Picture of a Ukrainian soldier with a calico cat tucked into his jacket

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.

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It's great to see a stray dog becoming useful and for his human caregiver benefiting from the relationship as is the dog. It becomes a symbiotic relationship in which both parties mutually benefit. This is a silver lining to this ridiculous war which should never have happened but which is the project of a madman, Putin.

Quite a lot of people think that he has lost his mind because he has been in isolation for two years or more, partly because of Covid about which he is paranoid and partly anyway because he has apparently become somewhat reclusive with a coterie of buddies from his KGB days who advise him. These men have very distorted views of the West as has Putin. He has called Ukrainians neo-Nazis or even plain Nazis when ironically, he is behaving just like Hitler.