Mieshelle Nagelschneider - The Cat Whisperer: Why Cats Do What They Do--and How to Get Them to Do What You Want

Copyright 2013 by Mieshelle Nagelschneider

Illustrations copyright 2013 by Maya Wolf and Tamara Hess

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nagelschneider, Mieshelle.
The cat whisperer : why cats do what they doand how to get them to do what you want / Mieshelle Nagelschneider.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90723-0
1. CatsBehavior. 2. CatsPsychology. I. Title.
SF446.5.N34 2011
636.8dc22 2010038747

www.bantamdell.com

Jacket photography: Leo Lam; except orange tabby (Shutterstock)

v3.1

God made the cat
in order to give man the pleasure of
caressing the tiger.

FERNAND MERY

IT S 6:15 ON A TUESDAY MORNING: I AWAKEN TO MY ALARM CLOCK radio and the weatherman announcing that today will be another rainy, gray, blustery day in Portland, Oregon. As I lie in bed, I can hear the raindrops crashing down upon the roof of my small house, and the sounds of Ferrari, my calico kitten, scurrying behind an unpacked box of clothes on the bedroom floor. I have been a veterinarian for barely four months at this point and have yet to find the time to unpack and get fully settled in the house. Heading to the kitchen for my early morning English muffin and coffee, I see Ferrari go flying down the hall dragging the now mostly empty sack of English muffins: Hey! You come back here with that! I try to scold her while laughing.

After breakfast, just as I am throwing my stuff in my truck to head off for the veterinary hospital, my pager goes off. I grab my phone and call the hospital. As a new graduate, my mind races with thoughts of what might be going ona poisoning? a traumatic injury? will it require surgery? Melanie, the office manager, answers my call. Hey, Mr. Walker is here with Gum Drop and he wants to speak with you right away.

Is Gum Drop okay? I ask.

He seems fine, she says, but Mr. Walker is in a bad mood again.

I can hear her sigh through the phone. Not the exciting medical case I had been hoping for, I muse, as I pull out of the drive and head for the hospital. Mr. Walker has been in several times because of problems with his cat Gum Drop, who has been urinating outside the litter box.

I arrive at the hospital twenty minutes later and make a mad dash through the pouring rain to reach the back door of the clinic. Putting on my lab coat, I catch a glimpse of Mr. Walker pacing back and forth in the waiting room. As the receptionist escorts Mr. Walker into one of the exam rooms, I can see that he seems upset, but I pop into the room with the exuberance and optimism only a new grad can possess. Hi, Mr. Walker, I begin. How is Gum Drop?

With his gaze fixed squarely on the floor, he states, I would like you to put him to sleep.

At this point, all eighteen pounds of Gum Drop are rubbing up against me on the exam table while he purrs away. Totally taken aback I reply, What, why, is he sick, is something wrong?

Gum Drop turns out to be the one patient they forgot to tell us about in veterinary school. He actually isnt sick at all, quite the opposite, in fact. Gum Drop is a beautiful, healthy four-year-old Ragdoll with quite the personality.

Ya! Mr. Walker states with an angry look on his face. There is definitely something wrong. Gum Drop peed on my brand-new laptop computer last night and its ruined. Three thousand dollars down the drain.

I tell him I am very sorry about his new laptop, but that euthanizing a totally healthy cat is not the answer. I add that its likely that he sprayed or urinated on the computer because he saw how much time Mr. Walker spent at the computer and he just wanted to get some of that attention for himself.

Dr. Shultz, you have run all your tests, even tried some medications, and you cant find anything wrong with Gum Drop, correct?

Thats true, I reply, but Its behavioral, I blurt out, sounding more like a defense attorney than a veterinarian.

Well, can you fix it? Mr. Walker asks.

I explain, again, that behavioral problems are more complicated and take time. We could try a different medication. Perhaps Xanax or Prozac might help. As I keep talking more about medications and what little I have been taught about feline behavior in school, Mr. Walker calmly scoops up Gum Drop and puts him in his carrier. On his way out the door, he looks back at me and says, Look, Doctor, you did your job, this cats just crazy. If you wont put him to sleep, I will just have to drop him off in the woods somewhere. Then he can pee on whatever he likes. That was the last time I ever saw Mr. Walker or Gum Drop.

Tragically, Gum Drops story is far from isolated. Depending on the source, four to nine million cats are euthanized each year in the United States. As I have seen firsthand, a disproportionate number of those lives are lost due not to medical issues, but to behavioral ones. When you have a cat who is destroying your new furniture or urinating around the home or attacking your other cats and you cant identify the reason, it can become exceedingly frustrating. And our responses to these problems can make things even worse because, from the cats perspective, they are very stressful and therefore likely to lead to further problems. As a result, many clients feel there is no hope, and that they just cant continue living with these sometimes very destructive and damaging behaviors. Out of desperation they will end up releasing the cat to fend for itself, relinquishing it to a shelter, or in some cases even electing euthanasia. Only by first understanding feline behavior can we truly hope to change our cats behaviors in the futurewhich is where Mieshelle comes in.

My experience with Gum Drop occurred in 1998, and it would be another five and a half years before I would have the pleasure of meeting Mieshelle Nagelschneider. At the time, there were many studies and programs designed to address the training and behavioral issues surrounding dogs, but far fewer studies focused on cats, and that remains true even today. Historically, dogs have been trained and utilized by humans to perform tasks, from pulling sleds to locating persons after disasters strike. Cats, on the other hand, have been viewed by many as too difficult to train and almost impossible to deal with when it comes to modifying their behavior patterns. In a nutshell, we understand the rule to be: Dogs want to please, and cats will do as they please.

Mieshelle, however, has taught me that many of our ideas about cats are wrong. To be totally honest, I was initially a bit skeptical of her. She would come to see me for veterinary care with one or more of her many animals in tow, and we would inevitably end up talking about cat behavior and the complex social structure woven into every multicat household. She would offer to help with behavioral cases and though I thought her ideas were interesting, I would respectfully decline. After several such visits with Mieshelle, however, I found myself, and members of my staff, asking her advice about some of our feline behavioral casesadvice that turned out to be very helpful. And soon I began referring clients with cats who had behavioral issues to her. She demonstrated time and again that she possesses the unique ability to communicate with cats on their level. To achieve this, one has to actually get inside the mind of these animals and see the world as they see it. One needs to literally learn to think like a cat.