Mau Mew

NEWS AND COMMENT-Seoul, South Korea: This is nice to see. There has been quite a lot of talk about cats and dogs creating a reservoir for the Covid virus. And the idea is that this reservoir may end up transmitting the virus from cats and dogs to people at some time in the future when people have managed to control and suppress the virus. Therefore, there is concern about cats and dogs catching the virus from people at this time. And I suspect that the administrators of Seoul, Korea are aware of this potential and have decided to prevent cats and dogs getting the disease or preventing severe symptoms. However, it is also known that cats and dogs do not present with severe symptoms when they contract Covid. Therefore, I'm convinced that the administrators of this city are more concerned about curtailing the possibility of a reservoir forming in animals which would jeopardise their control of the virus. Soeul, South Korea. Photo: Pixabay. So can dog owners can request a free Covi

In Telangana/Hyderabad there is one subcaste of people who eat cats. Worst thing is they steal pet cats from neighbourhood and eat them. I've lost 2 cats so far. The tweet below is a response to the tweet about a domestic cat seeing off a cobra. I don't believe the cat is truly confronting the cobra . But the response is interesting in that it states that some people in Hyderabad which is in the mid-south of India steal domestic cats for food.  Location of Hyderabad, India. And the guy who made the tweet has lost 2 of his cats this way. It is cat meat in India. I have written about this before . Who would have a cat in Hyderabad if people steal and eat them? I guess you'd have to keep them inside all the time but that is probably impractical. A subcaste is a subdivision of a caste. A caste is one of the traditional social classes into which people are divided in a Hindu society. Note: Tweets sometimes die. If that has happened, I am sorry but I can't control it. I

You tell me if this domestic cat in Bangladesh successfully confronts a venomous snake which looks like a cobra to prevent the snake coming into the home. That is what the video maker says. Having watched the video I do not think that it's a correct assessment. It looks to me as if the cat is a little bit bemused by the presence of the snake.  Cat confronts snake? Screenshot. He just sits there looking and the state keeps its distance as well. Why should the snake want to come into the home? Perhaps snakes in Bangladesh do like to come into homes for food or whatever but I suspect not. I don't think that this is a true confrontation between cat and snake. But that said, domestic cats have inherited the ability to confront snakes from their wildcat ancestor. Stakes are on the menu as our reptiles and insects. I'm not saying that this cat would succeed in beating the snake in a fight. I don't think they would but I also don't think that this cat presents a barrier

'You can't judge a cat by its colour' is the mantra to follow at a cat shelter. Adopters should spend time with cats at shelters and not prejudge using stereotyping. Some people judge domestic cats by their coat colour but there is little evidence that a cat's coat type and colour has an effect on personality.  Male white British Longhair cat bred in Russia by the Golden Leris cattery. Photo:  Питомник британских кошек Golden Leris located in Moscow, Russia. White cats seen as aloof. It is anecdotal and stereotypes circulate on the internet. The trouble is that typecasting cats by their colour has implications at cat shelters. We know the colours which are the least popular such as black. Here are some more associations between colour and personality: Orange cats (usually orange or red tabbies) are stereotyped as friendly; Black, white and tricolour (tortoiseshell) cats are stereotyped as being antisocial; Black cats are regarded as having less extreme ch

Tiger cub petting is immoral and exploitative. Screenshot. This a cool BCR video on cub petting. Tiger cub petting seems innocent and cute to the unknowing but the backstory is horrible and cruel. It is all about financial profit at the expense of animal welfare. The cubs are commodities to be exploited. The private zoos which run tiger and lion cub petting are immoral. They have to be to do what they do. Tigers and lions are exploited terribly all over the world. The rarer they become - and they are becoming rarer in the wild - the more they are exploited. Rareness is very exploitable in the human world. And cuteness is easy to monetize too.  Note : This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it. What happens to the cubs when they are 12 weeks old? They are no longer commodities. They are a burden on the expenses of these exploitative businesses. They d

UK veterinary practices are going through a sort of mini-crisis in my opinion. The first big problem is that there appears to be a lot of new young veterinarians coming into the market and many of them are females. They don't want to work on farms putting their arms up the backside of cows while being ankle-deep in mud at 4 AM in the morning. They want to be in a nice, clean and warm veterinary clinic with their hands on a domestic cat. And new, young male vets probably prefer this too.  Crisis developing in UK's veterinary profession. Photo: Pixabay. They say there's more money for a veterinarian working in a veterinary clinic on the high street somewhere compared to working with livestock in the countryside. That's the first issue and I suspect this is partly to do with the fact that more and more females are becoming veterinarians. It seems you have to be quite macho and male to deal with bulls and cows and the like. Secondly, there is a shortage of veterinarians

This is once again an example of how the domestic cat relies heavily upon their sense of smell to identify and investigate 'objects'. This family cat is relying almost solely on their sense of smell to investigate the new baby. She may recognise the body scent of her human companion on the baby. He sniffs all over the baby and in doing so when he gets near to the baby's head the baby starts moving.  At that point he moves away to a safe distance and watches. There is curiosity and inquisitiveness but also a tinge of anxiety about what this new creature will bring to the home. I don't know what happened next but it is probably something good. I have seen many babies with cats together on beds. The general consensus is that babies are good for cats and vice versa. Family cat relies on their sense of smell to investigate the new baby. Video screenshot. Family cat retreats to a safe distance from baby as the baby moves after being sniffed by the cat. Screenshot. Babies&#

Perhaps it goes without saying but this story from the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA), reminds us how the neglectful nature of cat hoarders leads to a huge amount of distress and cruelty to kittens who are brought into a disgusting and unhealthy world. VOKRA was recently inundated with almost 2 dozen kittens and cats. Some of the female cats were pregnant which is another typical symptom of cat hoarding. Nothing is done to sterilise the cats which is the reason why they end up with so many and they are often severely neglected. Karen Duncan, the co-founder of VOKRA paints a grim picture of how the kittens had barely survived. She said that if they had not been rescued, they could have died the next day. She said: "We had to just sit here and comb all day getting the fleas out. Fleas were jumping directly on them, it was horrifying, actually." The rescue centre has given them lots of vitamins and food because they were not only riddled with fleas but starvi

Elon Musk has suggested in a tweet on Twitter that the protozoan parasite toxoplasmosis, of which the domestic cat is the primary vector, is forcing humans to create superhuman artificial intelligence. That is the interpretation by the author of an article on The_Byte website. Photo by Steve Jurvetson on Wikipedia.   Screenshot of the tweet. The originals sometimes go wrong a leave a link, no more. I think he might have been a little bit stoned when he wrote this tweet because the underlined words (underlined by me) he has used don't make any sense at all to me. They are as follows: Toxoplasmosis infects rats, then cats, then humans who make cat videos. AI trains achieves superhuman intelligence training on Internet cat videos , thus making toxoplasmosis the true arbiter of our destiny. That has been interpreted as meaning that toxoplasmosis makes people create AI. I don't get it and I'm not sure the interpretation is correct because it's very unclear but I thought I&#

I am republishing verbatim some of the explanatory notes of the above act which explains why it has come into existence. In summary the above act allows judges to apply much stiffer prison sentences to the crimes specified below in the bulleted table to a maximum of five years and an unlimited fine. The unlimited fine is unchanged.  Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 allows for 5-year prison sentences for certain animal cruelty offences The above UK act "increases the maximum penalty for specific offences related to animal welfare in England and Wales from 29 June 2021. It does so by extending the maximum penalty, specified under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, of six months and/or an unlimited fine to a penalty of five years and/or an unlimited fine. These offences therefore become triable either way, and may be heard in the Magistrates Court or the Crown Court. And: ".....the 2006 Act set out a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine for the more

This is what the human companion and caretaker said of his cat on Reddit.com: I had to unexpectedly put my cat to sleep this morning. She was my best friend for 16 years and I loved her more than I love most people. As I said my final good-bye, she used her last ounce of strength to put her paw in my hand. I miss her so much. She lit up my life. Goodbye Holly Bear They are great words. They sum of the feelings of genuine cat guardians on the loss of their cat when they pass over the rainbow bridge. It hurts to hell.  Cat says final goodbye by placing her paw in his hand. Photo: Reddit user:  u/Ohgood9002 The death of a cat companion can be slow. Elderly cats often die of conditions such as kidney disease which is quite a slow process. The cat's guardian has to make a very difficult decision about when to euthanise their cat. This is one of the hardest decisions a person has to make if they genuinely connect with their cat and have a good relationship. You don't want to do it to

China is certainly a dictatorship. Russia is, in my view, a dictatorship dressed up as a democracy. China has no genuine animal protection laws. There is mass animal cruelty. There is change afoot because there are people in China who want to see change and animals protected. But for such a large country to have no overarching animal protection law is a scandal and it surprises me that they are not made pariahs internationally.  Dictatorships Russia and China bonded by animal cruelty. The circus lions of Russia where they are exploited and kept under deplorable conditions and trained cruelly. Image: see credit bottom left. Russia lives in the past. My research indicates that in 2010 there were no federal laws in Russia to protect animals. In 2014, Russia for the first time adopted an overarching animal welfare act Federal Law Number 498 but it seems to be defective and I would argue poorly enforced. There is mass fur farming which is inherently cruel and what prompted this post was th

What appears to be a couple of feckless British louts in the UK stole an all-white domestic cat off the street and they appear to be blackmailing or teasing the owner in a video which I believe that they had posted online on social media. It is a theft by the look of it. They should be found and prosecuted. The thug carries the cat around in a bad way by the shoulders while laughing and goading the owner. They say that they robbed the person's cat and they tease the owner to try and get their cat back. The cat's name is Biscuit. The location is Newbury town centre. The clip has been posted on Snapchat.  It caught the attention of the locals. The owner of the cat is Sophie Lightowlers. She saw the video but at the time did not realise it was her cat. She spotted it on a Facebook page. As mentioned, the idiotic thug has grabbed the cat by the shoulders and is laughing and goading saying: "Robbed your cat, come get it back." 'Robbed your cat, come get it back': V

This is a stunningly beautiful little video for me because of the closeness of the bond and support given. It contains so much that is human-like. The assistance of one cat given to another who's disabled. That is a human characteristic - for some. And the mutual support is very typical of human behavior. Note : This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it. And it is just great to see cats in such a strong relationship. It is like love. Maybe true love in the truest sense.  It is not uncommon to see cats who are very friendly with each other. However, this is friendship maxed out. It is more than simple friendship. It is a very close bond. It is about chemistry between the two.  Does the guiding cat get as much out of the friendship as the blind black cat? Is the guide cat consciously doing some altruistic? Or is it about mutual support?  If an

There are no wild cats whose normal coat is black. But please read on. The question in the title is asking if there are any wild cats who are by default black. I will rephrase that: are there any wild cat species whose normal and original coat is black. The answer to that question is NO.  But there are quite a few wild cat species whose normal coat is a typical brown spotted or striped coat but because of a genetic mutation it turns almost black, a sort of dark charcoal with ghost spots and other markings. These cats are called melanistic cats. The condition caused by the genetic mutation is called melanism.  Black bobcat trapped in Canada. Photo: in public domain. And there are quite a few cats, as mentioned, that are normally not black but sometimes they are. From the top of my head ( not a comprehensive list), I can think of several such as the serval, Geoffroy's cat, the jaguar, the bobcat, the leopard, the mountain lion a.k.a. the puma, and even the tiger, as there are rep

OPINION: Cat owners don't need a scientist to tell them that their cat recognises the sound of the name. Newsweek tells us in an article of June 30 that a Japanese scientist found that domestic cats recognise the sound of their name. The article is presented as some sort of eureka moment but it simply isn't.  For centuries cat owners have been talking to the cat companions, calling their name to come and they dutifully came. It's pretty obvious that domestic cats understand the sound of their name even if they don't understand the word or their name per se.  Cats do understand the sound of their names like dogs. Neither cat nor dog understand the meaning of their name and that they are sentient beings. Neither are self-aware. Pic in public domain. It's all about the sound especially when spoken by their owner. In fact, it is probably fair to say that it is essential that their owner makes the sound because the way a person sounds in saying words is important in t

The word "often" in the title is a bit startling. It was known that cats can get the disease from their owners but until recently it seems we did not know how common this was. But now we do because according to research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, six cats and seven dogs tested positive for the disease and 54 pets were found to have antibodies to the disease out of a total of 310 pets tested in 196 households. 54 pets out of a total of 310 is 17%. The research indicates that 17% of cats and dogs get the disease from their owners if their owners have suffered from the disease. Cats can get Covid from their owners in bed. Photo: Photo: crisisangels, via lorenzens-soil. This I think is useful information. It indicates that, as stated, it is quite common for owners to transmit the disease to their cats and dogs. It makes you wonder whether the virus might become a reservoir in those companion animals and pass it to visitors to the owners' homes. I'm sure

UNITED KINGDOM-NEWS AND COMMENT: is reported today that some 443 domestic cats have been recently diagnosed with pancytopenia of which 284 have sadly died. You may have heard and indeed you should have heard about the UK pet food recall of a long list of dry cat foods sold at Sainsbury's and Pets at Home. The Pets at Home own brand food AVA is affected. If you've not read about this then please click on this link where you can find further links to the foods that have been recalled . Sushi died of pancytopenia after eating Pets at Home AVA dry cat food. She was actually euthanized at a vets. Photo: Mrs Kenny. This is an update and it is a depressing one. Pancytopenia is a killer. It is a disease that causes low blood counts of red cells, white cells and platelets. It appears that the disease affects the bone marrow where the cells are created. Pancytopenia affects people as well and there are many possible causes such as cancer, bone marrow disorders, infections, medicine si

INDIA-NEWS AND COMMENT: Two brothers, Firoz and Sabir Mansuri, were on their motorbike heading towards a birthday party for Firoz's son in Madhya Pradesh when a leopard came out of a sugarcane field and tried to attack them. Firoz was the driver while Sabir was the pillion passenger carrying the cake. He said that when times are desperate you do what you can to survive and what occurred to him was to throw the cake at the leopard who was following them for over 500 m. It did the trick.  Brothers throw birthday cake at chasing leopard to scare it away The cake hit the leopard, distracting it and it disappeared back into the fields whence it had come. Comment : leopards not infrequently come into conflict with people in India because of the large number of people in India and there are quite a few leopards as well. We are told that leopard numbers in India have grown by more than 60% between 2014 and 2018 to almost 13,000. I'm surprised to read this but even without this grow

COMMENT: I think that the Plattsburgh city council have got this entirely wrong. Plattsburgh is in New York state as I recall. They have a local ordinance which states that if you feed cats on your property you are deemed to own those cats. But that seems irrelevant in this instance! That's because the guy was feeding feral cats under a TNR program on, I guess, public property. I'm also told that the city code states that feeding feral cats is a violation level offence whatever that means. Perhaps he was feeding them on his property but we are not told that.  Plattsburgh man commits a crime for looking after feral cats. Pic in public domain. Sorry for the poor image quality. The upshot is that this guy, Mike Clowney, has been told to appear before the local court because he's been feeding feral cats as part of a TNR program. He's been doing it for more than a decade. He attends the cats twice a day every day. He is a dedicated volunteer providing a good service to th

The Indian government has made it mandatory for members of the cat family to have a negative test for Covid before they are allowed into the country. This includes domestic cats to the big cats, in fact any cat! The new rules also include gorillas. The objective is obvious, namely to try and minimise the spread of the disease in the country. It is the first of its kind.  It's an interesting rule because the experts have consistently stated that there is no evidence that cats transmit the disease to people despite the fact that that it is a zoonotic disease. Zoonotic diseases are those that can be transmitted between humans and animals and vice versa . Cats must have negative Covid test before entering India So, I guess this rule has been enacted out of an abundance of caution, as the politicians say. The government states that large cats and gorillas are "having high susceptibility of infection against natural Covid-19 infection". The information for this they say come