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7-second, shallow cat video gets 3.8 million hits. The world is becoming lazy and frivolous.

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7-second, shallow cat video gets 3.8 million hits. The world is becoming lazy and frivolous. I know that I am a grumpy old man and nobody wants to listen to me. I know that nobody will read this. But I will say it anyway. This is a seven second video which has received 3.8 million hits on TikTok. It surely reminds us that the world has become lazy and frivolous. Covid-19 made the world lazy. The Millennium or Gen X generation are lazier than we were when I was a kid. There is a gradual dying of that old-fashioned idea of self-discipline. Self-indulgence is on the increase. I believe that self-discipline is being replaced by self-indulgence and I think we can thank the Internet for that. Particularly social media which is populated by navel gazing young people. YouTube is also populated by young people making rude and stupid comments. TikTok is pretty much the same. Just tons and tons of frivolous fluffy nonsensical videos which don't, for me, move forward the world. It doesn't

Holly Willoughby's self-indulgent "women-will-survive-in-a-man's-world" speech is a rip-off of Jennifer Aniston's

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The whole Philip Schofield saga is a mountain out of a molehill story of gargantuan proportions. It is ridiculous as many commenters have said. What did he do? He lied. Everyone lies. He had a consensual affair with a person of the same sex. That happens a lot too. He did nothing illegal as far as we know. So, what is going on? And Holly Willoughby's speech, for me, is sickening. It is so self-indulgent. The tone is screaming to me that women are suffering and bravely surviving in a rotten male-made world. "We will survive" is stamped all over that image of another presenter, Josie Gibson, holding her hand in support. She is playing the victim looking for sympathy.  Willoughby would not have made this bizarre, crisis speech if her co-presenter had been a woman who'd had a same-sex affair and lied about it. Image: MikeB The 'girls' against the men.  They always like to refer to themselves as 'girls' when they are women. It makes them more vulnerable in

Two Ragdoll cats go missing INSIDE their home!

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Yep, this is an example of how domestic cats can genuinely go missing even when they are full-time indoor cats and they have not escaped to the outside. It happened to me once. You're convinced that your cat has escaped the home and that you'll never see them again. You search frantically for what seems like ages and scratch your head to try and figure out where your cat or cats are. You then finally find your cat or cats tucked away in a place that you never imagined they'd be. That happened to me when I fostered a little tabby kitten who grew up to became my best friend. He'd placed himself inside the double-bed storage area under the mattress. Zara with her Ragdolls. Image: Instagram In the case of Love Island's Zara McDermott, her cats were hidden inside an electrical cupboard in the basement with the door jammed shut! Zara said: "I just had a near mental breakdown because I home and I couldn't find the cats anywhere, I spent 20 mins searching every roo

Is the Bengal cat from Bangladesh!?

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To those in the cat fancy the question in the title seems odd. Even stupid but there is a little bit of truth in it. I'll explain. Some cat fancy afficionados might say that, of course the Bengal cat is not from Bangladesh. The Bengal cat is a wild cat hybrid created by an American Jean Mill in America in the 1960s to 1980s by crossing domestic cats with the Asiatic leopard cat (aka leopard cat). She was living in Yuma, Arizona at the time. The Bengal cat is therefore from America.  It was actually quite a complicated and extensive process with a number of foundation cats as shown in the picture below. Foundation cats for Bengal cat breed. Image: MikeB It was created during a time when there was a keen interest in creating through selective breeding novel cat breeds including wild cat hybrids which are domestic cats with some wild cat DNA within them. RELATED: Bengal cat - comprehensive page . The leopard cat is a small wild cat species about the size of a domestic cat and fiercely

Two types of dog: who's the smarter or braver?

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 The video says it all: Comment : it seems to me that the dog who crossed the stream in the water is braver/bolder but less smart than the dog who finds the more elegant and safer route which took longer. There are other issues. The stream-crossing dog may have been unaware of the bridge while the bridge taker knew about it. Neither followed their leader/caregiver and used the fallen tree. Why, I wonder? Maybe it looked unsafe. The dog has an instinct to make these decisions.

147 words which explain why cat declawing is barbaric and unnecessary

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This is a 147-word letter to the editor on the Detroit Free Press website that was pointed out to me by a mate of mine, Doug, and which needs to be aired and recycled for as many people as possible to see. It sums up what is so immoral and cruel about this operation which has been and continues to be encouraged by many thousands of veterinarians in the United States. It is a shocking state of affairs when you consider that each vet who amputates the distal joint of each fore-toe of a kitten does so in gross breach of their solemn oath not to harm patients. In 99.99% of cases declawing is carried out for non-therapeutic reasons and therefore is a breach of oath. As such the operation is arguably a assault by a professional on a kitten and a crime under America's animal welfare laws. RELATED:  Epidemic of Botched Cat Declaw Operations . Here is the letter - thanks Melissa Sanger in Brighton: As a licensed veterinary technician, I have tried to comfort cats as they writhe in pain, de

Stoic tabby cat epitomises the strength of Ukrainians against murderous Russian aggression

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I love the Defense of Ukraine photos and videos. They are so professionally produced. This one so beautifully sums up the stoic attitude of Ukrainians in the face of the criminal and murderous bombardment of their homes by Putin. He wants to kill old ladies and their cats. He is a criminal madman. Stoic tabby cat epitomises the strength of Ukrainians against murderous Russian aggression. Screenshot. This sweet-looking tabby is dressed as if in a hijab. The blanket is to keep her warm. She looks calm if a little pissed off which is to be expected. Her brow is furrowed. She looks dead ahead. I love the expression. Who said that domestic cats don't have expressive faces?! The domestic cats of Ukraine have suffered as much as their caregivers. Many have been killed. Many have lost their caregiver and become feral. Then they scavenge for food among the ruins of their home and the homes of others. This tabby cat appears to be in a shelter, probably a station of Kyiv's underground rai