Cat talk and more

I have been picking up street cats for a few years now. The experience has taught me a lot about what it’s like to live with cats — and also what problems come with picking up strays.

But the learning never stops. So, when the chance to do a phone interview with Jackson Galaxy, host and executive director of Animal Planet’s My Cat From Hell and an expert with over two decades of experience in cat behavior— I grabbed the chance.

Galaxy’s book The Cat Daddy is a New York Times bestseller. He is also the president of Spirit Essences, the first and only line of holistic remedies for animals formulated by a holistic veterinarian and animal behaviorist.

Jackson first began his career in an animal shelter where he spent nine years on the staff of Boulder Valley Humane Society. During this time, he met Dr. Jean Hofve, a respected holistic veterinarian, and together they refined her line of holistic remedies for animals. Spirit Essences began in 1995 and was used as part of a holistic approach to health and behavior in the shelter, as well as in Jackson’s private cat consultation business.

Sixteen years later, Jackson moved to Los Angeles to continue running both businesses; longtime customers and clients watched as the company’s co-founder — who bottled remedies, answered phones and packed their orders — became an internationally known television host and star.

Animal Planet premiered My Cat From Hell in 2011. An immediate hit, it has followed The Cat Daddy for six top-rated seasons as he has made house calls to pet guardians and their cats. Jackson’s presence offers clients a deeper understanding of why cats act out, with insights and exercises from his unique “cat mojo” philosophy.

Jackson’s ability to connect with even the most troubled felines — not to mention the stressed-out humans living in their wake — is awe-inspiring.

Read on and learn more about cats — both the good and not too good.

PHILIPPINE STAR: Now that My Cat from Hell is on its seventh season are there still new things that you’re learning about cat behavior?

JACKSON GALAXY: Oh, absolutely. I think that one of the really exciting things about this season is that we’re expanding out. Of course, there will be the things that you’re used to seeing, lots of hellacious behavior by humans and animals alike. But there’s also going to be more of a focus on what you would see me do in my life, not just visiting homes, but we do a lot of work with animal rescue. So you’re going to see a focus on adoptions and fostering, and we actually — in the season finale we will be renovating a shelter. We’re going to be focusing on feral cat situations both in New York and Los Angeles. And we do a lot of traveling, plus we have the My Cat from Heaven segment, where we focus in on cats who have overcome the odds and have done some really inspirational things.

Could you name some of the best and worst cat behavior that you have encountered for this season?

I believe it’s the first episode. We dealt with a cat named Sebastian, which in terms of aggression is on my top five of all time. He did things to me —I don’t want to give it away — but he was very surprising. And not only was he surprising in the height of his aggression, but the family had a six-month-old child on top of all that so it made the stakes very real and very high.

I think that one of the things that surprised me so much this season was when we started working with feral cats and how many people we would run into in those neighborhoods who didn’t even know those cats existed, and that’s part of the problem. When you have cats that hide from you in your own neighborhood and they’re reproducing at an alarming rate, we get to show the rest of the world, “Hey, these cats are in your neighborhood, too.” And in Los Angeles alone there’s millions of them, millions of cats walking around that people don’t even know exist. So that was surprising to other people — not me, but to other people as well.

Also, you know what never fails to surprise me is how much the humans just overreact. I mean, we have one cat named Quincy in the first or second episode. All he does is knock things off the shelves. We’ve seen videos of cats who just knock things off shelves and yet the humans in that house assume he’s doing it to be a jerk, to spite them. It just never stops surprising me that humans will think that it’s all about us.

Do you feel like your real job is to alter human behavior rather than cat behavior?

I think that it’s a pretty 50-50 split. No behavior, whether human or animal, happens in a vacuum; they happen because of each other. And I have never ever been to a home where solving the human issue didn’t help solve the cat issue and vice versa. So I think that they are equal parts of the solution and the problem. So I’m always working with human behavior as much as cat behavior, which is probably part of the reason why I don’t like calling myself a cat behaviorist. I have never liked it. I just do it because I don’t know what else people would call me besides Cat Daddy. But I’m equal parts family therapist and cat therapist.

Why did you choose cats among the other animals?

Oh, I love all animals. I consider myself an animal activist more than anything else. I happen to have maybe a way with cats that others don’t, and it is the thing that I can teach better.

Would you share some tips or trick about how to manage cat  behavior?

Treat them nicely. I think a lot of times we tend to wrap cats up into our own problems and we tend to read into behaviors that don’t exist because we get upset by their behavior. I think that the number one thing is to get to know what cats are.

Are there formula treatments for cat behavior problems, or is each cat problem unique?

One of the things that I was always fascinated by, and I think that becomes sort of the easier way of dealing with them, is understanding what I call the raw cat. The cat that existed tens of thousands of years ago on the plains of Africa, that mind-set is still very much alive in the cat that sits next to you in your home. There’s a very straight line connecting those two. The hunter and that cat who was hunting mice to stay alive is the one sitting next to you. It’s amazing. We haven’t changed them. We haven’t bred their behavior out of them. So in a way, I still see cats as being wild animals, and if you understand those needs then the rest of it becomes much easier to understand.

Here in the Philippines we have a problem with stray cats. There are a lot of them in our streets. How do you think this problem is best solved?

Just like in the States and in dealing with most feral cat situations, and also as you’ll see in this season of My Cat from Hell, I’m a big advocate of what’s called TNR, Trap-Neuter-Return. TNR is a proven and humane way of controlling cat populations; that is that we trap them, we neuter or spay them, and then we put them back out to their colonies. We know at least they’re not going to reproduce. Now, what I’ve seen in Asia is that when we say stray cats as opposed to feral cats, some of those cats are adoptable. Some of those cats actually do want to be in homes, where in the States most feral cats that I’ve seen want nothing to do with humans at all. But that’s the other solution, if you think a cat is adoptable, adopt them. Bring them in. Get them off the street.

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My Cat From Hell Season 7 premieres on April 20, 9 p.m. on Animal Planet.