【挑战TIME】21期：WhatYourCatWantsYoutoKnow

你养过猫吗？34%的美国人家里至少养了一只猫，并且这个数值还在增加。如果你想养猫，或者想知道更多关于养猫的妙计，这本新书不得不看：《Everything Your Cat Expects You to Know》。

【Section One】Article

What Your Cat Wants You to Know

Are you a cat person, or would you like to be one? Welcome to the club. Thirty-four percent of American households include at least one cat, which adds up to 90 million pet kitties owned in the U.S. If you're thinking about getting a cat — or want to know more about the one you've got — the new book The Cat Bible: Everything Your Cat Expects You to Know (Gotham) is an excellent place to start. Author Tracie Hotchner is one of the leading experts of the feline world. Her popular radio show, Cat Chat, which airs Wednesdays on Sirius radio, celebrates its first anniversary in November. TIME's Andrea Sachs (who has two cats herself) caught up with Hotchner between broadcasts in Vermont.

TIME: You write that you're against declawing.

Tracie Hotchner: Oh, violently. It is illegal everywhere in the civilized world except the United States. It is a barbaric practice, in which not just the claw is removed, but the entire first joint of the foot is removed with a garden clipper — they cut off the entire toe at the first joint. So you have animals that are butchered and experience extreme pain, and no longer have the use of their feet for all the things that cats use their feet for — exploring the world, jumping up and down, playing with things. If there are scratching issues, people have to be taught to have appropriate scratching posts in the right place, in the right way, for each individual cat. You learn how to clip the tip of the claw, which is very, very simple. It takes five or 10 seconds.

What about a cat that is very shy?

It's an uphill chore to socialize them, to get them to come into more relaxed contact with humans. They probably come from a feral cat background, and were not touched or socialized as babies. You're working against their genetic and early childhood experience. But you can get them out of it with an understanding of what makes a cat tick, which is not to go to them and not to try to urge, coax or demand anything of them. You have to let them come to you and ask for it. That of course takes a lot of patience and is just frustrating, depending upon your personality.

What about feeding your cat? In your book, you say dry food leaves cats dehydrated, causes obesity, makes them sick, and the like.

My big campaign is to get people off of dry food. The message of Cat Chat is: Think outside the bag. Dry food is kitty crack. It's addictive, and incredibly harmful to your cat. Of course, that goes counter to everything your vet tells you, and everything that advertising tells you. But when you start to feed cats wet food, their personalities will change, anywhere from 10% to 100%, toward affectionate and relaxed.

You recommend not leaving food out all day.

Cats are not a grazing animal. They're not a sheep; they're not a horse. They're an animal that should eat a mouse or two, then, if they're lucky, another mouse or two later, if it's a good day. But they can also go 24 hours without food. In reality, that would be just fine, but that's hard for us [to understand], because we like to think of them — and ourselves — having nice warm tummies. Two meals a day is really to suit the human experience.

You also warn about leaving cats alone too much. But people commonly think of them as solitary animals.

They do. And it has been very useful to accommodate human guilt and a human lifestyle to think, "Well, that's just a stationary object that can take care of itself." In fact, while they aren't a pack animal, they're very sociable. Cats who sit on the back of a couch and don't even look at you when you come into the room and stare out the window — what they really are is depressed and lonely, and they've learned how to survive in a highly understimulated environment. To me, that's not very kind.

Many people with cats have litter box problems. Do you have any advice?

People have never been taught how to [attend to] a litter box properly. Cleanliness is next to godliness. People have never really been told that a litter box has to be kept squeaky clean. A cat is a very finicky creature. [If the litter box is dirty,] the cat will choose elsewhere. The other thing is the number of litter boxes: You need one per cat, plus one for the house ... When there are two cats, there [could be] territorial issues. By having multiple boxes, you make it more pleasant for them and you lower the chance of litter box problems. Once the out-of-litter-box issue begins, it's a lot harder to undo it than not letting it happen in the first place. A cat [usually] pees around the house for a couple of reasons: a) it's an unneutered male, and it's spraying; b) the cat has a urinary tract infection. [That's] the most common reason for out-of-litter-box issues.

Dogs and cats in the same house — O.K.?

Great! Adorable. You just have to make sure that the introduction is done well. As long as you don't have a prey-driven dog, or if you've raised them from puppy- and kittenhood so they view each other as family members, you're fine. You always want to make sure that the cats have somewhere to escape to, in case the dog or dogs get rowdy. So a good cat tree (or the back of a sofa) is always a good idea.

what's wrong with pet stores?

What's wrong with the kitten and puppy mill industry is that it's basically an abuse of the breeding stock. Those animals are kept like chickens or pigs in pens, with feces and urine raining down on them, minimum nutrition, minimum medical care, no socialization of the newborn, no socialization of the parents, no exercise for the parents, no stimulation of the parents. People have this kooky idea that they're rescuing a pet from a pet store. They're actually perpetuating a very abusive industry, in which the mark-ups are 200%, 300%, 400%, 500% at each step of the way.

I've heard of people being vegetarians and not feeding their cats any meat. What do you think of that?

I think they should buy a bunny rabbit. Cats are obligate carnivores, and eat 98% meat.

【Section Two】Vocabulary

1. felinen. 猫科动物 adj. 猫的, 猫科的, 猫一样的
2. clawn. 爪, 脚爪；v. 抓
3. feraladj. 野生的, 未驯服的, 凶猛的, 野兽的
4. frustratev. 挫败, 阻挠, 使感到灰心, 阻止
5. dehydratevt. (使)脱水
6. obesityn. 肥胖, 肥大
7. stationaryadj. 固定的
8. finickyadj. 过分注意的, 过分讲究的, 过分周到的
9. vegetariann. 素食者, 食草动物；adj. 素食的
10. a couple of 两个, 几个

【Section Three】Homework

1. Please translate the blue sentence into Chinese.
"It's addictive, and incredibly harmful to your cat. Of course, that goes counter to everything your vet tells you, and everything that advertising tells you."

2. What is the main idea of this Article?

3. Why we can not feed a cat dry food?

4. When cats who sit on the back of a couch and don't even look at you when you come into the room and stare out the window, What happened?

5. How to make dogs and cats in the same house?

参考答案：
1. 干燥的食物容易让猫上瘾，难以置信的是，它还有害于猫。当然，兽医告诉你的一切跟广告里说的恰恰相反。(仅供参考)

2. No standard answer.

3. Dry food leaves cats dehydrated, and dry food is kitty crack. It's addictive, and incredibly harmful to your cat.

4. what they really are is depressed and lonely.

5. you've raised them from puppy- and kittenhood so they view each other as family members. Or, you make sure that the cats have somewhere to escape to.