Cat Chit Chat

The newspapers are reporting on an aspect of the cost of living crisis in the UK which is troubling to me and other animal advocates. People are giving up cats and dogs in greater numbers than normal and the RSPCA as a shelter and sanctuary is running out of space. They are going on waiting lists. I suspect that this problem is compounded by the end of Covid during which people adopted more cats and dogs than usual to keep themselves company. These were arguably irresponsible adoptions without concern for the long-term consequences and responsibilities. One of 11 puppies thrown away like rubbish in Norfolk, UK. Photo: RSPCA. See story below . And on their Facebook page, the RSPCA illustrate the callousness with which some British citizens throw away their pets. They don't bother to contact the RSPCA or any other shelter to offer them their companion animal but they simply put them in plastic bags and leave them next to the rubbish. July 25, 2022 The RSPCA have an appeal for informa

Here is a nice TikTok video of a charming young woman telling us why she wanted a cat tattoo but not of her cat. She was correctly anxious about the tattoo not being a decent likeness of her cat. That would have been too difficult to bear. So, she took a picture from Messrs Google. This makes a lot of sense to me. I am sure that it is impossible for a tattoo artist to accurately replicate the appearance of your cat. It is always going to be a failure. To play the video please click on the center play button and then the play button lower left! 😎. Yes, I know it is a very high-tech website. I wrote the section below in 2008, 14 years ago! The bit above has been added on June 27th 2022. I felt that the page needed to be refreshed. Part 2 Something completely different for me - picture of a cat tattoo . Cat tattoos are popular it seems. As my site is called "Pictures of Cats" it means any pictures of cats and not just photographs of cats. There is the interesting dimension of w

From time to time, on a regular basis, there are calls to restrict the movements of domestic cats in order to protect wildlife specifically birds and in this instance bats. So, the call is for a night-time curfew for domestic cats. The first point to make is that we don't know how many bats are killed by domestic cats at night. I strongly suspect that it is very few indeed. But it might depend where the cat lives. In the UK we just don't see bats flying around at night but perhaps I'm being too casual about it. On a more important point, bats are more likely to be carriers of rabies in the US, for example. This is not an issue in the UK. However, this must be a factor for keeping cats inside at night.  Where a cat wants to be at night despite the rain. Image in the public domain. And with respect to birds, I recently wrote about an RSPB statement that there is no scientific support that domestic cats threaten bird populations in the UK and I would suspect the same applies

The first important point to note is that the question asks why a cat's eyes are ALWAYS dilated. In other words, this is a permanent state of affairs. In this state of affairs, the irises do not contract to a narrow pupil but there are always wide open with a big circular black orb for the eye and almost no visible iris. Dilated pupils of a cat. The second point to note is that the muscles of the iris contract to allow much less light through the pupil on a bright day. And they relax to let in more light when the conditions are dark. There is a 135 times difference in the amount of light that the iris allows to pass into the eye between wide open and closed to a slit. The nerves of the retina send a signal to the brain which sends another signal to the irises to relax or contract depending upon the light conditions. If the retina is malfunctioning and not able to convert light into an image the brain receives a signal that the light conditions are dim and then directs the iris to o

What do you think? Are these the wise words of a young man on TikTok or just a nice, convenient analogy? I don't think it is as straightforward as he makes out. It get the message but you can't pigeon hole all females in the same group in terms of their attitude towards dating and the same goes for males.  It is all depends on many things. Today in particular with the woke movement, you cannot pigeonhole all females and all males as separate groups. There is an entirely fluid group in the middle made up of members of the LGBTQIA+ community and so on.  The sexual preferences and gender of all humanity is a spectrum. You cannot compartmentalise it in the little boxes. It is far better to visualise it as a continuous spectrum. Nonetheless, I quite like this bloke's analogy which he delivers with confidence and clearly with first hand experience. Note: to run this video, click on the center play button followed by the play button bottom-left 😎. High tech. Although there is ano

Olga Pavolvska and her daughter, Masha are refugees from Ukraine who were welcomed in the UK as a consequence of Putin's invasion of their country. They are among more than 82,000 others from Ukraine in the UK. Olga found settling in the UK difficult. Her daughter, Masha, has found it easier because her English is better and being younger she is arguably more adaptable. She has made friends. Masha and her mother Olga. She will remain in the UK while her mother will return to Ukraine. Photo: Vicki Couchman. While her mother will return to Ukraine shortly, Masha, 15, will stay and has been offered a free place at a private school in September. She plans to go to university in the UK afterwards. Of course she misses her home in Ukraine and her friends the but it appears that she is settling well in the UK. In an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper, Olga said: "It has been difficult and sad. I miss my dog Bekky, my cat Dafne my home and all my plants." And of course she

There is a video called: "Cats go bug-hunting after spotting mosquito in the house". The description is misleading. The owner is holding up his cat above his head in the hope and expectation that the cat catches a mosquito. It seems horribly contrived and it looks like they decided to make a funny video but actually it's very boring. cat held up to catch a mosquito. Silly idea and it might cause a health problem for the cat. Screenshot from video, It happened in the UK. One of the cats is a Siamese called Pixie and the other cat is a tabby called Wrex. Not only is the video badly contrived, I do not think that it is a good idea either. It seems possible to me that a mosquito could bite the inside of a cat's mouth if they are held up to a mosquito like this. Or they might bite the ear flaps where the fur and skin is thin. Although the possibility of disease transmission from mosquito the cat is slight, it must exist. In the UK I would have thought there is little risk