Cat Chit Chat

Cat’s Brain Releases the Same Love Hormone as Humans It has been found that mammals, which of course includes the domestic cat, produce a hormone in a part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which has been described as the "love hormone".  It's technical name is "oxytocin". The hormone is associated with friendliness and, for example, sexual intercourse and is produced when animals interact with themselves, or when people interact with animals, on a friendly and intimate level. Because there's a great similarity in the way this hormone is produced by both the human-animal and the animal it has been concluded that the domestic cat feels similar emotions to people when they fall in love. I have extended that presumption a little bit because we do not know exactly how animals feel including of course the domestic cat but I think it is fair to say that if the production of the hormone is very similar and as the hormone is produced during intimate relat

Animal World’s Equivalent of the Victoria Cross. Discussion Recently, a Labrador named Sasha won the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross when serving the military in Afghanistan, sniffing out explosives.  Both she and her handler Sgt Dodds was shot dead in 2008 while on patrol. During military service in Afghanistan, Sasha had made 15 confirmed findings of explosives clearly saving many lives while exposing herself to injury and death (as was her handler). What a wonderful dog but are people as wonderful?  Is it right that we should put a wonderful dog into a war zone to help win the war for Americans and British against the Taliban? A dog doesn't know anything about war.  Sasha was simply trained to smell the odour of explosives.  She never knew what explosions actually were and had no idea that she was helping to protect military personnel fighting a war. Wars are a complete failure and the Afghanistan war is more of failure than other wars.  This is failure upon fail

25 Cats Found Murdered in Yonkers, New York: An Atrocious Act of Animal Cruelty At the heart of human society there is a darkness which sometimes presents itself to the public in the form of unspeakable evil and the victims of this evil are often feral or stray cat because they are some of the most vulnerable creatures on the planet.  No one hates as much as a cat hater and it doesn't take long for a cat hater to find a cat to abuse, to be cruel to, to kill and then to hang up in a black plastic bin liner just for the hell of it. Photo: SPCA of Westchester There is something demented about this act of mass cat cruelty because of the black bags containing the dead bodies of the cats and kittens which have been hung from the branches of a tree in a wood overlooking the Hudson River. The cats and kittens inside the bags had been killed with a blunt instrument.  Some had been killed a long time ago and were skeletons while others were killed within days.  That would indicate

Leopard Cat In Taiwan Under Threat from Habitat Loss Another rather ordinary example of habitat loss which threatens another wild cat species.  That said, this is the first time that I've written about a wild cat species in Taiwan.  The leopard cat is present over large parts of Asia but as usual under constant threat.  Apparently, they are found on plantations because they have adapted well. In this instance, in an area in central-west Taiwan (Miaoli County), which appears to be fairly urbanised already, a group of companies has decided to develop in an area where the leopard cat lives, without proper planning permission and without an environmental impact assessment having been carried out beforehand. There are an estimated 500 leopard cats in the area we are informed. The leopard cat is the wild cat half of the domestic Bengal cat and is called "Rock Tiger" (Joho) in Taiwan. I sense, but I have no firm evidence, that this sort of business expansion, which appears

Is my cat suffering paw pain from a declaw she endured as a young kitty? This is possibly a fairly classic case of botched domestic cat declaw surgery on a kitten which is causing continuing pain and discomfort which in turn has led to inappropriate elimination because walking on cat litter is painful. The only way to find out whether the declaw surgery has been botched and if there are fragments of bone in the cat's paw or there is re-growth of the claw is by x-ray and that costs money and so, of course, will the follow-up surgery if there is something wrong. When you consider that a veterinarian performs declaw surgery on all 10 toes on the fore-paws of a cat in about 15 mins you can see the potential for getting it, wrong can't you?  Most often veterinarians use a simple guillotine device a bit like garden secateurs .  It's quite horrendous really when you think about it. The vet, of course, presumes that the excruciating pain suffered by the cat after the operat

Validity Of All Animal Testing on Mice Called into Question When a mouse is in the presence of a man, the mouse thinks that the man is another mouse trespassing on his territory and as a consequence the mouse becomes stressed, highly stressed in fact.  The reason this happens is because men and mice have the same pheromones.  The presence of stress reduces the experience of pain in the mouse.  This skews results in animal tests carried out on mice. This finding has called into question perhaps all of the animal experiments on mice that have been conducted by men since the beginning of animal experiments, which must be an awful lot of experiments because in the United Kingdom about 67% of all animal testing is conducted on mice (almost 2,000,000 mice were used in 2004). If we can say that all the experiments conducted on mice can at least be called into question or at least there are doubts about the results of experiments, then I would have thought that this substantially damages

Families Torn Apart by the Arkansas Tornadoes 2014 Of course, when I refer to “families", I include companion animals and not only the relationship between people and their pets but also the relationship between pets themselves.  They're all part of the family and the family unit. In this case we have a cat and dog.  The dog's name is Lucille and she has been found, thankfully, but unfortunately the cat whose name is Opel is yet to be found. Having visited the Facebook page setup to reunite people with their companion animals, I have noticed that there are far more dogs posted than cats. I don't know whether that is significant or not. It just might be that people in that part of Arkansas prefer dogs. Or it might be the case - and I have rather black thoughts are, as black as that tornado cloud in the picture - that people are more concerned about their lost dog than they are about their lost cat. If, by chance, that is true it is in line with statistics

Picture of Tabby Cat Rescued after Arkansas and Oklahoma Tornadoes April 2014 This is a screenshot from a video taken in Oklahoma just south of Oklahoma City which is where the tornadoes passed across Oklahoma and also Arkansas and I believe other states in the centre of America.  The date is April 2040 and there's been lots of devastation in that part of America with, of course, lots of companion cats and dogs are being killed or lost. This cute little tabby cat - with a collar by the way which I hope helps to be reunited with her owner - was rescued by the lady in the pink dress.  I like the photograph because there is tenderness in the woman's eyes, there is fear and anxiety in the cat's eyes and there is total devastation behind them both. The result of all this devastation is a massive job on hand to reunite those pets (that survived) with their human guardians and caretakers.  There is, though, a lot of dedication from many wonderful people who are highly co

Are You Squeamish about Seeing Your Cat’s Bottom? This is actually a serious question although it looks like it's a bit of a joke.  Some people are squeamish about their cat's bottom.  They don't like their cat presenting their bottom to them.  It feels impolite to a human but to a cat it is neither here nor there, it means nothing and in fact cats frequently present their bottom to us because they like to sleep next to us but facing away from us and when they settle down guess what they do: you get their bottom in-your-face. No big deal.  Get used to it.  It's all natural and it's all part of a domestic cat's anatomy.  Every part of a domestic cat's anatomy is as good as the other.  A genuine cat lover is a very practical, down-to-earth person who likes naturalness. Some people don't like it when cats lick their bottom to clean it.  They think it is unclean and horrible. Some don't like to clean out cat litter trays.  The modern person actuall

Are They Your Cat’s Ashes? The link above takes you to an essay about the cremation of a domestic cat but it covers a lot more than that so make a cup of tea before you start reading it. As I understood the article, the message is that you might not be given your cat's ashes even when you ask for an individual cremation at an established pet crematorium. This may not worry people but it would worry me.  Although, it has to be said that once an animal or a human being is cremated there is no vestige whatsoever remaining of that person or animal.  There is no DNA in the ashes.  Ashes are ashes and they could be the ashes of a piece of wood or a piece of flesh or bone.  There are all the same. Therefore, if you request an individual pet cremation you are doing so for entirely emotional reasons because what you receive back is an emotional connection with your lost cat but it is not a direct physical connection as nothing of her or him remains after cremation. That said, an e

The Social Function of Tail Up in Domestic Cats The tail up position of the domestic cat is a signal to the other cat that the meeting is to be amicable. This position of the domestic cat's tail has evolved because the domestic cat has adapted to living in groups and being a social animal, whereas the domestic cat's wild ancestor is the African wildcat, which is a solitary creature. The only other cat species that presents the tail up position is the lion because they are the only species of wild cat that live in groups called prides.  They lion's tail up position is very similar to the domestic cat's except that the tip of the tail droops forward. So, the domestic cat's tail up position has evolved out of the hierarchical system that developed because they learned to live in groups. In hierarchical systems you have dominant and submissive cats-we all know that.  And there will be a top cat in a group.  When a cat who is not at the top greets the top cat he

Pets Lost and Found From Arkansas Tornado April 27 2014 I am just spreading the word in trying to help to reunite pets with people who have been separated as a result of the recent Arkansas tornado of April 27, 2014. There is a Facebook webpage where people can post comments and pictures etc to help in the reuniting process. If you click on the link above at the top of this page it will take you to another web page where there are links to FB.  Sorry but I can't say much more right now because I am pushed for time.

Missouri Mother of Two Goes to Jail Over Family Cat I am reliably informed that keeping a domestic cat in America is becoming more and more restrictive in that there are more restrictions on letting your cat go outside without supervision or on a leash.  It seems that the good old days of letting a cat go wandering around the house are gradually coming to an end.  I had no idea that there was a gradual increase in bylaws or local laws placing restrictions upon cat ownership and letting the cat go outside. The Family. The lady who was made a criminal is top right. Anyway, this Missouri mother adopted a cat called Thriller and she had a daughter aged 2 (see above).  The daughter inadvertently let their cat outside and he was eventually picked up I suppose by animal control and taken to a shelter. Mom had to pay a fine to the cat shelter to recover her cat and although she will wasn't aware of it, she had to attend court.  She failed to attend court and as a result she had i

Drones Prove Effective in the Fight against Wildlife Poaching in Kenya This is the first time that drones have been used for an activity that I approve of and like: wildlife conservation.  I could not think of a better use of technology to beat the wildlife poachers. We are all familiar with drones.  They come in a variety of sizes and shapes and uses.  The ones we usually see are quite large and may have rockets underneath their wings and sensors and cameras at the front.  Other ones are like model helicopters but there's more than one rotor: usually four. And underneath the rotors is a camera.  I suspect this is the one that they are using in Kenyan on a trial run. They are controlled remotely on the ground. Using a drone to scare away poachers who are frightened to be identified has proved exceptionally successful with poaching being reduced by 96%, apparently, in the area of the trial. Because of the success the Kenyan authorities have decided to extend the use of dr

Will Women Veterinarians Stop the Declawing of Cats In the USA? It seems that I have an old-fashioned view point that women are nurturers and men are hunters.  I had thought that that approach to life was genetically programmed into us.  And if it is, it must be very difficult for a female veterinarian to remove the top of the 10 toes of the front paws of a cat when the operation carries no benefit whatsoever for the cat and is done solely for the benefit of the cat's owner and on her instructions. If a person is a nurturer they want to nurture!  They want to nourish the person or animal or baby.  They want to make sure that the patient is cared for well and gets better.  They want to help the patient if the nurturer is a veterinarian.  This should be hardwired into the brain of a female veterinarian.  But apparently not. Despite the fact that 50% of American veterinarians are women there has been no impact upon the number of cats declawed in America.  It appears that female

Heaven is real: Which pet do you hope to spend eternity with? Is heaven really real?  We'll never know, will we?  Heaven is not real because it is only in the imagination or in our minds.  It is not tangible.  There is no evidence of it despite what some people might say.  The title to this post and the linked post itself was written by Elisa, a regular contributor to the main website. I don't believe that heaven is real but it doesn't stop me wanting to spend eternity with a particular cat who has passed on.  She died 20 years ago.  She died in an accident.  The accident was my fault.  I had just moved home because I just got divorced and the new home I moved to had a nice garden. There was a road outside but it wasn't that busy.  I wanted to let her go out but I was careless.  I was too free about her going out. At the time I was working very hard so I was away from the home all day.  I've learnt some hard lessons since then.  One day when I came back home s

Have I Given My Cat The Flu? The conventional view is that a person cannot give their cat the flu and neither can a cat give their human guardian the flu because viruses are species-specific. However, there was one reported case of swine flu being given to a cat by his owner. That single example does open the door to the possibility, as far as I'm concerned, that there may be other unrecorded examples of transmission of viruses between cats and people.  We don't know and I suspect that nobody is checking.  Viruses mutate.  There are new viruses.  Is it possible that one of these viruses can be transmitted between a person and their cat? The reason why I raise this question is because both my cat and I have exactly the same symptoms as I dictate this.  He has a cold and I have a cold.  He sneezes (very loudly) and I sneeze and feel a bit poorly.  My joints ache a bit.  His cold started at the same time that my cold started.  Of course, this may not be a cold.  It could be

Bacteria Pasteurella Multocida in Mouth of Cat Can Cause Meningitis There is one case reported on the Internet of a domestic cat licking a baby's bottle and thereby transmitting to the baby a certain bacteria in the cat's mouth to the baby whereupon the baby developed meningitis.  This is extremely rare and it should not worry mothers but I am reporting it nonetheless. This particular bacteria mentioned in the title and the link above can of course be deposited under the skin of a person if a cat bites a person but let me say right away that there really is never a good reason why a cat bites a person because cat bites can always be avoided by the person provided he or she adopts an aware and intelligent approach to their interactions with the domestic cat.  It may be harder to deal with feral cats and avoid scratches and bites but then again it depends upon how the person handles the cats and interacts with them.  It is in the hands of the person literally to manage themse

Naming Your Black Cat Or Dog After A Well-known Black Person A well-known television presenter in Britain tweeted that he named his black dog, a Scottish terrier, after a black footballer.  Is this an example of inadvertent racism or is the criticism, by some people of this presenter, an example of political correctness? The television presenter is Jeremy Clarkson and he's just adopted a Scottish terrier which is a black dog. The well-known footballer is Didier Drogba. Didier is a top-flight football of great talent who used to play in the Premier league in England, which is considered to be the best football league in the world by some.  I believe that he is currently playing for a Turkish football club called Galatasaray but he may not renew his contract.  I understand that he is possibly somewhere near the end of his footballing career. Anyway, that isn't the point.  The big point is whether Jeremy Clarkson is inadvertently being racist or is he just being funny?  Jere

Feral Cats Blamed for Flea Infestation At Irish Hospital This is a classic case of blaming the feral cat when no other reason could be found especially when that other reason was quite likely to be people.  If there is a competition between a problem being caused by a feral cat or a person you know that the cat will be the cause of the problem. It is obviously very unusual for there to be a cat flea infestation inside a hospital.  However, it is not that unusual, I suspect, for feral cats to live near hospitals because where there are hospitals there are kitchens to feed the patients and where there are kitchens there is lots of food in bins outside the hospital; an ideal source of sustenance for a group of feral cats. However, it seems that the hospital, on this occasion, was too eager to blame the cats and used a pest control company to trap them and kill them although it is said that they were euthanised by a veterinarian.   Euthanising a healthy cat is not euthanasia is strai

The Human Species Is Destroying Planet Earth This is an article by Ruth.  Ruth is a regular contributor to the main website.  I don't know how many people think that the human species is destroying planet Earth.  Do you think like that?  Do you think Ruth is being too pessimistic and negative.  Or do you think she's being realistic and observant? A lot of people are very interested in their little world, the world that they inhabit and either don't have time or the inclination to look beyond that, to the wider picture and to the consequences of their actions and how their actions impact on, for example nature and the environment. There are other people who understand how their actions impact upon the environment but do nothing to minimise that impact if it is a negative one because they're too busy surviving and trying to get on in the world.  As very few other people, relatively, are interested in conserving the planet and doing something about the environment, a

China-Eating Wildlife-Tightening Up and Enforcement of Existing Law

This Californian cougar looks very unhappy and so he should because he has mange which makes his fur look motley and it makes him look unkempt but it is also because he has eaten rodents which have been killed with rat poison. He must feel awful. He looks miserable. AP Photo - Mountain lion suffering from mange and rat poison As a result the cougar has been poisoned with rat poison. Not so long ago he appeared strong and healthy when he was wandering through a wilderness park in the middle of Los Angeles. And now he looks a mess and it is unclear whether he will survive. Although he has been treated and sent on his way. This mountain lion has been trapped before and wears a radio collar. The cat has a number P–22. Read much more on this well-known cougar There may be a connection between this cat getting mange and being poisoned by the anticoagulant rodenticide. Apparently, mange in wild cats is rare and only two other mountain lions in the 12 year National Park Servi

Cat owners should be open to the possibility that their cat has arthritis. This is particularly so if their cat is elderly and/or overweight. We know that in people arthritis causes a lot of discomfort and it severely affects the lives of people. We also know that domestic cat hide their discomfort and their pain. The masking of the discomfort and pain of arthritis makes it difficult to diagnose.  He has arthritis of the elbow and is on medication. Veterinarians will admit that diagnosis of feline arthritis is underreported. Not enough vets are diagnosing arthritis. One reason why feline arthritis may be more prevalent than people think it is, is because the cat companion is becoming ever more overweight. We know that the extra burden of weight on joints can lead to arthritis. The pet market place is very valuable to manufacturers and they are forever trying to sell more products to pet owners including cat and dog food that looks attractive to people. The cat treats are a mode

This is a video of camera trap photographs of the elusive Andean Mountain cat. This is the most endangered wild cat species in the Americas. Almost the only way to photograph this cat is through camera traps although Jim Sanderson has photographed this cat with a regular camera as far as I am aware. Nearly all the photographs that one sees of this cat species on the Internet are by Jim Sanderson. You see the same photographs over and over again because there are so few photographs of this cat. Jim Sanderson PhD is the world's foremost small wild cat species expert. This cat is about the same size as a regular sized domestic cat. However, you would not mistake this cat for a domestic cat.  The wild look and the thick tail are notable differences. The Andean mountain cat tail is thicker and more functional. The tail of this cat is used for balance negotiating rocky slopes etc. in the Andes. The coat is pretty much a regular tabby coat so this is a tabby cat but a rather special one a

Big cat rescue make a point that had occurred to me for long time which is that the state governmental agencies who regulate the hunting of the cougar are funded through the license fees that permit people to hunt. This must be an incorrect and ill-thought out process. If the regulatory agencies are funded by license fees then they will naturally wish to hand out as many licenses as they possibly can which will lead to a tendency to issue too many licenses for the sake of increased income. If too many licences are issued then too many cougars are shot and in addition the regulatory agency is no longer doing its job in protecting wildlife and ensuring that there is a balance between people and cat. Because too many cougars are shot, the agency then have to sell the idea to the public that there are plenty of cougars about. Do they concoct sightings and are the sightings of escaped pet cougars? The fees earned through licences should go to the state treasury and the regulatory age

"Dead cat bounce" is an obnoxious phrase to a cat lover. The phrase has nothing to do with cats really. It has everything to do with finance. In finance, a dead cat bounce refers to a temporary recovery in the price or value of the declining stock of a company or stock market. The stock of a company refers to its value with respect to shareholder's interests. That, in any case, is my understanding of the meaning of the word “stock". The phrase was apparently made up by a couple of journalists - Horace Brag and Wong Sulong - working for the Financial Times. The Singaporean and Malaysia stock markets fell rapidly and then bounced back. In a report on this event these journalists concocted the phrase, “dead cat bounce". To this couple of journalists the phrase was appropriate because to them even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height and the stock market, I presume, had fallen from a great height and then bounced back a little bit. Of cour

Are your living conditions suitable for your cat? Are your living conditions good enough for you but not good enough for your cat so that you could end up being prosecuted as a criminal in the United Kingdom under the Animal Welfare Act 2006? You might think that this is some sort of joke or spoof article but it is not because it actually happened to an amateur folksinger who lives in Hull, England. Apparently, in the UK it is possible for a person to decide that their living conditions are suitable for them, although they might be poor living conditions in terms of clutter and lack of cleanliness, but aren't suitable and substandard for their cat if the RSPCA and the police say so. The story concerns a lady whose name is Ms Nadian. I won't go into the full details but you can read about her story on this page . She was prosecuted for several things concerning her cats, one of which, incidentally, was failing to take a veterinarian's advice in euthanising one of her ca

This little feline story is an amusing warning to others and a lesson in cat behavior and how they can hide in places and be difficult to find and see. A couple bought a sofa from a charity shop. The three-seater sofa had been donated to the charity shop run by St Luke's Hospice, Grays, Essex. Emanating from this desirable piece of furniture was a meow, a soft and muted meow. The meowing came from a cat whose name is Crockett. The purchasers investigated and noticed two claws poking through the fabric of the couch. They had purchased a sofa with a cat inside it, an added, little bonus! Crockett's owners, Pauline and Bill said that there had been very upset to lose him. Apparently, Crockett has slipped into the sofa as it was being taken apart before being moved. Talking about cats and furniture, I have another warning concerning loungers. These are pieces of furniture which change shape and in doing so the machinery underneath the chair can crush a small cat or kitten who

A person visiting a major website about the domestic cat said that he was on a fixed retirement income, had not taken his domestic cat to the veterinary surgeon and that his cat was urinating much more than normal and he wondered why. He said that he was going through about 90 lbs of cat litter every month compared to 35 pounds normally and he wanted some advice. The obvious answer is to take the cat to the vet but it is amazing how often people don't want to do that and they ask questions on the Internet and hope to get a good answer and fix the problem which is highly unlikely, meanwhile his cat is suffering. One of the feline diseases that causes this is diabetes. The cat does not produce enough insulin. This results in an elevated blood sugar level. In turn, excess glucose is eliminated by the kidneys resulting in frequent urination. As a result, the cat drink more water. Another disease that causes a cat to drink more water and urinate more often is kidney disease. Both

About 300,000 years ago sabre-toothed tigers were roaming around North Central Germany near Hanover. We know this because the remains of a sabre-toothed tiger were preserved in rock strata 300,000 years ago. I think it is worth stating at the outset that the sabre-toothed tiger is not actually a tiger as we know today. It was a different species of wild cat. It is probably more sensible to describe the cat as a “sabre-toothed cat". The estimates are that this large wild cat weighed nearly 440 pounds. It had razor-sharp claws and canine teeth that were more than 4 inches in length. Clearly, this was a formidable predator for early humans. Humans would have defended themselves using a 6 foot to 7 and 1/2 foot long spear. The spears were used as hunting weapons. It has been speculated that the early humans of this era hunted hores and in the area in question they camped along a 300 foot stretch of a shallow lake. Source: a report by the Lower Saxony Heritage Authority.

I would expect that a lot of people would say that cats do not make facial expressions. People who live with cats and who love their cats and therefore know them will understand that cats do make facial expressions. They are more subtle than the facial expressions of people. Is that because there are less facial muscles and/or because the feline face is covered in hair? Or perhaps a cat has less emotions that a person and therefore does not need to express them so much through his or her face. I'm not sure, but I am sure that cats do make facial expressions and here's a very good example: This photograph has been praised, in fact, for showing both the human and the feline expression. This white cat with a very charming face has a very concerned and anxious expression. There is also a slight indication that she is relieved and that she feels secure being held by this fireman who himself has an expression which conveys to me that he is genuinely concerned about this cat's

This is not exactly a war over cat food but you can see how stresses can be built up in multi-cat households in areas where there are food bowls and where there is the cat litter. Cats will or might compete for either. These are areas where a hierarchy between cats is shown up and where a dominant cat will push out a more subservient cat . I think this is quite an interesting animated GIF, which are a series of still images strung together to make a video that repeats itself. Each image is in the GIF format. Clearly in this instance the ginger tabby is dominant over the bicolour ginger and white who is overweight so perhaps being pushed out of the food bowl is a good thing. I wonder if the slight overweight problem that the bicolour cat has is linked in any way to his or her subservience to the ginger cat? Perhaps he's pushed out and therefore he is keen to get at the food when there is a chance and hence he eats too much as a precaution against not being able to get to a f