Cat Chat®
Brought to you by Dr. Elsey's

icon of cat image in the shape of heart with tail finishing the heart shape Tracie Hotchner the Radio Pet Lady

CAT CHAT ® was Tracie’s own weekly, live call-in show on the Martha Stewart channel of Sirius-XM for 7 years – until the channel was canceled. Since 2015 it has been a weekly podcast carrying on her mission to educate and inspire cat lovers to optimize their relationship with their kitty cats by giving them the best possible nutrition and environmental enrichment.

Tracie’s frequent co-host is Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado of Feline Minds Cat Behavior Consulting and author of the new book Play With Your Cat! the Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline.

Sponsored By:
Dr. Elsey’s, who developed America’s #1 kitty litter and also created a healthy dry and canned food for kitties called cleanprotein™ inspired by a cat’s natural prey.

Also sponsored by Fera Pets

Does Your Kitty Want to Wear a Harness?

#302: Cat behavior consultant (https://felineminds.com/) Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado describes the slow and patient process of introducing your cat to a harness — then experimenting letting the kitty walk you indoors and possibly outdoors to see if it suits his/her personality.

Does My Cat Love Me?

#301: Jay Ingram wrote "The Science of Pets" so people could better understand the science and facts of their pets' behavior — and in particular how to understand what makes their cat tick, as well as what s/he may be feeling.

What To Do About a Cat Who Pees Vertically Behind Himself?

#300: Stephen Quant of https://catbehaviorhelp.com/ often gets consulted about a cat peeing on vertical surfaces, usually by backing up to the area in question. Often with a high and quivering tail. The cat will then shoot a stream of urine on the vertical surface. Stephen explains that this is not intended as urination, but is actually spraying as a territorial marker, so he explains ways to reduce the cat's need to do that.

A Bubbling Brook of Fresh Water for Your Kitty

#299: When Andrey Grigoryev invented the Brook glass fountain in his quest for enrichment and hydration for indoor cats, he never expected it to become the best-selling cat fountain. Cat lovers snatched up the clear glass fountain for its aesthetic appeal, the purity of the filtered water, the health benefits of drinking for their cats and that they could pop it in the dishwasher.

“We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat.”

#298: Tracie reads from this sequel to Syou Ishida’s prize-winning best-selling first book “We’ll Prescribe You a Cat,” which she discusses with Jennifer Mowdy from The Literary Cat Co. bookstore as part of the successful phenomenon of translated Japanese fiction generating worldwide attention.

Saving Kindles of Kittens with DIY Kitten Boxes

#297: Deborah Magaldi talks about the Helen Sanders CatPAWS organization in Orange County California, where they are saving very young kindles of kittens from a certain death in the shelters (where there's nobody available to bottle feed them every 3 hours) by providing a DIY Kitten box for the people who bring in kittens that are not yet weaned. This gives Good Samaritans a chance to actually really save the kittens by taking them home to feed and care for them long enough for the kittens to eat solid food and have a real chance at finding homes.

Are Orange Cats Friendliest? Or Is It In Your Imagination?

#296: Mikel Maria Delgado of https://felineminds.com/ explains how cat lovers tend to have a bias towards certain colors of cats and have (mistakenly) ascribed personality traits to colors that they are projecting onto cats. In fact, a cat's temperament is not genetically linked in any way, but a cat's personality can be influenced by their gender. Dr Delgado explains how that works — but she and Tracie urge everyone to view each kitty as an individual with their own bag of attributes.

Serious Cat Lovers Needed to Appreciate This Book

#295: Rebecca van Laer's memoir, "Cat," is for everyone who can relate to her "love letter" to the kitties who have graced her life, using her own cats as a lens to understand what it means to be a "cat person."

Video Your Cat Sleeping to Check Her Heart

#294: Dr. Heather Davis from PRN (employee-owned by the veterinarians) explains why they developed Felycin®-CA1, the first weekly therapy developed for cats with subclinical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), since this heart problem affects 1 in 7 cats (and 1 in 3 senior cats). She suggests videoing your own kitty while sleeping so you can see whether he takes less than 30 breaths a minute (good) and share this with your own vet to determine if more tests or medication are needed to protect his heart.

The Return of the Crazy Cat Ladies

#293: Jae & Adrienne talk about how their huge cat-loving following has grown organically, all from a place of mutually caring about cats and wanting them to be well, which is how their own supplement company evolved.