Cat Owners Can (Almost) All Agree on One Thing
On the list of perfect pet parents, Mikel Delgado, a professional feline-behavior consultant, probably ranks high. The Ph.D. expert in animal cognition spends half an hour each evening playing with her three torbie cats, Ruby, Coriander, and Professor Scribbles. She’s trained them to take pills in gelatin capsules, just in case they eventually need meds. She even commissioned a screened-in backyard catio so that the girls can safely venture outside. Delgado would do anything for her cats—well, almost anything. “Guilty as charged,” Delgado told me. “I do not brush my cats’ teeth.”
To be fair, most cat owners don’t—probably because they’re well aware that it’s weird, if not downright terrifying, to stick one’s fingers inside an ornery cat’s mouth. Reliable stats are scarce, but suggest that less than 5 percent of owners give
