Hello Furiends,
Since you humans decided to take away an hour of daylight from us, we felines have had a bit of trouble adjusting. It’s dark by 4:30 in our neck of the woods and we’re bit confused. I normally sit on the hallway cabinet and scream when I can’t figure out why The Human isn’t in bed to cuddle. Needless to day, this does not go over well with The Human. So, when all else fails, we nap.

Still, there was a bit of drama when Oliver’s girlfriend showed up one afternoon.

Since the little tiff, Oliver’s girlfriend has not visited. I hope she found a boyfriend who treats her nicer!

Community comes together to build cat haven

Two paws up for the people in this community who created this project in Newberry to keep the local cats safe, dry and warm.

Of felines and funding

This article was of interest to The Human as she is an entrepreneur. Did you know that feline-focused startups receive far less funding than those targeting the canine crowd?  Using Crunchbase data, a list was created of 11 companies funded in roughly the past couple years with a full or major focus on felines.

Altogether, they’ve pulled in nearly $140 million for offerings ranging from human-grade cat food to microbiome-based supplements to an AI-enabled movement-tracking collar.

The article lists a number of feline product providers who have received funding. Still, this feline wonders why there aren’t more when U.S. households alone are estimated to house more than 58 million cats. Globally, the population is in the hundreds of millions. Add to that the fact that spending on pets surged during the pandemic, as did venture funding for pet-focused startups. Data indicates cat owners aren’t scaling back, either.

The percentage of American households with cats has actually kept increasing, even after pandemic restrictions waned. Perhaps it helps that even if we’re at home less, cats are pretty content to be on their own.

So all you feline focused entrepreneurs get those products out there!

Man’s Best Friend Can’t Compare to These 9 Adventure Cats

My regular readers know how I love stories about adventure cats and this article from Outsider Magazine features 9 very cool adventure kitties.

The two featured in the photo here are the team of Pinecone and Mushroom. Their outdoor skillset is hiking and kayaking. Their human, Becca Terry loves to hike and kayak. After the shut down, she got Pinecone and she was excited to take the feline out to see and enjoy the things she had missed.

Pinecone became the perfect hiking partner. A year later, Mushroom joined the family, and picked up the adventure spirit quickly, despite visual challenges from only having one eye. Because cats are inquisitive and want to inspect everything, they hike at a generally slower pace than people, which can help their human companions slow down and “smell the roses”.

“When we go somewhere with Mushroom, usually I make sure I have a decent amount of time to be out on the trail,” Terry says. “Or sometimes I’ll pick a spot that’s shorter, like instant gratification—like a drive up to a mountaintop—but I let her move how she wants to move.”

Also, Mushroom is here to defy whatever stereotypes you have about cats being afraid of water. She’s not only a brave hiker but a regular kayaker. “I have her in my lap, and we don’t go on anything that’s got a lot of rapids,” Terry says. “So she usually falls asleep like she does in the car.”

Be sure and read about the other adventure cats in this article.

How the Feline Star of The Marvels Prepared to Play Goose the Cat

 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s favorite feline is back. Goose the cat returnsto the big screen in The Marvels.

While the character of Goose is returning for The Marvels, the feline actor who portrayed the animal companion in Captain Marvel did not reprise their role. The Marvels filmed in the U.K., not the U.S., like Captain Marvel, and recruited local animal talent for the movie.

Jo Vaughan, an animal trainer for the film and TV industry, was the lucky individual tapped to help select the cat for the Goose’s part and train the feline for the movie.

The trainer found a selection of cats that looked like the feline who played Goose in Captain Marvel, and two of those animals got the part.

“They picked Tango as the lead cat, and then we utilized Nemo as a backup cat,” Vaughn tells PEOPLE of the pets selected for the role.

Meowza, did those cats have to learn a lot as they were both new to acting. Vaughn “started from scratch,” training the cats for the movie over three months. First, she tackled environmental training, making the felines comfortable with a live film set’s active, loud, and often chaotic environment.

“The environment is a big factor because cats are generally quite nervous creatures, so they have to be comfortable around all those people and sounds,” the trainer says.

Most cats’ initial timidness to new environments is one of the most noticeable differences between training cats and dogs for Vaughn.

“Everybody takes their dog for a walk. Most people take their dogs in the car. Unless you’re taking your cat to the vet, nobody takes their cats anywhere. Usually, if your cat goes outside your house, it’s a bad experience. So you have to teach cats all these new things are positive,” she adds.

After mastering environmental training, Tango and Nemo focused on learning specific behaviors needed for The Marvels. Before filming started, Vaughn trained both cats to hit all their marks based on what appeared in the script.

“The biggest thing to us trainers is that the cat is comfortable knowing what we’re asking of them,” Vaughn says.

Because the cats are trained to perform certain behaviors on cue, even when surrounding circumstances change, they rarely get starstruck.

“If they have to sit on somebody’s shoulder, we teach them long before they ever come to set how to jump and ride on someone’s shoulder. So to them, it doesn’t make much difference who that person is,” Vaughn says.

For those who want to bring a little movie magic into their home by training their cats, Vaughn, who has six dogs, three cats, and a bearded dragon, suggests stocking up on treats.

“They don’t work for nothing. So you have to find something that they want in return for asking them to do something,” the trainer says, adding that, for cats, “it’s usually treats.”

“Animals are a lot easier to train at home, and it’s quite rewarding,” Vaughn says. “It definitely builds more of a bond than you would have just living alongside a pet.”

So now you know what it takes to be a feline movie star.