This is my three legged black cat, Charlie. I love him, of course. He gets around well but his disability has made him adapt considerably and he is no where near as mobile as he would have been if he had not lost his front right leg. Charlie my 3 legged cat - photo: Michael Broad @ PoC I don't know, by the way, how he lost his leg. He was adopted by my mother from an RSPCA shelter in Hertfordshire, England. You can see this picture on the main website, Pictures of Cats org here: Three Legged Cat Picture . This linked page talks a bit about the photography too. Right now it is 7:30 pm and he is out in the garden exploring. It is dark and I am a bit concerned. We get foxes in the garden but I don't think foxes can cope with a large cat like Charlie. He is still quite macho despite the lost leg. He has a fine single coat that is easy to comb and which fleas don't like as it is too thin. Fleas like nice warm and thick double coats with a nice density packed down lay

Nice photo - which has disappeared - sorry. It has a seriously metallic look. This chunky golden metallic tabby cat has eyes that are reflecting light sufficiently to cause a reflection on what seems to be a stainless steal surface surrounding the sink. A cat's eyes have a reflective layer behind the retina which boosts the light impacting on the retina. The gets gets two bites of the cherry so to speak. The "M" tabby mark on the forehead is no so much an "M" but lighting! This is a very special M mark. Cats are often seen in sinks curled up. Cats often like hard surfaces to sleep on. The idea of a cosy warm basket of some sort looks good to us but not always good to a cat. I think it is because cats are perpetually in full winter clothes. It must get hot on a soft surface that prevents air flow around the body. See more on the tabby cat . The photo is by -PhotoRoberto- and despite being fully protected by copyright it is published here because this w

I couldn't resist publishing this well known photograph on this Blogger site because I have just finished a post on the main site about the word "clowder" and its origins. And this picture really is of a clowder of cats in the shade. A clowder as you might know is a group of cats in one place. The word clowder comes from old English words such as clotter (which produced the modern word clutter) and clodder meaning a clotted mass. Well, I wouldn't quite call these cats a clotted mass, just a content group of cats seeking relief from the sun. A group of kittens in one place is called a "kindle" after the word "kendel" or "kendal" or "kyndyll". See more on the word, clowder . The photo was taken in a cat shelter in in Richmond BC Canada.This is the 1000th post on this blog - now there is a useless piece of information. See the original photo in large format . From A Clowder of Cats in the Shade to Home Page

Photo by IMP1 The above cats are described as "Wat Arun cats" by the photographer. The photograph was taken in Thailand. What are Wat Arun cats and how many cats can you see - yes three? There is a nice symmetry or harmony in this photograph. The stone cats are  mother and offspring, I suspect. The mother is washing her paw. The daughter is watching and waiting. The live temple cat behind them is also grooming itself and in a similar pose. Wat Arun cats are temple cats and this is a Bhuddist temple at Wat Arun in Bangkok, Thailand. The full address is: Bangkok Yai, Bangkok 10600, Thailand. The full name of the temple is Wat Arunratchawararam Ratchaworamahawihan (วัดอรุณราชวรารามราชวรมหาวิหาร) (try and pronounce that). This is where it is: View Larger Map The temple is a well known landmark in Bangkok and is also known as the Temple of the Dawn (as it reflects the early morning light). This website incidentally supports a group of temple cats in Phuket, Thailand thr

This is Emerson. He is a mackerel tabby cat. I am not sure if he is brown or grey because I think there is a slight blue or cyan cast over the picture due to the room light which is the main source of light for this photograph. As the light is blue, the brown tabby coat may have been neutralised to look grey. Not sure if I am correct. Maybe the white balance could have been adjusted? What do I know about white balance! This photo is interesting, however. It is different from the usual cat photograph. It looks set up. The fish is salmon. Does Emerson like fish? Probably yes but not all cats like fish. My Charlie prefers Marks & Spencer roast chicken for example. He will eat fish but only as a backstop food. Cats rely heavily on smell to get an appetite for a certain type of food so even a favorite food may be just sniffed at and left if it is cold and has no smell. When Charlie leaves a bit of human food (I only give him a limit amount of it) I micowave it if it has been standin

This is Tootsie, a polydactyl Maine Coon cat that lives with an American women who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Her Flickr name is valleygirl_tka I know Valley Girl as she is a work colleague of mine, although I have never met her. She has a website called, teh kitteh antidote/anecdote . Now that is a very fancy name for a website. It took me a little while to realise that it is a play on words, mispelled words (notice I spelled "spelled" correctly!). It is also a play on mistyped words and mixed up words. Great name for a website and the title does not start with a capital letter just to add a bit of spice. Oh, I almost forgot, Valley Girl's (VG for short) website is a subdomain of my maine (mispelled) site called, Pictures of cats.org or PoC for short. A subdomain is a domain that is separate from but part of the main domain. It is a separate website but included in statistical reports such as for Alexa traffic reports. Well I think Alexa treats it as part of PoC

This is Neena at a private cat sanctuary at Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. This is an extraordinary cat sanctuary. It is private so I presume that they are funded by donations although I sense that in this case that might not be the way it is funded. It is not a cat shelter in the classic sense (i.e. cats rescued and rehomed) but a true sanctuary where cats that are rescued can call it their home. It is instant re-homing! That said the cats are available for adoption but apparently the sanctuary owners don't allow most of the cats to go to new homes (perhaps the offers from prospective owners are not good enough, which wouldn't surprise me as the sanctuary seems to be better than most homes!) "Super premium" cat food is served and medical care is available twice weekly. Forget the private cat keepers of Brazil, forget the USA or anywhere elese, this is the best cat home in the world. There are a staff of 4 and about 300 cats as far as I remember. And what about this fin

Sphynx cat Photo by Mario Izquierdo (Flickr) This is an amazing photograph of a cat but Sphynx cats do make amazing photographs because you get beautiful tones particularly in black and white as is the case here and as the cat is hairless or nearly so you get all those lovely wrinkles that produce such rich texture and interesting shapes. This though is a particularly good example of a Sphynx cat photo as it is slightly mysterious. It is hard at first to figure out exactly what is going on. Yet on close inspection we can see that this is a small cat as it is in the hand of the owner (unless I am completely mistaken!). Another thing about this photo that is a bit mysterious is that although this cat has its digits extended (the phalanges of its paw extended) as if to grab something to stabilise itself as it has been held by the person, there are no claws that I can see. You would normally see claws under these circumstances in my experience. If I am correct, that means this c

Rafael - a rescue cat living in Brazil This is a gorgeous cat and a fine photograph. Firstly, I like the colours. Rafael is blue, well that is a cat fancy term that actually means a blue-grey which is the result of the dilute gene ( dd ) turning black grey. The grey cat has to to homozygous for this gene as it is a recessive gene . The grey is nicely offset by the pink ears. They are pink because they are back lit, the light is coming through them. This is a nice active photograph too. Rafael is walking purposefully towards his target! His eyes are set firmly ahead. He is a young cat judging by the size, expression and his whiskers that look quite fine. There are a group of cats that I call the grey cat breeds . The only colour that these cats can be is the colour that you see above - blue-grey. The best known of this select group is the Chartreux , a traditional French purebred cat with a long and distinguished history and a connection to monks and the Christian Crusades .

Finegan. Click on the picture to go to the Flickr original What about this cat? Well, he is an ordinary but extraordinary cat as all cats are extraordinary, certainly in terms of their agility. I feed a stray cat, who I named, Timmy , who comes about once a day. He comes over a high brick wall (about 7 feet in height). He simply ambles up to it and jumps to the top. Cats leap their way to about two thirds up the wall then almost climb the remainder with their claws and momentum. Finegan looks like an athletic cat as he is slender and probably not too heavy. He has blue eyes, Blue eyes are eyes where the pigment has been taken out of the iris. Cats that are white and coloured (bicolors) sometimes have blue eyes as the piebald gene or whiting gene turns the eyes blue as well as parts of the coat white. All white cats sometimes have odd-eyes , one coloured and one blue. The famous white Turkish Angoras have odd eyes sometimes as I recall. Finnegan has a beautiful tabby "M&quo

Biofuels don't even work and they are killing the Sumatran tiger. The Sumatran tiger as you would expect lives on the island of Sumatra, which is one of the islands of Asia (another is the third largest island in the world, Borneo) that is being deforested in part to make way for plantations where biofuels are grown.   Sumatran tiger - photo by Craig Grobler (Flickr) Biofuels are meant to reduce carbon emissions, which in turn will help to control, over the long term, global warming. Biofuels are produced from plant matter on plantations. For example Palm oil, like other vegetable oils, can be used to create biodiesel for internal combustion engines. Biodiesel has been promoted as a renewable energy source to reduce net emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Therefore, biodiesel is seen as a way to decrease the impact of the greenhouse effect and as a way of diversifying energy supplies to assist national energy security plans ( Wikipedia authors ). Palm oil is extrac