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player ready...When shopping for the cat-or the cat lover-on your holiday list this year, keep a few rules in mind:
– Cats do not dress up in cute little outfits. You cannot decorate a cat.
– Catnip is always appreciated and has no known harmful side effects.
– It’s impolite to call attention to all the cat hair in the house by gift-wrapping some tasteless sticky lint brush or something similar.
Beyond these few guidelines, shopping for cats is nearly as easy as curling up in a chair for a nap. American manufacturers virtually lie down and roll over to please the 52 million cats in America.
Take cat literature. Go to any bookstore this holiday season and you’ll see a vast assortment of cat-related books, ranging from “Zen for Cats” (“What is the sound of one can opening?”) by Alfred Birnbaum (Weatherhill, $9.95) to Cleveland Amory’s hotly awaited sequel to “The Cat Who Came for Christmas” and “The Cat and the Curmudgeon.” More adventures of Amory’s cat Polar Bear are in the new “The Best Cat Ever” (Little, Brown, $19.95).
For poetic cats, there’s “The Rubiyat of a Persian Kitten” (“And lately when I was not feeling fit, bereft alike of piety and wit, there came an angel shape and offered me a fragrant plant, and bid me taste of it”) by Oliver Herford (Rizzoli, $14.95).
For the earthier cat, there’s “The Kama Sutra for Cats” by Burton Silver and Margaret Woodhouse (TenSpeed, $9.95), filled with, you know, positions for cats: Correct position in which to attack a human, correct position to jump on a sheet, that sort of thing.
Kitty-book nuances
Carol Gardner, a book buyer at Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore, says, however, that dog books outnumber cat books.
But they differ, she says. Dog books are practical, useful. Cat books are luxuriously esoteric.
“Cat lovers expect different things from their pets,” Gardner says. “Most of the videos out for dogs are on dog training. But the videos for cats are for the cats to watch and enjoy.”
“The Kitty Video” (Lazy Cat Productions, about $20), for example, and “Kitty Video Supreme” (Lazy Cat Productions, about $24) “Video Catnip” (Petovision, about $20), are 40-minute films of birds, squirrels and hampsters. All are available at Park View Pet Shop, 2222 N. Clark St., and Not Just Thee Fish Bowl, 600 W. Dempster St., Evanston.
“Theoretically, they’re to be used to entertain your cat when you can’t be home,” Gardner said. “They give you little directions about sitting with your cat in a darkened room, putting the cat at eye level. Some cats really take to watching TV. But others just couldn’t care less.”
Feeder frenzy
On the more practical side, a great gift for an indoor cat is a bird feeder, suggests Jane Dorsey, of the Cat Care Society in Denver.
“If you have indoor cats, they like to sit at the window and watch the birds,” she said. “But I emphasize, it’s for indoor cats; otherwise you’re setting up a restaurant for them.”
A favorite cat toy continues to be The Cat Dancer, a 3-foot length of springy wire with twists of cardboard on the ends that drive cats wild. Some animal behaviorists prescribe Cat Dancer as a tonic for bored, overweight kitties. They cost under $5.
Another nice kitty stocking stuffer: a cat-size heating pad, available in speciality stores for about $30. Cats love to snuggle up in a warm spot. Of course, you could let them use your heating pad, but for evenings when you don’t want to share, this is the answer.
For cats who struggle with the temptation to chew on houseplants, a $1 packet of oat grass seed makes a nice gift. Plant the seeds in a container and set it aside for the cat’s enjoyment. The fast-growing grass attract cats, but won’t hurt them or make them sick.
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One gift you don’t want to give a cat-lover: a cat.
Don’t attempt to select a cat for another person. It’s an intensely personal choice, and people really ought to select their own cat.
“Give them a gift certificate for a cat instead,” warns Dorsey. “We really discourage the idea of giving a live gift.”