Mau Mew

I will answer the second question first. Feral cats have the physical ability and anatomy to meow just like domestic and stray cats. The point is that they don't normally meow because the meow vocalisation is a learned one between domestic cat and human caregiver. It is normally a demand for food or attention. The answer is not quite as clean as that because the meow sound is very variable. People should not think that every meow made by every cat is exactly the same. There is a great spectrum of meow sounds.  The word 'meow' is an onomatopoeia meaning that it reflects the sound . But as the meow sound varies a lot it does not reflect the meow sound sometimes! The meow sound has been learned by the domestic cat to make a demand on their human caregiver. Image: MikeB As to the first part of the title, as mentioned, this is a learned vocalisation by domestic cats over about 10,000 years of domestication. It is a sound developed between cat and human.  As feral cats nearly al

This is unusual. Perhaps very unusual. A user on the Reddit.com website has posted a video which you can see below of a domestic cat that they thought had a strange appearance.  They said that the cat was very big with strange ears. I immediately, identified the cat as an American Curl which is a fairly rare purebred cat and certainly very rare if he or she behaves as a stray cat which appears to be the case in this instance.  They're not normally large cat but standard-sized domestic cats with one exception to their regular appearance namely the ears that curl back due to a genetic mutation. Here is an example of an American Curl show cat photographed by Helmi Flick years ago. Photo: copyright Helmi Flick. Note: the video below may eventually stop working. Sorry but I can't control its existence. CLICK ON THE EXPAND ICON BOTTOM-RIGHT TO SEE THE VIDEO FULL SCREEN. What kind of cat is this? Stray cat moved into my back yard. Has huge paws/weird ears. by u/ReindeerNo1

NEWS AND COMMENT: As reported in The State, a cat was abandoned with other cats by their owner when they moved away. And this particular cat was very ill. She was brought to an animal shelter run by the Charleston Animal Society. It is located about 9 miles north-west of Charleston and is a No-kill shelter with a hospital which cares for around 20,000 animals annually. Sick cat after operation to remove 38 hair ties from her stomach. Image: Charleston Animal Society from video (screenshot). This cat was therefore fortunate to end up at this shelter where she stopped eating. They x-rayed her and found a massive blockage in her stomach. Her stomach was completely full of ties. A domestic cat's stomach is quite small at about the size of a ping pong ball I am told . How do you get 38 hair ties inside a stomach that size!? It must stretch a lot. The blockage constituted 38 hair ties which she had obviously eaten as if they were edible foods when in the ownership of the people who aband

A woman at a school meeting makes a point about gender self-identification while wearing a cat costume. She wore the cat costume to make the point that nobody would say that she is a cat just because she wears a cat costume. There is a video of her at the end of the article. She was criticising a member of the school board who self identifies as a woman despite being a biological man. The man wears his deceased wife's clothes and lipstick and grows his hair a little bit longer than normal. I don't think she's criticising the fact he wears his ex-wife's clothes as you can't criticise it but she's criticising the fact that he is on the school board and making decisions about the children while believing that people can self-identify on their gender. Woman wears a cat costume to make her point about gender self-identification. Screenshot. This is an enormously polarising topic. It is a very current topic. In the UK, it brings to mind Nicola Sturgeon, the first Mini

For HUMANS kissing is a common way to express affection or greet someone in many cultures around the world. However, in some cultures, kissing was not a regular practice before European colonization.  In these cultures, kissing was introduced by Europeans and did not have the same significance as it does in other cultures. Kissing can be used to express a wide range of emotions, including love, gratitude, compassion, sympathy, joy, and sorrow. Your cat understands your kiss as an act of allogrooming from another cat. - MikeB Your cat understands your kiss as an act of allogrooming from another cat. Image: MikeB It is an intimate exchange. It is a practice that was created by humans for humans. We don't know the origin. Anyway it is irrelevant. This is about humans. When we kiss our cat they don't understand the action as a kiss per se. You've probably kissed your cat before during moments when there is emotional warmth between you. Your cat will have learned that the act of

Strangely, this well-known cat toy, "Electric Flopping Fish, Moving Cat Kicker Fish Toy", has no reviews from the UK despite being for sale on the UK version of Amazon. The toy has 27,372 reviews of which around 16,400 are 5-star ratings. Overall, it gets 4.1 out of 5. But it is a best seller and is currently out of stock! Although I believe the manufacturer is introducing a new model which may account for lack of stock. Reviews and none from UK. Please click on the link to see the UK version. This is an Amazon link by the way. Flopping fish cat toy . So, what's so good about it. It moves! The activity stimulates the cat to regard the toy as a genuine struggling fish, a prey animal. Cats like the struggle and try and subdue it. Play is hunting for a cat as you know. They want to kill the toy. Toys that can be 'killed' are the best. This means destructible toys! This one isn't but it can probably be damaged. The weird aspect of the large number of reviews is th

Can domestic cats allowed outside hear bats. The answer according to a specialist bat group in Essex, UK is that they can. They say that cats can hear most bats' calls . And it seems that because they are able to pick up their sounds they may sit on a wall or a roof beneath a bat roost and catch them when they emerge which will be between dusk and dawn. The hearing range of the cat for sounds of 70 dB SPL extends from 48 Hz to 85 kHz. Bat calls can range from 9 kHz to 200 kHz. Humans can hear from 20 Hz to 15-20 kHz depending on age The question in the title occurred to me because we know that domestic cats have an extended hearing range to a much higher frequency than that which is afforded humans. It therefore seemed natural to me that they might be able to hear the high frequency echolocation sounds emitted by bats. Endangered bat attacked by cat in New Zealand but made a full recovery remarkably (being fed a grub). Image: Peter Drury. This is another problem for bats because th

This is a rather strange tip, and I am not entirely sure that it will work every time. And, in any case, who wants their cat to jump off their lap? Most cat owners like their cat on their lap.  But sometimes there is a limit to how long you'd like your beloved, darling cat to stay on your lap because (1) your legs are seizing up at the knee joint (2) you are reading a broadsheet newspaper and it is almost impossible to do this when your cat is on your lap (3) you need to get up to go to the bathroom or make some tea or get a beer etc. Cat comfortable on a warm lap. This is a stock image as I don't have a photo of my cat on my lap while I am sitting in my armchair. Image: Pixabay. You can delicately push him off your lap if you like. That'll work but I don't like doing that because I don't want my cat to get the impression that I want him off my lap. I like him on my lap, and he comes on my call.  Sometimes cats get used to signals which mean that their caregiver is