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Showing posts from July, 2014

Can you overdose a cat on flea medication?

Can you overdose a cat on flea medication? Yes, is the short answer. Flea meds are poisonous. We are told to handle them with care yet we put it on our cat's skin. Does that strike you as strange? It is also dangerous to interchange flea medication for cats and dogs. Never do it. It can kill the cat as can too much cat flea meds on a cat. This page explains: Flea treatments can kill Dog flea treatments kill cats

A Week in the Life of Wanderers' Rest Animal Shelter, Canastota NY

It has been one of those weeks at the Wanderers' Rest animal shelter. It probably isn't all that different from normal though. Firstly, a lady saw someone throw a garbage bag from the window of a moving car. You can guess what was inside the back, can't you? Yes, you're right, the bag contained 12 kittens and cats, of which 2 had died.  The lady who watched this despicable act recovered the bag and found homes for 5 of the cats. She gave the remaining 5 to the shelter. We read quite a few stories about kittens and cats being thrown out of the window of moving cars. It is totally beyond my comprehension how anybody can do it. The people must be totally desensitised to any form of decent behaviour. On the same day a woman who appears to be a serial cat hoarder received a visit from animal control who remove 15 cats from her home. The year before 20 cats were removed from her home.  Eight cats remained. No doubt something similar will transpire in another 12 months. The

Florida cat dials 911 and gets adopted

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By Elisa This is the story of Zeke, an office cat at Cat Depot, which is a rescue and adoption facility on 17th Street in Sarasota, Florida. Tina and Zoe adopted Zeke Zeke was hanging out in the office this past Monday when he decided to be proactive about finding a forever family. So the 3-year-old did what he's known for-playing with gadgets in the Cat Depot office. Unfortunately, the phone is no exception. Here's a short clip of what happened Sarasota dispatch picked when Zeke placed the call, and were concerned when no one said anything. Fearing an emergency of some kind at the rescue facility, dispatch called the front desk at Cat Depot. A volunteer stated she had no idea who had placed the call. They found Zeke snoozing away, stretched out across the phone, which was off the hook. Lynn Rasys with Cat Depot says this incident ranks right up there with one of the craziest things to ever happen there. She also confirmed Zeke had been known to call outside num

Money Stolen from Clarksburg Cat Shelter

The Clarksburg Cat Shelter rely on volunteers to run the shelter and their store. They rely on donations from the public to care for the 60 or more cats in their care. It is all for the good. Yet, someone, totally devoid of scruples decided to steal the donation box on their counter. From now on they bolt down the donation box. Good isn't it? Modern life I guess.

Siamese Miniature Cat

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The Toybob is a Siamese miniature cat with a short tail. The short tail for a cat is called a "bobtail". This very rare cat breed originates in Russia. Miniature cats are rare anyway so is particularly rare to see a Siamese cat with a bobtail which is also a very small cat. This cat breed ranges in weight from 2-5 pounds fully grown. Annie - photo by Giselle who lives with Annie.  Annie the cat in the photograph is about 4 pounds in weight.  This qualifies Annie as a miniature cat. You can read more about this cat breed on this page .

Siamese Cat Cartoon

Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese cat is a Canadian-American animated television series.   It is also educational.  It aired with PBS Kids.  In this television series the action is set in about 1840 during the Quing Dynasty.   The series is about family obligations and loyalty. Sagwa lives in the palace of a magistrate in Hong Kong before it was colonised.  Sagwa is part of a colony of cats living in the Palace who have the ability to write with their tails. The Siamese cats are involved in adventures incorporating moral lessons to educate children which is typical of children's shows.  Chinese culture is also on display which helps to raise awareness of an alternative culture. See cartoon cats for stuff.

Choupette Lagerfeld's Cat is Not a Siamese

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Choupette is described as a Siamese cat .  She is arguably the most spoilt cat in the world. Apparently, her blue eyes inspired Karl Lagerfeld (her owner) to use sapphire blue in his collections for Chanel.  The blue eyes of a Siamese cat should be sapphire blue . However, the coat of the Siamese cat is described by the breed standard as as short, fine textured, glossy.  Lying close to body (Cat Fanciers' Association - CFA). It is clear from the photographs of this darling flame pointed cat that her coat is too long and too dense and in fact too upright to be the coat of the Siamese cat. Her coat is more that of a Balinese cat which is the long-haired version of the Siamese cat. The picture on this page clearly indicates the type of coat that this cat has and it is completely different to what the breed standard states. The Siamese cat coat is very silky and close lying to the body. This is noticeable and quite a feature of this popular cat breed.

What An Animal Gas Chamber Looks Like

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What An Animal Gas Chamber Looks Like This is a cross-post to an article I wrote a while ago but Google is not picking it up. "..During this process the animals are put into a small box with many other animals (sometimes up to 30. The gas is turned on they are scared and cramped as this gas fills their lungs it starts burning their insides and eyes. They then begin to panic and cry for help as they bleed from their cavities, vomit and defecate all over (literally) and finally after enduring this for several minutes they take their last breath... As all of this is going on they are usually fully conscious." ( Olga's email to me - thank you Olga ) To think that animal shelter volunteers and staff deliberately place dogs and cats into these horror machines to kill them in a way that is for me reminiscent of the Holocaust. Sorry to mention that but it has the same flavour about it and I don't see why we can't mention it in relation to animals as well as peop

Fish Pets Cat Health Care Tips

If you are one of many thousands of people who has typed the above words into a Google search, I presume that you are looking for tips about general pet healthcare while focusing on fish and cats.  I don't know much about fish but I do know a lot about cats. I also know that the most important aspect of pet healthcare and looking after a companion animal is the preparation that a person does before making the adoption. The preparation is about ensuring that the person has sufficient knowledge about the companion animal they wish to adopt and, as importantly, sufficient funding to care for the companion animal throughout the life of the animal.  Abandonments should be ruled out.  Abandoning a companion animal to a shelter for example is obviously very bad for the health and welfare of that animal on a number of levels. Giving up on a pet through abandonment or relinquishment can end up with the death of that pet which is the worst kind of animal welfare. I don't think en

Laser Declawing (the truth)

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By Kirsten Doub, DVM State Director of the Paw Project-Utah. Paw Project-Utah has been doing paw surgery on cats with fragments. Clearly these cats with “pebbles in their shoes”, fragments of a mutilated bone that they have to walk on, and nails regrowing under the skin are in pain. The P3 fragments are left behind when the declaw is performed with a pair of unsterile Resco nail trimmers. A very imprecise, quick and dirty way to do 8 amputations in a few minutes. Proponents of declawing tout the laser declaw as a humane alternative. We are here today to show you why the laser is just as bad. It may not leave behind P3 fragments in as high numbers as the Rescos but it can cause thermal injury to P2 and set up these cats for painful osteomyelitis. What is osteomyelitis? Osteomyelitis is inflammation and destruction of bone caused by bacteria, mycobacteria, or fungi. Common symptoms are localized bone pain and tenderness with constitutional symptoms (in acute osteomyelitis) or with

Tame Fox Loves Her Caretaker

A lot of people dislike foxes. In fact a lot of people hate foxes. They think they spread disease and are pests. Personally, I love them. I think they're great and they survive against all the odds in the human world. The fox in the video, Dawn, was raised as a young cub and lives in a sanctuary in the UK (Nuneaton and Warwickshire Wildlife Sanctuary). There are 5 other foxes at the sanctuary.  My Charlie has frequently bumped into a fox when he is outside in the evening but nothing happens. The fox more or less ignores him and Charlie hisses at the fox. On one occasion Charlie was aggressive towards the fox , who I was feeding.

What To Feed Feral Cats

Although dry cat food is not as good as wet (high in carbs and too dry), it is more practical for feeding feral cats because it can be left and it won't go off. Any brand of dry cat food would do; the best quality affordable. Update : Experienced feral cat caretaker writes this: No, no, no to an absolute dry kibble diet for ferals. That's a lazy mans' way. It's time consuming, but what I do is prepare my feeders as much as I can ahead of time. All feeders have wet food layering the bottom and then covered with dry. They don't get any less than what I give to the darlings inside my home. I don't see them as "less than". They are equals. I make no less than 4 visits to my colonies per day. Early morns are the big feed fest, late morn is checking water supply and taking up leftover food, early afternoon is "snack" feeders put down, and late afternoon is taking up feeders and replenishing water. Because it's scorching hot in summer here,

Cat Eye Color Change

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A cat eye color change will take place at about 7-9 weeks of age in the life of a kitten. Until then the eye color is created by light refraction . Thereafter the formation of pigment in the iris of the cat's eyes creates the color. The change in eye color is due to a delayed creation of pigmentation in the iris of the young cat. Below are pictures which show (a) the difference between the iris and pupil and (b) why kittens without pigmentation in the pupil always have blue eyes: These images illustrate this page which explains things .

Pallas Cat Domestic Ownership California

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The title is a rather clumsy phrase used by people searching for information about keeping the Pallas cat in California as a pet.  That is my reading of the search term. Without going into lots of detail as to why it is inappropriate to keep a Pallas Cat as a pet in California, suffice to say that the keeping of a wild animal by individual person is banned in California. There is one qualification.  If the person owned the animal in question before in 1992 they are allowed to keep the animal until I presume the animal dies.  In 2014 that would not be applicable to any wild cat species because none of them live beyond an absolute maximum of around 20 years. Most often small wild cat species in captivity die relatively young because they are unsuited to that sort of lifestyle. Private zoos and public zoos have great difficulty in maintaining their stock for this reason. The Pallas Cat is very cute looking and quite a few people think about having one of them as a pet but it won

Do Companion Animals Exhibit Jealous Behaviour?

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Dogs Engage in Jealous Behaviours  The answer to the question in the title is probably, Yes.  But the underlying reason for jealousy is probably not what you think it is.  We think of jealousy as losing a girlfriend or boyfriend. We think of jealousy in terms of human behaviour and at a rather superficial level. It is believed by some scientists that jealousy originates in siblings fighting over family resources.  In short, it is more about survival than being jealous over a potential interloper into your love life. In respect of domestic dogs, a study conducted by the University of California indicates that dogs exhibit behaviour which is consistent with what we describe as "jealousy". 36 dogs were involved in the study.  The owners were asked to pay attention to objects other than their dogs and the attention that they paid to these objects was the same as if they were paying attention to their dogs. The objects were a pop-up book, a plush dog toy and a bucket

Cat Ears Warm to Touch

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The reason why the ears of a cat are warm to the touch is because the blood vessels are very near the surface.  The blood circulates around the body. The body temperature of a domestic cat is 100 to 103°F.  This is 37.7°C to 39.4°C.   This is quite a warm temperature and when you touch the earflaps of a cat you more or less feel this temperature less a certain amount because you are not in direct contact with the blood and the blood will cool temporarily as it passes through the flap. The fact that the ear flap (pinna) is so fragile and thin and that the blood vessels run near the surface within the flap, provides an opportunity for a veterinarian and a cat owner to administer medication via the ear flap. Certain medications placed against the ear flap are absorbed into the bloodstream. One such medication is transdermal Methimazole. Transdermal means through or across the skin. You can see a video on this page about the application of this medication which is for feline hypert

Feral vs Indoor Cat Lifespan

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I have seen a lot of variation in the estimated lifespan of feral cats compared to indoor cats. In general people say that about 3-5 years is the lifespan of a feral cat and 14 years is the average lifespan of a domestic (not specifying whether the cat is a full-time indoor cat or not). The truth is no one has been analysing cat lifespans. These are estimates or to be more generous "guesstimates" based on a reasonably assessment. Another point to make is that a full-time indoor cat might not, on average, live longer than an indoor/outdoor cat. ASPCA says that the average lifespan of an indoor cat is 13-17 years with some living to 20 plus but that is not an average is it? That is a very generous spread based on informed guesswork. My late lady cat aged about 16 years of age at the time. I had just wiped her coat which is why it looks a bit wet. She lived four more years. Petco says that an indoor cat has an average lifespan of 12-20 years (even more of a spread a

Can I Get Toxoplasmosis From Kissing My Cat?

Can I Get Toxoplasmosis From Kissing My Cat? The simple answer is that technically a person can get toxoplasmosis if they have a habit of kissing their cat on the lips or near the mouth.  The reason is this: a cat washes her bottom with her tongue. Somewhere near half of cats have been exposed to toxoplasmosis at some time and many of them have it but without symptoms. However, and this is the important bit, only for a period of about 10 days in the life of the cat can there be toxoplasmosis eggs in the cat's faeces which can be transferred to the person. You can tell, therefore, that the chances of getting toxoplasmosis from kissing your cat is extremely rare to the point where, my opinion, it could be ignored. It should also be recognised that worldwide about 50% of people have been exposed to toxoplasmosis. This is a similar number to the percentage of cats, interestingly. Note: in America the figure is about 30%. Another interesting point is that by far the most common

Crystal Meth And Cats!

On Tuesday, July 22, 2014 at about 3 am in the morning a call out was made to the police on US 395, north of Conway Summit.  This, by the way, is in Arizona, USA. By the time the police got to the car there was a passenger in the backseat,  a 33-year-old woman, but no one in the driver's seat. The driver had run off because both the passenger and the driver had been taking drugs and in the car was paraphernalia concening the use of crystal methamphetamine. The passenger was under the influence of this drug. There was a second passenger, a cat hiding under the passenger seat. The policeman decided the cat should be taken under the care and control of Mono County County Animal Control until the lady was able to care for her cat herself. A gentle wrestling match ensued as the police officer extracted the cat from the car. There was the usual hissing, scratching and “feline defensive mechanisms". It seems that the policeman did a good job. The only worry I have is whether

Your Online Pictures of Cats May Tell Us Where You Are

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Your Online Cat Photos Tell Others Where You Are | PoC These days pictures of cats taken with smart phones and modern digital cameras contain metadata which is information about the photograph such as the shutter speed, whether flash was used, the aperture and also where the photograph was taken using a built-in global satellite system (GPS). When you upload the photograph to a Instagram or Flickr or any one of the large photo hosting websites the metadata goes with the picture and in the case of Flickr, for example, the information is set out on the page where the photograph is. There are millions of photographs with this data attached to them and an entrepreneurial professor, Owen Mundy, at the University of Florida has extracted the GPS metadata and built a website around it which uses Google mapping to show the location of the photographs on a map. Very often the pictures of cats are taken by the cat's owner and also very often the cat's owner is in the photograp

Cruel Way To Kill Birds By U.S. Department of Agriculture

Who said cats are big killers of wild bird species? The ornithologists and Woody ;) LOL. People who know better realise that people are the biggest killers by far either by direct of indirect means. The method employed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston, Texas, USA is particular nasty and quite shocking to some people. Rather than take humane proactive measures (deterrents) the authorities have put down a poison, Avitrol®, mixed with corn kernels. This has resulted in birds species such as grackles and pigeons writhing in their death throes for upwards of an hour having fallen from the sky. Some of this was filmed. Avitrol is a particularly nasty poison as it causes the birds to writhe and convulse which is intended as it frightens the living birds to stay away. Charming human behavior, isn't it? At least cats kill birds to eat. But let's remember birds are down the list of prey for the cat . Of course passenger

Cat Saves Boy From Bullies

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You may remember the famous cat saves boy story in the USA . A dog attacked a boy and mauled his leg. It was a deliberate attack on a boy as if the boy were prey and the family's tabby cat charged out of the home to the rescue and flew at the dog pushing him of the boy. The boy and cat were close and it showed. This is a UK version; not quite so dramatic. I wonder whether the news media were just looking for the UK version; jealousy I say!  In the UK version a group of bullies were....well, bullying a boy who just happened to have a close feline companion. The bullied boy is 5-year-old Ethan and his cat defender is Smudge (see above) another tabby cat. Smudge sprang (literally) into action and pounced onto the chest of one the bigger bullies. Ethan's mother says: ".....they shouted him again and then one of the boys got in Ethan's face and said, 'Oi! Why are you ignoring me?' and pushed him over. "That's when I rushed outside and saw Smudge fly

UK Version of Jackson Galaxy

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In the UK, according to the Daily Star , we have an unknown cat expert who wants to become an recognised feline behaviourist with his own television show just like Jackson Galaxy in the USA. His name is Louis Denver, 29, and I have a feeling he has been watching Jackson Galaxy in action on his website. He calls himself a “cat man" and says that he has built up his skills as a cat psychologist over time.  He lives in the north of the country in Lytham St Anne's, Lancashire. Regrettably, he says things which tell me that he does not know enough about cats to be the UK's version of Jackson Galaxy. Louis says the main problems facing cat owners are inappropriate elimination, loud meowing at night and spraying around the house. These are not the main problems.  Very few domestic cats spray around the house because spraying, as I'm sure Louis knows, is a form of territorial marking but although some rarely do this, 95% of domestic cats don't, especially if they are n

The truth about treating cat ear mites

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The truth about treating cat ear mites | PoC If you click on the link above you will be taken to what I believe is a good page on this subject but it is not getting enough exposure from Google search and therefore I'm cross posting the page (in summary) on this website.  I apologise for duplication in what I'm saying about this but it needs to be done. Essentially what I say is that a lot of people look for either a homeopathic home cure for cat ear mites or some sort of quick fix at home to avoid a trip to the vet. They are looking for ways to clean their cat's ears and kill the ear mites. It is possible to clean the inside of the ear flap but only the part that you see. What about the beginning of the ear canal that goes to the eardrum?  Ear mites are going to be in that area and when you try and clean that area you are quite likely to do damage to the ear canal and even the eardrum unless you are extremely careful. As cat ear mites are very irritating to the c

Is the tuxedo cat a breed or not?

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Binnie I'm sure that most people know the answer this question because cats have been discussed on the Internet for about 10 years now.   The tuxedo cat is not a breed of cat . This is a certain type of cat coat that is black-and-white with not much white so that the cat has the appearance of wearing a tuxedo which is formal dress wear the men: the penguin suit. The classic pattern gives the cat a button of white on the chest but as shown in the photo the area of white can be more extensive. A lot of the breed standards for a wide variety of cat breeds allow their cats to be black-and-white and some of these cats will be tuxedo cats. It all depends on the breed standard as to what is allowed regarding the coat of the cat with respect to a particular cat breed.

History of Cat Food

History of Cat Food | PoC The history of cat food as shown in the spreadsheet above tells us that just after the Second World War things started to take off. It was during the Second World War that the concept of dry cat food was first tried. It was successful because it was convenient and then during the era 1950 to 1970 and beyond there was a proliferation of pet food lines and products. The manufacturers of human food jumped onto the bandwagon. A major development was to create extruded dry cat food which although first developed in the 1950s is still the same today. The great deficiency in this process, which makes attractive looking albeit inappropriate cat food, is that it requires carbohydrates to work. The high level of carbohydrates in dry cat food is not there by choice but by necessity and only because the process demands it. That is not a good reason why dry cat food is high in carbohydrates. Domestic cats cannot taste sweetness and therefore they have no co

Fewer Approved Drugs and Medications for Cats than for Dogs

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Fewer Approved Drugs and Medications for Cats than for Dogs | PoC This appears to be another example of discrimination against a domestic cat!  Apparently, there are more FDA (the regulatory body in America) approved drugs and medications for cats than for dogs. Vets use non-approved medications for cats in substitution. The reason is that it is not commercially viable for the manufacturers to turn out drugs and medications for cats, requiring obtaining FDA approval, which I presume costs a fair bit of money. I also presume that the reason for this is that the manufacturers do not think there will be a sufficiently large market for the drug that they had considered to produce because cat owners do not take their cats to the veterinarian anywhere near as often as dog owners take their dogs to the vet. I'm guessing that that is the reason.  I have almost certainly simplified things but it is remarkable that there is a disparity in the number of available medicines between d

VE Kitty Tubs Help Cat Parents Transition to RAW Meat Diet

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GREEN BAY, Wis. (July 18, 2014) (PetPR News Distribution) – Vital Essentials® has launched VE Kitty Tubs Frozen RAW Entrees with a “Take the 5-Day RAW Challenge” campaign. The promotion has been created to help pet store retailers educate cat parents about the “essential” benefits of RAW cat food and to provide helpful tips on transitioning kitties to RAW meat diets within 5 days. VE Kitty Tub Frozen RAW Entrée line began shipping in late Spring 2014. VE Kitty Tubs offer complete RAW-meat meals with essential nutrients that cats instinctively crave. Each Kitty Tub Entrée is “Purely RAW” – made with only fresh, whole, single-sourced USDA animal protein and is Grain Free, Gluten Free, and Guilt Free. Varieties include – Chicken & Liver, Classic Chicken, Cold Water Catch, Duck, Turkey, and Duck & Rabbit. The “5-Day RAW Challenge” brochure is available to cat-parents through pet store retailers that offer VE Kitty Tub Entrées. This brochure provides the essential reasons for s

When the news is so bad how do you write about cats?

When people are behaving so badly, it is harder to write about cats. This is because we have to behave well if we are to improve the life of cats. The worse we behave between ourselves the more the welfare of the domestic cat becomes less of a priority. The recent Malaysia Airlines MH17 disaster puts me off writing about cats. This is an extraordinarily crazy example of careless and callous human behavior which has resulted in the deaths of 298 innocent people, 80 of which are children. If the world is so crazy that people can fire a surface to air missiles which can travel to 72,000 feet, in a place that is considered to be Europe, to shoot down an aircraft that looks like a troop transport aircraft but which is a commercial airliner, then we are all lost. If people can't even behave half decently then what chance have we got? We don't know for sure what happened in the MH17 airline disaster but the current general consensus is that a sophisticated Russian manufactured

The Lack of a Sweet Tooth in Cats

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Domestic cats are neither attracted to nor avoid the taste of sweet carbohydrates. In an extreme adaptation to a carnivorous diet, the domestic cat has taste buds which are very responsive to amino acids but unresponsive to many mono and disaccharides (carbohydrates). By contrast, many dogs have a sweet tooth and prefer natural sugars, for example: sucrose, fructose, glucose and lactose but not maltose. Cats and dogs respond very differently to stimuli which is sweet tasting although both as we know our carnivores.  The dog is, it seems, a borderline omnivore. Domestic cats find bitter tastes objectionable. Dogs should not eat cat food and vice versa . The sweet receptor or taste buds that can taste sweetness are made up of two “coupled proteins" which are generated by two separate genes . The domestic cat, and in fact all cats, lack the amino acid that make up the DNA of one of these genes. Cats are the only mammals lacking what is called the “sweet gene".  Despite th

Investment in TNR In Yonkers, NY After Animal Cruelty

After what has been described as the worst case of animal cruelty in the history of Westchester when the dead bodies of 25 cats and kittens were found in black plastic bags hanging from a tree in a wood, the city of Yonkers has acted constructively and proactively in allocating $15,000 towards trap-neuter-release programs to help reduce the number of homeless cats which are ultimately potential victims of the nasty people who like to abuse animals. The city of Yonkers deserves to be applauded because this is a very constructive and an enlightened decision.  It also promotes the concept of TNR as a means of controlling stray and feral cat populations humanely. An organisation called Animal Defenders of Westchester are delighted because the decision sends the right message about dealing with community chats: humanely and compassionately.  It sends the message that the city of Yonkers, New York cares about the vulnerability of community cats and wishes to do the right thing for them.

This Englishman has absolutely no regard for any animals

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His name is Joshua Varey, 24, from Colne, Lancashire. UK. Take a good look at him. It is the face of an ignorant b*st*rd who has no regard whatsoever for animals. I won't tell you what I'd like to do to him. See the video to read the story. In summary, Varey was the ringleader of two others (also convicted) who tried to shake a cat out of a tree to allow their dogs to attack and kill him/her.

The Malaysian Airlines MH17 Shot Down Story

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I am sure that you are as shocked as I am about the Malaysian airline aircraft being shot down over Ukraine by his alleged pro-Russian rebels using a ground to air missile . The aircraft was shot down over the area occupied by the rebels and the Ukrainian government has denied using these missiles as I understand it. The plane broke up in the air and hit the ground over a 9 square mile area indicating a explosion in the air. If the allegation is correct that this civilian airliner has probably been shot down accidentally by a missile fired by pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine then it creates despair amongst all people on the planet because it just reinforces our thoughts that these ridiculous conflicts end up hurting everybody. "We warned you not to fly in our sky" - a Russian separatist boasted they had just downed Ukrainian transport plane, minutes before news of crash emerged indicating they thought they had shot down a Ukrainian forces plane and not the Malaysian

Lilica a tender and kind dog feeds her animal buddies

Humans barely share things. This dog travels four miles daily to collect food from a really nice lady to take back to her junkyard animal chums including a cat! I had weave a cat into the story. But this is about a dog who shows tenderness and kindness that teaches us a lesson. Lilica was a homeless dog but made a home for herself in a junkyard in Brazil. In her search for food she bumped into Lucia Helena de Souza who lives four miles away. Lucia is an animal lover and she feed Lilica. Then one day the dog grabbed the bag in her teeth and took it away. The bag was open so the food was spilled. The next time Lucia made sure the bag was closed and eventually Lucia decided she had to find out where Lilica was taking the food because this routine had been doing this for a long time. She discovered Lilica travelled the four miles back to the junkyard four miles away along an unlit and dangerous road where Lilica shares her food with the other junkyard animals including a cat as I un

Paw Project-Utah Reconstructive Paw Surgery Demystified

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By Kirsten Doub - Paw Project-Utah The Paw Project-Utah reconstructive paw surgery demystified!! There have been questions as to what exactly we do for these cats. This should answer all your questions! Truth be told: Medicine is an art! The goal of Paw Project-Utah surgery, under the care of Dr Kirsten Doub, DVM and several DACVSs who she consults with, is to help shelter declawed cats achieve an improved quality of life, so that they can live pain free lives and use their declawed paws for ambulation. This is in the hopes of finding PAWMAZING permanent homes who will keep them and love them FOREVER. PPU’s study data has shown that 70% of declawed cats in Utah shelters have P3 fragments left over from a botched declaw. Most of these cats have fragments which are >5mm and include the ungual crest; because the ungual crest was not removed during the initial declaw, these cats have pieces of nail regrowing under the skin, abscesses on many toes, and deformed painful toes. The ma

Attention Seeking Behaviour in Cats

Attention Seeking Behaviour in Cats I might be out on a limb but I don't think that cats, through certain types of behaviour, seek attention from their human caretaker. I think we are anthropomorphising cats when we say that our cat is seeking attention through vocalisations or being naughty or touching us with their paw etc.. You see, my theory is that the act of seeking attention is a human behaviour. It is the behaviour of a child perhaps who might feel vulnerable and needy and also perhaps excitable for whatever reason. The reason will often be down to how the child has been raised but attention seeking behaviour is about needy and vulnerable people who need other people to pay attention to themselves. Once people pay attention to them they are satisfied but they are not seeking something other than that. By contrast, the domestic cat who vocalises a lot, directed at the human caretaker or the domestic cat who is, in human jargon, misbehaving, is seeking something which

Photographs of Japanese Cats in Japan by Japanese photographers

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I think that photographs of Japanese cats by Japanese photographers have a certain quality about them. There are a lot of good Japanese photographers and the street cats are distinguishable from the stray cats of other countries. Here is a small selection. If you click on the photographs you are linked back to the photographer's photostream on Flickr.  These are all Flickr photographs. The photographer says the following about the above photograph: Get along very good two cats living in the cabin of the field work of Tomei Yokohama Aoba Inter nearby. Tiger cat big male, Goriza. Tortoiseshell cat small female, Holmes. Goriza in contact gently to Holmes, Holmes is a yearning Goriza. This cat seems to be polydactyl looking at the left forepaw. Below is an extraordinary looking cat - big boss cat: A visitor comments: WOW! Is this perhaps a man in a catsuit? The color balance is wrong but as is on Flickr. I altered it here .

Cyprus: Hotel Employees Chuck Dog Into Rubbish Crusher

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This is a gross example of animal cruelty admitted by the hotel management. Richard Chadwick who commented on this story on Facebook says the following about the owner of the hotel: She is the owner of the Anastasia Hotel in Southern Cyprus. It is her, and her alone no matter how much she wants to blame the staff, who is responsible for the horrible treatment of a puppy. This is a photograph of who he was referring to: In response Penny Smith says: This was on FB a couple of weeks ago. The owner of the hotel issued a statement saying she had asked two of her employees to take it to a local vet as it was sick. Instead they threw it into a crusher. To give her her due, she did make sure the puppy was being cared for at the vets, sadly too late, and claimed to have sacked the two emplyees. Maybe someone should establish the exact facts before we blame the wrong person. It appears that a 7 month old stray, sick poodle was wandering around the hotel irritating hotel management an