Former police officer has to teardown her catio because of complaints from neighbours

A former police officer who adopted, with her electrician husband, four rescue cats (her fur babies) built a cat enclosure in her front garden which has a cat flap entrance and which contains many ramps and places for her cats to enjoy the outside safely. She checked with her neighbours first (not all it seems) and they didn't mind it. In fact her immediate neighbour finds it okay. However some neighbours complained and got the local council involved who have demanded that she takes it down.

The offending catio.

She says that she built the catio at least in part because there are cats around who were bullying her cats. So she's keeping them inside in this enclosure. It is claimed that the catio is out of character with the rest of the houses and that it impedes access to a narrow nearby lane and creates a blind spot for motorists.

The council is Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire. This is a British cat problem! The catio is certainly out of character with the rest of the houses but I doubt whether it's a blindspot for motorists and I also doubt that it impedes access. It is just, according to some neighbours, an eyesore.

Sue Haworth in her catio.

Sue Haworth has appealed the council's decision and hopes to keep the 9 foot high and 13' x 11.5' feet catio. It's a really nice catio and in almost any other place and if was built in the back garden it would probably be perfectly acceptable to everyone including the local authority.

The trouble is this; it is incredibly obvious and intrusive but it is very useful and it keeps four rescue cats very safe whilst being able to enjoy the outdoors. It's a shame she didn't seek planning permission at the outset. One issue is that she only moved in 2 years ago so some neighbors see her as a newcomer and trouble.

I don't know why she could not have built it in the back garden. Perhaps there wasn't enough space but then she could have built a small one. I fear that she is going to lose this battle. The construction cost £10,000 and the cats' names are: Chloe, Floyd, Freddie and Millie.

Cats gets brain freeze. Why?

 
Why do cats get brain freeze? Well, in this compilation on YouTube they get what is called "brain freeze" because they are eating ice cream. The reason why they like eating ice cream is because it contains quite a lot of fat in the milk and cream. Cats always like that. But then they find it is cold which causes pain and discomfort so they stop and open their mouths and pause giving the impression of 'brain freeze'.

I can only presume that they do this for the reason that (1) it allows them to warm up the interior of their mouths quite quickly because the ambient, warmer air impinges upon it and because (2) they are in pain and pull a face as humans would under these circumstances. When it is warmed up they continue to eat ice cream. It's as simple as that in my view.

Wikipedia provides me with a more technical description of feline brain freeze. They say that it is a cold-stimulus headache which is a brief form of headache associated with the consumption of cold food or beverages such as ice cream.

The authors argue that the coldness of the food in touching the roof of the mouth results in a nerve response which in turn causes a rapid constriction of blood vessels. The capillaries in the sinuses constrict and then they warm up and dilate. This is picked up by pain receptors which send a signal back to the brain. It is referred to as "referred pain".

Brain freeze pain may last for a few seconds to a few minutes. They do not explain why the mouth is held wide open which common sense dictates is for the reason that I have stated.

Cats, Rats, A.I., Oh My! - Ben Hamm

Ben Hamm discusses his cat and how he developed his special cat door which prevents cats bringing prey into the home.

Idris Elba Reacts To 'Cats' Trailer, Says He Lived His Dream In ‘Hobbs &...

The doomsters and gloomsters who criticise the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Cats' are wrong

The film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's theatre show "Cats" is going to be fantastic. The doomsters are completely wrong. The Internet is awash with idiotic remarks about the scary trailer to the movie. They think it looks crazy and weird and that it's odd to see cats with human breasts and whatever else they can find to criticise which is all mumbo-jumbo to me. Maybe it is a wind up and good PR.

Cats the Movie - fabulous.

I have seen the movie trailer I think it's fascinating and a brilliant way to turn this highly successful theatre show into a movie. It had to be something different and the director Tom Hooper I believe has made some excellent choices. The use of CGI brilliant. The dance routines are great and the atmosphere and ambience of the movie is mysterious. You ask questions and it draws you in.

TS Eliot's Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats upon which theatrical show is based would have liked the film because the poem itself is quite mysterious and this is reflected in the movie.

There was criticism about one cat being too small and the size of a butter knife. But this is incorrect as there are some very small domestic cats. That's a practical point and I think the criticism is over the top anyway so perhaps I don't need to make a practical point about it.

Perhaps I'm being over the top myself because the amount of publicity that this film is getting, most of it criticism, is phenomenal. It is all about public relations in my view. I wonder whether it's been planted, a lot of it. It looks that way. I will make a prediction here and now and say that the film will be hugely successful and all this nonsense about the trailer being weird and mysterious and frightening will all wash away with the success.

New York state bans cat declawing and advances cat welfare in the USA by leaps and bounds

New York state's Gov Cuomo signed off the statewide cat declawing ban very recently and the law is effective immediately. It is reproduced below. It is an amendment of an existing statute. It's quite clear that it bans cat declawing for nontherapeutic reasons which accounts for 99.9% of declawing in America.

Going forward, veterinarians can still declaw cats with their client's informed consent if there is a genuine health reason for doing so. The operation has to be done in the interest of the cat, the patient. No longer can clients protect their furniture by declawing their cat.

This, to me, is a massive step forward in cat welfare in America. It is almost certainly the beginning of the end of cat declawing in that country. It should please millions of cat lovers both in America, Europe and in other countries of the world. In represents an advancement in cat welfare by leaps and bounds. Going forward, it is highly likely that other US states will follow in a domino effect and I'm hopeful that perhaps in several years cat declawing will be no longer exist in this great cat loving country.

It is highly ironic and a distortion of attitudes that in America with more cat lovers than anywhere else and indeed more domestic cats than any other country that they should be brutalising their companion animals from no reason other than to protect furniture. This is completely nuts and utterly incorrect. The ban will chang attitudes for the better. People will learn that they can live with cats who have their claws.

It shouldn't take a legal ban to achieve this result. The veterinarians should have stopped voluntarily years ago. Indeed, it should never have been invented (in the 1950s) - this damned operation. But there it is and here we are. The time has come to stop it.

Is highly likely that the recent bans on declawing in Canada has had an effect on the New York State legislature and possibly upon Cuomo, himself. In Canada large parts of the country now ban declawing.

Woman who hunts to eat says vegans and shooters have common ground

Rachel Carrie. Photo: her FB account.

Rachel Carrie says that hunters can eat meat without guilt because they have no problems of animal welfare. She is a woman who has currently hit the headlines and is a former vegetarian and a mum. She says that she has fed her family for a year on 125 pigeons, 80 pheasants and partridges and 40 ducks and 4 deer.

"Vegetarians and vegans, shooters and hunters need to be educated. We are not the enemy. We have common ground."

Rachel comes from Yorkshire, UK. As a girl she was a vegetarian because she was upset by factory farming. She remained a vegetarian for five years from the age of seven. She changed her views when her father acquired a hawk. He took her out rabbiting. She says that she was okay about eating something where she had seen where it had lived. She said that she hopes that makes sense. It doesn't to me.

She says that she feels no guilt or qualms abour shooting deer. She believes that it is not an act of cruelty.

"You place a clean shot straight through the heart and that animal never knew you were there."

She believes that the animals don't suffer when they are shot and that they are not scared. The animal is not transported miles and miles to an abattoir.

Further, she says that when you shoot an animal dead to eat it you don't waste the food as people do when they buy food at a supermarket.

She firmly believes that she does not have the animal welfare issues surrounding the usual livestock farming and killing in abattoirs.

She likes to pose for photographs of the animals that she has killed. Judging by the photographs she does not only kill animals in the UK.

Comment: her argument is based upon the fact that she always makes a clean kill straight to the heart. Can she guarantee to do that every time? I don't think so. It's a very poor argument. Looking at her face in the photographs I get the distinct impression that she enjoys killing animals. I wonder whether she is making an excuse for the enjoyment of killing animals. Is she justifying it? Is she finding a reason why she kills animals and masking the true reason: entertainment.

I have heard this argument before namely that when hunters kill animals to eat then what they do is justified. Another justification that they wheel out is that it is good for conservation. I simply don't get it. There has to be some cruelty involved because you cannot guarantee killing an animal instantly without any pain with a rifle.

I get the argument about animal welfare issues with respect to farming and abattoir. There are definitely big animal welfare issues in farming which drives people to be vegans or vegetarians. But the answer is not in hunting and pretending this is good for conservation or animal welfare.

This woman likes to kill, she likes to take photographs of herself and present them online on social media. She is all over social media. If she was genuinely concerned about feeding herself why should she publicise the whole thing so energetically? Why should she embrace social media? Why can't she just get on with it quietly? To me she enjoys the celebrity. The news media has picked up on this. She is a good-looking woman. You put her face with a dead animal and it turns some people on. It turns on the hunters and shooters who are normally macho type men in America.

It's all a lot of nonsense in my opinion. I am tired of hearing these false justifications for shooting animals. There is no need for it today and a lot more needs to be done to improve animal welfare in respect of livestock. One area would be halal meat. In the UK the authorities are far too soft with respect to how halal meat. They allow it out of political correctness. I disagree with this attitude.

Stray dogs save life of tiny baby thrown into drain

Forgive me, but I want to write about dogs today and I need an outlet for it so I have chosen this website. This is a story from India where female infanticide is not that uncommon because it is linked to extreme poverty and the need to provide a marriage dowry.

Screenshot from video. The dogs paw at the package containing the premature baby.

In this instance a woman was caught on a security camera throwing a plastic bundle into a muddy drain in the Indian town of Kaithal, in the state of Haryana in the early morning. She disappeared immediately.

The baby started to cry and a pack of street dogs picked up the sound perhaps instinctively searching for something to eat. They pulled the crying child out of the drain and pawed at the plastic package and started to bark. This alerted passers-by who discovered the child. They called the police.

The police are examining the security camera footage to try and find the woman. They want to identify her in order to charge her with a criminal offence. It is said that the baby was born prematurely after about seven months of pregnancy judging by her size and weight.

They are keeping the baby under observation and don't want to transfer her to a larger hospital because that might be in life-threatening to her.

The baby weighs 2 lbs 4 oz and was in a serious condition. The story is about dogs saving the life of the baby. They saved the baby's life accidentally in truth. It wasn't a deliberate and consciously made decision to save this baby's life. They simply alerted people to what was going on. But it is nonetheless an interesting story of life in India, on the ground and at the sharp end.

I'll mention cats just to make this article relevant to this website. In India there are community cats. Yes, people do own domestic cats and sometimes they keep them in their apartments just like they do in the West but there are many more stray cats wandering around the community scavenging and surviving and occasionally being fed by shopkeepers et cetera. It's a very harsh life for community cats.

I recall the director of PETA in India mentioning how harsh it was and how the cats can be injured and killed by traffic and cruelly abused by some people who dislike them. As a result PETA in India decided to operate a TNR program which somewhat goes against the grain for this organisation because they tend to believe that feral cats should be euthanised in order to put them out of their misery. That's a misdescription really because in America PETA does advocate TNR provided the cats can be properly cared for and are in an environment which does not make their lives intolerable. That must be a difficult decision.

Clearly a lot needs to be done about domestic cat ownership in India. To me, it is way too careless and thoughtless. There far too much suffering by cats and dogs who end up as strays. It's frankly quite horrific. That's not to take anything away from genuine cat loving cat guardians of which there are probably a good numer in India.