Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK THE NATURAL CAT
ANITRA FRAZIER is executive director of Anitras Natural Cat, a house call service providing holistic health care and grooming to the furry-purrys of New York City, as well as worldwide telephone consultations. She also heads Fluff City, New Yorks feline health spa and hospice. Anitras clients have included hundreds of brilliant and influential cats, some of whom share their lives with luminaries from the worlds of film, theater, fashion, and classical music. She is the author of The Natural Cat and Its a Cats Life. Her current projects include a novel, a short story collection, and Jailin and Beek Beek, a childrens book. Anitra teaches intermediate yoga at Integral Yoga Institutes uptown center and rides a Raleigh three-speed bike.
NORMA ECKROATE has coauthored numerous books since she and Anitra Frazier teamed up for the first edition of The Natural Cat. Her current titles include The Dog Whisperer (with Paul Owens), The Puppy Whisperer (with Paul Owens and Terence Cranendonk), Complete Holistic Care and Healing for Horses (with Mary Brennan, DVM), and Switched-On Living (with Jerry Teplitz, PhD). Norma also produced the DVDs The Dog Whisperer, Vol. 1: Beginning and Intermediate Dog Training and The Dog Whisperer, Vol. 2: Solving Common Behavior Problems for Puppies and Dogs. She loves writing about the benefits of holistic health for both animals and people, as well as the importance of positive-only animal training.
Dedicated to
the owners who asked
and the cats who taught
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks go to Dr. Richard H. Pitcairn for his encouragement and guidance through the years, his generous contribution of recipes and information, and his astute editing of the veterinary medical material in Chapters 11 and 12.
Our heartfelt thanks for their contributions to this book also go to:
Phyllis Levy, our guiding light
Doctors, healers, and teachers: Dr. Paul Rowan, Dr. Gerald Johnson, Dr. Edwina Ho, and Dr. Amrita McLanahan
Sources of information and inspiration: Integral Yoga Institute and Association for Research and Enlightenment
And the many supporters who cheered us on, especially: Alicia Perez, Matt Sartwell, Sandra Martin, Margaret Blackstone, Andrew Lewis, Sharon and Steve Sherman, Lucy and Dan Kaplan, Olga Aparicio, Lynne and Gus Gustavson, Ursula Jahoda, Swami Gurucharanananda, Phyllis Embleton, Mark MacCauley, and J. David Stites
For this revised edition, there are more individuals and cats to thank than space in this book allows. However, a few people have lent extraordinary support:
Michael Dym, VMD, for his very generous contributions of research material and his technical advice
Alberto Gil, DVM, whose support is invaluable and whose insights are both inspirational and practical
Megan Bamford, DVM, for her generous input
Bryan Kortis, CEO and founder of Neighborhood Cats, Inc., for his insightful contributions to the feral cat chapter
Emma Cobb, who gave me hands-on experience with the wild ones
Emigdea Vinces, my helper and friend, who does everything to perfection
Sande Shurin at the Transformational Acting Studio and the actors in the Breakthrough Class for their inspiration
Our wonderful agent, Lisa Hagan, who constantly cheers us on, and our kind and supportive editors at Plume, Cherise Davis Fisher, Jennifer Risser, and Allison Dickens
My patient friends and family who had the understanding to give me the space I needed to complete this revised edition
And, finally, Norma would like to thank Anitra. When we started writing the first edition of this book in 1980, who knew that it would soon be considered a seminal work. I am grateful for the opportunity to assist you in helping so many cats by sharing the holistic nature of life, health, and healing with their humans. As the Universe must have planned all along, coauthoring this book also led to a lifelong second career as others also entrusted me to assist in wordsmithing their lives work. In the process, my life is immeasurably richer. So blessings to you, dear friend, for entrusting me with this important undertaking. Its been a fun ride!
FOREWORD
This is a very special book. It is written by a woman who was willing to put aside a mass of opinion and ignorance and find out for herself the truth about cats.
What strikes me as her greatest contribution (besides a wealth of practical and useful information) is her approach toward understanding. Rather than letting herself be captivated by ideas and images passed on by many sources, she determined to find out firsthand how to care for catsby asking the animals themselves.
I am reminded of a conversation that took place some years ago between the author J. Allen Boone and Mojave Dan, a desert hermit who had close communion with animals. As he wrote in his fascinating book Kinship with All Life, Boone had been struggling to find out the real truth about the nature of a remarkable dog who was his companion. So he put the issue to his friend Dan. After a long silence, Dans cogent reply was Theres facts about dogs, and theres opinions about them. The dogs have the facts, and the humans have the opinions.... If you want facts about a dog, always get them straight from the dog. If you want opinions, get them from the human.
Much of what Anitra Frazier has learned about cats has come in just such a way, and she has reaped a wealth of information about them. Her book invites you to travel the same road. As you read it, you can see how she evolved the process of watching cats without a screen of preconceptions. This kind of learning does not end.
There is another hidden value in all of this. Many people have learned through relating to animals what it is to care for and accept responsibility for another being. All the basic elements of a relationship are therethe same elements found in a relationship with a friend, husband or wife, child, or even a plant. If one can discover how to relate fully to an animal, without exploitation, with real care and concern for its welfare and continued physical and psychological well-being, then one can relate to anyone. The skills involved are universal.
Many people have found in themselves a compassion they did not know existed by relating to an animal in their life. This potential is meant to be extended to all relationships. Some, however, focus their affections on only one or two animals and, in so doing, become withdrawn into themselves. Later, when the animal dies, as it inevitably will, such people may suffer terrible anguish. I bring this up here because I see it so often. Reading Anitras book reminded me again of the potential that can be realized through relationships with a cat or any animal. Not stopping at this pointextending that potential to ever wider circles of both people and animalscan allow for a continuous learning that is immensely rewarding.
The Natural Cat is also extremely practical and covers common and mundane problems in a unique wayholistically. That is, the author considers all aspects of the animals life and environment, both psychological and physical.
I want to emphasize Anitras sections on declawing and overpopulation. As a veterinarian, I have seen firsthand the incredible suffering of cats who have an amputation of what is to them their fingers. And my work in an SPCA clinic (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) brings me face to face daily with the suffering and neglect of unwanted animals. It is a blight on our society that such conditions should exist.
