Cat Chit Chat

The first bit of strange cat stuff is a weird picture of a….well it is obviously not real. There are a lot of sites peddling a wide range of sensationalist images and videos of any subject. It is all circulating around the internet. Here is this weird photoshopped image: Despite being a bit disturbing it is well done. Next comes a video. This is a nice video but the title is… Little lion survived in Siberia due to “adoptive dogmother” . This gives the impression that the lion cub was in the wild in Siberia. As there are no lions in Siberia the cub must have been born in captivity in Siberia. The strange bit is not the dog nursing a lion but the title. Next comes “Cat Missile” This must also be a clever piece of photo editing using Photoshop or some other similar software. Next one…You have to figure out what the image is..can you see the girl? Next some images that I find disturbing: Picture above: He was up there for 18 hours! These are power cables! Not a clue how this cat

Witchcraft banned cats from the bible. Crazy? Absurd? No not really. Here is my argument. The bible contains no reference to the domestic cat whatsoever. The domestic dog is mentioned but not that frequently. Lions and leopards are referred to rarely. At the time of Christ the cat had, by mutual consent, been domesticated for more than 6,000 years. In Egypt the African wildcat had been well and truly domesticated also by consent with the cat. In other words the cat and humans gained from the relationship. For a while, the domestic cat in Egypt before the time of Christ (a cat that is the Eyptian Mau even today), was revered and worshiped. We know about that. As a result, a lot of potential existed for a least a mention in the bible. But nothing. Zilch. Rien. Porquoi? It may simply be that the authors of the bible found nothing in the domestic cat that related to their stories. That seems a fair assumption as the bible is about people. And the bible was written second hand many,

It is perhaps obvious but little discussed. Wildlife conservationists can't preserve wildlife on their own. They can't work in isolation, which sometimes seems to be the case. There are two "ends" to the wildlife conservation problem and it is a problem as wildlife is being hounded off the planet by increased human activity. At one end is the conservationists, the people who wrestle with symptoms of ever increasing human activity that destroys habitat and destroys wildlife directly as it frankly gets in the way of human activity. Most human activity is commercial activity. The conservationists are the equivalent of the veterinarians, they try and cure the illness. But despite huge efforts they are weak compared to the "illness" and, in fact, effectively powerless. They certainly are not curing the problem, just sticking a plaster over it. This is because the illness is not being tackled at source by the other party to wildlife conservation; the busin

This is a picture of male serval Morpheus looking inquisitively at me. The picture is in fact a bit misleading as he was probably figuring out how he was going to spray urine all over me. This he did not long after this photograph was taken. As mentioned, his name is Morpheus and despite looking rather sweet in this photograph, when I was with him in his enclosure I cannot say that he behaved in a particularly sweet way. That is not to criticise him. He behaved exactly as I would expect a wildcat to behave towards a human who he is unfamiliar with. He was a bit hostile and wanted to make me smell more like him! And it was pretty well impossible to avoid his spraying particularly as I was fully occupied trying to tease him into position and photograph him at the same time. Decent compositions and interesting expressions were extremely fleeting. On one occasion I placed by cat tease (a feather attached to the end of a flexible stick) to close to him and he caught me with his fron

Classic looking Siamese cat (left) and a grey cat (right) at Cat sanctuary Foz do Iguaçu, Brasil - Cats: Bishop and Bella-Donna,  Photo by fofurasfelinas In the cat fancy - the world of purebred cat shows and breeding - the Siamese cat personality is very well known as it is very distinctive. What comes to my mind immediately is the relative intelligence of the Siamese cat and its desire to speak to us, or to put it more technically its vocalisation skills. Before I go on though, let's remind ourselves that there are a number of cats that are in effect Siamese cats or at least Modern Siamese cats in terms of personality. The only difference between the following cats and the Siamese cat is their coats: Balinese - long haired Siamese ( update : Marie Clements a Balinese and Siamese cat breeder says that the Balinese has a similar but different personality. She breeds traditional Balinese cats. Read her page here ). Oriental Shorthair - wide range of coat types Oriental

This is a photomontage created by Ruth who is a passionate anti-declaw campaigner. I admire her greatly for her consistency and perseverance. The point that she is making is that although vets say laser declawing usually causes less pain, it still causes pain and in any event it is still unnecessary mutilation of the cat. Vets in the USA should be spending their time educating cat keepers not chasing the almighty dollar with new methods and gimmicks to deceive the public into thinking that declawing is acceptable and reasonable. See Ruth’s post here: LASER DECLAWING IS AS CRUEL AS ANY OTHER METHOD.

I think this is quite a nice picture for showing the three types of Siamese cats. The original Siamese cat shape is the top one. The is the Traditional Siamese and it has the nickname, “ Applehead Siamese ” because of the apple shape head (i.e. rounded in comparison to the long Modern Siamese head shape ). The Modern Siamese is the bottom one and the backlash or change away from the slender (oriental body shape) is the middle Siamese cat that I would call a classic Siamese cat and which is now a new breed called the Thai cat and which is registered with TICA but not the other cat associations.

I feel that I have to revisit the indoor outdoor cat debate. People have strong views about the subject. And they are often very polarised views. In the USA people tend to keep cats in full-time. This is a culture thing, the norm it seems. One reason for this, I sense, is because there is a much greater possibility in the US for cats that are outside to be attacked by large wild animals. There are few large wild animals in the UK that would attack a cat. It is extremely rare for a domestic cat in the UK to be attacked by a wild animal whereas in the USA coyotes are commonplace it seems to me and they attack cats. Coyotes are dog like animals to people who are unfamiliar with them. I see many indoor outdoor cat debates on the internet and many words written but I have never seen anyone mention or discuss the philosophical or more profound issues behind the whole thing. We must admit that the outdoors is the cat's natural home. It is full of fantastic stimulation, the smells, sou

Well, this is not about cats. A relief to change the topic for a while, to be honest. But there is a connection between the photograph below and cats. The photograph was taken in a meadow or very large field belonging to A1 Savannahs near Ponca City in Oklahoma. A1 Savannahs is probably the best cat breeder anywhere. I spent a very enjoyable 12 days there recently. I stayed in the guest house, a large three bedroomed house next to the farm. Harmonious serene dawn in sunny Oklahoma May 2010 - photo by Michael @ PoC The cattery is of course on the farm and next to this glorious field. For an English person (me) the weather in Oklahoma is more extreme than in Britain. Although it is probably more accurate to say that the weather in England is more dull than anywhere else. There were storms about while I was there. The hail storms are ferocious. The hail can be very large and damage property and people. Staying in the guest house it was like someone throwing tons of stones