As the title says, I’m shocked to see how many cats featured in videos and memes are in fact declawed. This is a barbaric practice that is painful and completely unnatural for the cat. How egoistical of their owners to think that it’s fine to remove their claws just because they don’t want their cheap furnishing to be damaged. What about not adopting a cat? No they rather make the animal handicapped for life. I unfortunately noticed that the practice it’s mostly prevalent in US, where I assume most of the memes/videos of cats come from. I’m sure in this community there are plenty of cat lovers that would agree with me. So please, as we are normalizing critiquing obese or unhealthy practices for pets, we should stop condoning barbaric practices like declawing. Please let’s all make a difference, thank you for reading.

I've seen people stressing that you shouldn't get a cat as a pet if you don't want to spend thousands a year on them. The truth is, a stray is going to live a far better life in a home than they will ever live in the streets, even if you don't vaccinate them, take them regularly to the vet or you feed them low quality food. (And you shouldn't do any of these things, ideally, mind you). Stray cats without anyone taking any sort of care of them live a short and generally horrible life, if they can sleep indoors in the warmth of your home (or even just in your back garden, away from the streets) instead of under a car on the tarmac, always on the lookout, their quality of life will be incomparable.

Is it just me, or has anyone else become frustrated with the amount of people not providing basic health care for their cats?

I know that vet bills can be extremely high, but they are not unexpected. Just expect that medical things can and will happen, and they will cost money. That is just part of cat ownership. Reddit is not a substitute for providing your cat proper medical care.

Other perspectives welcome, because I want to better understand why people are putting cats in these situations. I wish that pets had free health care, and a change to the system is desperately needed. Until the system changes, I wish people didn't have pets they choose to medically neglect.

Every other post is mourning/loss or a sick/injured cat and OP asking what to do because they can’t take it to a vet.

I don’t know why it’s changed so much, but I don’t find it enjoyable anymore, and I think a lot of other users feel the same way.

Brought my cat to the vet and checked him out, asked if he’s been off but told him he’s been normal apart from what happened today. They ran two tests one for eye pressure and the other to see if he has any type of cuts in the eye. Came out thankfully but still wouldn’t say it’s normal. Was mentioned to do a follow up with a Vet even if nothing proceeds to happen and if something was to happen to bring him back. This is just a short summary since it was quite a long conversation with the Vet. If anything proceeds to happen good or bad I’ll do another update. Thank you Edit: this post

i love him so much. he’s just a sweet little guy so full of life. he’s never felt anything but love for others and won’t hesitate to try to play with any stranger he runs into, even other cats. he loves to play with anything and gets himself into plenty of mischief but i don’t care what he does as long as he’s being safe. he’s so silly and funny and he has the longest saddest meow. i love the stupid way he sits and his funny looking face. he’s so soft and i love it when he sits on me and curls up to sleep on my head. i love when he tries to pet me and doesn’t realize his claws hurt. he’s so sweet and so good! every time i look at him i can’t stand it. i want him to live for 50 or 60 years.

Howdy cat lovers!

In our constant battle with spam campaigns on r/cats, we have identified that 'name my cat/kitten' submissions have frequently been abused by karma farming bots.

Those of you who frequent 'new' on r/cats will remember the t-shirt/poster/merch spam campaign that used to frequently end up in our feed - It was highly disruptive for our community, as well as for our mod team. Through tireless work, patience, and determination - I developed a bot, u/SpamBustr, which has completely eliminated their success on our sub, among many others to date.

We continue to remain vigilant and adapt as needed, and so today we have added a 12th rule to r/cats in aid of our fight against spam:

12. 'Name my cat/kitten' posts are allowed, but require the correct flair + verification to ensure OC.

You must set the flair of your post to 'Name Request' at the time of submission, failing to do so is in breach of this rule.

Please submit your post before sending us a modmail - your submission will trigger an automated message which will contain the instructions required for your post to be approved.

Your verification message will be left unanswered if you send us a modmail before you have submitted your post for us to review.

Our verification procedure involves taking a picture of your cat/kitten alongside a slip of paper with your written username. In theory, this will drastically reduce the potential for bots to karma farm such content. This procedure requires you to submit your post first, after which you will immediately receive a message with verification instructions.

The mod team and I will carefully monitor the effectiveness of this system, and encourage you to reach out to us should you face any technical issues.

We remain committed to ensuring that r/cats continues to be a sub that millions of you enjoy across the globe, and we welcome any suggestions or thoughts you may have in upholding this value.

Best wishes, r/cats mod team

p.s, did you know you can set your user flair to that of your kitties breed? Check the sidebar!

For at least the last five years, one of our neighbours' cats, a big tabby boy named Milo, has been coming over to our place. From what we understand, he didn't get along with their dogs, so he was often shut out of the house, even in bad weather. When it was really cold (we're in Ohio), he would slip into our garage through our in-only cat flap to stay warm. Our own cats (three of them) have grudgingly accepted that he's part of the landscape.

Starting about a month ago, we noticed Milo showing up at our door more and more often. At the same time, we noticed that the neighbours' house appears to be empty. Of course, it's difficult to be sure because everybody is staying inside with the whole pandemic business, but there are no cars in the driveway, we don't see lights on at night, and nobody has closed the doors of their shed when they've blown open. As far as we can tell, they're living elsewhere. But Milo was still here.

Five days ago, we noticed an injury on his front right leg. A patch of greyish flesh about two inches across, with splotches of darker grey and dark red. Not knowing what else to do, I contacted the local animal control for advice.

Long story short - we just took Milo to the vet. It looks like the injury on his leg is a wound that got infected, so he's had an antibiotic shot, rabies vaccine, and painkillers - and now he's settling into my youngest son's bedroom.

So yeah - I just stole a cat, and I don't feel in the least bit guilty about it.

Edit: I just went into the room and said "Reddit would like a picture", so he decided to pose for me! https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/comments/fslwn1/this_is_milo_milo_has_been_in_the_house_less_than/ As you can see, he's still very insecure and uncertain...

Edit 2: Update - Milo has now been with us for a couple of days, and is settling in marvelously well. We discussed our options with our vet; they confirmed that he has no chip, and is not neutered. We need to keep him inside for at least ten days, technically for quarantine. If nobody has come looking for him after ten days, they'll chip him and he's legally our owner. We can then think about things like vaccines and neutering.

Thank you all for your kind words and support in this!

Is anyone else obsessed with how their cat smells? My boy is a 1.5yrs old and he just smells so good. He has this natural sweet scent to his fur. Anytime I smell him I feel like my brain is producing happy hormones and I feel 10x better lol. What does your cat smell like?

Who knows and who cares?

https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/about/rules

​

Hello everyone,

​

Today we are going live with our primary rule overhaul in order to keep the subreddit rules in tune with the modern needs of the community.

​

Our rules were old and sometimes edited and added to, but over the years reddit has changed and our community has changed to the extent that it made sense to completely start from scratch.

​

We have kept a lot of the rules that we were actively moderating for, but have removed some rules that are no longer relevant. When the subreddit started the rule "Content must be about cats" made sense, but we do not need to expressly codify this anymore. We're not a small community these days and it has not happened in years that someone posted a bunny rabbit instead of a cat. We will of course still remove off-topic content but do not see the need to clutter up the rules page with something that our community understands to be self-evident.

​

We will likely make minor edits and additions to this new rule-set in the coming weeks until everything is just the way we like it, but the rules as posted now are the general framework from which we will do so.

​

We have kept our rules broadly worded so they can encompass many topics and so we do not need to codify for every single possibility.

​

The most important rules are at the top. Our number one rule is to respect each other. This for example includes following rediquette and sitewide rules, but also our subreddit-specific rule of not attacking other posters for not raising their pets to your satisfaction.

​

Our rule about spam, memes and self-promotion includes accounts that do not directly promote their content, but which nevertheless primarily exist to drive content to their NSFW stores like Onlyfans. Everyone is welcome to post here, but NSFW sellers can do so on a seperate, SFW account. We do not allow memes as they are most often posted as easy karma-grabs instead of genuine engagement.

​

And so on.

​

Please read our new ruleset via the link at the top of this thread and give your feedback in a comment below.

​

Thank you all for helping us make this space the wonderful community that it is and we hope you enjoy your time here.

​

The r/cats mod team

This is a ridiculous post but we're out of ideas!

Cosmo is our fluffy scaredy-cat that we rescued from a bush 7~ years ago. He's terrified of most things and isn't particularly playful but for some reason he absolutely loves this specific red and blue toy ball. Here's an album of Cosmo and his ball over the years: https://imgur.com/a/Qa3AKLC

The name of the toy is "Hartz Just For Cats Sparkle Madness" and they come in a pack of 3 with assorted colors (pic: https://i.imgur.com/CmImZY3.jpg). Cosmo is only interested in the red and blue one -- he acts insulted if I present him with a different color. We bought as many as we could after we saw his strange obsession as a kitten, but Hartz soon changed the colors and later discontinued the toy entirely.

I managed to score a pack on eBay years ago but otherwise my wife has just been sewing them back together after they get destroyed. After multiple moves and hours of play, we're now down to just the fabric remnants of one ball. I've bought just about every comparable toy on the market but nothing appeases Cosmo. I even reached out to Hartz to see if they had a stockpile of extras somewhere but only received a canned response.

Does anybody here happen to have this particular red and blue ball lying around? I will happily buy it from you! Thank you!

EDIT: By popular demand, here is Cosmo and his ball PART 2: https://imgur.com/a/TdJ9yGG

Edit: We have handed out all of our coins! Thank you everyone for posting all your wonderful cat pictures.

Hello everyone,

As you may have heard, reddit has decided to end it's coin feature.

This will mean that our community awards which were designed in a contest by our userbase will no longer exist. We will of course store their images and a description in our wiki because they are part of subreddit history.

Every time you gave post or comment a community awward the subreddit bank received 100 coins. We used these to award mod awards, which grant premium to people.

We have a little under 200.000 coins left in our subreddit coin bank.

We're giving them all back to you!!

In this thread please post a picture you made of your beloved pet cat. We accept any picture that is one you made, no pictures you found online please.

The mod team will wait a few days and then award as many people each with a mod award granting one month of reddit premium, which allows you to browse reddit and not see ads.

One award per subscriber and moderators are excluded from joining.

Thank you to each and every one who participates here. This subreddit is the wonderful community it is because of you. It is your presence, your votes, posts and heartwarming commentary that makes this place special. You may no longer be able to give special community awards to people, but a true community we remain.

The mod team of r/cats is very grateful for each and every one of you.