What sort of news is cat news?

Cat news is invariably about one of quite a narrow band of topics. One of these topics is feral cats. There are quite a lot of people who dislike feral cats and some of these people are in authority. You could say in fact that the people most likely to dislike feral cats are those who are in authority. Some of these people are scientists and they write up studies about the feral cat and they are often derogatory.

There are critical articles about the feral cat. With respect to the feral cat the real issue is that there are too many of them and they spread disease and of course above all else they kill too many birds and there's a huge amount of bias. With respect to the feral cat these are the stories we see on the Internet.

With respect to the domestic cat,  the most common news story about the household cat is the fact that he/she is far too often unwanted and finds his or her way into shelters where regrettably too many are put to sleep because nobody wants to adopt them. The great story about domestic cats is that there are too many unwanted domestic cats.

Then there is a topic of cat shelters. This is the sharp end where cats that are lost or unwanted and indeed feral cats find their way to be euthanized or to be rehomed. Being the sharp end of the existence of domestic and stray cats, news stories regarding animal and cat shelters are very poignant and they reflect very strongly on humankind and how we relate to cats in general.The existence of many millions of unwanted cats in the USA is a reflection on our relationship with them and our inability to care for them satisfactorily as a whole.

Then we have cat news stories about the wild cat species. These are nearly always about the illegal and abusive trade in iconic cat species such as the tiger. Most of the stories about the wild cat species are to do with conservation and the failure of conservation which has occurred over many years and even decades. Nothing has changed to make one more optimistic about the future of the wild cat species.

If new stories about the wild cat species are not about conservation and its failure then they are about attacks by the big cats upon the indigenous people of the country in which the cats live. These are normally tiger attacks because they are the most newsworthy. However, the newspapers never or hardly ever refer to the underlying reasons why tigers living in the wild attack people. The reason is often because the tiger is old or infirm or has been injured by a person and therefore has to rely upon attacks upon a person rather than the usual prey. In addition people are forced to live in close proximity to tigers because the population of people is expanding. In short, the underlying cause for a tiger attack is humankind.

Another news story we often see with respect to the domestic cat is celebrity cats. This is a new phase and celebrity cats have taken off and you could argue that at the moment celebrity cats are the most common news item concerning the cat. The entire globe has been unable to avoid news about Grumpy Cat, for instance.

Another popular news item regarding the cat is the abuse of outdoor cats. There are many stories on this topic. These are criminal matters and people will note that we hardly ever find out whether a person who has abused the cat is prosecuted and punished as a consequence.

Another popular news item regarding the domestic cat is cat hoarding. Cat hoarding is quite prevalent and is due to a mental health condition by the person involved. Sometimes cat hoarders are quite devious and they give the impression that they are trying to help cats and even ensure that other people send them cats to be rescued but once they are sent to the cat hoarder they quite commonly end up dead due to neglect.

Once again we rarely find out how the stories pan out. We don't know how they end up . We don't find out whether they were successfully prosecuted in the criminal courts and what sort of sentence they received. It is possible that cat hoarding is a symptom of modern life and it may be an expression of anxiety and stress in which case there are probably more cat hoarders today than there were in the past.

Also, with respect to wild cat species you will quite commonly see stories about the conflict between human and cat. This is a conflict which exists because two species, human and cat, are forced to live in close proximity, which is unnatural. The reason why these two species live in close proximity is because there are too many people living in a certain area in that area originally belonged to the cat, which is usually a tiger.

Another topic is considered newsworthy concerning the cat is the private zoos and backyard setups housing exotic big cats in the USA.

There is a gradual building up of a groundswell of opinion against people who keep tigers as pets in their backyard and, in addition, the private zoos where often quite a large number of large wild captive cats are kept. Private zoos are gradually being perceived as places which damage conservation and which reflect a culture of a bygone age.

I think the point has to be made that almost all the news regarding domestic, feral and wild cats emanates from the United States of America. You rarely see any interesting cat stories coming out of the United Kingdom or Europe. Europe is particularly quiet in respect of cat stories.

As for Asia cat stories which come out of that region of the world are often to do with wild cat conservation and in places like China the topics concern a distinct lack of animal welfare which has resulted in practices which the West detest such as eating domestic and stray cats. This is a highly controversial topic and things are changing because there is a groundswell of opinion in China that this must stop.

The above are the major topics which create cat news stories in 2014. I may have missed something out because this article was written without reference to anything.