Many cat blogs I read mention Vicky Halls as some kind of cat god. When her mailing list had a giveaway for her latest book – The Complete Cat, I decided to enter. Luckily I was one of the first people to reply and the book arrived in the mail this week.
While I haven’t read this book cover-to-cover (I see it more as a reference guide than anything), I have gone through (via the handy index) pages and chapters I’ve found interesting – and think I might have to source her previous books Cat Counsellor, Cat Detective and Cat Confidential as I’m sure they’d contain some interesting information too.
One thing I found particularly interesting was the breed profiles. Train is a British Shorthair x Burmese – I wasn’t searching out a particular breed, more that she was unwanted and I was ready for another cat in my life. Reading the profile for Burmese was particularly interesting – while Train doesn’t have all of these problems, she does have a few – mainly aggression related – which we are trying to work on. And her 2nd birthday is coming up this Wednesday. Lucky us!
Undesirable behaviour seen…
Where do I start? Wool-eating, cable-chewing, territorial aggression, urine-spraying and inter-cat aggression are probably the main issues for those Burmese that go wrong. They seem to be highly motivated to behave in a certain way and those that go around the neighbourhood beating up all the other cats rarely respond to behaviour therapy. I often remark ‘Beware the Burmese’s second birthday,’ as these are problems that arise after maturity.
Have you heard of Vicky Halls before – or read her previous books? Are they worth it?
savvycat x
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a card carrying member of the church of Vicky Halls! I love her books. I’ve read Cat Counsellor and Cat Detective, and am just starting Cat Confidential. I think they are great. I like the way she presents different case studies, identifies the problem and then discusses things they put in place to address the problems.
I got into her books when we moved and Fui and Suey became indoor cats. I wanted to try and enrich the indoors as much as possible, and there are some great ideas in her books. Suey loves using the food puzzles I made after reading about them in the book. It also got me to look at my own behaviour towards the cats in a different way, with the aim of not having them become over-dependant on me.
I also like that the books are straightforward. Some of the ones I’ve read have been all caught up in really technical details of psychology and hard to understand, or are adamant that their viewpoint is the only one that is correct. Vicky says in her books that she thinks it’s best to have a one cat household, and that cats should be allowed outside, but still talks about how you can make life better for indoor only cats or ways to deal with multi-cat tensions. I’ve learned a lot to hopefully prevent problems between my two. She also doesn’t just recommend drugs or really expensive furniture etc.
Fui and Suey´s last blog post: The Kittens Speak
Sounds like I need to read some of her books. We have nine feline babies and some of them, not sure which, wee and spray EVERYWHERE. I know it’s my fault for having so many cats but there is a reason, I’m not just a mad cat lady! Thanks for mentioning her, I will be on the look out for her books.