Cat Chat®
CAT CHAT ® was Tracie Hotchner's own weekly, live call-in show on the Martha Stewart channel of Sirius-XM for 7 years – until the channel was canceled. Since 2015 it has been a weekly podcast carrying on her mission to educate and inspire cat lovers to optimize their relationship with their kitty cats by giving them the best possible nutrition and environmental enrichment.
Tracie’s frequent co-host is Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado of Feline Minds Cat Behavior Consulting and author of the new book Play With Your Cat! the Essential Guide to Interactive Play for a Happier, Healthier Feline.
Episodes
313 episodes
Protecting NYC's Un-Owned Cats Since 9-11
#316: Mike Phillips tells the history of the Urban Cat League — rescuing cats after the World Trade Center bombing, making a refuge for them — and continuing to improve the lives of street cats to this day.
A Cat Who Wants to take Showers With You?
#315: A listener wrote Tracie to ask how it was possible that two different cats she's had want to get in the shower with her! Resident cat expert Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado discusses the likelihood of this unusual feline predilection and ho...
What to Know About Cats and Mammary (Breast) Cancer
#314: The nonprofit EveryCat Health Foundation financed a study across 5 countries of mammary tumors in cats, with surprising results explained by Dr. Maggie Placer, the veterinarian who is the Science Program Manager for the Foundation.
Legalizing the Thousands of NYC Bodega Cats
#313: Dan Rimada is leading the push to legalize and protect bodega cats by creating a citywide archive of cats in NYC bodegas (estimates are 5,500 of them) which he and fellow volunteers have started documenting through field visits, photos, o...
Vincent Gets Off Kitty Crack with CleanProtein
#312: Andrey (who created Brook Fountain) reports that his adopted cat, Vincent, who was completely hooked on kitty krack, transitioned off unhealthy kibble by starting with Dr. Elsey's CleanProtein dry food, then going all the way to wet food ...
HARD HAT CATS NYC: Hard at Work Keeping Rats at Bay
#311: Sheila Massey talks about her Hard Hat Cats NYC, which puts unadoptable cats from the NYC shelter into breweries, restaurants and retail stores where they provide non toxic rodent control in return for safety: a litter box, food and shelt...
Turn Your Sofa Into a Scratching Outpost
#310: Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado of FelineMinds cat behavior consulting, explains that you cannot — nor should you — try to stop a cat from scratching, which is a natural and essential behavior. Instead, you need to offer a variety of sturdy, tall...
Premium Cat Food at Supermarket Prices
#309: Allison Ward, the founder of Salty Cat, launched her company with the intention of creating a lower-priced cat food with premium ingredients. How did she do it? Simple! By lowering her profit margin, while also creating an egalitarian man...
The “Elevator Butt” Style of Peeing
#308: Cat behaviorist Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado explains another way to look at “vertical peeing” — cats who raise their butts like a rising elevator to pee behind themselves. But because they have all four feet in the litter box, it is not “mark...
What Does FIP in Cats Have in Common with Long Covid in Humans?
#307: Dr. Dean Vicksman, the Board Chair of the nonprofit EveryCat Health Foundation, talks about how their grant funding for feline health science has helped crack the code for managing long-COVID in humans.
Pink Watermelon-Flavored Tofu Litter?! Are You Kidding Me?!
#306: Cat behaviorist Dr Mikel Maria Delgado shares Tracie’s dismay at what has become “litter nonsense” (to appease IG and TikTok content creators) instead of using “litter common sense” and giving cats what they need: comfortable clay clumpin...
What To Do About a Jekyll and Hyde Cat?
#305: Cat behaviorist Stephen Quandt (https://catbehaviorhelp.com/) discusses the stress to people and other cats in the home when an otherwise friendly cat suddenly displays unexplained aggression towards a family member — and how to make sens...
Vincent is Hooked on Kitty Krack — Help is on the Way!
#304: Andrey Gregoryev, who invented the Brook glass fountain, recently adopted Vincent, a kitty from a hoarding situation, who will not touch anything but dry kibble, which Tracie calls Kitty Krack because it is harmful and addictive to cats. ...
A Safe Room is a Sanctuary — Not a Prison
#303: Rachel Geller helps people understand their cats better with free advice through her personal nonprofit All Cats All the Time. She always recommends putting a new cat in one room in the house and only introducing him/her to the rest of th...
Does Your Kitty Want to Wear a Harness?
#302: Cat behavior consultant (https://felineminds.com/) Dr. Mikel Maria Delgado describes the slow and patient process of introducing your cat to a harness — then experimenting letting the kitty walk you indoors and possibly outdoors to see if...
Does My Cat Love Me?
#301: Jay Ingram wrote "The Science of Pets" so people could better understand the science and facts of their pets' behavior — and in particular how to understand what makes their cat tick, as well as what s/he may be feeling.
What To Do About a Cat Who Pees Vertically Behind Himself?
#300: Stephen Quant of https://catbehaviorhelp.com/ often gets consulted about a cat peeing on vertical surfaces, usually by backing up to the area in question. Often with a high and quivering tail. The cat will then shoot a stream of uri...
A Bubbling Brook of Fresh Water for Your Kitty
#299: When Andrey Grigoryev invented the Brook glass fountain in his quest for enrichment and hydration for indoor cats, he never expected it to become the best-selling cat fountain. Cat lovers snatched up the clear glass fountain for its aesth...
“We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat.”
#298: Tracie reads from this sequel to Syou Ishida’s prize-winning best-selling first book “We’ll Prescribe You a Cat,” which she discusses with Jennifer Mowdy from The Literary Cat Co. bookstore as part of the successful phenomenon of translat...
Saving Kindles of Kittens with DIY Kitten Boxes
#297: Deborah Magaldi talks about the Helen Sanders CatPAWS organization in Orange County California, where they are saving very young kindles of kittens from a certain death in the shelters (where there's nobody available to bottle feed them e...
Are Orange Cats Friendliest? Or Is It In Your Imagination?
#296: Mikel Maria Delgado of https://felineminds.com/ explains how cat lovers tend to have a bias towards certain colors of cats and have (mistakenly) ascribed personality traits to colors that they are projecting onto cats. In fact, a cat's te...
Serious Cat Lovers Needed to Appreciate This Book
#295: Rebecca van Laer's memoir, "Cat," is for everyone who can relate to her "love letter" to the kitties who have graced her life, using her own cats as a lens to understand what it means to be a "cat person."
Video Your Cat Sleeping to Check Her Heart
#294: Dr. Heather Davis from PRN (employee-owned by the veterinarians) explains why they developed Felycin®-CA1, the first weekly therapy developed for cats with subclinical hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), since this heart problem affects 1 ...