The RNLI have said that in rescuing a white cat from a river they attracted more attention than if they had rescued 10 men 👍. Great Yarmouth and Gorleston coxswain, Paddy Lee, said: If we'd rescued 10 men, I don't think we'd have got as much attention. It's even hit the headlines in places like Italy and France. Oliver Bolton took the photographs. He said that the rescue had been dramatic. The cat, who they have named Icicle, fell into a river. Icicle appears to have clambered up to a space about 2 feet above the waterline in a wall but was stuck there. Icicle on the ledge. Photo: Oliver Bolton. RNLI rescue a white cat from a river near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. Photo: Oliver Bolton. Icicle after his rescue from a river. Photo: Oliver Bolton. It looks as though somebody called out the RNLI and just before they arrived icicle fell into the river. The men of the RNLI quickly got to him and scooped him out of the water. They wrapped him in a warm blanket as you can see

An amusing cat photograph which once again shows us the domestic cat's love of boxes. However, this photograph was set up as the cat is wearing a hat 😊. And therefore he/she was placed in the box. It doesn't matter because it's a nice picture and cats love boxes (for security and reassurance). I believe that these are tangerines and I also believe that the photograph was taken in Brazil. Agrocat - love of boxes. Image: Twitter.

This is one of quite a few pictures that I have seen of Ukrainian soldiers and their cat or dog companions. This young Ukrainian soldier (or is he a civilian volunteer in a camouflage jacket?) has a calico cat tucked inside his jacket. A calico cat is a tortoiseshell-and-white cat. They are almost invariably female as are tortoiseshell cats. The man is genuinely enamoured of his cat companion. Picture of a Ukrainian soldier with a calico cat tucked into his jacket. Photo: Reddit. The cats keep them company and entertain them. The dogs help them do their job. I remember one story of a Ukrainian soldier in the trenches on the front line in the north of the country at the border between Ukraine and Russia who relied upon his stray dog companion to help spot the enemy because his sense of smell and awareness was superior to his. He believed that they made a good team together. RELATED: Stray animals boost morale on Ukraine’s front lines as Russian troops invade . It's great to see a

This is a strange picture of a man who I would consider to be heroic. He was apparently evacuating his home in Kiev, Ukraine to get away from the fighting. He has a rifle which I'm going to presume was given to him by the state to defend the city as a lot of volunteers are doing this, and he is carrying a mini-aquarium and a cat carrier with I believe a cat inside.  He is wearing a helmet to protect his head. Although I would think that he would be too preoccupied in not splashing the water out of the mini-aquarium to be that concerned about whizzing bullets. He has a lot to carry and be concerned about and I don't foresee a great outcome especially for the aquarium. Picture of a man evacuating in Kiev, Ukraine with rifle, aquarium, cat carrier and wearing a helmet. Photo: social media. I don't know how he is going to make it out of there with all his worldly possessions. I'm being facetious because I have to presume that he has left a not behind. The number of refug

The question in the title is asking about the origin of the cat breed called the Cornish Rex, one of the Rex cats. The first Cornish Rex cat was born in an old farmhouse on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, UK on 21 July 1950. Originally the cat was called the 'English Rex' until a second form of Rex cat was discovered in nearby Devon (Devon Rex). The map below shows you the location of Bodmin, Cornwall. A red tabby male cat in a litter of five kittens born to a standard farm cat called Serena was seen to be different to the others because he had an unusual curly coat. The owner, Mrs Nina Ennismore kept the kitten and on the advice of a geneticist, I am told, mated the curly-coated male kitten back to his mother, a tortoiseshell cat. Beautiful Cornish Rex cat with a Van-type coat. Photo: Pinterest. This mating produced a litter containing two curly-coated kittens and one plain-coated kitten. They were back crossed a further time to produce further curly-coated kittens and the new bre

I don't know why this Idaho state trooper was in this situation when a domestic cat in the back of a car escaped (update - I do now 👍: see their FB post below ). And he stopped on the side of a freeway (a motorway in UK language). This would be the hard shoulder in the UK. This is a potentially dangerous place for both cat and trooper. Lucky, in a way, that the cat dived into the forest and not the other way onto the road. There is a question mark over why the cat was free inside the vehicle; not helpful and perhaps careless but maybe the cat escaped from a carrier. Update : the FB post from the Idaho State Police tells us more. This is what the Facebook post says: "Faster than a fleeing feline. And talk about a leap of faith! Trooper Llerenas fleet of foot kept a four-legged furball from dashing into a snowy North Idaho forest recently. A van traveling on I-90 has its side door come open and the Trooper saw several items fly onto the roadway. When the Trooper stopped the va

  No According to 8 sources. It is quite nice to know that eight sources tell me that orchids are not poisonous to cats. It's pleasant to know that because there are a lot of plants which are poisonous to cats . I am almost of the opinion that a cat owner should have no plants in their home! That would be too extreme but actually it applies to me. You just have to be careful and I don't want the worry because cats like to nibble plants because they like to nibble grass which is a plant. RELATED:  Top 10 most poisonous plants to cats . Although orchids are non-toxic to cats, if a cat chewed on one substantially it might give them a stomach upset causing them to be sick. And there may be some pesticides on orchids . I don't know if there are but the commercialisation of growing plants probably indicates that some sort of toxic pesticide is used by the producer. However, they have been declared safe on the Internet by people who know more than me about the toxicity of plants a

Get this 😃. I have never seen a cat eat dry cat food pellets using their paw in such a manic manner. This cat looks starved to me. And there is no benefit to eating the pellets with his left paw. He would get them into his mouth faster if he ate in the conventional way.  No matter. It makes for an interesting if slightly disturbing video. Eating with paws is not that unusual. It is just the crazed performance of this cat which is.  People ask why cats sometimes use their paws to eat and drink. I think it is natural. It is easier to eat with the mouth directly but an alternative is to use a paw, usually the left incidentally which indicates that cats are generally left-handed and/or ambidextrous. Grey cat manically eats dry cat food with left paw and stuffs the pellets into his mouth. Screenshot. Humans use hands to eat sometimes. And humans eat direct from the plate using the mouth sometimes (rarely 😉). Anyway, to get the food into the mouth is the objective especially when starve

 Here is the tweet by Chris Packham directed at Gary Lineker. Hello @GaryLineker Chris here . You may have seen that an @premierleague footballer from @WestHam has been filmed kicking and slapping a cat . As a great ambassador for sports and sportsmen and women can I call upon you to help ensure this is dealt with appropriately . Please RT pic.twitter.com/oM8P4pNKJc — Chris Packham (@ChrisGPackham) February 8, 2022 Note : This is an embedded tweet. 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. It is not clear to me what he specifically wants Gary Lineker to do. My guess is that he wants Lineker to put pressure on West Ham administration to punish Zouma more and perhaps terminate his contract with West Ham if it is feasible as per the terms of Zouma's contract. We are still waiting for the RSPCA to reach a decision on what to do: prosecute Zouma or not. They are taking far too long ove

NEWS AND COMMENT-JAPAN: This is a nice story of symbiosis, to use a rarely used word, certainly in this context. It means a relationship in which both parties benefit the other. And in this instance both Naoki Teraoka, the owner of a model railway themed restaurant (Tetsudokan) benefited greatly after he rescued stray cats near his business. He was going through a very difficult time because of Covid. A pretty typical scenario for huge swathes of businesses in entertainment and hospitality. He has a model railway in his restaurant to create a theme and added interest. And he loves model railways. Photo: believed to be by  @Caferest_bar_Fe. It's a popular restaurant and he was going bust because of Covid. He noticed a stray kitten next to his restaurant and decided to help because the cat needed help in terms of food and medical treatment. He named him Simba. And a few days later he noticed Simba's mother. He took both of them in. After all, he had plenty of unused food as th

Claudia Mertens, a Swiss scientist, decided that women are predestined to be the main human partner in human-cat relationships. They observed human-cat interactions in home settings in Switzerland. They observed these relationships for a total of 504 hours. The participants included 162 persons and 72 cats. Women predestined to be the main human partner in human-cat relationships. Photo: Pixabay. When people were more often in the home the human-cat dyad increased. That is to be expected. By the way, a "dyad" is, in this instance, the partnership between one cat and one person. However, when either the man or the woman was home more often in equal amounts, it is the woman who is more likely to interact with the family cat. In other words, the increase in interactions for men and women who were at home more often was more substantial for the women than for the men. RELATED:  Talk and touch, two reasons why cats tend to prefer women . They also decided that the woman-cat dya

This is a parody of Titanic (1997) starring 'OwlKitty' on YouTube. The motivation behind the video came from the creator's desire to combine their cat, Lizzy, and "our green screen in a funny, silly way". In other words, they wanted to put their cat, Lizzy, in a movie.  Parody : "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect".  The video was created by the cat's owners, Tibo Charroppin, a filmmaker and an animator, and Olivia Boone, a creative writer and content editor. As you can see, they make content with their 'prima donna' cat Lizzy. They have made other parodies including The Avengers, Jurassic Park, Pulp Fiction and others.  Screenshot from video. Tibo said that on average it takes about two weeks to make this sort of video. As an interesting snippet of information. It always interested me as to how long it took to make these videos. Two weeks is a very long time which

I just want to touch base again with this story. It has been around for a while. Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel first came to prominence on the Internet during the Syrian war. That has abated and fizzled out as far as I'm aware but there is still a great need to support the stray and feral cats of Aleppo which is exactly what Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel continues to do. Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel the "Cat Man of Aleppo". Image: screenshot from FB video. He has a Facebook page and, on that page, we see him educating the children of that city. There is no direct commentary to a video. There is background music instead. But we see him involving the children in cat rescue and feeding the stray cats. He also hands out what appears to be dry cat food for the cats. Feeding the stray cats of Aleppo, Syria. Screenshot from FB video. I can't embed the video on this page because his Facebook's settings don't allow. I have asked him to have a look at that in order to help promote his w

There is a study on the Internet, published on the Open Veterinary Journal website called: Surveillance of heat-related illness in small animals presenting to veterinary practices in the UK between 2013 and 2018 . The scientists concluded that cats with heat-related illness on occasions presented to veterinary clinics in the UK (those who participated in the survey) between May and September, with 75% during June and July. Cats hunting in hot weather may rarely suffer from heat-related illness. Image: public domain. In all, the study found that 16 cats with heat-related illness ended up at veterinary clinics. They were suffering from hyperthermia which describes a body temperature elevated above the accepted normal. The study is a warning (primarily with respect to dogs who suffer from hypothermia mainly through over exercise), that, even in soggy Britain, it is possible for domestic cats to suffer from heat-related illness. A particular vulnerability for domestic cats is that they

A video made by one of the fans on a smartphone before West Ham played Leicester last weekend shows them chanting about the Kurt Zouma cat-kicking incident. It is very unpleasant if you want to respect the domestic cat.  If you care about animal welfare, this kind of animalistic chanting is unpleasant to say the least. It portrays the fans as ignorant and disrespectful of animal welfare. The video is on social media, specifically Twitter. RELATED:  Premier League footballer videoed kicking and slapping a Bengal cat . It depends on who you are as to whether you dislike the chanting. They think it is great fun and you'll find that a lot of people agree with them. They see nothing wrong in it. Perhaps the majority of British citizens see nothing wrong in it. It will be just cat lovers and animal advocates who find it unpleasant. Who said that Britain is a country of animal lovers 🤔? West Ham fans chant about Zouma's cat-kicking incident and throw around an inflatable cat. Screens

The way I see it, you can do one of 3 things in terms of burial or cremation. However, before you deal with that it makes sense, I think, to spend a short some time with your cat and grieve over him or her. These are the last moment that you will be with your cat companion.  Urn for your cat's ashes. This is for sale on etsy.com . It is a very nice one. There is a caveat here. Rabies still exists in America albeit rarely. It is possible it seems to me to get rabies from a deceased cat. Apparently, the virus remains alive inside a deceased animal for 48 hours. That possibility should be observed but this is going to be a very rare occurrence because rabies is rare and the virus is normally injected into a person via a bite. Although irrelevant to this discussion I remember a Vietnamese guy eating the brains of a monkey or dog and getting rabies. A bit mad anyway to eat the brains of a dog but I think it is a cultural thing. Nearly all diseases affecting cats are not zoonotic which m

No! take a look at this video on Twitter. We know that most if not nearly all domestic cats are afraid of hoovers but not all. It depends on the cat's personality and his training. Cats can get used to the sound and movement of a hoover and self-train to ignore or accept them. It may take a long time to get to the situation we see in the video. Some cats are confident and some are timid. I have seen a cat thoroughly enjoying himself while his owner hoovered his belly 😃. It takes all sorts. Are all cats afraid of hoovers? Clearly not. Screenshot. There is a role to play for the cat's caregiver however. They can help their cat be less fearful of the sound and movement of what to the cat seems like an unknown noisy object that might be a predator. That's why they scram before you are anywhere near him/her.  Once they understand that the hoover is no dangerous you have halfway there. Pancho, old chap, did you use your downtime from Twitter to get over your #Zuigerphobia ? #

The legislature of the US State of Arizona is discussing a possible ban on cat declawing. This is reported by Fox News online. They say that an Arizona House committee has approved a bill that would ban cat owners from declawing unless it was for genuinely therapeutic purposes i.e. in the best interests of the cat and for the benefit of the cat's health, which is hardly ever the case. THERE IS A VIDEO FROM FOX NEWS AT THE BASE OF THE PAGE WHICH REPORTS ON THIS DEVELOPMENT IF YOU'D PREFER TO HEAR ABOUT THIS VISUALLY BUT THERE WILL BE ADVERTS. The bill is called HB 2224. It provides for fines if any veterinarian performs the procedure unless it is for genuinely therapeutic purposes. A supporter of the bill or perhaps the proposer of the bill, Arizona State Representative Amish Shah, rightly said that: "With all the research and science that we have accumulated on this topic, it is cruel, it is mutilation, and it needs to stop." The usual counterargument is presented by

Firstly, there are people who practice witchcraft in the UK today, 2022. You don't hear much about them if anything. You don't see them but they are self-proclaimed witches practicing witchcraft. And they perform weird and wonderful ceremonies. We don't know where they are and I don't think that people are much interested in them except for people like me news media reports that five black cats have gone missing from two places: Croft-on-Tees and Dalton-on-Tees, both near Darlington, UK. Five black cats vanish near Darlington, UK. Is this witchcraft? Image: PoC. There are two strange facts about the case. There are other indoor/outdoor cats allowed to roam around these towns which are not black cats. Nothing happened to them. Secondly, the five black cats have completely disappeared. There is no trace of them anywhere. It is as if they no longer exist. RELATED:  The earliest record of the belief that cats are witches in disguise . This would point strongly to the sugges

My research indicates that Keanu Reeves does not live with a dog or a cat. This may surprise some people because he is a decent bloke who likes animals. In fact, I think that you could argue that he is better than a decent bloke. He is an exceptional individual on my research. He eschews his riches made from his A-list Hollywood ranking and is a generous charitable donor.  He supports PETA, the animal rights organisation. And it is reported that he has spent time talking to a tramp in New York City for hours on end. I mean, the guy doesn't see himself as a Hollywood film star but as an ordinary person who perhaps prefers to live an ordinary life and mix with ordinary people. I love that. Keanu Reeves takes the subway in NYC like anyone else. Photo: in the public domain (presumed). Neither is he a vegetarian nor a vegan. In fact, he has talked about his diet and he does eat meat. So, he loves animals but doesn't see the need to become vegan. I guess he has decided that he can he

Kurt Zouma's two cats, one of which is a Bengal cat and the other is probably of the same breed, "will remain in care after being checked over by vets," the RSPCA confirmed. You may remember that the West Ham defender, 27, had his cats seized following the uploading of a video by his brother to social media in which he is seen drop-kicking and slapping one of the cats at his £2 million mansion. Kurt Zouma. Pic in public domain. The RSPCA has said that the investigation is continuing and while it does, they will retain the cats. However, they said that they are not up for rehoming. They have embarked on a full and thorough investigation they said.  An RSPCA spokesman said: "Two cats are in our care, have been seen by a vet and are being well looked after. They will remain in our care while the investigation continues and are not available for rehoming although we have lots of beautiful cats who are looking for new homes. We understand the high level of interest in thi

This is a TikTok video of an eight-year-old shelter cat named Bell. She is female which is unusual for a ginger tabby and she is the only cat at the shelter as you can see when the video camera roams down the aisle of shelter cages with not a cat in sight. By implication, Bell is the only cat left because she is middle-aged in cat years. She looks very cautious when the person making the video enters her cage. This is understandable. Bell emerges from hiding in her shelter enclosure. Screenshot. On the outside of her enclosure there is a sign saying "free roaming". I am not sure what that means in this instance. I don't think Bell was free-roaming but she might have been. Perhaps it means that she is able to roam freely in a larger than usual enclosure or area at the cat shelter. @gcace_rescue The only cat left on our adoption floor is Bell💔 #adoptaseniorcat #foster #rescue #animalshelter #fyp #catsoftiktok ♬ original sound - m.a.r.y s.h.a.n.t.i Once again, i