It’s okay for kitties to be friends, but only if precautions have been taken!

It’s February, that time of year when love is in the air. That’s why February is nationally recognized as Spay/Neuter Awareness Month, as a means to educate and encourage people to have their pets sterilized before the spring and summer months when there is a rampant overproduction of puppies and kittens and when most animal shelters experience an unmanageable increase in animal intake. Today is also World Spay Day and honestly, the best gift of love you can give your pet is to have them spayed or neutered. In our case, since we’re cat educators, here are some basic facts as to how and why spay/neuter equates to love:

1. It improves your cat’s health and quality of life. The overall health and emotional benefits to your cat from spay/neuter will result in them having a longer and happier life. Spaying your female prior to her first heat nearly eliminates the risk of mammary cancer, uterine infections, and uterine cancer, which is fatal to approximately 90% of cats according to the ASPCA. Neutering your male before he is 6 months of age prevents testicular and prostate cancer and greatly reduces his risk for perianal tumors.
2. It lowers a cat’s dangerous desire to roam. Even with the best intentions to keep your cat indoors, escapes can happen. If your female is not spayed and she comes across an unaltered male, she might accidentally become impregnated. Even worse, in looking for a mate, your cat could become lost, injured, or even fatally hit by a car.
3.  Behavioral Benefits. Spaying stops a female’s heat cycle and the annoying vocalization and inappropriate urination that can often come with it. Until she is spayed, this cycle will repeat and continue for weeks at a time until she finds a mate. Neutering a male reduces aggressive behavior and his need to mark the house or outdoors with strong-smelling urine. Spay/neuter will virtually eliminate these behavioral issues whether for an indoor pet cat, or outdoor colonies.

There are numerous other reasons to encourage and promote spay/neuter. If you’d like to read further articles, please consider the following:

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – The Facts of Life: The 101’s of Kittens and Conception

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – The Overall Health, Behavioral, and Emotional Benefits for Cats and Society at Large

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Debunking the Misconceptions, Excuses, and Reasons Why People Don’t Spay or Neuter Their Cat

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Cat Overpopulation and the Moral Ethics of Time

Zee & Zoey’s Spay/Neuter Series – Making Sense of Cat Overpopulation When the Numbers Don’t Add Up

The lovely and elegant Zoey, our beautiful model for 2023.

2022 was a year filled with good, and not-so-good, and everything in between. Through the ups and downs of it all, we always remain grateful for the friends and family in our lives and hope 2023 will bring peace, joy, love, and safe times to all.

Love and purrs from Deb, Zoey, Mia, Peanut, Rolz, Kizmet, Jazmine, and Shadow.

Our lovely model, Jazmine.

Things have been a bit hectic and stressful here at Zee & Zoey’s Cat Chronicles. My mom fell a couple of weeks ago and was admitted to the hospital for hip replacement surgery (the surgery went well, thank God). While there, she contracted Covid and was completely isolated from her friends and family, so as you can imagine, with her being 80 years old, I’ve been preoccupied. Thankfully, we got the best gift ever – she finally tested negative and is home for Christmas. I will be spending time with her and my precious family during the day, counting my blessings.

I had wanted to do a post featuring all the feline gang – Zoey, Mia, Peanut, Rolz, Kizmet, Jazmine, and Shadow, but I just didn’t have time this year. But suffice it to say, we love you all and thank you for your support and friendship throughout the year.

It’s a Blog Hop!

Our gorgeous rescue, Shadow. Clearly, he makes a great case for supporting Black Cat Friday.

It’s almost here, the day after Thanksgiving that day which officially starts the hectic frenzy of Holiday shopping, aka Black Friday! However, at Zee & Zoey’s we respectfully request the day be called Black Cat Friday because let’s be honest, black cats rule!! In honor of both black cats and the holidays, I’m so excited to share the 2022 holiday greeting cards I created for Zee & Zoey’s Cat Creations shop on Zazzle – both featuring black cats! One is an elegant gold, silver, and black design, highlighting peace and reaching for the stars, and the other is a graphic design I created, incorporating none other than our rescue Shadow, in a stunning traditional red and green Christmas card with poinsettias. And since the poinsettias are fake, I don’t have to worry about Shadow ingesting any of the poisonous-to-cats, leaves!

I hope you enjoy the cards – if you care to place an order, please click on the card and it will take you directly to our Zazzle shop. And make sure you check out the great Black Friday deals Zazzle will be sharing – there is no reason to spend full price for a card because I’m certain there will be lots of discounts available!

Card front – gold, silver, and black design.

Card interior – Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All…

Graphic design in red and green with rescue cat, Shadow, and poinsettias.

Interior – Season Greetings and Wishes for a Joyous New Year!

We also have many other beautiful cat card designs, along with cat T-Shirts, mugs, mouse pads, and more if you’re looking for gifts. You can find everything, here. Please take care everyone and have a blessed Thanksgiving. We are missing our beloved Zee who won’t be with us this year. Despite that, I’ve elected to share one of my favorite Thanksgiving pictures I’ve created of the gang and have kept him in it, because he lives on in spirit.

Keep your cats safe, too – as always, sharing this useful graphic.

Love and peace from Deb and the gang.

Despite Shadow being with us for nearly three years (he showed up at our doorstep on November 8, 2019), the relationship he and Jazmine share is still tenuous. Granted, there are times they can be within a foot of each other without incident, as in the above photo, but those moments are few and far between, and the body language of both shows a cautious truce. They can, however, miraculously forget they are enemies when a can of tuna is opened, with them so intoxicated by the odor it renders them helpless to hissing and swatting, their typical modus operandi. But once the tuna festival is over, it’s back to stare-downs and belligerence. They can even pick each other out from our clowder of seven when everyone is in a group swarm, such as at dinner time, knowing which cat gets a paw swat to the head, and which doesn’t. Sometimes I can barely tell which cat is which, so I find that skill quite the fascinating marvel. They can get along with everyone else, just not each other.

So, for Halloween, I thought why not play a trick, and give everyone a treat? All that’s needed is a little witch’s spell and some help from Photoshop, and voila, you’ll see that anyone can be friends!

A pinch of tuna, a sprinkle of catnip, a ratty old blanket, and an empty box should do. Hocus, Pocus, throw it in the cauldron, do some fancy editing, and there you go, a Happy Meow-O-Ween to you!

Take care everyone and keep those kitties inside, safe and sound for this not-so-pet-friendly holiday.