In the world of cats there are two main categories of human

I'm simplifying things but it is true. In the cat world - the domestic cat world to be more accurate - you can divide humans into two groups or categories.

1. Those that don't see sentience in the domestic cat and have the potential for cruelty towards their cat; not blatant or obvious cruelty but sometimes insidious slow-motion cruelty.
2. Those that are sensitive or very sensitive to the fact that the domestic cat is a sentient being with the capacity to feel pain and to suffer. These people pick up the pieces left by the other group. To put it another way they rescue cats and the other group throw them away.

Here is a story told by a woman which illustrates the categorisation:

She says that a cat "tried to come into my house at the end of June of this year while we were in the middle of a heat wave in WA". So, this is the US and it must have been damnably hot. The pic below is of the tabby cat concerned before and after rescue.

Rescued cat adopted so respectfully and with kindness. Image: Kitten LaRue (Quora.com).

I have just written an article about whether feral cats come into homes. Well, this story answers the question. They do if they are strays and not true ferals. This tired, old cat had been dumped by their owner because - I guess - they were old and tired and also sick. 

The woman: "discovered the cat was very old, she has been declawed, so there was no way for her to catch any food for herself. The cat was horribly dehydrated, had 104 temperature, she was skin and bones and yet she was so sweet and loving!"

She took the cat to a vet immediately. She was x-rayed and found to have bad arthritis in her back. This may have come about due in part to being outside for a long time. She had survived despite being declawed.

The first category I mention above declaw cats while the second category do not. A profound difference in attitude.

The woman concluded her story with these words:

"Poor kitty could barely walk! So, this is quite a success story, I named her Ladybug and she is so much happier now! You can tell she feels like someone’s pet again. She loves to cuddle and gives back so much love, she didn’t deserve to be abandoned and left for dead."

You'll agree that far too many people throw away their cat companion when it is convenient to do so; when the cat becomes a bother or a nuisance. When they get ill because they are old. This is not treating cats as sentience creatures but as 'objects' to possess to decorate the home.

How do I know what my cat likes?

The duty of the cat caregiver is twofold fundamentally, (a) to provide a secure home - safety comes first and (b) to make their cat happy!

Jackson Galaxy has some great advice on how to start the process of making your cat happy. And his advice is echoed in Dr. Desmond Morris's well-known book Cat Watching, the first and I would say best book on domestic cat behaviour on the market.

Image: MikeB

Jackson Galaxy says that cat owners should behave like a detective to find out what's going on; what's wrong and what's right, which means that the cat owner should be very observant.

I think that part of the duty of being a good cat caregiver is to be highly observant. Cat owners should watch their cat and take mental notes or even write it down.

If you want to find out what makes your cat happy observe their behaviour. Here are a couple of simple and easy examples.

Food preferences

Cat owners should provide their cat with best quality wet and a bit of dry food for night-time grazing together with some treats from time to time. Domestic cats have food preferences when it comes to wet cat food. To find out those preferences you have to go through a lot of different cat foods and observe the cat's response. Simple stuff. Once you found their favourite you provide it regularly.

RELATED: How do I know if I’m feeding my cat good quality dry cat food?

This will not only make your cat happier but it will also reduce the amount of wet cat food wastage. And it is always a nightmare to get rid of wet cat food which is going off as it so smelly, messy and horrible!

RELATED: What is complete cat food?

Sleeping arrangements

Another example would be to observe where your cat likes to sleep. If your cat is an indoor/outdoor cat they might spend quite a lot of time outside at night and sleep during the day when there is a lot of activity at least potentially in the home. 

An indoor/outdoor cat might have difficulty in finding a quiet place to sleep. Their caregiver should observe their cat and provide a quiet corner of the home, perhaps a room, where they can sleep and within that home use a customised discarded cardboard box which will provide a roof over the cat's head and walls on their sides. Domestic cats like to feel the pressure of the walls of a box against them as it gives them a sense of security. It's why they like boxes.

Quite a lot of cats are borderline anxious or actually anxious. They don't show this to their owner. Cats are undemonstrative which makes it difficult to find out what they like and therefore what makes them happy. This is where the owner's observational skills come into play.

Caregivers should be detectives and they should do this all the time throughout their period of cat ownership. It never stops. Cat owners can always learn more about their cat and what makes them tick.

"Can cats fake being nice in order to get adopted?" asks cat owner on social media

Image supplied by the cat's owner.

The cat owner explained what was happening:

After it settles into a comfortable environment, it may show a different side. I once adopted a stray cat, and when I met him, he came up to me and suddenly laid down. He obviously wanted to be with me, and so did I. I thought that a weak cat that likes to lie under people's feet must be very obedient, right? He was very obedient at first, and a year after I raised him, he started pooping all over the house...under my refrigerator and in some boxes. I took him to the vet who said he was fine; he was probably living in a safe environment. Anyway, I don't regret raising him, but my cat is really different than when I first met him.

My response on social media

This has nothing to do with being nice to get adopted. Sorry. It is to do with the environment in which he lives which has become stressful for him and he is marking his territory with feces to make it feel more friendly. Either that or he is incontinent and ill. Find out what is causing the stress.

Some more

I noticed that the person took their cat to a veterinarian who said that "he was probably living in a safe environment." That indicates that they discussed the environment in which the cat lived and it was probably described by the owner which may have misled the veterinarian.

I am convinced that this problem is caused by the cat perceiving the environment as unsafe which is making him anxious which is why he is defecating inappropriately.

It brings very much to mind my ex-wife (!) who lived with one of our two cats when we divorced. And she, after divorce, went slightly mad and started drinking a lot and smoking and going out in the evening. She was rarely at home and her cat became very anxious because she was never there. And he defecated on her bed in the middle of the duvet. This was clearly very upsetting to her. The reason is the same as this person is experiencing: stress.

In lieu of defecating, anxious cats can sometimes spray urine onto objects around the home for the same reason. They are depositing their scent around the home to make the place feel more friendly; to make it feel like their place, their home.

This is a very common problem by which I mean anxiety in domestic cats is a very common issue. And not infrequently it is caused by the owner being absent. It can sometimes cause cystitis which also results in inappropriate elimination with small drops of bloody urine around the home. The urine is not sprayed but the cat has an uncontrollable desire to pee because of a bladder infection caused by the stress.

Near Bangkok cats in diapers can go to the cinema with their owner

This is novel. It's probably impractical and perhaps a little extreme but a cinema near Bangkok has allowed cats and dog to watch their films with their owners provided they wear diapers (nappies)! Get that. I see the problem. If one cat peed onto a cinema seat because they were stressed it would be the end of the experiment.

A pet cat sits on the armrest of a seat inside a movie theater on the opening day of the pet-friendly i-Tail Pet Cinema at Major Cineplex, inside the Mega Bangna shopping mall, in Samut Prakan province, central Thailand on Saturday, June 10, 2023. AFP PHOTO.

Major Cineplex spokesman Narute Jiensnong made the order that cats and dogs had to wear diapers. I have a strong feeling that this is not going to work despite being kind and animal-friendly.

The reason why the cinema chain has opened their doors to pets is because pets are big in Thailand, second only to China in Asia and they want to encourage more customers through the doors. There are 8.3 million dogs and 3.7 million cats in 2021, in Thailand apparently.

Fair enough but I don't think cats and dogs are stopping cinemagoers from going to the cinema as films traditionally last 90 minutes. You're not going to be away from home and your cat or dog for more than 3 hours. That's okay.

Nice thought though. Ikea in Thailand are also allowing pets into their stores with their owners provided they are in strollers.

There must be a limit to the 'dogs allowed policy' for Cineplex as some species are enormous. Who's going to put a 60-kilogram dog in a nappy and hope that it stays on for the duration of a film?!

Source: The Manila Times.

18-year-old musician and cat lover killed on the frontline in Ukraine's war

NEWS AND SOME OPINION: This is a snapshot - a vignette - of the Ukrainian war started illegally by Putin and prosecuted by him with incredible cruelty to the point where in the eyes of 95% of the world's population many war crimes have been committed. 

I want to retell the story as told by Christina Lamb in The Sunday Times today. It is very sad. And so unnecessary. So wasteful of a good life with potential for so much more.

Iryna Krasnokutska and her son. Image: The Sunday Times.

Christina Lamb interviewed Iryna Krasnokutska about the death of her son. She is on tranquillisers and is receiving counselling as a way to cope. She is in despair because her son Maksym was a good man. He had talent and a good future ahead of him.

Iryna makes uniforms for Ukrainian soldiers. She is busy. On her phone is a photo of a handsome young son holding a tabby cat. It was his 18th birthday. Within six months of that photo being taken he was dead. At the time of his death, he was the youngest soldier to die on the front lines in the Ukraine war.

She said:

"These are our young generation we need for the future. My son had his whole life ahead of him. How can we be sending 18-year-old to the front lines?"

Iryna was immaculately dressed and made up nicely when she spoke to Christina Lamb. her son was known as Max. He loved jazz and cats. He also loved Formula One and called his cat Kimi after the Finish racing driver Kimi Raikkonen.

He wrote his own compositions and played the alto saxophone in the Poltava Orchestra. He signed up to fight soon after the invasion started. He told his mother that he had to do it to protect her.

"Mum if I don't protect you and Poltava, who will?"

He had never held a gun before but was well trained a long way from the frontline in western Ukraine but as it happens, the Russians sent cruise missiles to his training camp which killed dozens of soldiers. Fortunately, he survived. He felt that he was the lucky one.

After two months of training Max was transferred to another camp in the north-east of Ukraine. This was nearer the fighting. This camp was also struck by a Russian missile. He survived again.

He was then sent to the frontline in the Donetsk region in the east. He was stationed 500 m from the Russians. In late July he phoned his grandmother and told her that he had just come back from a mission during which all his fellow soldiers had been wounded or killed. He survived again and told her that he was the lucky one.

Sadly, two days later news came out of the area where he was fighting that someone had been killed. Instinctively Iryna knew that it was him. It was two more days before her instincts were confirmed. On August 5 he was buried in the newly created Alley of Heroes, a part of a cemetery in Poltava Zaturyne reserved for military deaths.

Since then, Iryna's younger son has been taken to hospital where he remained for 45 days. Then her husband, a driver had a heart attack and had to go into hospital as well.

She couldn't grieve properly. She became angry. On her phone she keeps the photo of her smiling son playing his saxophone. She wants to remember him like that. And she doesn't want any more of Ukraine's youngest and best to be killed in battle.

Max had a tabby cat. No doubt he loved his cat. The cat now does not have Max as a human companion. Let's think of the cat as well who might be grieving as Max's mother is.

Woman with double chin says she would rather starve to feed her cats

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is a BBC story published eight hours ago. The headline is "Cost of living: pet owner would rather starve to feed cats".

Under the headline is a picture (see below) of the woman, Miari Workman, holding her two cats. She has a double chin and she's clearly carrying too much weight. Starving? Not eating enough? Nah!

Ms Workman has made a bold statement which has caught the attention of the news media but she's clearly not carrying through on that statement. She has no need to starve herself because she is finding a way not to and that, by the way, is to go down to a local pet food bank. Free cat food.

I wonder sometimes whether people use pet food banks who should be using them. Do people who operate pet food banks actually check with care the credentials of their customers? Do they check whether they really are out-of-pocket completely to the point where they have to starve themselves as Ms Workman indicates?

I don't think so. In fact, I'm certain that it never happens. She says that she is a single mom with kids and two cats and really struggles with money. This is what is likely to happen because if you've got children you've got to be around for them and therefore you can't go out to work. And therefore, you rely on welfare benefits. And human and pet food banks.

I think though that she has made a statement which is over the top. If she was really skinny and looking pale then I would believe her. But her words are empty.

She also says that the pet food bank "helped tremendously". And "Sometimes I'll feed my daughter and go without and make sure I've got food for the cats."

She goes without food but I think she could go without a little more food because she needs to eat less. That is quite obvious.

Although I can't believe this woman, I can believe, through personal experience that food prices in the UK have rocketed and I believe a lot of the time the rises are unjustified. I believe that the supermarkets are jumping on the bandwagon of inflation and adding an extra price rise in order to increase their profit margins. This is unscrupulous.

Pet food has risen by 12.6% over the past 12 months and human food has risen by 18.2% over the same period.

The one good thing that Ms Workman states is that when you adopt a cat you don't just get rid of them because you're struggling to pay your expenses. You find a way to keep looking after them. Too many people find it too easy to abandon their cat companions as a time convenient to them. 

And sometimes people use events such as the cost-of-living crisis in the UK to get rid of their cat. It's a way of justifying it.

An animal welfare assistant at Blue Cross, who runs the pet food bank, Gemma Greg, 25, said that since January she had noticed that more people were using their charity. And she also said that many families were looking to have their pets rehomed for financial reasons.

I'm back to my original point. The last thing you should do is to get rid of your cat. You can find other ways to save money. You can stop paying subscriptions for mobile phones. You can stop or reduce your outgoings in many areas. You can save enough money by restricting your outgoings to allow you to afford cat food. I just don't see inflation as a good excuse.

THE LINE: Is there a place for the domestic cat in the city of the future?

Saudi Arabia has proposed an incredibly impressive and entirely novel city of the future called THE LINE. It is a city compressed into a line 170 km long, 500 m tall and 200 m wide, sandwiched between mirrored glass. Inside is entirely futuristic with entire communities provided for. It is a 'civilisational revolution that puts humans first' according to the designers. 

But is there a place in this world for domestic cats? Clearly, they are all going to be full-time indoor cats but of course the indoors is amazing. This is a city enclosed by apparently glass which reflects the harsh sunlight in Saudi Arabia.

Inside THE LINE.

Of course, the country has the money to build this and it is going to be incredibly expensive (trillions of dollars). The video starts off with compressing the horizontal nature of cities into a much tighter but vertical space which appears to be the underlying modus operandi of this development. It is in preparation for a time when there isn't enough space to build cities horizontally and they have to go upwards.

You may have to click on the play button twice 😊.

They say that the city will run on 100% renewable energy and 95% of land will be preserved from nature. So, everything outside the city is left for nature to thrive in. That is an idea which appeals to me. Currently in many parts of the world, there isn't enough space for wild animals to thrive and indeed many species are being endangered and becoming extinct because of this problem.

"Everything will be accessible within a five-minute walk and an efficient public transport network will offer an end-to-end journey in just 20 minutes. Automated services will be powered by artificial intelligence."

In this novel development humans are separated from nature to allow the wild creatures of the world to live their own lives. They say that there will be no roads, cars or emissions which I presume means inside the construction but they say you can travel from one end to the other in 20 minutes. You do it by train or some other automated transport. 

THE LINE. Screenshot.

THE LINE is planned to accommodate 9 million people but its footprint will be just 34 km². The city of London has a human population of around 9 million as I recall. London has an area of 607 mi² according to my Internet research.

Back to cats! This novel city sis for humans built by humans and designed by humans. Is there a place within it for domestic cats? And how good will it be. It is a human-centric concept being built for humans.

Keeping your home warm just for your cat might waste hundreds of dollars or pounds annually

It has been calculated in the UK that if you keep your home warm just for your pet cat you could be wasting £240 per year. The same applies to a dog. The point is this: if you keep the heating on in your home while you are at work to keep your cat warm it is going to cost you a lot of money over a year which is something to be factored in at this time of a cost of living crisis and rising inflation in many countries.

Don't heat your house while you are out to keep your cat warm. Image: Pixabay.

Dr. David Glew, an expert in energy efficiency and policy at Leeds Beckett University said that "It is not a great idea to heat your whole house for a dog [or cat] while you are out as it could cost you hundreds of pounds a year. To put it into perspective, putting in loft insulation will only save you around £40 a year, a new boiler will save you £50 a year, and cavity wall insulation will save £80 a year for an average house."

I think you can safely translate those numbers to dollars in the USA although I suspect it would be considerably less as the cost of living is quite low in America compared to the UK. Nonetheless, every penny helps.

Interestingly, in the UK, a survey published in 2015 conducted by Energy Saving Trust found that 53% of dog owners and 47% of cat owners worried that their pet would feel cold while they were out. However, Justin Shotton, president of the British Veterinary Association said heating "shouldn't generally be necessary". The reason is that when animals are young and healthy and have the usual fur coat they are well able to cope with any slight chill that exists inside a home during cold days.

In addition, the survey found that 31% of people left the light on for the cat or dog while they were out. And 28% said they left the radio one and 23% kept the TV on.

My initial thoughts about this is that if you want to keep an area of your home a little bit warmer in winter while you are away, you can buy a trickle feed electric bar which plugs into the mains. These are very safe and designed to keep the temperature from dropping in a fixed are.

Trickle heater on Amazon.

It just takes the edge the chill. You can also buy one of those igloo cat beds which are completely covered and insulated. This will allow the body heat of your cat to warm up their own environment. Another possibility is to buy an electric blanket for cats and dogs which will allow them to warm up when resting. I believe that these are all available at modest prices in Amazon.

I certainly would agree with this expert that it is unnecessary and a waste of precious funds to keep a home warm just for a cat or dog. There are other ways of achieving the goal, three of which I have mentioned.

Do some cat owners introduce a new pet to force the existing one out?

Bad relationship between cat and owner. Picture in public domain.

Here are some facts about domestic cats and their ownership which encourage me to believe, very speculatively, that some cat owners might introduce a new pet, either a dog or a cat, into the household in order to force the resident cat out to find a new home. This post is provocative but I believe it is fair and reasonable.

• It is hard to ensure that the resident cat gets on with a new, incoming cat. It can cause stress in both cats, particular the resident cat. It can be difficult to ameliorate this tension. The relationship might never be right.
• It's a known fact that some domestic cats migrate to a new home for whatever reason. Something is not right where they are living. So they up sticks and find somewhere else, often a neighbour's home.
• We also know that some cat owners relinquish their cats to shelters under unjustified circumstances. It is done entirely voluntarily. Indeed, some cat owners take their cats to a veterinarian to put them down despite the cat being thoroughly healthy. That sounds ridiculous but it does happen. The point I am making is that the relationship between domestic cat and owner is not always good. There are instances when the relationship is broken or breaking down.
• We also know that some people do not like to openly relinquish their cats to a shelter. There are numerous instances of people abandoning cats in shelters surreptitiously by leaving them in boxes outside the front door or whatever. They do this at any time of the year including the deepest part of the winter when it is freezing outside. They even do it at night when it's even colder. So, there is a reluctance to advertise the fact that they are giving up on their cat or cats. Perhaps there is a stigma involved.

In order to avoid this stigma some canny cat owners might adopt a new cat or dog in the knowledge that it may force the existing cat out. Perhaps their relationship with the resident cat has broken down. They might be ambivalent about whether they want to continue living with their cat. They set up a situation where the resident cat might decide to leave. They encourage the scenario. It is a speculative action because it might not work. But it might work and this might suit them. 

RELATED: Not sure whether you want a cat? Try fostering first.

You would have to be a poor domestic cat caregiver to dream up that sort of scheme. But, then again, there must be a substantial percentage of homes in which caregivers are rather poor at the job. We don't have data on this. But it wouldn't surprise me that at least 10% of cat owners are average-to-poor in the caregiving that they provide. If that is correct, we are looking at millions of people. Some of them might concoct the kind of scheme that I have suggested.

Tip: how to save left over cat food some of the time

We know that a problem with wet cat food is that a lot of it can be left behind, it goes off and it has to be thrown away. The first point to make is that not all wet cat food goes off quickly. Clearly in warm climates and in hot homes it will probably be inedible after about an hour or so because its smell changes and cats assess food on the smell it gives off.

Tip: how to save left over cat food some of the time

However, under many conditions if your cat leaves wet cat food in the bowl you can bring them back to it by adding a good quality dry cat food which can be sprinkled over the wet. You only have to add a small quantity of kibble to turn left over wet cat food or even rejected wet cat food into something which is acceptable to your cat. It is a mind game trick. We should be able to outsmart our cat. Humans are meant to be more intelligent than cats 😇.

Your cat will start eating the dry cat food which she likes and which is different to the wet (obviously) and in doing so progress onto the wet and hopefully finish it off at a second sitting.

I have just done exactly that and it worked a treat. I think we owe it to ourselves to minimise the amount of wet cat food that we throw away. Some people say that you can feed foxes with left over wet cat food in order to make use of it. I tend to disagree with that because in my experience foxes don't really like leftover wet cat food. Perhaps it depends upon the fox and where you live but that's my personal experience.

Also, foxes are essentially dogs in terms of their diet and cat food is unsuitable for dogs because it's too rich. It might cause diarrhoea. I don't have any hard evidence for that but common sense dictates that you should not give cat food to dogs and vice versa. 

It is more problematic, by the way, to give dog food to cats than vice versa because cats are obligate carnivores as we all know by now thanks to the Internet whereas dogs are omnivores despite being described as carnivores 😕.

Man looks after severely neglected cat but is accused of stealing the cat by the owner

This is a cat ownership story that ends well but it's a bit of a saga to get to that point. It appears to come from America where a kind-hearted man was concerned about a cat that had been locked outside for around two years by his owner, a woman. The man took pity on the cat and fed him and let him in when he could. As a consequence, the woman came around to his home and accused him of stealing her cat. He felt obliged to stop helping the cat at that point as he didn't want to cause any trouble.

Read the story in the light of this update, please: I have learned that the woman's then boyfriend insisted the cat was put outside. She complied. She's now dumped her boyfriend. I feel sorry for her but she's lost her cat. Moral: stand your ground if your boyfriend tells you to get rid of the cat.

He is now called Jarvis. This is the star of the story. He's now loved by a good man. Photo: Reddit.

About two weeks later he actually saw this cat hit by a car while crossing the road at a time when his neighbour was not at home. The cat was badly injured. The man took the cat to the vet where a leg was amputated at a cost of $3000.

The man decided to take steps to keep the cat. He reported the cat as a stray to the vet. The vet checked the cat for a microchip but he didn't have one so he helped him contact a shelter to file a "lost pet" report. There is a five day holding period at that shelter during which the owner can claim ownership. After the five days is up the cat is available for rehoming. Nobody claimed the cat. The man claimed ownership.

The previous owner, the negligent woman who had previously accused him of stealing the cat, saw the now three-legged cat in the man's window and demanded that he hand over her pet. She threatened him by saying that she would contact the police. She accused him again of stealing her cat. He said that she must have the wrong cat because he has three legs. He slammed the door in her face.

She screamed through the door for a while and then left. The man is waiting to find out if she did indeed contact the police. He posted the story on Reddit.com and ask for advice. Everyone said that he did a good job. They praised him. They said he was safe from any prosecution for theft because he had reported the matter to the local shelter and the true owner had had a five day period to claim her pet.

He posted on Reddit:

"The cat’s name is Jarvis and he is very happy back as an indoor cat. He is chipped even though I didn’t plan on letting him out again. He’s been recovering remarkably well, even if he’d rather meow at me to carry him rather than walk on his own -.- we’re gonna have a good life together."

My opinion: Great ending. Nice man. The Reddit users are correct. The man did the right thing. He is safe from prosecution. The woman is all mouth and no trousers. She has lost her cat companion and rightly so. The story ended up well as this cat is now loved and in a warm and friendly home. Sadly he has lost one of his legs in the journey to a good home. This should not have happened. This man is also very generous in spending $3000 on someone else's (at the time).

Indicators of poor cat ownership in Melbourne Australia 2009

There is a study online on the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science dated 2009 entitled Admissions of Cats to Animal Welfare Shelters in Melbourne, Australia (link). It paints a picture of poor-quality cat ownership in Melbourne Australia and I will tell you why.

Stray cat Australia. Photo in the public domain

The scientists investigated what was going on at one large Melbourne shelter over a 12-month period. In the abstract to the report, they don't tell us the name of the shelter. But they say that they tracked 15,206 cat admissions. They found that 81.6% of the admitted cats were strays. That means they were unowned but were likely to be previously owned. They had wandered away from the home and nobody had taken a blind notice.

They also found that only 4% of the cats coming in that year were sterilised. I'll restate that, only 4/100 cats admitted to this shelter had been either spayed or neutered. That is highly indicative of poor cat ownership. And if the cat was a true domestic cat the rate of spaying and neutering was at 12.8%. That is a little bit more than 1 in every 10. Once again, this is highly indicative of a negligent form of cat ownership.

Finally, they state that "the majority of cats admitted were euthanised". What they mean to say is that the majority of cats were killed because I'm going to make the presumption that the majority of cats were not in such a poor state of health that they had to be euthanised. 

Euthanasia only takes place, in truth, if it is more humane to put a cat to sleep than to treat them and bring them back to health. So, the scientists are using a euphemism to cover up the mass killing of thousands of stray cats entering a major animal shelter in Melbourne, Australia.

It does not paint a pretty picture. And it encourages the authorities to place restrictions on cat ownership because one aspect of this story is that when you have that many stray cats wandering around the environment, they have an impact on native species due to predation, which is of great concern to the authorities in Australia. There are two sides to the coin in this instance: both sides don't look good.

My new kitten's first encounter with the big ball of flame in the sky

I love this description from a Reddit.com user: u/Sava333.  Domestic cats are sunworshippers. We know it. This little juvenile cat has discovered that there is a place in the home where the sun shines and he has occupied that space. He is sunning himself. I would expect him to be there again in the future from time-to-time. Why do domestic cats like the sun so much? Because they are domesticated North African wildcats. You can imagine that there is quite a lot of sun in the places where these cats live, such as in and around Syria which, incidentally, is the place where the original domestic cats came into existence, it is believed.

Photo: Reddit.com user: u/Sava333. 

The 'sun and domestic cats' is quite a big topic actually. The sun can cause cancer in the ear flaps of stray and feral cats. You might have seen it: white cats with their ear flaps amputated. The thin covering of fur on the ear flaps does not protect the skin and cartilage below and so the ultraviolet light of the sun can damage the cells causing cancer. And white cats are particularly susceptible because white fur has no pigment. It is white because it is pigmentless not because the pigment is white! This allows the sun's rays to go through it and harm the skin below.

This little fella, in the picture, is a classic, blotched, tabby cat. I think he is going to have a great life. The home looks nice. I have presumed that he is male but this cat could just as equally be female. I say that in the interests of equality bearing in mind the woke movement which is surrounding us at the moment and affecting everything we say especially on the Internet, on social media, where one misstep in the words used can lead to a pile of opprobrium and worse, the loss of your job!

Cat with a genetic predisposition to being obese or a self-deceiving owner?

Swayze is a domestic cat who weighs 16.8 pounds and has become a celebrity for it, which I find disturbing. We do not need to celebrate obesity in felines, please. It is completely inappropriate because, according to veterinarians, there is an obesity epidemic among domestic cats in line, apparently, with humans. Swayze is a five-year-old tabby cat living in America (northern Georgia). She's a lady and has 32,100 followers on her Instagram page

Obese Swayze. Photo: Jam Press.

To me, the interesting aspect of this celebrity cat is that her owner is not overfeeding her.  Abbe said: "I limit Swayze to very little food and I don't leave food in her bowl all day. She has been on a prescription diet that didn't work. I just limit her food and she has lost some but she is stuck at 16.8 pounds. I feed her half a can of wet food two times a day and sometimes feed her 1/8 cup of dry, but not on a regular basis. I don't give her snacks or treats except cheese but it is so rare that I give it to her."

So, we have a cat that is apparently fed properly with very few treats but her weight is stuck at the obesity level which is patently apparent in the photograph. This level of obesity clearly negatively impacts health quite substantially. As mentioned, feline obesity should not be celebrated and I strongly disagree with the fact that the owner has turned her into a celebrity cat. I'm sorry but it is not a good idea. The Instagram account should be closed down because it only serves to encourage others to make their cat obese and then become a celebrity cat. What kind of good can that do?

I have to conclude that Swayze has a genetic predisposition to being obese. This can happen in humans but my research indicates that this inherited predisposition does not necessarily mean that the body metabolises food in such a way that you become obese. It means that the individual - and I am presuming that cats can also inherit this predisposition to obesity - has increased hunger levels, increased calorific intake, reduced satiety, reduced control over eating and a tendency to be sedentary.

This implies that a person who inherits this problem is driven to eating more than somebody who hasn't inherited the problem. Is this what is going on with Swayze? It appears not because she does not eat more than normal, we are told.

Therefore, I have to be unconvinced about her owner's statement that she is fed a modest diet. I don't want to throw around accusations but people do tend to mislead themselves as to diet. Certainly, this applies to humans feeding themselves and I will therefore presume that it also applies to people feeding their cats. It is very easy to fool yourself as to the amount of food you are giving your cat.

There can only be two possibilities as to why Swayze is overweight and they are that she is not exercising enough and that she is eating too much. It's a simple formula of too many calories going in and not enough calories being burnt. Therefore, her owner is fooling himself or herself. And this ridiculous celebration of obesity must stop, please.

9 possible signs your cat has Covid-19

First things first: in the USA, according to the Humane Society there have been 49 confirmed cases of Covid-nineteen in cats and 35 confirmed cases in dogs. As there are around an estimated 94 million domestic cat companions in the US, you can see that this is not a problem that people should get wound up about. At the moment it seems that the chances of your cat contracting Covid-19 are extremely, almost infinitesimally small.

A high temperature is the first sign that your cat or dog might have Covid. Image: PoC.

The best way to protect your cat, I would have thought, is to protect yourself by following the well-publicised procedures. And in the USA a high percentage of cat owners keep their cats inside full-time which must protect them from this disease. That said, Newsweek have written about the nine signs that your cat has Covid so I will reproduce them here just for the sake of completeness. I think it's nice to know these just in case you and your cat are unlucky.

It's probably worth saying that one of the signs of Covid in people is a lack of taste and smell which are two symptoms that we can't know that I cat suffers from because the only way of finding out is to ask your cat! Perhaps we should assume that those symptoms are also present (which may affect their appetite) to which you can add the following:

1. A fever. A fever is when the body temperature exceeds the normal temperature for an adult cat which is between 100-103° Fahrenheit with an average of 101.5 degrees F. How do you tell that your cat has a fever? Well of course you can measure the temperature and I have a page on that was you can see by clicking here. But what are the outward signs? A veterinary website tells us that they are: loss of appetite, depression, lack of energy, decrease drinking, decreased grooming, rapid breathing and shivering;
2. Coughing. The should be persistent coughing which will be different to the sort of sound a cat makes when the vomiting up a hair ball which is not coughing at all;
3. Difficulty in breathing with shallow breath;
4. Lethargy. Lethargy is a classic symptom of a cat feeling ill and it should be noticeable to most cat owners who are reasonably emotionally close to their cat;
5. Sneezing;
6. Runny nose;
7. Eye discharge;
8. Vomiting;
9. Diarrhoea.

There has been quite a lot of talk about cats and dogs getting Covid which I think is out of an abundance of caution because there is precious little evidence that pets transmit the disease to people living in the same household.

It's a shame that they get it at all because this is a human-created global problem. It is through human carelessness that this has happened although the World Health Organisation is still trying to find out where it started without the cooperation of the Chinese! That I think tells us a story.

If the above signs are present then the usual procedures concerning people should apply to a cat or dog. This means isolating the animal but before that you have to get confirmation from a veterinarian that your dog or cat does indeed have Covid. Nothing stupid should happen. No one should panic or do anything which would harm the companion animal in any way.

P.S. in Siamese and other pointed cats if they have a temperature it may affect the color of their non-pointed coat. It might be lighter.

Some pros and cons of pet health insurance

Sorry, I have moved this article to the main site and improved it. Please click here if you'd like to read it.

It's National Cat Day in the US. What Can I Do?

National Cat Day was started to heighten the awareness of people to rescue cats in shelters and to encourage cat lovers to celebrate the life of their cat companions. So what can we do on this day? It must be about improving the lives of our cats. That must be the underlying purpose of National Cat Day. I would like to suggest one overarching goal which affects every aspect of cat caregiving: respecting the cat. So what does respecting the cat mean? First it means reminding ourselves that we are living with another species of animal. It means not treating our domestic cat companions as little people although that is very nice to do and what one is almost compelled to do but it can lead to relating and interacting with our cats in the wrong way.

Picture: Figo Pet Insurance

Respecting the cat really means understanding the cat which is going require some book work if you like. If not book work then some thought and consideration. Perhaps watching some videos or reading articles like this one. You have to understand domestic cat behaviour to respect the cat. You have to understand a little bit about their anatomy, their diet and their physiology. You need to get into the head of your cat is best you can to understand their desires and motivations. Then you need to allow them as best as possible to express those desires and motivations. The more they can do this the happier they will be. A domestic cat is happiest when he is able to behave as naturally as possible. That means creating an environment where you can do this. And the concept of ownership should be rejigged to to one of 'relationship'. The concept of ownership does not sit well with good cat caretaking.

  

Another aspect of respecting the cat is to remind ourselves that we are a human-animal and much larger than a domestic cat. How do they see us? Do they respect the human? Well we don't know for sure how they view us but they probably relate to us as if we are cats. This is because they do not change their behaviour around us. They behave as if they were behaving towards another cat, perhaps a mother cat. This indicates that they think of us as cats. Dogs, conversely, relate to people differently than they do towards other dogs. This indicates that they view us as a species other than a dog.

  

So we need to remind ourselves that we are much larger than them and that they live in our world. We have complete control over that world. We can make it good and we can make it bad. We have to also realise that domestic cats are not "independent" to the point where they can be left alone all day. They are social animals. They have learned to be sociable with their human companions and other cats and dogs. Therefore we need to be around them, interacting with them.

  

As one last point worth making and that is the obesity epidemic. This is almost like loving a cat too much. It almost inevitably boils down to providing a cat with too much food and not enough activity. The simple fix for feline obesity is to feed in a more controlled way and interact with your cat to play a lot more. The first is easier to do than the second and it means providing high quality cat food, no dry cat food ideally, and rationing the portions. Your cat will complain initially until he gets used to it. Obesity causes health problems and loving a cat by providing too many treats causing health problems is not truly loving your cat or respecting him or her either.

A Quarter of UK Pet Owners Would Give up Their Pet If They Had a New Baby

It may surprise people that today, December 25, 2015, a quarter of UK pet owners would surrender their cat or dog if they had a new baby on the way. This clearly means that a very large percentage of pet owners in the UK believe that a cat or dog is dangerous to a baby. It may be true for a dog because there are, rarely, cases of babies being attacked by dogs. Although I'm sure these attacks are ultimately down to careless dog ownership.

However, I don't have an example of domestic cats hurting babies. It is a fallacy that the domestic cat presents a danger to a baby. The opposite is nearer the truth. Some people believe that a cat's faeces are a hazard to the unborn baby. I have written an article about that sometime ago which can be read if you click on this link. The hazard is extremely slight and can be protected against quite easily. The danger is certainly exaggerated.

If a person wishes to adopt a cat while at the same time carrying an intention to have a baby in the not too distant future then they should not adopt a cat. Surrendering a cat to a rescue centre should be the very last option and only taken under very severe conditions. Cats are not throwaway creatures to adopt and discard at a person's whim. We know that.

A study also reported that 30% of UK dogs are abandoned in the months just after Christmas. This once again is another aspect of the rather careless, throwaway mentality of some cat and dog caretakers.

The same study reported that 8% of the 2000 pet owners participating had admitted that they had surrendered a cat or dog in the past when they had a newborn.

About 40% of people in a relationship stated that they had not made any plans as to what would happen to their cat or dog if they split up and went their own way while only 34% said that they would try to keep their cat or dog if they separated from their partner. That does not indicate a fantastic attachment between person and pet.

According to the UK's main dog adoption website, 67% of rescue centres said that the surrender of dogs was on the increase.

The famous London animal shelter, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, said that there been increase in people wishing to surrender their pets to their rescue centre in order to go on a summer holiday because they were unable to afford a boarding kennels or find someone to look after their cat or dog. Clearly this is shocking once again and indicates a lack of proper connection between pet and person. These people should not look after a cat or dog. That is obvious. Today there are too many people in the UK and I suspect anymore else in the world who are not suited, if we are honest, to be a responsible caretaker of a cat or dog.

The research comes from Co-op insurance and a poll conducted by One Poll.