The Aussies have created another novel way of killing feral cats. They spend many thousands of hours dreaming up new ways and this is the latest. They inject into a native small mammal such as a bilby, a rice-sized implant. They call them population protecting implants or PPIs. They are placed under the skin of the animal. These small mammals are dinner-sized creatures for the feral cats of the Australian continent. Note: this is me reporting and commenting on the news. Journos call them op-eds. Bilby - Credit: UniSA. When inside the prey animal nothing happens. The pellet is covered by a protective coating. It contains a toxin derived from a natural poison in native plants. PPIs are harmless to tolerant native mammals they say. However, once the mammal is eaten by a feral cat they become a deadly toxin as the implant is activated in the predator's stomach. They don't tell me how that transformation from a passive object under the skin becomes a deadly poison in a cat's

I think this is a question that should not be asked. It's a dangerous question to ask in my opinion. Psychopathy is a human concept that relates to humans. It's a way of measuring human behaviour which is antisocial, amoral and which demonstrates the inability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships. Psychopaths fail to learn from experience and express extreme egocentricity. So I don't think you can measure animal behaviour with a tool that is designed to measure human behaviour. You get into all sorts of complexities and problems if you try and do that. You end up at a dead end. Psycho cat. This is an anthropomorphized cat in the human image. It shows that we are applying human concepts inappropriately to animals. But they say that cats are inherently psychopathic. They say that all domestic cats are psychopaths. But this is instinctive, natural behaviour by domestic cats. I suppose what they're referring to, the experts, is that domestic cats like t

No, the word "leopard" should not be capitalised because it is a common noun but there are some exceptions which I discuss below when the word becames part of an individual cat's name.  None of the wild cat species should be capitalised including the lion and tiger. It's interesting, however, that you still see the names of wild cat species sometimes capitalised.  I believe that there was a convention perhaps a hundred years ago when these nouns were capitalized. Grammar, after all, is an artificial convention. It is not an absolute set of rules set in stone.  Humans decide what is and what isn't acceptable in terms of grammar and the current thinking is that the word "leopard" should not be capitalised and neither should any other name of the wild cat species.  Sometimes, however, you will see a lion that has been named because they are famous i.e. 'Cecil the Lion'. Clearly, the whole name should be capitalised as all names are. The whole name i

This is an interspecies friendship story from Indonesia in 2010. You may have heard about it. I am a great fan of interspecies friendships and there are many to see on the Internet. This particular story comes from a book I have on these sort of friendships called Unlikely Friendships . RELATED:  Interspecies friendship: donkey and domestic cat The macaque and the kitten. An interspecies friendship in which both found something that was missing in their lives. The picture is deemed to be in the public domain. In Indonesia there is a sacred forest in the town of Ubud on the Indonesian island of Bali. In this place monkeys roam freely over a Hindu temple built many centuries ago. They are long-tailed macaques which are said to guard the temple from evil spirits. A ginger tabby kitten strayed into the area and into the arms of one of these macaque primates. At this temple there are 300 macaques in four separate troops each with their own territory. People who saw the friendship develop

Sometimes there can be a domestic cat merry-go-round. It happens all over the place in all developed countries to varying extents. I read about them a lot. One person throws a kitten away. Another person picks him up and lives with him the rest of his life. Sometimes that process is extended whereby the second owner also gives up the kitten or adult cat to a rescue. They adopt the cat out. The adopter might also relinquish their cat. It can be a merry-go-round. Gray - a cat who was thrown away from a car as a kitten and adopted by the owner of the house near to where it happened. Photo: Janet Johson. There is a good and rather stark example on the Internet. It comes from Janet Johnson. It happened last January when her son looked out of their front window at 8:15 PM. They live in South Carolina and the temperature was forecast to drop to 28°F. A cold night. Johnson's son turned to her mother and said that somebody just threw something out of the car in front of their house. She

This is a nice reaction from the TV host. He smiles and looks very relaxed about the interruption to his show by a domestic cat who must have been on set behind the camera. It is remarkable that the cat was allowed to wander onto the set. I think it is nice though. It breaks up all that dry, boring news stuff and adds a bit charm to the proceedings. It detunes it and humanises it. Although you couldn't allow it to happen too often otherwise someone would complain that the TV channel was trivialising the news. Georgia's TV Kavkasia said they don’t know where the came from and the was definitely not part of the show! Yes, I am sure that was the case. 😃 . شاهد.. #جورجيا.. قطة تقتحم بثاً مباشراً لبرنامج «Kavkasia» عندما قفزت فجأة على المكتب أمام المذيع المصدر: anews #صحيفة_الخليج #الخليج_خمسون_عاماً Posted by ‎ صحيفة الخليج ‎ on Saturday, November 20, 2021 Here is a screenshot from the video: Cat invades TV show and presenter likes it. Screenshot.

It's coming to Europe and I would hope that it is coming to America. It is a good looking EV (electric vehicle) from China called the Ora Good Cat, which is an interesting name. I've decided that it is a name designed to attract people who like cats and who live with them. And the classic profile of that kind of person is a woman, specifically an independent-minded woman concerned about the environment and therefore in the market to buy a compact EV 😊. In a woke age of strict equality we can't exclude cat-loving men either! Although the design is so obviously targeted at women. Ora Good Cat EV from China. Manufacturer:  Great Wall Motors. And if the marketing bumf is to be believed then this is a good EV. The biggest worry about EV is the mileage on one charge. They say that the car does 501 km or 311 miles on one charge. I think you could sensibly reduce that to about 250 miles on one charge under real-life circumstances which includes putting on the air conditioning u

A black cat saved from the wheel well of a truck by customs agents and now with Cat Advocacy and Rescue Association - CARA. Nice photo and great cat rescue: Earlier this afternoon, this very lucky kitty was rescued from the wheel well of a truck by customs agents. She is claiming refugee status and is being taken home by one of the agents! Such a lucky kitty!! Posted by Cat Advocacy and Rescue Association - CARA on  Wednesday, November 24, 2021 Here is a still photo from the FB post. This needs to be here to provide a 'featured image'. A black cat saved from the wheel well of a truck by customs agents. Said black cat with a worker from CARA - Cat Advocacy and Rescue Association - CARA.

Perhaps this is the largest number of people who have rescued a cat from a tree. I'd be surprised if there was another instance in which more people were involved. Hank, an 18 month-old bicolour, ginger tabby normally spends his days in the backyard in a north-east Washington home. Sometimes he enjoys wandering into the garden of nuns who live in the same block reports The Washington Post . Delores Bushong, who lives in Northeast, hugs her cat Hank after he was rescued from a tree in her neighbor's yard. (Courtesy of Humane Rescue Alliance) Hank's owner is Dolores Bushong, 74. She adopted him from a rescue centre in the Shenandoah Valley area and has lived in north-east Washington for 30 years. She was amazed at the number of people who came to help. "It really required a lot of people coming together and trying an incredible number of different things to get Hank out of that tree." She said it was very frustrating to feel impotent when you love a cat as much a

NEWS AND COMMENT: A Minnesota man, Kristopher Henderson, has been charged with murdering his baby child of 2-months-of-age. However, he allegedly blamed the family cat for leaving his child with severe injuries including broken legs and ribs. He was trying to pass off the killing on his cat. A Minnesota man,  Kristopher Henderson ,  has been charged with murdering his  baby child  of  2 -months -of-age but he initially blamed the family cat. Image: Blue Earth County Jail. His baby died in hospital after he allegedly inflicted severe injuries. After initially blaming the cat for injuries that no domestic cat could cause, he admitted to hitting his child forcefully to try and quieten her. ' Henderson was initially charged with first-degree assault which was upgraded to 2nd-degree murder with intent. He appears to have also been charged with first-degree manslaughter while committing malicious punishment to a child. It looks as though there are two alternative charges because one m

I have taken the title from The Mercury News . The reason why I am writing this note is because a reader of that online newspaper asked a question of their resident expert, Joan. They said that their nine-year-old beloved indoor cat had suddenly taken to clawing at her after she petted him for more than a minute. She found it very odd because he is usually very docile. She wanted to know the cause. I'd like to throw my hat into the ring. Cat being petted. Image: Getty. Joan suggested two possible causes: that the cat was feeling pain for some reason and petting him exacerbated the pain causing the inadvertently provoked aggression in response. And secondly she thought that he might be feeling stressed because of a change to his lifestyle as a result of the pandemic. It's a good question which implies that for many years this woman has been petting her cat in a completely acceptable way. Therefore nothing has changed in the way that she is petting her cat. Therefore the chang

The councillors of the city of Fremantle in Western Australia want to ban freeroaming domestic cats. They will have to be on a leash if they have their way. Soon cats could be prohibited from all city-owned and managed properties. This is one more step in the pressure being applied by legislators in Australia to domestic cat ownership in order to constrain free movement and protect native wildlife.  Photo: Pixabay. This is the kind of cat you'd keep on a leash without laws to make you do it as she is beatiful. There is a gradual, insidious almost, expansion of the concept of limiting the freedoms of domestic cats and restricting domestic cat caretaking. I am not against it as long as cat welfare is also dealt with. Constraining cats can lead to bored cats and a lack of stimulation. This can lead to health problems. In this instance, the motion for the change in the local law was put forward by Councillor Adin Lang. It was backed at a meeting this week according to The Daily Mail

Hindus don't get on with domestic cats in general according to my research (wrong? - tell me please). But, on the face of it, it is not to do with their social and cultural rule called: Uchchhishta. I've learned that devout Hindus have a problem with saliva. Perhaps we all do to be honest. This is because saliva contains bacteria and we think germs spread in saliva. But they have a revulsion about it. They also have a specific term to describe leftover food which contains the saliva of the person who ate it. This word is: Uchchhishta. Cat in Hinduism. According to hindupad.com cats are also considered as a worshipful animal in Hinduism since the cat is the vehicle of Mata Shasti Devi, a female incarnation of Lord Muruga who is worshipped mainly in North India. Picture in the public domain. Hindus represent about 80% of the general population of India. But do they all have a revulsion against the saliva in leftover food? I don't think so. However, there's a problem h

This is a picture of a cold Sphynx cat bent over in a slightly strange position with an interesting expression and an overall appearance which reminds me of an old man with a bent back walking down a street or standing in a doorway on a cold winter night. Perhaps my imagination is running riot and perhaps I am anthropomorphising this cat too much. We nearly always anthropomorphise our cats. But look at the expression on his face. At the base of the page I explain why I think he has taken up this position. Sphynx cat huddles over warm air vent to keep warm inside the home. Photo: Reddit. It's a peculiar position and his owner says that he always does this when he's cold. And when I read that information I questioned what she was doing. Why did she allow him to get cold and then photograph him and upload the photograph to the Internet? Would it not have been better if she had kept him warm? The trouble with that suggestion is that if she had kept him warm he wouldn't have

It looks as if the owner has made the presumption that their resident cat will accept a newcomer dog without any fuss whatsoever. And the cat objects in the strongest possible terms about the introduction of a newcomer dog into the family. The cat is shocked. She screams and makes her point very strongly indeed. It couldn't be stronger. I don't know what they're going to do now. It looks like a catastrophe to me because it might take a very long time for these to the get along. Screenshot. The cat is screaming at the top of her/his voice objecting to the dog. I don't know what they were thinking when they videoed the introduction. Maybe they thought that it would be a happy scene but what they got was a cat screaming at the top of her voice telling the father to go away with that nasty dog who is going to mess up my (the cat's) life. It is one of the hardest things to do to ensure that the resident cat gets along with the newcomer dog or newcomer cat. I don't

I think that the Russians love their cats. There are some amazing breeders of Maine Coons in Russia and they love their purebred cats. Well not all Russians. But there appears to be quite a healthy cat fancy in Russia. I don't know much about Russia but I have this strong sense that they have an affinity with the domestic cat like the Turkish despite the fact that it is not a great country for a domestic cat because of the climate.  It looks pretty hostile and they do have feral cats who tend to live in the basement of apartment blocks which they access through little holes in the wall. I presume these are ventilation holes. I don't know how they survive in the winter. It just looks awful. A balcony window for the cat. Image: @Prostoilogin/pikabu.ru. And on this page we see an intriguing photograph of an extended balcony of an apartment which might well have been built in breach of planning permission. I've seen lots of balconies built in Russia which must have been constru

In defiance of natural instincts, this female leopard crept through a sugarcane on an October night to find a cow tied up in a field. It's the way the villagers kept their livestock in this community on the banks of India's Dhadhar River at a village called Antoli. The cat did not harm the cow. The villagers were worried and asked the Forest Department to remove the leopard to a sanctuary nearby.  The trappers turned up on what they saw shocked them. After several attempts to capture the leopard she returned to the area nightly. Sometimes many times during a single night. But she did not return as a predator but to her cow that it seems she regarded as her mother. She came for a cuddle. Female leopard befriends a cow for months. Image: Believed now to be in the public domain. She approached the cow cautiously and rubbed her head against the cow's head and then settled down against her body. In response, the cow would lick her leopard friend. She started at her head and neck

NEWS AND COMMENT : Private zoo owners are ignorant. They are uneducated and they are stupid at least in respect of one topic: animal welfare. They don't know what it's like to be banged up in a cage. They think it's all right. They think that if a tiger is born in a cage it accepts the cage (wrong, the need for much space is in their DNA). Another indicator of ignorance. They should go to jail for a couple years or more and feel what it's like. This is exactly what has happened to the notorious Joe Exotic.  Joe Exotic in prison. Image in public domain. He's been in jail for almost 3 years. I guess you know why. He was the star of the Netflix documentary which went viral. I guess the world and their dog know about Joe Exotic - real name: Joseph Maldonado-Passage. He is revelling in his celebrity status. Netflix should be ashamed of providing him with the platform to gain celebrity status. In the follow-up series by Netflix he apparently expressed some sympathy toward

Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, is a known wildlife conservationist which is good. He has once again highlighted the increasingly negative impact of human population growth on wildlife conservation. He is focusing on Africa where there is the world's most diverse and beautiful wildlife including many iconic large species and where the human population is on course to double by 2050 to 2.5 billion. That kind of human population growth inevitably leads to a heavy increase in agriculture and commercial enterprises and activities which squeezes out wildlife, essentially due to the destruction of their habitat. Human birth rate is high in African putting pressure on wildlife. Photo: Pixabay. William criticised Africa's human population growth in 2017. At that time he condemned the "staggering increase of 3.5 million people per month" in Africa. A royal-watcher and apparently a critic, Phil Dampier, an author of books on the royal family, tweeted at the time: "I

US News today reports on a male Hawaiian monk seal dying after a five-week battle with toxoplasmosis. It has prompted another discussion about how Hawaii should deal with both domestic and feral cats. The argument is that the toxoplasma oocysts which are shed in both feral and domestic cat faeces (once) somehow make their way to the sea where monk seals ingest the oocysts and become infected with toxoplasmosis. Comparison of size of Hawaii 4 main islands with UK. Image: MikeB from mylifeelsewhere.com. They tried to save this seal but, as mentioned, it died. The seal, known as RW22, was treated at the Marine Mammal Center. They called on cat owners to keep their pets indoors and to dispose of faeces in cat litter in the trash. It's another instance of where putting cat litter down the toilet is a bad idea. It has to going to landfill. However, I guess oocysts can still make it to the sea from landfill under certain circumstances. But the point of this article is that in 2016, five y

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is a brilliant case from America. I love it. God bless the courts of America is what I say. A Federal Court of Appeal in America has ruled that a police officer who unreasonably shoots a dog can be held liable in the civil courts for violating the constitutional rights of the dog's family. That also must apply to any companion animal including cats which is why I am writing about it on this website. A Federal Court of Appeal just ruled that a police officer who unreasonably shoots a dog can be held civilly liable for... Posted by Nathan Winograd on  Thursday, November 18, 2021 Yes, police officers have shot or bludgeoned to death innocent cats in the past in America . I have written about these stories. But obviously dogs can potentially pose more of a threat to police officers than cats. In this instance, the story is frankly horrendous and it demonstrates how badly behaved police officers can be. It doesn't have to be in America. It can be in Great Bri

This is a compressed summary in bullet fashion of an alleged scam concerning a community cat who needed expensive med treatment to be paid for via online donations. Scroll down for the bones of the story. Gogi - alleged but not true. Pic: FB Alleged fake vet bill. Pic: FB. This is a story about an alleged scam by a 20-year-old woman who gave the impression she lived in Singapore; She called herself Nora Nur; She said that she had rescued a community cat from Punggol, Singapore. She claimed the cat had been abandoned; She had called the cat Gogi; On the Facebook group Sayang Our Singapore's Community Cats she asked for donations, small amounts like $5.10 dollars; She uploaded pictures of the cat and a veterinarian's bill from a real veterinary surgery: Frankel Veterinary Centre; She said the cat needed expensive treatment: 6,000 Singapore dollars for feline infectious peritonitis treatment and 800 Singapore dollars for a hysterectomy; It is quite common for cat rescuers to see

NEVER Turn Your Back on Big Cats! That's what the experts say. It's to avoid provoking the prey chasing response inherent in feline predators. The advice when confronting a mountain lion is to face the cat and make noise and make yourself bigger. If you turn away and run the puma will run after you as if you are prey. But the video is weak in my opinion. Firstly I don't like to see captive big cats in small pens whiling away the days bored to death. And secondly I am not sure that these big cats are trying to attack the video maker who has a successful YouTube channel. It looks to me that some of them are just interested in his presence and so they charge up to investigate. Anything will get them interested as the days roll by with almost nothing happening. Perhaps I am being too critical. Note : This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Icelanders are discussing whether to keep domestic cats indoors full-time. The town council of Akureyri, the "Capital of North Iceland" has decided to ban outdoor cats from January 1 2025. It was a majority decision in favour. They are going to stop the free movement of domestic cats in this town and they've given residents a long lead-in to get used to the idea. Akureyri. Photo: in public domain. However, a poll suggested that Icelanders in general do not support banning the free movement of domestic cats. But there are distinct regional differences. In Hafnarfjörður, 60% of the residents were either very or rather supportive of outdoor cats, for example. Almost the opposite view was taken in East Iceland where 55% of the residents were very or rather opposed to allowing cats to go outside. RELATED:  Icelandic government proposes changes to the law regarding feral cats The Veterinary Society of Iceland is opposed to a ban on outdoor cats. They also say that the proposed