Pet Page

There is a lot of information overlap between each of these sites, so I try to keep a record of the offers I have already taken advantage of. :-)

Cool Savings requires you to “become a member”. Personally, I don’t often do this as it has led to spam in the past. If you try them out, let me know.

And They Say Cats Can’t be Trained :-)

The trainer in these videos uses the well established technique of using clicker and food to teach kittens specific behaviors. The premise is also used in training dogs, zoo animals and more. Food — the great tamer of them all :-)

From the You Tube description”
Clicker training is not only enjoyable for cats, but it can be life-saving too. Suppose you had an extreme emergency and needed to get your cat out of the house immediately? A cat that is clicker trained will quickly jump into his carrier. Richard Norton clicker trains his Bengal cats, starting with very young kittens, as shown in this YouTube Video. Richard explains the click as a conditioned stimulus for operant behaviour. “This means that the click alone can elicit some of the same bodily responses and processes that food could elicit. This is achieved by presenting food and the click nearly simultaneously. Our experience is that 3 or 4, 5 minute sessions is more than adequate to fully establish the click as a conditioned stimulus for operant behaviour.

Video explaining the clicker training process with a young kitten

Video of clicker training process to teach a Bengal cat to press a light switch

I tried out a few clickers at Petsmart (had to go to the dog training aids area), Then I found some healthy treats my cats might get excited about. While we have tried this technique before, I was unsure if my cats would really respond well. Having found these videos I am more determined to make it work this time.

If you have a cat behavior issue, you can visit Marilyn Krieger’s site The Cat Coach. She advises clients about modifying an unwanted behavior through clicker training and other techniques.

Some really good books about training cats from Amazon.com:

Cat Training in 10 Minutes
I just ordered this one. I will let you know how we are doing :-)

Getting Started Clicker Training for Cats

How to Get Your Cat to do What You Want