Practical guides on safety, care and wellbeing for cats, dogs, fish, birds, rabbits, reptiles and more, so your home is a safer, happier place for the ones who are family too.
In autumn the balcony stops being the pleasant spot it was in summer and starts collecting things: stored furniture, plants coming indoors, plastic sheeting that moves in the wind. Every one of those changes alters what the cat can reach.
Read the Guide →Clumping, crystal, plant-based, non-clumping or wood. None wins on everything, and the one you prefer is not always the one your cat would pick.
Read the Guide →Forty years of research on cats falling from balconies fits into three numbers: 77% of falls happen between April and September, survival with treatment is around 90%, and injuries are documented from the second floor up. What the veterinary literature says, study by study, fully sourced.
Read the Guide →The short answer is yes, and not because your cat is clumsy. Even the most sure-footed cat miscalculates when a fly goes past or a bang startles it.
Read the Guide →In summer the balcony concentrates three risks at once: heat, toxic plants within reach, and falls when a bird switches on the hunting drive. All three are fixable without building work.
Read the Guide →A net is not something you fit and then forget. It withstands sun, wind and claws, and a worn net gives exactly the feeling of safety that is dangerous.
Read the Guide →A light well connects several floors, so the drop is deep even on the ground floor. In return, courtyards offer what a cantilevered balcony does not: solid walls to anchor into.
Read the Guide →On a roof terrace your cat has more metres available to find the weakest point. That is where most installations fail, not on the material.
Read the Guide →The hard decision only arrives once you have decided to fit a net at all: synthetic mesh or metal. Both work, but not in the same home and not with the same cat.
Read the Guide →Between 4 x 3 m and 8 x 3 m there is no matter of taste, there is a five-minute measurement. Skip it and you order short, then improvise at the exact corner that counts.
Read the Guide →A normal balcony is built for people, not for an animal that climbs, jumps and squeezes through impossible gaps. Seven things to check before you open the door.
Read the Guide →In summer the airing hours go up, the insect screen holds less than you think, and your cat spends more time on the windowsill. Three things that change at once.
Read the Guide →The "one hour a day" rule means nothing. A greyhound and a border collie need opposite things, and in puppies and older dogs too much does more harm than too little.
Read the Guide →It is the most common behaviour complaint and the worst explained. The cause is not dominance or lack of discipline: walking fast and sniffing is what the dog wants, and pulling delivers it.
Read the Guide →The air says 28 degrees and feels manageable, but the ground your dog walks on can be 50. How to check it in seven seconds and what to do if you have already gone too far.
Read the Guide →You set up the tank, add the fish, and three days later you cannot see any of them. The typical reaction is to remove hiding places to force them out, and it is exactly the opposite of what works.
Read the Guide →Finding a fish on the floor is one of the worst moments in this hobby, and it was almost always preventable. Jumping is not clumsiness: it is a response to something happening in the water.
Read the Guide →You set the tank up, the water looks crystal clear, and the temptation is to go and buy fish that same afternoon. That is exactly the mistake: clear water does not mean safe water.
Read the Guide →Feathers appear on the cage floor and the bird looks flat. It is almost always a moult, a normal and exhausting process. But there are three patterns that are not a moult, and they are worth recognising before months go by.
Read the Guide →A perfectly ordinary living room is full of traps for a bird in flight. Most are not obvious, and some kill within minutes without a single warning sign.
Read the Guide →Dental disease is the most common health problem in rabbits, guinea pigs and chinchillas, and also the one that gets caught latest. The reason is that the early signs do not look dental: drooling, one watery eye, eating more slowly.
Read the Guide →Most digestive and dental problems in pet rabbits come from the same place: too much pellet and not enough hay. The right ratio is less intuitive than it looks.
Read the Guide →Metabolic bone disease is still the leading reason pet reptiles end up at the vet, and it is almost always preventable. The problem is rarely a lack of calcium: it is the relationship between calcium, phosphorus and light.
Read the Guide →A reptile does not make its own heat: it borrows it from the environment and regulates by moving. Understanding that changes how a terrarium is built.
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