Ten Cat-Related Attractions on the Information Superhighway

In This Chapter

• Web browser’s delights 
• Cat pictures by the millions 
• Pampered cats — and needy ones 
• Goodies galore 
• A place for remembering

First, a confession: We’re serious online geeks. Paul has spent more than a decade building and running the Veterinary Information Network, Inc. (www.vin.comwww.vin.com/petcare 

Still, the worldwide network of computers we all know now as the Internet is an incredible resource for any cat lover, not just longtime computer geeks like we are. With a computer and a modem to hook into your phone line, you can shop for your cat, research breeds and health topics, enjoy some kitty humor, or just plain look at cat pictures, of which the Internet seems to have millions — and the numbers climb every minute. Internet for Cats (No Starch Press) author Judy Heim observes: “There’s a popular saying on the Internet: No one knows you’re a dog, but everyone knows what your cat looks like.” 

One of the easiest ways for beginners to poke around is to use the graphical part of the Net, called the World Wide Web. We also think you might enjoy joining an e-mail list, which is an online discussion group dealing with a specific topic — a breed of cat, for example, or holistic cat care. Arguably the largest collection of e-mail lists can be found at the Onelist Web site (www.onelist.com). Just enter “cat” in the site’s search engine and join the groups that interest you. 

A list of ten sites can’t begin to hit all the best cat sites on the Web. A hundred wouldn’t do the job, nor would a thousand. If you feed the word cat into any search engine, a site that searches the Web, you’ll find that the subject triggers millions of suggested places to look on the Web. And that’s just when we did it. By the time you read this book, you’re likely to find millions more such references, such is the Internet’s speed of growth. If sex-related topics are the No. 1 draw on the Internet, we think that you can make a good case that cats are No. 2. 

Try out our humble offerings and don’t be shy about exploring on your own. Many pages offer connections, called links, that take you to other cat sites if you click them with your mouse; in fact, some pages are nothing but links. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it never hurt a Web browser. Following some of these links can turn up some real gems. 

Don’t forget to make sure your cat is comfortably settled in your lap as you begin. And please forgive us if some of the Web sites we offer are missing. The Internet is a very fast-changing place, remember. You should be able to locate sites that have moved by using any search engine. 

A Link for Everyone 

The Cat Fanciers site (at www.fanciers.com) is the best starting place on the Web for cat lovers. This site is page after page after page of links to breed descriptions, general information, cat clubs, cat shows and registries, veterinary medical resources, breeders, rescuers and shelters, and every other cat-related site the creators of the page could find. 

Cat Fanciers is a real treasure trove, no doubt about it, assembled by people who love and respect cats and want the very best information on them made available to us all. Bravo! 

You could spend weeks exploring all the links — and the links’ links — from the Cat Fanciers site, including one to the Federazione Italiana Associazioni Feline (which Gina uses her college Italian to translate as “Italian Cat Page” . . . or something like that). 

In any case, set up your unlimited-time Internet account before heading to the Fanciers site, because time surely does fly when you’re having the kind of fun we had reading it. 

The Cat’s Meow 

When exploring the Fanciers site, be sure to click on the collection of cat FAQs (that’s Internet-speak for Frequently Asked Questions). The FAQs here are a repository of knowledge and fun information that has been building since before most people had even heard of the Internet. You can access the FAQs directly at www.fanciers.com/catfaqs/. 

Pictures! Get Your Cat Pictures Here! 

“The Web was originally designed to make it easier for scientists to send information to each other,” explains humorist John Scalzi, “but the minute they figured how to send pictures through the pipe, you just know that some scientist posted the Very First Cat Picture on the Web.” And your point, John? 

Because so many cat pictures are on the Web, we’re guessing you could spend the rest of your life looking at them and not see them all. Fat cats. Skinny cats. Young and old, of every imaginable color and pose and background. Cats on couches; cats on cars; cats in laundry hampers. Meow! 

Almost any cat-related site has cat pictures, and even those that don’t have pictures link to other sites that do. We decided that our favorite was Cat Delight (at www.dell.homestead.com/cat/home.html ). And we’re not alone: Thousands of people dropped in before us, and many of them left pictures of their own cats behind. You can, too. 

You don’t need an excuse to enjoy this site. Or to put your own cat out there for everyone to see, because, be honest, doesn’t the world deserve to see your cat? How can you deny people such joy? Your cat is likely to get tired of looking at other cats long before you do. If that happens, check out, with your cat, Lil’ Fishies Cam (at www.riebesell.net/cam/ ), a constantly changing view of aquariums full of real, plump — and probably yummy — Fish. 

Little Cat Laughs — and Big Ones, Too 

Living with cats will fine-tune any sense of humor, and we can tell the folks behind the ErotiCat Homepage have been living with cats for a very, very long time. 

The site, home.ican.net/~otiss/menu/menu.html, is a G-rated send-up of the Internet’s oh-so ubiquitous sex sites, with a kitty twist. ErotiCat breathlessly exposes such “scandals” as people who sleep with their cats (er . . . on the bed, we mean) and offers lots of pictures of naked cats — yes, with no clothes at all! — getting affectionate. 

A very clever site in all, and full of lots of beautiful cats. But what would you expect for a site dedicated to “celebrat[ing] the eternal and sensuous beauty of the feline form”? A higher calling, we’ve never heard of. 

A Place for Pedigrees 

The world is full of cat registries, and you can link to many of them from the Fanciers directory, mentioned in the section “A Link for Everyone,” earlier in this chapter. The Cat Fanciers’ Association — no relation to the Fanciers Web site — is the world’s largest registry of pedigreed cats, and its Web site (at www.cfainc.org/cfa) deserves a visit. 

Everything you want to know about pedigreed cats you can find there: official CFA breed standards, pictures of top-winning cats, cat-care guidelines, and a tour of the organization and what it stands for. A pretty basic site, to be sure, but if you’re interested in pedigreed cats, this one is a great place to visit. 

The Cat’s Meow 

You can jump from the CFA site to the related Winn Feline Foundation, or you can go there directly by pointing your browser to www.winnfelinehealth.org . The foundation is an important source of funding for research into cat health. We encourage you to check out this worthwhile organization. 

Help for the Homeless 

Feral cats are everywhere, from the alleyways of big cities such as London, Rome, and New York to the edges of rural encampments everywhere. Ferals are domestic cats gone wild — former pets and the offspring of former pets: animals abandoned in the mistaken belief that cats can fend for themselves. 

They can’t. Ferals survive by scavenging, by hunting, and by handouts, but no individual cat can live this life for very long. They die miserably, and they die young. 

Alley Cat Allies is a group that’s trying to deal with the problem by stabilizing feral populations through its catch, neuter, and release program. As do many feral cat advocates, they argue that maintaining stable, nonbreeding colonies of cats is a more humane and cost-effective way of dealing with the problem than the constant effort people expend to exterminate wild cats. 

The coalition’s Web site (at www.alleycat.org) is a resource for those who feel the same way, with information on why the trap, neuter, and release program is a viable solution, along with articles on how to set up such a program in your community. The site also contains fact sheets for veterinarians on how to treat ferals and information on rabies, trapping, and relocation. The site’s a must-see for the compassionate cat lover. Another great resource on feral cats can be found at the Web site of San Diego’s Feral Cat Coalition (www.feralcat.com). 

Cat Tracks 

These sites are marvelous, but don’t forget that we’ve put lots of information on helping feral cats in our own Chapter Ferals: Special Cats, Special Considerations. Attitudes toward homeless pets of all kinds have been undergoing a dramatic change with the spread of the no-kill shelter movement. 

In the forefront of all these changes is Maddies Fund, a foundation that seeks to help communities with no-kill solutions. Maddies Fund also has a Web site that’s jam-packed with excellent information on reducing the number of homeless animals. It’s a must-see Web site, at www.maddiesfund.org. 

Where Tradition Lives On 

You don’t need to be much more than a casual observer to have noticed that fashions change in cats as well as in clothing. And in no case is this change more apparent than with the Siamese. 

A few decades ago, the Siamese was a robust creature, with a solid body and an “apple head,” as its fanciers described it. That cat is a far cry from the Siamese shown today, a slender creature with a wedge-shaped head. The only apparent similarities between the two styles is the cats’ “chattiness” and the characteristic Siamese markings: light-colored body with darker “points” on the face, ears, legs, and tail. 

The change was not popular with some people, and one of them, Diana Fineran, decided to do something about the situation. In 1987, she started working for the preservation of the “traditional” Siamese, which she believed was not only more attractive but also healthier. She found some breeders with “apple head” Siamese and put together an organization, the Traditional Cat Association, to support them. The association now also includes “traditional” Burmese, Colorpoint Shorthairs, Persians (which have gone from the older, “doll-faced” variety toward extremely shortfaced cats with health problems), Himalayans, Bengals, Nebelungs, and Chantilly/Tiffanys. 

The TCA Web site (at www.tcainc.org) offers standards for the older types of these breeds, as well as pictures, breeder referrals, and membership Information. 

For Serious Lovers of Cats and Books 

Annette K. Gaskins is a book hound, if you’ll pardon the description, and a very dedicated cat lover. She has combined her two loves in her “Cat Lover’s Bibliography” site (at www.fanciers.com/other-faqs/gaskinsbib.html). 

The page is the perfect spot to visit if you’re planning a trip to the library or attempting to expand your home reference collection on cats. Her lists are fairly extensive and include both fiction and nonfiction, as well as magazines, videotapes, and cat organizations. It’s not complete, to be sure (this book isn’t in it, for example!), but it’s a great start to finding out what’s available to cat lovers. 

Because Gina loves reading fiction about animals, she especially appreciated the list of cat-related mystery writers (although she’d add the Midnight Louie series from Carol Nelson Douglas to the page, as well as the works of Shirley Rousseau Murphy). The listings of cat books with poems, biographies, pictures, essays, and humor are commendable, as is Gaskins’s research into basic care and training books. 

The willingness to share information in the online community is one of the best things about the Internet, and to find such a generous effort on behalf of cats and those who love them is really inspiring. Good job! 

Veterinary Resources 

As mentioned early in this chapter, Paul runs the Veterinary Information Network, Inc., an online service that offers its subscribing veterinary professionals access to continuing education, top-quality specialty consultants, bulletin boards for discussing cases with colleagues, and searchable databases of dozens of professional journals. Through the Pet Care Forum (www.vin.com/petcare), these professionals share their veterinary expertise with pet lovers, especially in The Veterinary Hospital, where veterinarians respond to questions on the many bulletin boards. 

Probably the best-known veterinary site on the Web is NetVet (at netvet.wustl.edu/vet.htm), put together by Dr. Ken Boschert, a veterinarian in Washington University’s division of comparative medicine, in St. Louis, Missouri. His cat section offers a lot of solid information and many good links. 

Two other sites are worth exploring. The first is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (at www.fda.gov/cvm), which keeps its visitors up-to-date on the latest approved drugs for veterinary uses. The site also offers links to other animal-related government resources, as well as U.S. colleges of veterinary medicine. (The colleges themselves often offer links to veterinary schools worldwide.) 

Shopping for Kitty 

Enough of this serious stuff! Time to go shopping. You can find almost as many cat-toy vendors on the Web as you can cat pictures, and you can get a list of these sites from the Cat Fanciers site or find links to them from practically every other cat site on the Web. You can also put the words cat and toy into a search engine and let it rip. 

Since we wrote our first edition of this book, the online retail world has gone mad with huge and well-funded Web sites such as petsmart.com. These sites are hotly competitive, to say the least, and we’re glad to see them in the mix. 

With their multi-gazillion-dollar advertising budgets, they don’t need our help in promoting them. So we also want to draw your attention to a couple small niche players we’ve enjoyed buying from over the years. 

Cat Faeries (at www.catfaeries.com) was one of the first shopping sites on the Internet for cat lovers, dating back to the dark ages of 1993. We like the site not only because it’s cool (which it is) and because it offers cool toys (which it does) but also because we like Gail Colombo, the person who makes it all go. Gina met Gail at the Cat Fanciers’ Association International show and knew in a second that Gail was a cat-loving woman — and not just because she was wearing a fuzzy cat-shaped backpack. Cats adore her, and the feeling is clearly mutual, as her well-chosen collection of fabulous cat toys and accessories attests. Cat Faeries stocks organic catnip, and each order comes with a note from the boss, Betty the Rushin’ Blue cybercat (pictures of whom appear on the site, of course!). 

Fat Cat, Inc., (at www.kittyhoots.com), has a motto you just gotta love: “We’re a company dedicated to making the cats of the world happy — oh, and we make cat toys too!” This sleek site has a great collection of cool cat toys, including those in the shape of prey, politicians, or dogs. Would your kitty like Toss Perot or Revenge Rover? You may need to get them both to find out. 

A Memorial Space 

One of the saddest places to find cat pictures on the Web is on sites dedicated to the memory of beloved pets who’ve passed on. We found such places sad, true, but we also found them beautiful and inspiring. One such site is the Rainbow Bridge Tribute Pages (at /rainbowbridge.org/bridge.htm). 

The Rainbow Bridge refers to a lovely story that has given many pet lovers comfort over the years. After our animal companions die, the story goes, they’re restored to health and vigor and are well cared for in a special place. They’re happy, except for the fact that they miss us. After we die, we see them again and cross the Rainbow Bridge together. 

A wonderful story, and we hope it’s true, for we’d like to see many, many animals again. 

The site offers stories, poems, and pictures, each and every one guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings. The last page notes that this site was “made with love,” and we have no doubt about that. Creators Meggie O’Brien and Kathie Maffit are providing a much-needed service to us all.

Cats ‘n’ computers  Two products are custom-made for cat-loving computer jockeys. The first is Catz, a software package that produces an interactive pet to live in your computer. You choose a kitten to adopt from a handful of contenders and give him a name. You can pet him, feed him, play fetch, or take his picture. It’s all great fun! To order, visit the company’s Web site at www.pfmagic.com or check with your local computer store.

A good deal and a good deed are the outcome if you order the second product, the Computa-Cat poster from the San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Originally designed to promote adoptions, the work — designed and written by Paul Glassner — is a clever homage to computer advertising. A handsome tabby is in the middle of the poster, surrounded by a “product description,” such as the following description for the cat brain: “Semi-programmable. Central Control Unit functions independently.” The Computa-Cat poster is $17 from the SFSPCA, 2500 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Proceeds go to the society’s programs for helping animals and people. You can see the poster on the group’s Web site, at www.sfspca.org. 

by Gina Spadafori and Paul D. Pion