Success in the Multi-Cat Family

Many cat lovers are not satisfied with a single cat; they are so smitten by their feline friend that they are consumed by the desire to have two, or even more cats as family pets. However, done incorrectly this can lead to significant problems; including persistent fighting and/or urination and defecation outside the litter-box. Having fostered more than 400 kittens and cats over the past decade, my husband and I have encountered this many times - both in our own cat family and in the homes of the people who have adopted our foster pets. I have come up with the following advice for cat owners considering expanding their furry family.

The first question I recommend that prospective multi-cat owner ask themselves is: "should I even get a second/another cat?" The most important thing to realize in this context is that cats are not naturally pack animals. Unlike dogs, whose forebears live in devoted and highly structured family units, cats are solitary creatures. Exceptional cases do arise, but in general the only affectionate multi-animal scenario in the feline world in the mother-kitten relationship. Because cats are usually born in litters of at least 2 or 3 (and often more), there is generally a second level relationship among littermates. However, the attachment between mummy and kitten is the strongest, and it is invariably affectionate. In fact, there are those who suggest that your cat's affectionate attachment to you is transference of this relationship - essentially they consider you their 'mummy' and the younger they are when you adopt them, likely the stronger this relationship will be.

I personally believe that the attachment cats develop for humans is probably more to do with individual personalities (both cat and human), but whatever the reasons and mechanisms, it's definitely true that it is a lot easier to get a cat to love you than it is to get them to love another cat. So, ask yourself candidly if you really need a second (or third, or fourth) cat. And, if you have gotten away with two, don't be fooled into thinking that you will necessarily be problem free with more. Each cat has his or her own unique personality and hang-ups - just like people. Our own personal experience was that cat number two dovetailed perfectly into our family, right up until we introduced cat number three.

Presuming that I have not talked you out of the idea by now, that you are determined to have a multi-cat household, here are my suggestions for increasing your chances of smooth success. First, consider going multi-cat right from the start. Ideally, adopt a mother and her kitten. This can be especially successful if the mother is under one year old which, sadly, has been the case far too often for the mother cats we've helped rescue. You can also consider adopting litter-mates and chances are almost as good that things will work out well, but this is by no means guaranteed. Keep in mind also that reintroducing mummy and kitten and/or littermates after a period of separation can be no different that introducing feline strangers. Our experience has been that cats have the capacity to remember people and other cats for about three weeks, on average. Some forget you, or their mother, kittens or siblings, in as little as 2 weeks. If you are a cat owner who has used a boarding kennel for kitty and come back from vacation only to get the cold shoulder from your pet, consider the possibility that this may not be so much a case of punishing you, as one of kitty having forgotten who you are - at least a bit.

If you already have a cat and this option is not available to you, then great care is essential. I cannot give you a definitive recipe for success, but I do suggest the following. First, adopt from a humane society that fosters the cats in a home setting. If the cat you are adopting is known to be good with other cats, then the battle is half won. Consider fostering yourself; see how your current cat reacts to other cats. Ideally both cats should be neither aggressive nor timid with other cats. One of each, for example, is not a good combination; you are setting the stage for a bully and victim relationship. This can sometimes lead to worse problems than two aggressive cats. You may not be fortunate enough to happen on two cats who both actually enjoy the company of other cats but, at the least, you should aim for two that are indifferent to each other. If you simply do not have the opportunity to assess how your current and prospective cats are around other cats, then your most promising scenario would be to introduce a kitten as your second cat. You should probably also plan to get a cat of the opposite gender from your current cat - we have found that this can be quite conducive to friendly relations.

How you introduce your new cat into the household can also have a significant impact on the success of the ultimate relationship between these two. A gradual introduction can go a long way to smoothing the path towards friendship. Many people make the mistake of dumping the new cat into the middle of the household environment, which has the distinct potential of eliciting an aggressive reaction from the incumbent cat. I suggest you start by confining the new cat to a single room of the house, and let the two get to know each other first by smell and sound. After a few days, if things are progressing well, you can introduce the two for brief periods, under close supervision. The speed with which you increase the duration of these face to face sessions will really depend on how things go between the two cats.

Whatever you do - don't give up too quickly. It can take weeks for things to settle down and even the most acrimonious introductions seldom actually lead to injury for either cat. And remember, however long or short, and rough or smooth the adjustment period, always be sure to provide one more litter-box than the number of cats in your household. Even if cats get along well, they seldom like to share the 'facilities'.

Finally, be sure to spay or neuter all your cats - not only will this make them less likely to fight and spray urine, there is an endless supply of homeless orphans, many of whom end up abandoned and suffering, or euthanized, for lack of suitable adoptive homes. It is irresponsible for us to let our pets breed and contribute to their numbers. Best of luck!

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More Success Tips From Strictly Come Dancing 2006

'Strictly Come Dancing' is a dancing competition where a professional champion dancer is paired with an amateur. The couple with the lowest marks are expelled each week. Points are awarded by four judges and by the viewing audience.

The program contains success tips which can be applied to other activities as well as dancing. You can, for example, guarantee that there will be at least one critic ready to snipe at you as soon as you attempt anything outside the ordinary. The winning dancers can show us how to deal with such criticism.

Successful competitors learn to get over criticism which they feel is unfair or to use it as motivation. If the criticism is justified, they will try to put right whatever is criticised.

Karen Hardy, the professional dancer, who eventually won the competition with her amateur partner, the cricketer Mark Ramprakash, actually thanked the judges for their criticisms:

"I have to say thank you to the judges because they got me mad."

She knew how to let the criticism motivate her to greater action: "If anybody kicks me down, they will get a tyrant coming back."

However, Karen also knew how to respond to justified criticisms:

"They all had valid points. Len picked up on technical faults. My job now is to get back in the studio and correct my faults and hope they don't show up again."

Carol Smillie and her partner, Matthew Cutler, felt she had been unfairly criticised by the judges in the fifth week of 'Strictly Come Dancing'.

Carol and Matthew believed that they had received nothing but criticism while all of the good things they had done were ignored. No one likes criticism but most of us can accept some criticism so long as it is spiced with some praise and so long as it is consistent.

Carol commented: "I took it on the chin but Matthew was really angry about it."

Craig Revel Horwood, one of the judges, commented:

"It's stupid to blow off about things like that. In my opinion, Carol was a disaster. She just needs to get on and correct it and stop whingeing about it."

Both Matthew and Carol did, in fact, respond well to the criticism.

Matthew said; "Getting bad remarks on Saturday (the day of the weekly show) will make us work harder." Working harder is the key to much success. Even if you learn to work smarter, work is still involved at some point!

Carol had a fighting response to the criticism:

"When Monday morning comes, you start afresh. The slate is clean The bouncing back starts with a Cha Cha Cha. Great! BRING IT ON! "

However, Matthew felt the judges' comments had harmed his partner's ability to do well:

"The judges have made my job much harder. Carol is saying 'I can't do it' in reference to the Cha Cha Cha. She would never have said that before."

Carol admitted: "Sometimes the fight leaves you but it is back."

Claudia Winkelmann, an interviewer, acknowledged her courage:

"Lots of people would lie down in the foetal position and say I'm not going back."

People, who desire any kind of success, have to learn to grow up, stand up and continue to take action when criticised.

Successful people accept the fact that if they want to win a competition, they will have to train and work very hard. They will not master the necessary information or skills in a second.

Karen made this point to Mark: "If you could get it in a second, we would have 3000 world champions wouldn't we?"

If anything is worth doing really well, it isn't going to be easy. Karen, like most successful people, had the sense and the training to accept this.

Karen and Mark always put in an exceptional amount of work. She commented: "You just hope that all the work you've put in will pay off. We've put the hours in. Practice makes perfect and that is how I've been trained. "

Brian Tracy, the great business guru and motivator, says much the same thing in relation to business success:

"The only way to learn to be successful in business is to practice, practice, practice. And if you're not willing to practice; if you're not willing to put in the time to learn, then it is not possible for you to succeed in business."

Sometimes the professional dancers lowered their standards to make life easier for their amateur partners. But one, at least, of the most successful amateurs refused to allow them to do this. She wanted to achieve the same high standards as the professional who partnered her.

During the week after the fifth performance, Erin Boag was asked what she considered the best dance of all the series. She referred back to week three of the second series when Darren Bennett, a champion professional dancer, and Jill Halfpenny, an actress, danced a jive to 'I'm still standing':

"It was just spectacular. It had anything and everything that you could ask for."

Both Jill and Darren decided they would produce a kick ass jive in response to the criticism that their rhumba in week two was 'pedestrian'.

Darren was full of respect for his partner: "Jill's desire to learn to dance was absolutely amazing. Jill would just work and work and work. You cannot ask for more than that. We went out there and literally danced full on."

The speed of the jive was the most difficult part of the dance for Jill. You don't have time to think. Jill asked her partner if he was dancing at his full speed. He said "No".

She said "What I want you to do is always to try to dance at your pace because I want to pick up your pace. I don't want you to pick up my pace."

The audience could see how hard she was working physically and responded.

They danced the jive again in the final.

The hall erupted after the performance and the judges all gave them a ten - the maximum score. They won the championship of the second series.

In the current series, the women amateurs realised that they would have to give everything to do well in the competition. The women professionals always looked stunning and the women amateurs realised that they too had to go in and give it the full wow factor. Someone remarked:

"Louisa Lytton's dresses have got smaller as she gets braver and as she gets better at the dancing and feels more confident."

The amateur men had to accept that they, also, had to do whatever it took to look the part. Arlene, one of the judges, gave her view: "Mark should cut his hair even if he is not happy about it - anything to win."

Another lesson from the show is that confusion will eventually dissipate if you keep working. The amateur dancers would frequently make comments like:

"It's very confusing. Why am I not getting it? I don't know what I'm doing. I'm so confused. I get so confused about where we are. I don't understand that. What are we doing here?"

However, as they kept working and training, the penny would eventually drop and they would come out on the show night and give a half decent performance.

Carol Smillie said: "Every dance I do, I have two or three mental blocks where I think: 'I can't get this right'."

Matthew Cutler, her partner, commented: "Even when she has mental blocks she's done the dance so many times that by Saturday she does it alright."

At one point, Mark Ramprakash said: "I have lost the will to live. It is my usual feeling of confusion and feeling a total beginner."

However he kept going: "I am not going to let this Viennese Waltz get the better of me."

That afternoon, it all came together.

To sum up the success tips above:

Do not lie down 'in the foetal position' when criticised. Stand tall and take corrective action if the criticism is fair and use it as motivation if it is unfair. Sometimes the fight may leave you but it can also return.

You have to work very hard and practice hard to be successful If this were not so, everyone would be successful. Continued practice and learning is necessary in business as well as dancing.

People need not drag others down to their own level. Instead, they can strive, like Jill Halfpenny, to reach the standard of the superior performer. If someone else can achieve something so can you.

Anyone who wants to achieve outstanding success must be prepared to do whatever it takes to win even if it means cutting their hair and taking pains to appear at their best. Who knows; they might be able to create their own wow factor.

Confusion is a state most of us get into when learning anything new. If we keep trying hard and working hard, we will eventually move out of confusion into a state of reasonable clarity. Tony Robbins, the great motivator, teaches that we should rejoice when we are confused because, if we keep going, enlightenment will be just round the corner.

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Success Lessons From The 2007 Rugby Union World Cup Part 2 - The Haka

There are few new success lessons. Most people just need reminding of the ones they already know. One way to remind yourself is to see success laws applied in different environments like the different sporting environments.

Like most sports, rugby teaches success lessons which apply both to rugby and to life in general. The rugby union world cup started with a shock result when Argentina beat the hosts, France, on September 7th 2007.

Next day, Saturday 8th September, the New Zealand 'All Blacks' hammered the Italians in the next match of the competition. The score was 43 - 0 after only 30 minutes.

The All Blacks perform a 'haka' before their matches. Haka are sometimes thought of solely as war dances, but individual haka have different purposes which are not all related to war. Some are performed by women.

The hands, arms, legs, feet, voice, eyes, tongue and the body as a whole combine to express courage, annoyance, joy or other appropriate feelings.

The Haka is also about drawing strength from your ancestors and climbing the ladder to your dreams - nothing is impossible - you can achieve anything.

Many scots, or part scots as in my case, claim descent from a great ancestor, Robert the Bruce. We draw strength from his example.

He is famous for being ready to give up his fight for independence until he saw a spider who refused to give up trying to build his web in spite of many failures. Eventually, the spider succeeded and so did Robert.

I think of Robert the Bruce nearly every day and am reluctant to throw out spiders. My bathroom has quite a few spiders happily living there! My sister has just suggested that they would be better off outside where they could catch some food. She has a point!

The spiders provide a great role model for those who feel like giving up. Their perseverance and optimism in building their webs is legendary.

War haka, known as 'peruperu', were originally performed by warriors before a battle. These dances, accompanied by fierce, shouted chants show off the strength and ferocity of the warriors in order to frighten the opposition. This is the type of haka performed before rugby matches.

Most opposition rugby teams are tough men and are probably more intimidated by the reputation of the All Blacks than by their haka but they know they are in for a tough game and the performers of the haka end the 'war dance' in fighting mood ready to win the game and to demoralize their opponents. A popular haka, with the English translation follows below:

Ringa pakia

Uma tiraha

Turi whatia

Hope whai ake

Waewae takahia kia kino

Slap the hands against the thighs

Puff out the chest

Bend the knees

Let the hip follow

Stamp the feet as hard as you can.

Ka Mate! Ka Mate!

Ka Ora! Ka Ora!

Tenei te ta ngata puhuru huru

Nana nei i tiki mai

Whakawhiti te ra

A upane ka upane!

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

Hi!!

It is death! It is death!

It is life! It is life!

This is the hairy person

Who caused the sun to shine

Keep abreast! Keep abreast

The rank! Hold fast!

Into the sun that shines!

Music, words and movement have been used for centuries to motivate humans to heroic efforts. It is no wonder that successful films like Waterloo, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and the Rocky series have inspiring sound tracks. Viewers walk out of the cinema feeling like heroes.

TV series like the Hornblower series have sound tracks that make you feel that all your dreams can come true. Movement has the same effect. It warms you up and makes your mind sharper, more confident and more successful.

The Italians found out swiftly how an inspired and heroic team plays rugby.

The All Blacks move fast and seize every opportunity. They are just as fast to block the chances that come the way of their opponents. Whenever Italy looked like scoring, two or three All Blacks were there ready to tackle the Italian player holding the ball. Their defence is almost impregnable.

However, Italy intercepted a ball and Stanievic scored a try. The score was now 43 -7.

We have a crumb of comfort here for the English who have not been playing well since they became world champions in 2003. Stanievic was born in England and his parents run a hotel in Warwick!

"It's seizing the moment is what it is!" said the New Zealand commentator, Murray Mexted.

"Anything can be achieved if you put your mind to it!" said an advertisement at half time.

Chris Jack, a lock forward, scored a try a few minutes after half time for New Zealand. He showed us a bit of a side step. "Who said locks could not sidestep?" said Murray as the score went to 50 -7. Too often players are stereotyped in rugby.

It has always been said, usually by the backs, that forwards cannot run fast with the ball. Teams, like the All Blacks, that ignore these false limitations usually win matches. The All Black forwards can run fast and can catch and pass the ball with great skill.

Italy contested the match vigorously as soon as they recovered from stage fright at playing the renowned All Blacks. You have to play the man and not the jersey.

Successful people are not intimidated by the reputation of a group or an individual whether they are the All Blacks or anybody else. Every human being has huge abilities wherever they come from.

Eight years ago in 1999, the All Blacks were defeated by France. France will have to repeat that performance next weekend in the quarter finals in Cardiff if they are to reach the semi-final.

Italy nearly reached the try line again but then the All Blacks scored instead.

The score was now 57 - 7. A try was next achieved by Jerry Collins for New Zealand. The score moved up to 62 - 7. Jerry then scored another try 69 - 7. Once you score a try you get a taste for it! Get some success and you want more.

Italy managed to score a second try from good old fashioned support play before the end of the match. Eventually New Zealand won 76 -14. They like to be way ahead of the competition and they make sure they are.

An All Black coach revealed one of their secrets. They get plenty of relaxation for both body and mind by sleeping and eating well and by doing sports they enjoy as well as rugby. Having plenty of sleep, good food, fun and relaxation is a key element in any success.

Australia also like to be well out in front. They are the most successful team in the rugby union world cup series. They beat an improving Japanese team by 91 - 3. Australia scored thirteen tries. The Japanese did not score any.

The great teams are not content to just win. They want to annihilate the competition and achieve almost impossible standards of excellence.

On Sunday 9th September in the Parc des Princes, South Africa, another favourite team to win the cup, beat Samoa 69 - 7.

Like the All Blacks, the Samoans perform a war dance which they call a 'siva tau' before their matches. During the dance the players feel like warriors ready to fight for their people and they carry this mindset into the rugby match.

The Samoan national rugby union team used to perform the traditional 'Ma'ulu'ulu Moa' on tour. Prior to the 1991 World Cup, the 'Manu Siva Tau' war chant was composed. It was considered to be more aggressive and effective in psyching the players up.

The Tongans also have a fearsome war dance and the Fijians, not wishing to be left out, now perform one of their own.

These war dances do not always bring victory except in the case of the All Blacks but, as suggested above, they probably mean that the teams performing them play with more fire and energy than they otherwise would.

I hope that, one day, South African may start their matches with a Zulu war dance. However, England should probably steer clear of doing a morris dance although some of these do have connections with sword fighting!

Rugby teams without war dances usually rely on their national anthems for inspiration. England also rely on the great spiritual, 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'.

South Africa play well, however, without a war dance and have won the world cup before. They believe, every time that the world cup takes place, that they can win it. They certainly started off well by defeating Samoa.

On Tuesday, England were hit with injuries and a suspension. None of them apart from the suspension came from the actual game of Rugby. Clive Ashton hinted that he wouldn't have minded if the injuries had come from something serious like being kicked on the floor by ten forwards!

What success lessons can we learn from the above account?

We can use the power of movement and exercise to inspire us to achieve success in any field of human activity.

Roger Haeske has written an article about how exercise can make us wealthy! His view is that exercise makes us more energetic and productive and, therefore, more likely to make more money. I agree.

Drawing strength from the example of your ancestors whether they are Robert the Bruce or some one less famous but equally heroic.

Move fast and seize every opportunity that comes your way.

Too often players are stereotyped in rugby and in life in general. We need to ignore these stereotypes and find out for ourselves what we can do.

Successful people are not intimidated by the reputation of a group or an individual whether they are the All Blacks or anybody else.

Once you score a try you get a taste for it! Get some success and you will want more.

Get plenty of relaxation for both body and mind. Make sure that you have fun in some part of your
work and life at least.

Believe that you will win or succeed in whatever you are doing. This will increase your chances of success exponentially.

Don't just strive to be a hero. Strive to be a super hero!

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