Can cats carry bed bugs, and if they can, how do you get rid of them on the cat? The place where I’m staying has bed bugs and I have three cats.

~ Jammie

Good night, sleep tight ... and don't let the bed bugs bite.

Siouxsie: Well, Jammie, bed bugs sure are a drag, and they’re the just about single biggest pain-in-the-tail pest of modern life in the U.S. But the good news is that no, your cats will not carry or spread bed bugs.

Thomas: Bed bugs generally don’t live on their hosts. They hide in cracks and crevices and come out at night to feed. Once they’ve eaten their fill, they hop off again and go about their nasty business elsewhere.

Dahlia: And given the choice, bed bugs will feed on humans before they’ll feed on cats, dogs or other animals. You humans have a lot less hair, so you’re easier to bite!

Siouxsie: If your cats are itchy, take them to the vet to make sure they don’t have other parasites like fleas.

Thomas: Because cats don’t carry bed bugs like they do fleas or ticks, you can’t keep them off your cat with flea treatments.

Dahlia: The only way to get rid of a bed bug infestation is to de-clutter, wash the heck out of all your (and your cats’) bedding and clothes, and bring in exterminators to treat your home.

Siouxsie: The ecologically safest way to get rid of bed bugs is heat treatment. Exterminators bring in special machines that raise the temperature of your house to well over 120 degrees F and keep the temperature that high for a set amount of time.

Thomas: One of Mama’s good friends got bed bugs in her apartment, and the property management company had the heat treatment done. She hasn’t seen a bed bug since then — and it’s been a few months now. (Heat treatment is not a DIY project! The Bedbugger.com forums contain a few horror stories about people who’ve destroyed their belongings and sometimes even burned their houses down by trying to heat-treat their own homes.)

Dahlia: You can read more about the various treatments for bed bugs here. They also have some advice for DIY treatments you can use to keep the nasty little things at bay.

Siouxsie: A couple of years ago, we responded to a reader who asked about how cat-safe the various bed bug treatments are. If you’re interested, you can read that column here.

Thomas: So rest assured, your cats are not a bed bug vector, and nobody should blame your cats if the bugs spread!

Dahlia: We hope you and your housemates can get your bed bug situation sorted out and that everybody is less itchy and creeped out as a result.

My cat is approximately 5 years old. I adopted her from the ASPCA over a year ago. She seems to be afraid of her toys — the ones with little stuffed animals or feathers hanging from sticks — and runs away when I try to play with her. She prefers to pounce on my arm and grip it, play biting it. How can I make sure she is getting enough stimulation and exercise without sacrificing my arm?

~ Maureen

Play is super-important for happy (and well-behaved) cats.

Siouxsie: This is an odd situation, Maureen, but we think we can help. We cats do love to play, but there’s a right way and a not-so-right way to play with us.

Thomas: A lot of people think they can play with their cats like they’d play with a dog — that is, getting them all riled up and excited by waving toys at them or perhaps even putting those toys near their faces. That doesn’t work so well for cats.

Dahlia: When you play with your cat, you need to exercise her prey drive.

Siouxsie: Think about the kinds of critters we hunt: Mice and birds. Some cats are “mousers” and some cats are “birders,” and you’ll find out which one your cat is when you play with her.

Thomas: Mice move along the ground in uneven jerks, sometimes standing still. They often seek shelter or move in quiet places. If you use a toy with a stuffed animal on the end, or even just a plain old six-foot-long shoestring, use these kind of motions.

Dahlia: Birds also move around on the ground, but then they suddenly take off. When you play with a feather toy, use this kind of motion.

Siouxsie: Most importantly, don’t wave the toy right in your cat’s face or aim it at her head. That will scare her and she won’t want to play with you.

Thomas: Start out by dragging the toy along the floor, several feet away from her, using slight jerking motions to attract her attention. You’ll probably notice that her eyes will start following the motion of the toy. If you keep doing this, making the toy’s movement unpredictable, she’ll get into a crouched pose. You might see her tail starting to twitch a little bit. Then her muscles will tense … and bam! She’ll be on the toy!

Dahlia: Make the toy “struggle” for a few seconds as she wraps her paws around it and bites it, and then let it “die.”

Siouxsie: When you play like that, you’re engaging her whole prey cycle: hunt, catch, kill. You can make the experience even more awesome by giving her a small treat afterwards so she gets to eat once she’s killed. (But keep the treats very small in size and adjust her regular feedings to compensate for the extra calories so she doesn’t start gaining weight.)

Thomas: As for what you can do about your kitty stalking and “killing” your arm, think about what kind of motions you’re making when she goes after your limbs. Are you making small motions like typing on a keyboard, knitting, writing or drawing? If so, she may be attracted to the motion of your fingers, the pencil, the knitting needles or the string.

Dahlia: What that’s telling you is that her prey drive is not being sufficiently exercised. If you’re able to play properly with your cat, so that your attempts to play with interactive toys don’t frighten her, you’ll be able to burn off a lot of that extra energy and it’s very likely that the arm-attacking behavior will stop.

Siouxsie: When she does attack you, cry “ow!” in a high-pitched but not excessively loud tone, and put her on the floor. This “ow! and down” technique has been very successful, particularly with kittens. The high-pitched squeak is a tool kittens use to tell each other that the play is getting too rough.

Thomas: Jackson Galaxy, cat behaviorist extraordinaire and star of the Animal Planet show My Cat From Hell, made this short video on how to properly play with your cat. This could be helpful, too.

(In a reader? Watch the video here.)

Through Feb. 15, About.com is seeking nominations for hundreds of award categories, and we want to be a finalist for the Best Website About Cats. The more nominations we get, the better our chances of being selected by About.com’s cat experts to be one of the five finalists.

April 2012 will mark the ninth anniversary of Paws and Effect. That’s right, nine years of answering letters from readers every single week. We’re delighted that we’re starting to get recognition in the wider blogging world, and becoming a finalist in the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards could be huge for us — and it would be a super-awesome purr-tastic anniversary gift, too!

It’s simple to nominate a site, too. First, log in through your Facebook or about.com account, then go to the Best Website About Cats nomination page to submit nominations for up to five cat websites, and then there are only three things you need to enter:

• The name of our website, Paws and Effect
• The URL of our website, http://www.paws-and-effect.com
• A brief comment about why you’re nominating us.

Here’s a screen shot showing you just how easy it is:

Thanks in advance for your support. If we make the finals, we’re going to call on you again. We’re just purring with delight at the possibilities!

Last night I found my 18-year-old cat, Pinky-Boy in front of our space heater, and his whiskers and “eyebrows” are now severely burnt from standing that close. He’s going blind, so maybe he just didn’t realize where he was. I know the space heater seems like a safety hazard, but we have three other cats, and nothing like this has ever happened before. But yes, the heater is now out of reach from Pinky. Anyways, back to my question: can I cut off the burnt edges of his whiskers? I know that whiskers are very sensitive, but because they are so burnt, could the ends be cut? Thank you so much!

~ Katie and Pinky

Siouxsie shows off her whiskers to great effect. The whiskers, or vibrissae, are a vital part of the feline sensory system.

Siouxsie: Well, Katie, first of all, we want to reassure you that you’re not a bad caretaker for having a space heater! Most cats never go close enough to a space heater to burn their whiskers.

Thomas: But when Mama had a space heater in her house, I loved to get so close to it that I singed my fur more than once! It was kind of embarrassing, really … but it was just so cold and I wanted to snuggle up next to the heat.

Dahlia: An interesting thing about cats is that we comfortably endure much higher temperatures than humans do. Animal behaviorist Linda Case discovered in her research that while humans are very uncomfortable at temperatures above 112°F (44°C), cats can tolerate (and even enjoy) temperatures as high as 126°F (52°C).

Siouxsie: So that’s one reason why your Pinky is so in love with your heater.

Thomas: As cats get older, much like people, we tend to be less able to control our body temperature. You’ve probably noticed that elderly humans tend to like much warmer environments than their younger counterparts. We feel the same way.

Dahlia: But now, on to your question. We believe you should not trim Pinky’s whiskers, and here’s why.

Siouxsie: Although the whiskers themselves don’t have nerves, the reason our whiskers are so sensitive is because there are lots and lots of extra nerves in the hair follicles that grow our whiskers. It’s those nerves that react when the whiskers are touched.

Thomas: Cats whose whiskers are cut off tend to lose their sense of orientation in space. This would be extremely hard for a blind cat to deal with! Even the singed ends of his whiskers are helping those nerves to relay messages to his brain about his environment.

Dahlia: The ends of the whiskers will probably fall off on their own eventually, but meanwhile, leave them be.

Siouxsie here. I love my bed so much I didn't even wait for Mama to get it out of the box before I slept in it! If she got me a bed warmer, I'd love it even more.

Siouxsie: You can help make your sweet Pinky more comfortable — and less likely to romance your heater — by providing him with a heated cat bed. This will help keep him comfortably warm, and if he’s a bit creaky with arthritis, the heat will be very soothing to those sore joints.

Thomas: There are three common types of heated beds. One has an electric heating pad that releases a steady heat as soon as the cat gets in it. These tend to be the most expensive.

Dahlia: Beds also come with removable microwavable pads filled with buckwheat or other materials. These can retain heat for half an hour to an hour, and are the least expensive.

Siouxsie: Thermal, or self-heating beds, use insulating material to reflect the cat’s body heat back to the cat. They don’t warm up as fast as electric beds, but they are more affordable.

Thomas: If Pinky already has a bed, you can buy a pet bed warmer and insert it under the fabric cover.

Dahlia: So, Katie, we hope we’ve answered your question and given you some options to help keep Pinky nice and toasty without risking nasty injuries.