Got me an office buddy

Well, that didn't take long. My new 'office cat' is Hugo. He belongs to my daughter and will be staying with us until September. He is my grand-kitty & I adore him. He had surgery on his mouth last year and I kept him at our home to nurse him back to health and we really bonded.

I think he's just been waiting to get first dibs in the office.

Boy,  is he in for a fun time looking at all your fabulous blogs. ;-)  I'm happy to have him as my office-guest for awhile because this 'ol guy is the friendliest cat on earth. I'm drying out some catnip in here so that just may have been partly why he came and stayed. But Hugo does have the friendly gene.

It pays to have a 'friendly dad' 

Almost 20 years ago Dr. Dennis Turner, a behaviorist in Switzerland, found a paternal effect on cats’ friendliness to people.  Friendly fathers tended to produce friendly kittens.  Because the sires in Turner’s study never saw their kittens, he concluded this had to be a genetic effect rather than how the males behaved with the kittens.

In most cases, we don’t know how genes operate to influence behavior.  Behaviors themselves are not inherited.  Cats and other animals don’t have a gene for friendliness or other complex behaviors.  Many genetic effects are indirect, which turned out to be the with “friendly” cats.

A later study by Dr. Sandra McCune looked into how both paternity and early handling between 5 to 12 weeks of age affected “friendliness”.

Interestingly, whether or not the kittens were handled did not influence their likelihood to approach a novel, inanimate object.  But kittens from the friendlier fathers approached novel objects more quickly than those from unfriendly fathers. 

Very interesting. So that tells me if you are about to adopt a kitten,  it is good to know who the 'tom' was if you want to be guaranteed a friendly cat.


Now Hugo is slightly bigger than Ginny was so we may have to make some adjustments on Ginny's blanket. Perhaps if he just moves his caboose a little to the right.

I think Ginny would approve.
From the living-room I can see our beautiful, full to bursting with blossoms, apple tree in the back.

 This time of year it is in all of it's glory. Soon, we'll be picking up tiny apples by the bushel-full off the lawn but for now we will enjoy this gorgeous tree.
I'm on the hunt now for Pussy-toes. It is a ground cover with little pink flowers.

Hugs, Deb