Total Cat Mojo

by Jackson Galaxy

  IN THE CHAPTERS ahead, you will be acquiring a lot of knowledge in the form of tools: time-tested, real-world suggestions and practices that will improve the quality of life for your cat and, by extension, you. But the tools—that is to say, the raw knowledge—are not the most important part of this section. The most important takeaway of this section is understanding that you are in a relationship with your cat.

  Imagine this: You have a fifteen-year-old son who is friendly, outgoing, and generous—he is not one to ever give you or anyone else much trouble. One afternoon, you receive a call from the school principal. She tells you that, for no discernable reason, he started a fight with another student, broke the kid’s nose, and sent him to the hospital. Your son would have to be suspended until the whole thing is sorted out, and he’s now in the principal’s office, waiting for you to come pick him up.

  You hang up the phone, overtaken by shock. You struggle to understand the underlying reason why your son might have done this, as a five-alarm level of parental concern kicks in. From the moment you grab your car keys to the moment you pull up to his school, you experience a dizzying array of extreme emotions—from anger to frustration to fear, with a dash of humiliation thrown in for good measure. At the eye of your inner storm, though, you envision him sitting there waiting for you, feeling scared, ashamed, maybe even still full of rage. In any case, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is surely suffering, and because of that, so are you. He is your kid, and you just want to know what’s wrong so you can help.

  Now imagine this: You come home from a tough day at work, open your front door, and get hit with the stinging ammonia blast of cat pee. You’ve heard of this kind of thing happening, but your cat has never done anything like this in his life. Immediately, you begin the search, cursing at yourself and the cat because this day couldn’t get much worse . . . and then it does: right on the center cushion of your brand new vanilla cream couch, you see the sizeable sunset-orange/yellow splatter.

  Shock gives way to something just this side of rage as you grab the cleaning spray and get to work on the cushion. No matter what you do with the endless spraying and blotting, it’s beginning to sink in that the cushion is toast. The stain can fade, but it’ll always be there, along with that smell. Your temperature continues to rise along with the recurring thought that your cat acted out this way because of something you did. Clearly, this is a spiteful gesture, and no matter why he might feel the way he does, you know that you’ve done nothing wrong. You notice him sitting at the entrance to the kitchen, as he does every night, waiting for dinner. A few hours ago he decided that he hates you, and now it’s business as usual? That’s not going to fly. Debating the consequences, you shake your head because you realize that your cat will simply never know how much damage and suffering he has inflicted on you.

  So, let’s compare and contrast:

  In each of these scenarios, both kid and cat signaled that something was definitely not okay. In the case of your child, the focus went immediately to your child. The big why dominated your thoughts—as in why did he feel he needed to resort to violence and why didn’t you see the signs beforehand? This was followed by the big how, as in, how are you going to help him and how will you get through this as a family? In the case of your cat, the big why centered on why your cat would do something like this to you, and the big how was about how you were ever going to get the pee out of the cushion. You didn’t struggle to understand what new issues might have arisen in the household to cause him to do this, nor did the “five-alarm level of parental concern” likely have you running him to the vet the next morning to see if he had an infection or some other health issue that could’ve factored into the equation.

  Bottom line: in the first scenario, your reaction was centered on your concern for your kid; in the second scenario, your reaction was centered on your concern for your couch.

  And there’s the rub.

  In the sanctified realm of our home among our family members, true empathy shouldn’t be reserved for one and not the other, for some and not all. As enlightened as we may fancy ourselves, as long as there is even a splinter of treating our animal family members as things we own as opposed to those we love, that splinter will infect the body of our family. That splinter has a name: ownership. The way forward also has a name: relationship.

  IT’S NOT WHAT YOU OWN, IT’S WHO YOU LOVE

  If you took the species part out from the equation and just saw your cat as another member of your family, you’d be left with relationship. At the core of this relationship are fundamental elements that dictate your ability to successfully navigate that relationship, like:

  Knowing—Likes and dislikes, fears, aversions, how their history dictates their present behavior.

  Listening—When they are soliciting something from you, whether it is affection, protection, or just your time, you bring your attention to them, even if there is nothing you can offer in that moment.

  Compromising—In any relationship you come to the realization that it isn’t all about you and your needs. You bend to others when in reality it’s the last thing you want to do.

  Vulnerability—The nature of the relational two-way street is remaining present with the other being, admitting you don’t know everything, admitting that you don’t control the outcome of each and every moment of that relationship. You don’t have ownership over others’ reactions, the way they handle the world around them. You can learn from others just as readily as they can learn from you. In other words, you dare to make yourself available to another, without relying on a safety net of your design and under your control.

  And of course, the magic ingredient in all of this is loving—a deep knowledge that your life together is better than your life apart, which makes you embrace all of the above conditions (even if you don’t always joyfully do so) not only because you have a stake in the outcome of every moment, but because, after all, it’s why we are here—to love and be loved.

  Put all of those fundamentals in a pot, bring the soup to a boil, and it takes on a life of its own, evolving to a certain degree on its own accord and at its own pace. We, as individuals—and despite the intense protestations of our respective egos—are reduced to participants, and not directors, in our own story.

  Then there is the final element—surrender—and whether the relationship is one with a “significant other” or a parental one, it’s unavoidably a key ingredient in the soup. Releasing ownership and embracing relationship is, to be sure, a scary damn thing. But it is what makes having others in our life the most precious thing.

  It might be getting pretty obvious at this point that my aim for you is to bring a new outlook to your relationship with your cat, by seeing it as a relationship. From this vantage point, everything that you might hope to gain from this book will be enhanced tenfold, in terms of getting positive outcomes from problem behavior. By observing your cat’s actions with an empathetic eye, you’ll have a very different reaction to the peeing on the furniture or any other form of “acting out.” Instead of getting angry at your cat and berating him (or cursing yourself), your first thought will be, “Whoa! This isn’t like him. What could be going on that would cause him to do something so uncharacteristic?” The big why and big how become integral to our responses, and that’s exactly the mind-set we want to be in as we proceed with all of the upcoming tools in this section.

  Further, empathy also grants us the gift of a certain degree of foresight. If we are able to react with emotional connection to the outburst, then it follows that we should be able to prevent it by seeing the lit fuse before the cat bomb goes off. The huge pee spot on the couch may have been prefaced by actions that would be imperceptible to an outsider: pacing, vocalizations that you may have never heard before, even behaviors that aren’t connected to symptoms. Through the laws of relationship, you will be attuned to the “gut feelings,” the nagging “something just isn’t ri
ght” feelings that can oftentimes save a life . . . or at the very least, a couch.

  AT THE TOP of this chapter, we said the most important thing was to understand that you are in a relationship with your cat. That relationship, like any you’ll ever be engaged in, requires you to use tools to successfully navigate it, and in the coming pages we will give you plenty of those. That brings us to a final thought: all the tools in the world won’t do you any good unless you have a place for them to live in and to operate from—and that place is the empathetic core inside you. In other words, you are the toolbox: Welcome to it.

  7

  Raw Cat 101 and the Three Rs

  THE YELLOW BRICK road of Cat Mojo is paved with your cat’s swagger, her sense of pride, her confident ownership of her territory, and her instinctive knowledge that she has a job to do in that territory. What moves her down the road is her daily routine of hunt, catch, kill, eat, followed by grooming and sleeping. If cats can engage this HCKEGS cycle with consistency, certainty, and confidence, they will experience total Cat Mojo, which is our Emerald City, always rising like the sun on the horizon.

  For cats to reach the Emerald City, we need to provide an infrastructure through which all of these activities can unfold each day with predictability. And we do this with the Three Rs: Routines, Rituals, and Rhythm.

  Every home has its natural rise-and-fall energy cycles, based largely around when you get up, go to work, come home, then go to bed. As you begin to establish rituals and routines with your cat, and base them on your home’s energy spikes, you create a rhythm. This rhythm becomes the foundation for all of the primary, supportive interactions you have with your cat, such as when you play and when you feed.

  But it’s not just about getting your cat to conform to your rhythm. It’s about folding their needs and yours into a household rhythm. Just as human rituals define our confidence and sense of stability, cats need their own. So your day isn’t just about taking your kids to school, dropping them off at soccer practice and piano lessons, then helping them with homework and preparing dinner; I’m saying that HCKE, cuddle time, and cleaning the litterbox are all locked into that rhythm as well.

  THE ENERGETIC BALLOON

  Cats sleep as much as they do in order to prepare for the hunt. As they sleep, they are collecting energy. They are, in essence, Energetic Balloons, starting as an empty vessel and, through sleep, filling up with energy. When they wake up, that energy needs a home—a target, if you will. Let’s not forget that they are programmed by years of evolution, with a rhythm that demands satisfaction. The Raw Cat awakens and needs to hunt. Anything else that happens to cats (like being petted), or even around them (experiencing the lively rhythm of your and your family’s day), becomes more air in the balloon—more energy that will seek release.

  That’s where our job comes in. We can almost guarantee a measure of mojo and proactively lessen the frustration of a quickly filling balloon by being the architects of this preexisting rhythm. When interacting with our cats, we are either putting energy in, filling the balloon, or taking energy out, opening the safety valve. It’s that simple. Just as the rhythm of our day is determined by our various rituals and routines, the same is true for our cats. Each day in our home presents fairly predictable energetic spikes, and our cats spike along with the rest of us. When the family gets up in the morning, it’s energy in. Our rituals range from alarm (and snooze) to shower, from shaving or makeup application to breakfast (both human and cat). These rituals are the building blocks of our morning routine; everyone runs around the house, talking in loud volumes—Did you pack your lunch? Are you ready to go? Did you feed the cats? More energy in. Footsteps around the house, doors slamming, and all of those reverberations: still more energy in. We leave the house with a full balloon (our cat) left behind.

  Imagine what happens now as the day passes. We’ve got birds outside the window, traffic noises, people in neighboring apartments making noise.

  Now you and your family return home, and energy spikes. Dinnertime, everyone’s home. How was your day? Feed humans and animals. Time to do the dishes! Get ready for the next day. In the meantime, the balloon is filling while you relax and unwind. Watch some TV before the last spike of the day when you get up again, get ready for bed, and prepare for the next day. At this point, all you have to do is breathe loudly and the balloon is going to pop.

  What does a full balloon look like? Imagine if you had a balloon and that balloon had a mind and could feel it was ready to pop. That balloon would start to self-regulate—it would let some air out. Redirected aggression is an example of your cat letting air out, but there are more subtle ways. To me, the tail swish is that “balloon’s” ability to let air out. Once the balloon is full, the tail becomes an air escape mechanism. Same thing with what I call “back lightning.” The twitching that happens through the cat’s back is, at least partially, a spasm, but also a way of getting that energy out. You may notice your cat walking across the room, suddenly stopping as if a fly just landed on him and then very deliberately grooming himself. This self-soother is also a self-regulator.

  What is our role in filling up the balloon, in this overstimulation? For some cats, petting is air into the balloon in a way that is intolerable. It’s energy in without an out. What might feel good for three or thirty seconds suddenly begins to feel like it’s going to make their balloon pop. And then—bang! That hiss, that bite, their turning on you—running away or self-grooming are desperate attempts to let air out of the balloon.

  The Raw Cat 101 tool focuses on the particulars of those key rituals and routines, so that you can enjoy a rhythm in your house that supports the Mojo-fied experience for your cat—every day.

  PLAY = PREY

  Now that you know about the Raw Cat Rhythm, do you still think that tossing a crinkle ball across the floor counts as play? Are you letting yourself off the hook because you have a bunch of plastic mice and a catnip cigar lying around the living room? Do you still, after all of this, have a vision of cat play being about them batting a ball of yarn around the carpet? If so, do not pass go, and definitely do not collect your two hundred dollars. Go back to the Raw Cat Rhythm (chapter 3), reread it, and meet me back here.

  One of the most important things I can tell you about keeping your cat Raw happy and Raw healthy is that play isn’t a luxury, something that is a fun diversion if and when you have time. Look at it this way: If you have a dog, you have a collar and leash and you take the dog for daily walks. And likewise, if you have a cat, you have interactive toys and you use them for daily play sessions. These things should hold equal weight because for the respective species, they are a physical and behavioral necessity.

  Having that interactive toy, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. Here’s the thing: play is a structured activity. The difference between casually playing with your cat and truly engaging in the HCKE ritual is the routine nature of HCKE. Your cat likes things to happen in a predictable manner, and this is how you Mojo-fy playtime for them. You don’t play Monopoly by sitting down and flicking around Monopoly game pieces with your finger. No, this is Monopoly: you roll the dice, you move, you pick up a card, you buy a house. A typical play session with your cat involves this level of engagement.

  As you break out an interactive toy and replicate movements of prey, you’re helping to reinforce the endgame—what the Hunt/Catch/Kill actually looks like—and you bolster the Mojo that goes along with the hunting process. You are essentially providing a structured outlet for your Raw Cat’s behavioral yearnings. This is how you feed the Mojo.

  “BUT MY CAT DOESN’T PLAY”

  The reason so many people say to me, “Jackson, my cat doesn’t play,” is because they expect playtime to look like your cat is just running laps around the house for an hour. But remember, play (i.e., “the hunt”) is not all about action; the preparation, or the “stalking,” is just as big a part (if not a bigger one) of the process as the “p
ounce and kill” action part.

  The exhaustion that comes from hunting happens even when the cat isn’t continually moving; watching the moth on the ceiling exhausts, the stalk exhausts, those short bursts of energy exhaust. It’s the mind-body focus that exhausts your cat. This is a directed action that your cat is 100 percent engrossed in. Expecting success to look like a track-and-field event will result in both you and your cat being frustrated. Don’t set yourself up for failure: know what success looks like.

  Every cat plays. You just need to know how your cat defines it. Your sixteen-year-old diabetic overweight Persian might just do “moth on the ceiling.” For that cat, that is play. If all she does is moth on the ceiling, and when the moth lands, she just bats at the toy twice—that is still play. Expecting your sixteen-year-old diabetic Persian to run around the house leads you to say “my cat doesn’t play,” and then you never try again. Instead, get to know what that “alternate universe” of HCKE looks like for your cat.

  . . . And you didn’t think I was going to let you off the hook, did you? Creating ritual around play is only half the equation; your investment in that ritual is the other half.

  The Cat Daddy Guide to Types of Cat Toys

  Interactive toys: You’re attached to one end; your cat is attached to the other end. You provide the Three Rs (Routines, Rituals, Rhythm) of what the hunt looks like. These are toys that stimulate the prey drive—like the wand with feathers, or small prey at the end of a cord. Without question, THE most crucial tool in the shed.