Not sit or shake, but something that makes everyday life easier. Going to a mat while you carry groceries in, bringing a toy instead of grabbing a sleeve, that sort of thing.

What did you teach them, and how did you get it to click? Curious to hear from cat and bird owners too.

A cat settling beside its owner may be part of a relationship that reaches beyond companionship. A small study of Japanese households found links between feline and human hormone levels, while closer everyday proximity was associated with owners feeling more vigorous and active.

The research, published in iScience, examined 29 cats and 19 owners over one month. Saho Takagi of Kyoto University worked with Taisuke Tsubomura, Miho Nagasawa and Takefumi Kikusui. The team investigated whether everyday relationships could help explain why studies of cat ownership and human wellbeing have produced inconsistent findings.

The results suggest that cats and owners share measurable physiological patterns. However, the study cannot establish whether cats improve their owners’ moods, happier owners interact differently with cats, or shared household conditions influence both.

I adopted a one year old cat about 12 months ago. She was very frightful, I couldn’t even walk near her. Now she’s warmed up but still hates to be picked up. Is there any hope? Occasionally she will sit on my lap but any sudden noise or movement she’s up and gone. When I pet her for too long she gets up and leaves

Last year after moving from home I progressively became depressive and realised it was because of loneliness. I thought about it for ages and did a lot of research and then decided to adopt a bird. This was not out of impulse but weighing the pros and cons and how well I could care for them.

I despise pet shops and breeders so I only wanted to adopt and I came across the perfect bird. She is a female eclectus parrot who had no health or behaviour problems who needed to be rehomed. This was due to the owner not being able to take care of her any more.

Quite frankly I’d say she was lucky considering her previous owner. He fed her only seeds and clipped her wings. While her wings are still growing back she is eating a vitamin A rich diet now.

To give context on eclectus parrots they are famed for their relatively low maintenance. They don’t require partners like other parrots, instead preferring their own company. They are not overly loud usually and largely just like to hang out.

After extensive research and accomodation I adopted her and she has been with me since. I give here as much out of cage time as possible and work from home three days a week so she’s not alone too much. I cleaner her cage regularly and got an air purifier so it’s not too dusty for her.

From all i can tell despite not being a bird whisperer, I believe she is happy. She loves to sit with me while I work or watch tv. I have always talked to myself with manic frequency so I’m always talking to her. I installed a petcam so I can talk to her while at work. She hasn’t plucked and she is a good weight.

I always worry though that I’m not doing enough. I get paranoid that having her in my house is cruel. She can’t live in the wild for obvious reasons as she would just die to a cat or something. She is stuck in this system but I just worry she isn’t getting enough.

I know lots of people mistreat parrot and I just don’t want to be like them.

Hi i decided to adopt a bunny in November December i just want to know what are some things that i need know ive been doing research on adopting a bunny or buying on from some one. What kind of care does the bunny need I’ve been looking on instagram and Google trying what I need to make sure I’m doing good btw this would be my first pet give me a list

From the dog photography awards of 2026...really cool

I took in a kitten on Friday because its mother rejected it. I’ve been feeding it KMR every few hours but it’s been having trouble latching on. It has a few times but it’s very irregular. It’ll kneed at the towel like it’s hungry but just chew on the nipple of my syringe I’m using. I can’t afford to take it to a pet ER so I’m doing everything I can at home. It’s also very underweight for a 3 week old kitten. It acts normalish for a kitten, just like one I had a few years ago.

Choosing cat food is surprisingly complicated. There are so many brands and opinions online that sometimes it feels hard to figure out what matters.

I've come across Club 4 paws while looking into pet food options, and it got me thinking about how other cat owners make these decisions.

Do you mainly look at your cat's digestion or whether your cat actually likes the food? And how long do you give a new food before deciding whether it works?

I'd love to hear how other people approach it

I bought a new cat yesterday afternoon, but since bringing her home, she has done everything apart from use the litter. I'm getting concerned now. Is this normal??

I often call my bearded dragon “stinky fat bastard guy” or “freaky ass mf” when I’m feeding her (jokingly ofc).

I have had friends express that cussing at animals is wrong, and that my doing so has made them uncomfortable.

Obviously I don’t think animals should be spoken to in a rough or loud tone. I usually I speak in a baby voice, whisper, or normal speaking voice regardless of what I’m saying so as to not scare my dragon.

I don’t really get the logic behind it, but I want to know if this is genuinely a habit I should let go of?

Would love to know this subreddits thoughts

Edit: I appreciate the feedback lol

Will continue to call my stinky chud daughter fat and stinky.

One of our cats has always had some issues with the litter box. She makes the motions to bury, but she never actually buries, instead pawing the sides of the pan or the floor. And what she leaves smells ATOMIC >_< But now she's sick or something, has been for a couple weeks. She'll randomly poop on the floor somewhere in the apartment, and it's always very loose, almost like diarrhea.

We thought the problem was I wasn't changing the pan often enough (I admit I don't keep it well, weh), but I changed it today and she just went on the hand towel I've been using in place of a mat for dish washing. We're at a loss as to what to do.

We feed her weight loss food, because she's always been rather chunky and will eat ANY kibble she can (which makes feeding her "sister" a pain). We haven't really switched foods recently--we've been giving her normal paté instead of diet because Mom is tired of keeping track of which can, but our cat's been doing this before she swapped.

We can't just lock her into the litter box room until she gets over this. What do we do? Should we be prioritizing stomach health food instead of weight loss? We can't afford to go to the vet....

Hi everyone,

As title says, just want to put this out to the universe to see if we can get some hope and some additional good vibes and prayers sent to our baby. He is a 7-year old mutt and late Thursday/early Friday began his fourth bout of Hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, or so we thought!

It has always started the same: lots of puking, followed by an eventual turn into diarrhea with some blood, rapid dehydration. The first time he just needed a subcutaneous fluid bubble and that was it. Second time he was hospitalized overnight with IV fluids. Third time was ambulatory again. This time….he puked more times than he ever has before. They actually sent us away the first time we showed up even though we knew how this would progress because his vitals looked fine. Then, about two hours later he was panting and pooped his classic raspberry jam color & consistency stool so we brought him back in. The vet checked his heart rate and said it was 90, which is low for a dog with acute gastroenteritis so he said there was a possibility for Addison’s disease, which was then confirmed as atypical later.

Yesterday was a rollercoaster. From being told they could manage it and he would likely be discharged at night, to being told he was actually much sicker than normal and might need a mainline IV, to then being told he didn’t need one because he was improving on his own, to then his blood pressure dropping to 55, being told he had a 50/50 shot to survive and to come into spend time with him, to being told the mainline iv seemed to be helping and his blood pressure had stabilized.

We got to see him, and he has a bag hooked up to his bowels which is basically just continuously dripping blood out of him. We’ve been told this is concerning but not altogether surprising. They have given him lots of albumin to replace the protein and his levels are improving. They sedated him to put in a nasal feeding line and will try nutrition later tonight.

This has been absolutely awful and I’m having a hard time seeing stories similar to this one. We’re hoping his odds have gone up a bit since last night since he is holding stable but the vet says we are still in a critical point.

We are so worried and just looking for advice or reassurance or i don’t even know. We just want to get him through this now that we know so we can manage it well for him.

Please please, if you can send some well wishes to our boy Ardy, or some prayers if you pray, we could really use all the good energy.

Thank you.

And if your dog has repeated issues like excessive shedding, chronic GI issues, and other subtle symptoms, look into Addison’s disease.

This is for a fairly distant future in which I start collecting different animals as pets but I really want to keep a lot of pets when I can cats included but also want to have reptiles such as snakes lizards frogs and basically everything else you can keep as a pet. So I’m wondering if people have figured out a way to have them coexist without hiding them from each other

I want a cat and my sister wants a dog but we can only have one pet in the house.

This might sound stupid but what cat breeds are dog-like and dog breeds that are cat-like?

Update: thanks for all the replies, they really helped 💕

just to clarify something, we've raised a cat like two years ago but lost her unfortunately and couldn't bring ourselves to raise another pet until now.

we will properly adopt a cat since we have an experience. hope we find a friendly cat that is not afraid to be outside cuz we would love to take it with us to places. 🎀

My mom is allergic to cats but despite that she has okayed my wife and I staying at her house with our cat and dog. Our cat is just a kitten and despite the fact that we are watching after him and keeping him solely in our room, he has gotten out and peed on our bed. I’ve made sure he has a clean litter box, but he has now peed on the mattress twice in the last few days. My parents are out of town and I really don’t want them to regret letting us stay here. We aren’t living here forever, we have a house; we are just in town for a few weddings. I have blotted out the urine but there is still ding yellow on the mattress. I can’t flip the mattress because it’s a pillow top. What can I do?

Hello! My 11 y/o half mini Aussie is in really pretty good shape, but after having a UTI, she's started having little dribble accidents here and there, with the occasional bigger accident after she's been lying down (sometimes only for a few minutes). Our vet has recommended two different medicines but when we researched into them one can cause bone issues and the other can cause anxiety (which she can already be a bit anxious sometimes).

Does anyone have any better suggestions? We gotta get the problem fixed, but I'd love to not fix it at the price of her health.

Thanks!

EDIT: Okay I want to make something very clear. My sister isn't crazy or would purposefully harm any animal! Stop going into my DMs saying she's going to harm an animal. That is messed up.

Hi!

I have a younger sister, adult, who is mentally disabled from a car accident. She has been asking for a pet recently so that she can have some company when she is alone when I am at work.

I say no fish because she is deathly afraid of fish and water, don't know why but no fish.

She has been wanting a pet for some time but I can't figure out what kind and she said that I can choose what pet. We have had dogs before when we were kids but that's not really starter friendly for her anymore.

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

I desperately need advice. My housemate has been leaving to go see his situationship in another state. He will be gone for up to 8 days at a time. I take care of them while he's gone but because of the way the house is set up, I stay in the basement with my cats which is seperate. I am not actually upstairs with them most of the time and they can't be left out without supervision. This means they only leave their crates to go to the bathroom 2-3 times a day and to eat. One of them barks all day long non stop to the point where he wheezes. There is a blink camera that he has facing their crates.

He also has a cat which has gone without food and water for days at a time. The cat stays in a tiny bedroom. Before he left this time he said nothing to me about how long he would be gone and told me not to feed the cat as she has already been fed. This was Monday night. I have watched him hit and kick the dogs as well as deny them water so that he doesn't have to take them outside to pee. What can I do?? I will try to rehome the cat but because of the camera, it would be much harder to do that with the dogs.

Adult cat about 7 years old. Completely food obsessed, and frankly kind of an ass. Always has been. Like break into the fridge to chew his way into a bag of cat food I had to hide level bad.

Found a baby kitten abandoned near a dumpster, took her in, cleaned her and nursed her to health. Cats were separated for almost a month with the whole medical treatment process.

Introductions weren’t great. Adult cat avoids her completely at first, now he tolerates her barely and it feels he is mad at us for taking second kitty in. Separating the cats just seems cruel to any of them at this point. Either one would get locked up and isolated.

Kitty is rambunctious and sweet, doesn’t really get social cues well still and tries to play with the adult cat who is very much not having it.

How do I get them to get along and be happy? I already give the adult cat high places and plenty of extra food. Bought the pheromones but they’re not doing too much. Been about a month

I’m concerned because my cat started drooling. he only did it for a small amount of time and it was while he was purring and being cuddle. Is this a happy response or should I be worried?

Like he should be fine right it was only a 75mg? (Yes ik not replacing vetinary advice or wtv I'm not I promise)

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Olá a todos. Moro em Brasília, a capital do Brasil. O clima aqui costuma ser bem quente, exceto durante a estação chuvosa - agora. À noite (~00:00), a temperatura mínima fica em torno de 18ºC, 19ºC, etc. Nunca abaixo disso.

Gostaria de perguntar se isso é extremamente frio para os periquitos ou se eles toleram bem. Em dias quentes, a temperatura diurna chega a 32ºC e o ar é extremamente seco. Pensei em colocar um cobertor ou capa sobre a gaiola à noite para bloquear a corrente de ar, a luz e o frio.

Isso é seguro? Além disso, é necessário comprar um daqueles poleiros aquecidos ou aquecedores de gaiola? Ou não? A maioria usa USB direto e não há tomadas perto de onde a gaiola está localizada, e eu teria medo de colocar cabos de energia perto dos pássaros.

Another question: sometimes they sleep in a box in my room (a closed box with holes, no direct airflow). And I like to sleep with the air conditioning on. What temperature range can I keep it at, with they in my Room?

I assure you the air conditioner doesn't blow directly on the box where they're kept in the room. Even so, I'm worried they might get cold. What temperature range is safe?

Name, age, species, personality and stuff! :)

Mine: I have one pet fish I love most in the world. He's an Oscar fish and his name is Oscar Lava. He's turning 2 next year on March 31 :) He recognizes his food and where it's hidden XD He gets excited when I open the drawer where I keep his food in.

My dog has always been a bit weird. We got her young (rescued from a bad situation) so shes not socialized quite correctly.

She was raised around cats and another dog about 6 months her senior. Ever since she was little and realized the cats would grab her and clean her, she would sprint over to either of the cats, throw herself at their feet, and wait there for them to clean her.

She's around ten now, and still bothers our cat constantly to clean her even more than she asks to be carried or held. I'd always assumed that it was just because it felt nice? Not sure why the cats clean one dog and not the other, though. (If it matters, the dog they clean is a shih-tzu mix with soft fur, and the dog they don't has coarser, terrier-like fur.)

Please limit unnecessary anthropromorphizing! (I do think animals can feel/have favorite individuals but it's not the flavor of answer I want.)