Cute caterpillar looks like a cat

Note the word 'cat' in caterpillar. Very appropriate in this instance as this cutey's head looks a like a cat's head with the big 'ears' and tabby markings on the forehead 😎.

It is the caterpillar of the brown Chinese bush butterfly or Mycalesis gotama which has a snout that is familiar to the whole world in the shape of the Hello Kitty logo.

Please click on the play button twice.

Find out what your cat likes through observation and deliver it

Instinctively, I spend quite a lot of time observing my cat and finding out what he likes me to do. Yes, I know, it is a form of cat-training-human, but I like it. I feel that it is my duty to try and please him and it is no hardship to me. And you do this by interacting with your cat and observing the effect. Of course, it helps to understand domestic cats generally.

Gabs on top of the Sky television box which emits quite a lot of heat. Like many domestic cats he loves warmth. Click it for a large image. Image by MikeB.

My cat likes the back of his head to be stroked. He likes my hand to be placed on the back of his head. I think that he likes both the contact and the warmth. It has got to the point where he asks for it not by meowing but by looking up at me in a certain way which I now understand.

And this request always happens when he is on my lap, when I'm in bed, as is the case right now. It's about cause and effect. You do something with your cat, and you can tell if he or she likes it.

Another thing which he likes is to be flea comb around the cheeks and down the side of his neck. Also, on the top of the head. He likes the feeling of it, and he likes the way his fur feels afterwards I believe. These are areas that he can't get to and therefore it is fairly obvious that it will please him.

The benefits of doing this are twofold: you check for fleas and if there is one in that area you remove it and kill it and the whole experience is pleasurable both for cat and person. It is pleasurable for the person because it is a warm, friendly interaction which is exactly what people are after when they adopt a cat companion.

My behaviour in this instance is the same sort of behaviour that another friendly cat would perform when allogrooming. You often see two domestic cats who are friendly with each other licking each other. And they nearly always focus on the top of the head or other inaccessible parts. Perhaps that, too, is instinctive.

It is quite easy to get into routines with respect to behaviours that please both cat and person. The cat enjoys the interaction, and the person enjoys their cat's company and delivering a form of behaviour which their cat enjoys.

Here are some other human behaviours (not a complete list) that my cat responds positively to which I therefore do in order to please him:

1. When I sit down to watch television, I call him to come over and sit on my lap. He prefers it when I wear an old dressing gown which I guess provides extra warmth to him. He almost invariably comes over and takes up the offer.
2. I know that my cat likes warmth. Many domestic cats do. I do my best to provide it. In fact, he likes it on his belly. I know this because when he lies on my lap he spreads out and hangs over the edge of my knees while putting a paw on the coffee table. He likes to have one paw on the coffee table and to please him I bring the table towards him so that he can do this.
3. I know that my cat prefers to go into the back yard through the bifold doors rather than through the cat flap. So, if it is possible, I open the bifold doors enough to allow him through. This encourages him to go into the backyard and I join him there for a cuddle and to see what is going on. While in the backyard he likes me to pick him up for a short time of about 30 seconds. This gives a high vantage point, and it allows for an intimate form of contact. He lets me know when he wants to be put down by looking at the ground.
4. I know that he likes to sleep in a place where there is protection above him. I know this because he likes to sleep on a chair, the lower half of which is under the dining room table. He likes that feeling of protection that the table above him provides. A lot of cats have the same feelings. Therefore, I have splashed out and bought him a special little "bedroom". I have not constructed it yet but when I have, I will provide a picture on this page. It was expensive and had problems on its delivery. It's manufactured in Poland, and I was not aware of that when I bought it online. There were duties to pay i.e., VAT which I wasn't aware of. I renegotiated the purchase price with the manufacturers, and they gave me a discount which was more or less equivalent to the amount of VAT. But the point here is that a lot of cats including mine like to sleep with something above their head for protection. It allows them to sleep more soundly. This is an example of finding out what your cat likes through observation.

Magic tip: how to stop a persistent tickly cough

This is nothing to do with cats, but I feel that I have to try and get this great tip out there. It really is good, and I don't see anyone mentioning it on the internet. 

It is based on personal first-hand experience, and I feel confident that it will work a lot of the time. Tickly coughs are common after an upper respiratory viral disease: a cold or Covid Omicron for example.

I had a tickly cough for weeks and it was driving me mad. I also felt under the weather with a headache. I don't know if the source of the cough was the same as for the headache, but I think it was. It may have been Covid Omicron which is like a cold.

TCP can cure a persistent tickly cough. Image in the public domain.

I got rid of the cough by gargling with diluted TCP at about 1 part TCP with 3 parts of water, which is a liquid antiseptic based on halogenated phenols.  Make the concentration as strong as you can take, even 1:1 and you might drink a little of it at the end. But only a little bit. If you want to pass on this last bit of advice that's fine.

I gargled three times in the evening and in the morning the cough was 90% gone. It felt like I'd gone to heaven. I did the same thing again yesterday and this morning and the cough has gone.

I also used Corsodyl mouthwash after the gargling just to be sure both bacteria and viruses were being killed. Although, phenol disinfectant can kill a wide variety of microbes such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi.

My research indicates that low concentrations of phenol cause bacterial death by deactivation of essential enzyme systems.

Phenols have a broad range of disinfection capabilities. They are effective against bacteria, micro-bacteria and fungi. They are also effective against envelope (easy to cure) viruses such as influenza. Therefore, phenol is more effective against bacteria and on that bases I wonder if a tickly cough is mainly caused by bacteria on the throat.

Phenol-based disinfectants have a high potency in disinfection of hospitals. Phenol derivatives can deactivate viruses such as HIV and other hydrophilic viruses within minutes at a concentration range of 0.5-5%. 

They deactivate pathogens by inducing membrane damage which leads to the leakage of intracellular components and denaturing of proteins! 

That's very technical but I'm just trying to add a little bit of meat to the bone here to try and explain why TCP is effective at reducing or eliminating the tickly cough after an upper respiratory viral infection possibly followed by a secondary bacterial infection and I think it is effective against post a Covid Omicron infection.

Gargling with TCP is unpleasant, but the result is pleasant. Mouth washing with Corsodyl hurts if you do it after you have brushed your teeth so do both the TCP gargle and mouth wash before brushing your teeth.

Give it a try if you have a bad tickly cough that is upsetting you. You might get lucky. If it works for you, please leave a comment. There is no danger and downside to the best of my knowledge. This is an over-the-counter treatment not requiring a prescription which is why I feel that I can talk about it here.

Europeans are apprehensive and experience heightened emotions. Cuddle your cat.

Google offers the world Google Trends. It's a useful service to see what people are thinking what they are doing in real time. It provides background information as to what is bubbling under the surface of the news and what we see happening around us. And today, Google search trends 2022 indicates that the searches are driven by heightened emotions. This applies to people across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This implies that people in America are not suffering from heightened emotions. 

This is probably because the major source of heightened emotions is the Ukraine war which is a long way away from America and I sense that Americans feel distanced from the Ukraine war whereas it is on the doorstep of Europe.

And I say "suffering" because it seems that these emotions are anxiety or apprehension.

Peoples of Europe are apprehensive. Cuddle your cat. Image: Image by Prettysleepy Art from Pixabay.

And a reason why this exists is because of issues with personal finances due to high inflation which is destabilising the economic systems. With high inflation you have higher interest rates in order to suppress inflation and with higher interest rates you going to have far more costly mortgages when they are on variable accounts. This puts in jeopardy keeping one's house because some people can't afford to pay their mortgages anymore.

This leads to anxiety. There is just one example. And of course, you have the Ukrainian war which is costing the world about US$2.3 trillion in terms of trade and loss of revenue. The Ukraine war is seriously damaging economic growth and prosperity which has a knock-on effect in the way people feel and of course it fuels inflation because Putin has stopped the supply of gas and oil to Europe which has forced up energy prices dramatically. This has fuelled inflation and the consequential high number of problems that emanate from that.

And on a very basic and raw level, the Ukraine war threatens the lives of Europeans and arguably people across the world. It may expand to a world war and that would affect everybody including America. This possibility generates anxiety.

But after Covid people want to socialise, they want to get out and do things. The end of Covid brought an optimism but this has been counteracted by apprehension. Google trends say that there are two moods in place: optimism and uncertainty. They say, "We are curious but cautious and were turning to search for answers".

Health is a bigger issue with people because of Covid. Long Covid is a major issue. It is believed that it affects the heart, and a substantial number of people suffer from it. And in the UK the NHS is broken causing long waiting lists which affects health treatment which of course affects the health of the citizens of the UK.

So, two fundamental problems exist which cause apprehension: health and wealth! In the background is the Ukrainian war which is like a disease that affects everything insidiously. It undermines society.

I would suggest that apprehension is outstripping optimism. I am not optimistic but I'm naturally pessimistic, I guess. I can see things getting worse not better all because of Putin and his mad escapades. He is digging himself into a massive hole.

Just recently the Nord Stream Gas supply pipes were blown up. There's a big question mark as to who did it. I think it is somebody in Europe we did it in order to ensure that Europe never goes back to Russian gas. It's a method of preventing Europe having two minds about going back to buying Russian gas because of the difficulties of doing without it. So, I think it's people who want to hurt Russia and to strengthen Europe's independence of Russia's energy supplies.

But it all adds up to more apprehension in European citizens. Which brings me to my last point: cuddle your cat! I had to get domestic cats into this discussion somehow, but we know for a fact that if your cat is sitting on your lap as mine is at the moment, keeping you warm and keeping you company, you feel better. You feel reassured and your cat feels reassured. You have a companion; you have a friend.

And cat companions are far more reliable than human companions. They will always be there for you. Good human caregivers reciprocate. For 15 or more years you have a relationship which improves your life and which chips away at that apprehension which world events, out of our control, generate.

Neglected, starving adult cats trapped in home killed and ate one of their kittens

In human terms, this is an extremely rare example of a gang of domestic cats "murdering" a young kitten because they were starving, and they were starving because they were neglected to the point of starvation by their callously negligent owner who has subsequently been convicted and punished. This is also a case of cat cannibalism.  I have found 9 reasons for domestic cat cannibalism.

The story comes from Bradford, UK. Four members of the same family, all women between the ages of 23 and 49, neglected seven cats to the point where some of these adult cats bit to death a kitten who was in poor health in order to eat that kitten to survive. The kitten was probably one of the offspring of one of the adult cats.

One of the starving adult cats who decided to attack and eat one of their kittens in order to survive. Photo: RSPCA vet.

I don't know whether you have heard of that happening before, but I certainly haven't, and it is an example of cannibalism. I have written about the nine reasons why feline cannibalism happens in domestic cats which you can read by clicking on this link if you wish.

In this instance, the RSPCA were called to the house where they found two urine-soaked cats in filthy crates in the kitchen and the other five running around loose in the home.

The "murdered" kitten was handed to an RSPCA inspector, Kris Walker, by the former partner of one of the women. This allowed the veterinarian attached to the RSPCA to assess the body and they decided that the kitten had been bitten around the neck and head and it was these bites which killed the kitten in conjunction with his or her poor health.

It appears that only part of the kitten was eaten. I know that is an unpleasant thought.

The four defendants ended up in the Magistrates' court having been charged under the animal welfare act 2006 for animal cruelty. The women are all related and appear to be a mother and her three daughters: Dawn Mawson (49), Sabrina Mawson (23), Elisha Mawson (23) and Elizabeth Mawson (25).

There were convicted of animal welfare offences under the Act mentioned and were given a life ban on keeping animals as their punishment. For me, that isn't enough. But perhaps they didn't have enough money to pay a fine.

The veterinarian who carried out the post-mortem said in a report that "The fact that the other cats in the house attacked him (the kitten) is quite unusual and it is possible they had done this as they saw him as a source of much-needed food."

And the report also stated that: "It is abundantly clear that the welfare needs of these animals were simply not met. This has been one of the worst cases of animal neglect. Custody was a real option we considered in this case."

The RSPCA inspector said: "It was awful the state these cats had been left in and how hungry they were when we took them to the vets. Sadly, they were so hungry that they had picked off the weakest link among them."

Cat head backyard fence is delightful

Well, it is the first time I have seen a fence like this, and I am impressed. It is uncomplicated. It weathers nicely and in fact the weathering of the fence makes it look better. The slats are staggered which makes them more distinct and I like the way the slats are separated slightly so each one becomes a cat. It's an ideal fence for a cat lover obviously.

Cat head backyard fence is delightful. Image: Twitter.

You just have to make sure that you don't live next door to a cat hater! Because if you did it would irritate them tremendously. I don't think it would cost that much for a carpenter to create this and add real character to your backyard or back garden. Or perhaps it would be better in the front yard so the world could see it more easily.

Here is a closeup:

Photo of 'conjoined cats' wins prize but is it photoshopped?

This is a photograph taken in Japan by Kenichi Morinaga of one white cat and one ginger tabby cat who appear to be "conjoined". They are sitting on a fence. The photograph won first prize in the 2022 Comedy Pet Photo Awards.

'Conjoined cat' won a photo prize but is it photo-edited? Photo: Kenichi Morinaga.

My immediate reaction when I saw it was to ask if the photograph has been created with photo-editing because it very much looks like it. I just don't think that you can get this appearance by two cats being in close contact with their heads facing away from the camera. Anatomically it is impossible to achieve this, I would say. But it beat the judges! Perhaps they accept photo-edited images?

The news media say that the "cats are pressing their necks together to give the appearance of being conjoined". It just doesn't look right to me. And I know how to photo-edit photographs and it would not be that difficult to photo edit this image as follows.

How he did it using photo-editing

One of these cats was sitting on the fence and the photographer acquired another cat from the Internet that was in a configuration ideal to place it on the fence when the background was removed. The photographer then removed the heads of the cats and placed the two cats together. He made sure that the connecting point was roughed up a little bit so that it looks more natural.

How he'll spend the money

The prize was £2,000 plus a £5,000 donation to an animal charity of his choice.

Morinaga said that he likes to spend time travelling around Japan's islands to photograph street cats.

The photographer has a fascination for the antics of cats. He said: "When I returned to Japan, I continued to seek them out, they really cheer me up, especially after the last two years of the pandemic. They are so funny, even when they are doing something serious."

He is going to use the prize money to fund more photo trips around Japan. He said: "I would like to continue photographing many cats and bring many more smiles to people's faces. Through funny photos I hope that the world will one day become a kinder one, where cats, dogs and other animals are not abandoned or mistreated."

Does my cat understand when I pick him up and hug him?

A social media user asked: "Does my cat understand when I pick him up and hug him, or is he just waiting to be moved/put down?"

Does my cat understand when I pick him up and hug him, or is he just waiting to be moved/put down? Image: MikeB based on image in the public domain.

The answer to the question depends on the circumstances. However, if you have the habit of picking up your cat gently and gently talking to him and gently loving him and you do this as an expression of love and friendship, your cat will understand what it means and respond accordingly. 

However, if you regularly pick up your cat and transport them to another place under certain circumstances and you do it over and over again then your cat will understand that picking them up and transporting them means just that and it is not an expression of love towards your cat. 

Like I said it's a question of circumstances and how a cat links your behaviour with those circumstances to deduce what is going on.

There is also the issue of how you pick a cat up and whether you do it in the correct way or incorrectly and how you hug your cat when they are in your arms. Do you carry your cat like a baby which is feet up and, on their back, or do you carry them in a way which is less intimidating to them? 

Sometimes when people treat their cat as babies the cat can become a little anxious. In which case they will want to be released. And cats vary tremendously in their preferences.

Some cats like to be carried or jump on to their owner's lap while others are less keen. Some cats actively dislike being picked up and carried and they'll complain. For them, picking them up and hugging them cannot be a pleasant experience of affection from their owner.

And clearly, there has to be a good general relationship between cat and person. If the relationship is slightly tense or fractious, a cat will not wish to be picked up because it will only tend to make them nervous. The opposite will happen if there is a good relationship, and the cat likes to be picked up and understands that it is a demonstration of affection from their human caregiver.

Neighbor from hell threatens to kill the stray cats that I feed

USA: This is about a new neighbour from hell and how to deal with him. It is not an uncommon problem, but it is an almost intractable one and my advice based on a lifetime of experience is to move home.

A social media user is desperate for advice. They say that they bought a house five years ago after much effort and he is pleased that he has managed to secure a safe haven for himself and his family. It has a large backyard and a forested area beyond. Therefore, there is lots of wildlife including possums, foxes, raccoons, deer and groundhogs and even an otter. He enjoys this.

How do you combat neighbours from hell who want to kill stray cats that you feed, and this is in the country. Image: MikeB

And there are two neighbourhood stray cats hanging around his carport, so he feeds them every night at the same time that he feeds his three indoor cats.

"At a loss about animal hating new neighbors" - social media user desperate for help.

A new neighbour bought the house next door about a month ago. It is clear to him that his neighbour is an animal hater plus a neighbour from hell. For example, his neighbour said that he saw a groundhog in his backyard and that they are going to feed it with food baited with a constipation treatment so that the groundhog shits itself to death.

"Feed it Ex-Lax so it will sh*t itself to death" - neighbour from hell

And also, the animal hater has told them that they need to stop feeding the stray cats because they scratched his car (probably a lie). The neighbour said that unless they bring the stray cats inside, he is going to kill them.

When they told him that they've been feeding the stray cats for years he said that he didn't care.

As a consequence, they called the police non-emergency number, but they said that there is nothing that they can do because the cats are stray and also because the neighbour from hell hasn't actually done anything yet. Typical police, negative response. They could have at least spoken with the man.

Then they decided to bring one of the stray cats inside, but this made her miserable and the resident cats were also unhappy as expected. The other stray cat gets into fights with other cats and is a genuine feral and they can't get near him.

They want to protect the two stray cats but don't know how to do it except to keep an eye on them. The trouble is that he works and can't protect the cats 24/7.

To sum things up, the man (65 years of age) is seeking advice and has been living in a property for five years and his new neighbour hates animals and is threatening to kill stray cats that he feeds.

My advice

My advice on social media was very negative advice and one that I feel that many people would reject but I think it's the right one and it is this: to move home. I know that sounds awful but when you live with a neighbour from hell you can't beat them. 

Well, you can probably beat them in the end after an awful lot of argument and possible litigation but when you have achieved that you've actually lost because you are then living next to a person who hates you and will probably do all they can to make your life miserable for years.

As soon as you enter into a major dispute or long-term disputes with your neighbour even if that dispute was caused by their bad behaviour, there is no reasonable answer to the problem except to get out and move on.

In fact, my experience tells me that under the circumstances you should not complain about your neighbour from hell's behaviour. You should not talk to them. We should not do anything other than move home quietly.

If you complain about them and put in formal complaints to the local authority or whatever it has to be declared when you sell your home, and it will put off potential purchasers.

Neighbours from hell are irrational. And therefore, it's impossible to deal with them rationally. It's impossible to make progress with them. It's impossible to negotiate or discuss things with them because they want to dictate terms from the onset. Therefore, you either accept what they say, or you get out.

I guess there is another outcome which is to let the madman kill the cats but that is probably less acceptable than moving home. And in any case, you are left with living next to a neighbour who is a complete nuisance and likely to be a nuisance about something else in the future.

Nicolas Cage's best friend is his cat Merlin

Nicolas Cage, the iconic American actor who has made some super films and many flops 😒 says that his cat Merlin loves him and is very affectionate. Merlin loves contact and jumps into bed with Nick and hugs him and he thinks it is his wife but 'Nope, it's Merlin!'

Cage and Merlin. Is this really Merlin. The cat in the video looks like a blue purebred British Shorthair but 'Merlin' is a 4-year-old Maine Coon. The cat in the video is not a Maine Coon. Image: Screenshot.

Merlin shows Nick Cage a lot of affectionate energy and he calls him a 'real sweetheart'. And he means it. And I am sure all of us who have been loved by their cat companion know what he means. 

When a cat loves you and shows it in their behaviour it is special. We are privileged to experience cat love 😊💓✔️.

Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source, or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.

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What I positively don't like about the video is the stupid video editing which, for me, dilutes the genuine affection that Cage has for Merlin and vice versa. 

And the cat is a Maine Coon while Merlin is a Maine Coon. So, the video maker got that entirely wrong. I can't find a reliable photo of Merlin at the present time.

The video takes the piss out of the relationship, and I believe that it is a genuinely loving relationship. You don't take the piss out of that. I am being too serious perhaps but that's how I see it. Maybe it is Cage who's taking the piss out of the relationship, but I don't see that happening as he is a known cat lover.

P.S. Initially I misspelled his first name which was unforgivably careless of me. And as I dictate these posts his surname was also misspelled, and I missed them both! Horrible. Sorry. Doing things too fast.

Humans moan about feral cats, but human carelessness created them

Every day on the online news media - every damned day (yes, I am annoyed) - we see hundreds of articles on local, state and federal newspapers and from other countries particularly Australia, about feral cats and the nuisance that they cause. The biggest complaint about feral cats is that they kill birds. But of course, they kill other animals too, sometimes native species, which really irritates local authorities and going higher up to federal authorities.

This sort of picture annoys millions of people, and they blame the feral cat. Let's go one back and blame the people who are careless cat owners. Image in the public domain.

They moan and moan and they criticise feral cats over and over again. The dreaded feral cat is a constant concern to the authorities. They speak of feral cats as if they are monsters from another planet. They just arrived out of the ether, and they are a damned nuisance.

The old saying 'don't shoot the messenger' comes to mind. The feral cat is the bringer of bad news to people in the community. They don't tell citizens the bad news through vocalisations but by their presence. The bad news is that careless people created the feral cat.

But it would help if the people who moan about feral cats sat down and counted to ten and reflected on why feral cats exist and the reason is...wait for it...human carelessness and negligence. They should then moan about the people who caused the feral cat problem! And leave the innocent, persecuted victim - the cat and the messenger - alone or at least treat them decently unlike the bloody Aussies.

If the news media and the local authorities are going to moan about feral cats, they have to moan about people as well because they are the root cause of the problem.

And I want to see some more moaning about people and I don't want to see the feral cat victimised over and over again by ignorant journalists who don't really get to the bottom of these problems. They simply regurgitate what they read on some other online news media site. The articles are often written by a person with very skimpy knowledge of cats and without an opinion of their own.

Let's drill down and see why feral cats exist. It goes back to the beginning in Australia when migrants came to the country, but the problem has been perpetuated and exacerbated to further carelessness in domestic cat ownership and therefore when you talk about feral cat nuisance and that they need to be either eradicated or humanely euthanised after being trapped (or just shot), you have to talk about proactive steps to stop more feral cats being created. 

That can only take place through education. It has to be widespread education, probably part of the general school curriculum if you really want to get to the bottom of the problem.

You have got to change attitudes, fundamental attitudes in a small section of society because it is only in a small section of society, perhaps around 5% of cat owners, who spoil it for everybody else by not spaying and neutering their cats to ensure that they don't procreate. And by limiting the number of cats that they possess. In short, showing some self-discipline and demonstrating to others that they care about cat welfare and are not self-indulgently simply acquiring cats willy-nilly without proper controls and management.

There are even some people - even today - who believe that a female cat needs to have babies before she can be complete which is pure mumbo-jumbo. If all the people who think that that their female cats need to have babies, you have a cat problem and some of those kittens will grow up to be adult cats that are unwanted and some of them will become feral cats.

The more you read about domestic and feral cats the more you have to conclude that the domestication of the Middle Eastern wildcat has been a failure. This is because half the world's population of "domestic cats" are actually feral cats. So, if there are 500 million domestic and feral cats in the world, there are at least 250 million feral cats and that might be a conservative number.  It was never meant to be this way, but humans have learned to reluctantly accept feral cats which means they accept a ton of misery in animals that were created out of negligence.

Although we do not know the number of domestic and feral cats in the world. We have to guess. But my guess is that there are more feral cats than domestic cats when looking at all the world's domestic and feral cats.

This is because in Asia and specifically in India the majority of cats are 'community cats'. They are semi-feral. They are not true domestic cats. They are sometimes fed but they are not taken the veterinarians when they become sick. There is little or no medical care. The level of care to community cats is average-to-poor to very poor.

'Copycats' a cat picture I don't like

The picture is called 'copycats'. And the person who uploaded it to Twitter has the handle: 'cats being weird little guys'. Being a grumpy old man, I don't see cats being weird but humans being weird. They get a kick out of placing a real tuxedo cat (black-and-white) in bed with a bunch of plush toy look-a-likes. Then they take a photo and upload it to social media. I mean, I don't get it. 

'Copycats' a cat picture I don't like. Image: Twitter.

I suppose it is all about human entertainment, but it is at the expense of cats. But then no one gives a damn except grumpy old fools like me who complains. Why don't we celebrate the cat or simply stop using the cat to make funny cat pics for social media? Let's just end the funny cat pic and video era. It has gone on long enough. Way too long actually.

I don't think it helps with cat welfare as it uses cats as objects of entertainment. Someone out there will take a different message from the images and believe that cats can be abused in a more harmful way. There are a lot of people who get kicks out of hurting cats.

It is funny because at the other end of the spectrum of cat pictures we have cat rescue organisations trying to drum up donations by showing injured, rescued cats. They publish these uncomfortable photos on Twitter, and it is simply wrong. It is using cat cruelty to try and get people to donate money. It is another version of cat abuse.

Showing photos of injured cats, I have decided, is abusive. It devalues cats. And it inures people to cat abuse. People need to be sensitive to cat abuse and to roundly object to it and reject it. If you bombard social media users with pics of rescue cats in very poor health and injured, people become accustomed to these images and see nothing particularly wrong. It is becomes normalised.

I have asked cat rescues to stop showing injured rescued cats as it is clearly wrong. Let's see the cat treated in a kindly non-abuse way. The cat should never be used (abused) to try and achieve a human goal. But is happens all the time in many different ways.

Are there cheetahs in India? YES, from September 17, 2022.

Until September 17, 2022, you would have to answer the question in the title with a very positive NO because the same subspecies of cheetah that is found in Iran in very small numbers, was also present in India in the 1940s but the last cheetah in the wild in India was recorded in 1948 and they were declared extinct in that country in 1952. 

Image: ANI/Unsplash

The last cheetahs were shot in the Sal forests of Koriya District, Chhattisgarh, which seems incredibly careless of the authorities and the individual person who shot them because they were the last ones in the country! An example of anti-conservation of the highest calibre.

But you may have heard that the authorities have taken the bold step of relocating cheetahs from Namibia, Africa, which is essentially the home of the cheetah in the world. A special cargo flight bringing eight cheetahs landed at the Indian Air Force Station in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. India's Prime Minister, Miranda Modi, will release them into Kuno National Park. Update: he had his camera with him with a telephoto lens to capture the moment of release.

He will release them on his birthday, which is this Saturday. The cheetahs have travelled more than 8000 km in a specially modified passenger 747 jumbo jet.

Below is a video of one of the cheetahs about to be flown from Namibia to India. They make such a sweet meow sound. I feel sorry for this cat. He or she is upset and wants to be back where she belongs.

The eight cheetahs are made up of five females and three males. Modi wants to revitalise and diversify India's wildlife under "Project Cheetah". The project is described as the world's first "inter-continental large wild carnivore translocation project".

It appears that the first discussions about this translocation took place in 2009 when officials of the Cheetah Conservation Fund based in Namibia entered into discussions with the Indian government and subsequently the government ordered the Madhya Pradesh Forest Department to develop a separate space within Kuno National Park to accommodate the cheetahs.

It is worth mentioning that female cheetah ranges in Namibia are extremely large measuring 1500 km². However, the majority of male cheetahs in the Serengeti living coalitions and establish small territories of about 30 km² with good vegetative cover and a locally high abundance of antelope. The point that I'm making is this: is there enough space in this national park to accommodate eight cheetahs from Namibia?

The park is spread over 748 km². There are no human settlements in the park. They believe that it can sustain 21 cheetahs. The authorities relocated villages from inside the park to outside its boundaries perhaps in preparation for this translocation.

The relocation of these cheetahs is also a big move for Namibia as it is the first time the wild southern African cheetah been translocated anywhere else in the world. The project has a budget of US$5 million over a period of five years.

The big question is whether the cheetahs will survive or fail to reproduce over the five-year period. Some experts have voiced major concerns. One of those is Valmik Thapar. He is unsure whether they will survive in the wild in India.

He believes that India does not have the habitat or prey species for wild re-roaming cheetahs. And he believes that the authorities do not have sufficient experience or understanding to make it work. He believes that they will survive in the short term provided they are provided with food. He says that India was never the natural home of the African chetah.

Here is a BBC video on the topic:

2 reasons why domestic cats 'play' with prey (and it is not because they are psychopathic)

You might know the 2 reasons why your domestic cat - if she is allowed to go outside - 'plays' with the mouse she catches but I'd like to play with the topic for a while. Sorry about the pun. 

2 reasons why domestic cats 'play' with prey (and it is not because they are psychopathic). Image: MikeB.

The first reason is that most domestic cats don't really get enough hunting time. Hunting is in their DNA, and they need to express this desire. For indoor cats it is in the form of play-hunting. When a cat is able to successfully catch a mouse, they want to extend the fun as long as possible and so they toy with the poor animal both before they die and after death. It looks horrible, callous and psychopathic to some humans, but we can't measure cats by reference to human characteristics. 

Cats are insensitive to the pain they cause. They are insensitive to the emotions of the prey animals that they terrorise. We must avoid anthropomorphising cats. So, the first reason why cats play with prey is to extend the excitement of the hunt and the kill because they don't get enough of it. 

Hunting becomes more than an act of survival. It is playing out the hunting instinct and as you know cats hunt when they are not hungry.

The second, instinctive, reason is linked to the first. Many domestic cats get a little bit out of practice on their innate hunting skills and want to make sure that they don't suffer a nasty bite from a highly defensive and athletic little mouse. And so, they bat, slap and toss around the poor creature using their paws thereby avoiding getting their head near the animal, which exhausts the mouse and makes them less of a threat in terms of acquiring an injury. 

Cats want to kill mice with a bite to the head but that exposes them to a bite from mice. The safer way to kill is to exhaust them and this has the added advantage of taking longer. As there is no need to eat the mouse taking longer over the kill is not a problem. In the wild, the domestic cat's ancestor would not mess around so much. They get on with killing and eating.

Rats certainly can harm cats. You don't see domestic cats playing with birds so much or hardly at all because they are harder to catch and less of a danger to the cat. Also, when birds are caught by a cat they don't respond in the same exciting way as mice. 

They just try and fly off. Mice gallop along the skirting board and hide. Cats love that. They love to prod and poke their paws into tight places where the mouse has found sanctuary. And one cat hunting strategy is to sit and wait by a burrow. When a mouse hides under the sideboard it is the same thing to a cat.

The whole hunting process for a domestic cat is like a play - another awful pun.

What breed is this stray neighbourhood cat?

"What breed is this stray neighbourhood cat?" asks a Reddit.com user and the answer is that this is a bobcat. This is not a breed of cat but a species of medium-sized wild cat ubiquitous in North America wandering around suburbia looking for a domestic cat to feed on! 😢

It looks like a 'purebred' bobcat (i.e., not a hybrid) who has wandered into the neighbourhood as they sometimes do as they often become habituated to suburbia which is not great for the cat as sometimes residents panic and grab their guns of which there is a copious number in the US.

What breed is this stray neighbourhood cat? It is not a breed of cat but an American bobcat wandering around American suburbia probably looking for a domestic cat to feed on. Image: Reddit.com (u/Gimme_More_Cats)

You'll see a lot of bobcats in American suburbia and the big problem is that in some places such as Florida bobcats acquire a taste for outside domestic cats. They attack, kill and eat them. Domestic cat owners find that their cat companions have simply disappeared, and the bobcat can return for more.

RELATED: Two dozen domestic cats attacked and eaten by bobcats at Flagler Beach?

You can end up with a mini slaughter of indoor/outdoor cats in one area. I guess small dogs might be vulnerable to bobcat predation as well.

The problem is human made as these settlements have been built on bobcat territory. They are simply occupying what is rightfully theirs and they bump into prey animals: domestic cats.

Sometimes you see escaped pet servals wandering around neighbourhoods. They, too, are vulnerable to being shot at because people can be scared, and they tend to exaggerate the dangers.

If they simply keep their cats inside and left the bobcat alone all would end well. You just have to leave them alone to share the place. It is their place anyway.

RELATED: Do bobcats make good pets? Do bobcats eat cats? Do bobcats live in UK? Do bobcats attack humans?

There are actually many news stories of bobcats interfering with human life sometimes with bad outcomes. For example, a contractor claims a bobcat attacked him on 18th floor of condominium in downtown Tampa. 

"Cat breeds I will never own" by an animal clinic worker

An animal clinic worker, Kaylnn, decided to tell us that there are four "cat breeds" that she would never own, and she has decided that she has the authority to tell us this. But her "advice" is hopelessly inaccurate and there are some glaring errors. It is all bollocks. She implies that in handling them at her clinic these cats have been very difficult.

"Cat breeds I will never own" by an animal clinic worker. It is all pure bollocks

She has produced a TikTok video which, I'm sorry to say, is hopeless as well. For example, she says that domestic longhaired cats are very badly behaved. "Domestic longhaired cats" are not a breed of cat. And therefore, she's got that wrong completely. And she's branding all longhaired domestic cats as being "a$$holes". This cannot be correct. It's impossible to state that and it is completely stupid. It goes against logic and the views of hundreds of millions of longhaired cat owners.

Please click on the video play button twice ✔️😊.

She says that the Ragdoll cat "will bite the $hit" outta u". In other words, all Ragdoll cats are biters and aggressive and nasty. That is also completely mad particularly as Ragdoll cats are bred to be passive and laid-back. Even if they were not passive and laid-back it is still completely incorrect to brand an entire cat breed as being biters. Incidentally, the Ragdoll is in the top 3 most popular cat breeds 👍.

She also says that the Bengal cat behaves like a wild leopard. And she brands the wildcat hybrid cats as being impossible. Well, wildcat hybrid cats can be a little bit more aggressive than your standard domestic cat, but they are still very unaggressive, and they make very good companions albeit more active than the average cat. It is even specified in the cat breed standard for the Bengal cat that they must be unaggressive. And therefore, all breeders of this breed of cat make a particular effort to achieve that goal.

Surprisingly, too, she states that she would never adopt a Persian cat using these words: "h3ll no". Persian cats are known to be passive, and some people describe them as being a bit like the furniture. They can be a little bit nervous which means they have a reputation for inappropriate elimination i.e., not peeing in the litter box. But they do not have a reputation for being difficult or aggressive for any other aspect of personality which makes them poor companions.

That's it. She has picked three cat breeds and one type of cat to state that they are all unadoptable in her opinion. I thought I might chat about it for a while and on this page, you can see her TikTok video above.

Please note, that her video has been downloaded to my desktop and uploaded to this website because this is allowed by the TikTok administrators. It is better to do it this way rather than embed the video on this webpage because sometimes videos on these third-party sites are deleted which stops the video working on this site.

Wise, elegant dog breaks up feline fight

This wise, elegant dog breaks up a feline fight within the home. In fact, you can hear her barking before she arrives as if to say "stop it!". It is a nice little video and one that we have seen before. The sad part about the video is that I suspect that these two cats will go on fighting for as long as they live in the same home. 

Sometimes cats in multi-cat homes simply do not get along and their home ranges overlap because they are living so close together inside the home. This is not ideal. 

Wise, elegant dog breaks up feline fight. Screenshot.

They adapt to it but unless they are friendly with each other it is liable to end up like this with a stand-off fight. 

The dog clearly recognises the animosity between the cats. This dog is no doubt friendly with both cats and he dislike seeing them fighting each other. 

She wants peace and harmony in the home. It is an incredibly wise decision by the dog. And it tells us that dogs are very sensitive to this kind of situation. 

It implies strongly that they are very aware of the need for harmony. Perhaps the dog is behaving as an alpha dog among a pack of other dogs only that in this instance the two dogs are cats. It is just that the dog relates to the cats as dogs and part of their pack. 

Normally the owner will be the alpha dog so perhaps this dog is not actually the alpha dog but he or she is certainly the leader in this little trio of family companion animals.

Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.

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Indoor/outdoor cat becomes very hungry in the winter

On social media, a cat owner tells us that she has lived with her cat for about a year.  During the summer months, her cat is very much an indoor/outdoor cat. She spends all day, every day outside and prefers to sleep outside under a certain plant in her back garden. She says that "during summer she was out all day barely eating her food". She's not sure but she says "maybe she was catching mice".

Indoor/outdoor cat. This is not the cat referred to in the article. Image: by Sa Ka from Pixabay.

RELATED: Are indoor or indoor/outdoor cats healthier?

Since the weather has turned and become much less agreeable for an indoor/outdoor cat she's become more "homely". She does not like the rain very much. And "she is suddenly so hungry!"

Whatever she feeds her, she demands more. She says that "some days I break and give her another tiny bit of biscuits or another day one of the kids got excited and fed her another packet".

Well, the woman is providing her cat with only dry cat food and not enough of it, it seems to me. The received wisdom of cat experts is that this is incorrect. Good quality wet cat food is better than dry cat food as it contains more water (70% compared to around 10%). Domestic cats do not drink enough water to compensate for the lack of water in dry cat food. This leads them to being mildly dehydrated. Therefore, cats must be provided with wet cat food.

As to the fact that she is suddenly very hungry this must be because she is a great hunter and during the summer months, she obtains most of her food through hunting, probably mice, near where she lives. And clearly, she does not bring her food back into the home. Not all cats do this. And/or she was being fed by a neighbour but the hunting theory is almost certainly the correct one.

A lot of domestic cat hunting takes place out of sight and out of mind of their owners. This applies to all domestic cats allowed outside. Although, we know too, that many cats like to bring their 'kills' inside the home, extend the hunt inside the home and then finally kill and eat their prey in a quiet corner of their "den".

The question on the social media site (mumsnet.com) regarding this cat is that she is a "very hungry cat". That's a question because she is asking "why is my cat suddenly very hungry?". The answer is she's not hunting any more in the winter months and therefore requires feeding. And she is not being fed enough and the wrong food by the sound of it.

REALATED: 16 tips on cat worms and deworming.

A side issue is that she should be dewormed regularly to get rid of endoparasites that she is ingesting with the mice. It is almost certain that she has worms after summer months of mice hunting.

Boris Johnson mentions Larry the cat's improved relationship with Dilyn his dog in farewell speech

Boris Johnson gave his farewell speech early this morning before flying up to Balmoral. He's been booted out of his job as the leader of the Conservative party and therefore the Prime Minister of the UK. And there has been some discord within the Conservative party. 

Government Chief Mouser Larry the Cat questioned over Partygate. Screenshot.

And also, there's been discord between his rescue dog, Dilyn, and the resident Downing Street cat, Larry. Larry is a celebrity cat and he's been at No 10 for some time as a mouser. He was adopted from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. In fact, he was specially selected as a proficient mouser. I don't think he has caught many mice though!

Larry and Dilyn. Photo credit: Deposit Photos | BBC

Dilyn was fairly recently adopted by Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie, also as a rescue animal and there were reports of them not getting along very well but Boris Johnson hints in passing in his farewell speech that Larry and Dilyn have made friends or at least there has been a rapprochement in their relationship. And he uses this snippet of good news to urge his fellow conservatives to work together under the new Prime Minister, Liz Truss.

I always like it when cats are mentioned by senior politicians. Even if it is in passing. It kind of puts them on the map and in a small way it helps to improve their public profile. The video of his speech commences at the moment he mentions Larry and Dilyn.

Note: This is an embedded video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source or the video is turned into a link which would stop it working here. I have no control over this.

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Kindhearted, cat-loving widower, one of 10 murdered by stabbing in Canada

NEWS AND COMMENT-SASKATCHEWAN PROVINCE, CANADA: The world has heard about one of Canada's deadliest mass killings on record leaving 11 people dead and at least 18 injured. Two attackers went on a stabbing spree in the rural heart of the country murdering people at random, one of whom was Wes Petterson, 77, a widower. He was stabbed at the same location as Lana head, 49, a mother of two and a 14-year-old boy and an emergency responder.

Damien and Myles Sanderson, the suspects. Image: Associated Press.

Ruby Works, a resident of Weldon, with a population of about 200, many of whom are retired people, said that Petterson was like an uncle to her. She said: "I collapsed and hit the ground. I've known him since I was just a little girl."

She said that Wes loved his cats and that he was proud of his home-made Saskatoon berry jam. He frequently helped his neighbours. She said that "He didn't deserve this. He was a good, kind-hearted man. No one in this town is ever going to sleep again. They going to be terrified to open the door."

It is reported that the two suspects, Damien and Myles Sanderson, travelled south of their killing zone in a black Nissan Rogue SUV for about 210 miles. One of them had been stabbed in the face. It looks as though one of his victims tried to defend themselves or was successful. It is reported that he approached the daughter of Doreen Lees, 89, from Weldon with his face covered asking if she would call for help. She did not assist him. She went back into her home.

Myles Sanderson is thought to be at large while Damien's body has been found by police. His injuries were not self-inflicted. We don't know who inflicted the injuries.

But this short article is about Wes Petterson who I would like the world to remember as a decent man, kind to others, a gentle cat lover who it seems had a good retirement and enjoying the company of his cat companions and whose life was taken from him unnaturally and for no apparent reason by a man intent on stabbing him to death. Why? The world is unfair, we know that. 

His cats will miss him. They will be confused. I hope and I believe that they are being cared for by the neighbours who he helped.

I just want to sleep! My full-time indoor cat keeps me awake all night.

There is a classic cat caregiving problem on the Reddit.com website from a woman who is at the end of their tether. They have 2 cats and the boy was neutered recently (and therefore is young) but he is stopping them from sleeping. They tried ignoring him. They allowed him to come into the bedroom but then they stopped him coming into the bedroom. 

I just want to sleep! My full-time indoor cat keeps me awake all night. Image: MikeB.

But he continues to wake them up at least twice between 3 AM and 6 PM every night. He chews "and destroys everything on our bedside tables, knocks things over, and steals things and runs away with them". They have given him a lot of toys which he happily plays with but it isn't enough. His owners want to sleep more than four hours a night.

I'm sure that they are describing a not untypical situation in any home with any full-time indoor cat. Male cats tend to be more of a problem because they have bigger home ranges than females and therefore the confines of a home will be more difficult to adapt to. This couple have tried all they can to play with him and to stimulate him to no avail.

The problem, as we all know, is that the domestic cat's circadian rhythm is totally out of sync with the human circadian rhythm. They tend to be active at dusk and sometimes throughout the night and then at dawn and they sleep from around mid-morning to mid-afternoon. The opposite can be said about people. And we buy into this difficulty when we adopt a cat. The problem is exacerbated with full-time indoor cats because they will tend to be bored because they are under stimulated through play.

It is almost an intractable i.e. unsolvable problem because of the inherited behavioural traits of both humans and domestic cats. They simply are not compatible in terms of the time that they are active. Of course, I'm sure there are some people who are active at night and sleep during the daytime and this must suit their cat companion tremendously.

The answer apparently to try and tire your cat out to try and shoehorn their behaviour into the circadian rhythm of humans. And Jackson Galaxy, the well-known American cat behaviourist has written about this in his book Total Cat Mojo.

Stop your cat waking you at night as per Jackson Galaxy

I've written about it myself based upon his book and therefore all I can do is to suggest you read the linked page above. However, I am sceptical about the outcome. I don't think that it is going to be easy to solve this problem. I suspect that in most homes people find a reasonable solution (compromise) which gets them by but there is always this underlying problem. Cats will wake up their owners at night. Even indoor/outdoor cats. Mine does.

Perhaps it might be worthwhile, before adopting, to consider what type of cat you want to adopt. For example, I think females will be less active at night than males. And I think perhaps the Ragdoll, a laid-back cat, might be less active than a non-purebred cat. Certainly, a male Bengal cat is not going to be very quiet at night. The wildcat hybrids are generally more active than the standard domestic cats. And old cats will be less active than youngsters. Adopt an old cat. They are often left on the shelf at shelters.

Of course, the other solution which goes against the grain of a lot of people's thinking is to allow your cat outside at night. That is unsuitable in many locations but if it is considered suitable in terms of safety then it would substantially solve the problem. But even them it won't be the magic solution.

Test finds that domestic cats might experience the emotion of jealousy

I'm going to refer to a test carried out at Kyoto University to see whether domestic cats can experience the emotion of jealousy. They describe jealousy as a "second-order emotion". I take that to mean a higher emotion which humans experience but there is a question mark as to whether animals experience it although a basic form of jealousy has been detected in domestic dogs.

RELATED: in a previous post the conclusion was that cats feel jealousy but not grief: Cats feel jealousy but not grief.

In this test with cats there were 52 participants taken from Japanese households or cat cafés.

They conducted a simple test by recording the behaviour of the cats while they saw their owner petting a social object which might be a rival and which in this instance was a realistic-looking soft toy cat. They compared the cats' reaction when a non-cat object was petted by the cats' owner (a cushion) and when a non-cat owner petted the toy-cat.

I wonder whether that was a wise decision to use a toy because it is plausible to suggest that domestic cats can tell the difference between a soft toy cat and a real cat.

Anyway, when a cat's owner petted a soft-toy cat, they found that household pets reacted more intensely towards the soft-toy cat. There were no other behaviours and they don't describe what 'reacted more intensely' means in the summary. When the soft cushion was petted by the owner there was no reaction and when the soft-cat toy was petted by non-owners there was no reaction.

They were unable to come to firm conclusions about the existence of jealousy in domestic cats. Jealousy is an emotion which is expressed in the context of a close relationship and cats can have close relationships both with other cats and people. Therefore, the question as to whether they have the emotion of jealousy is a fair one.

The study pointed to a distinct possibility that domestic cats can feel the emotion jealousy but further work is required.

The study is called Domestic cats' reactions to their owner and an unknown individual petting a potential rival.

Chinese use live sparrows as bait to capture pets for the cat meat market

Like many others, I despair at the news stories emanating from China about the cat meat market. The latest story actually has a good ending which is very pleasing. It is also very pleasing to be told that the Chinese police rescued 150 cats headed for the dinner tables. On my experience reading about these stories, it is nearly always animal welfare volunteers who stop lorries travelling to the south with stolen cats and dogs for the meat markets. 

Domestic cats lured with live sparrows and caged for shipping to the south for the cat meat market. Image: Yahoo News!

But here we have the police being involved which may hint at a change in attitude by law enforcement. It also tells me that it is illegal to steal domestic cats and ship them off to the south to be eaten.

It may surprise people to read that but because there are no real animal welfare laws in China there is no law to enforce when there is animal cruelty. Perhaps the country has introduced some laws that I have not heard about. If so, they will be laws which are not directly about animal welfare but about shipping animals or transporting animals I suspect.

The cats in this instance were crammed into rusty cages as usual and they were found by police in the eastern city of Jinan in the Shandong province. The report comes from The Humane Society International.

This unscrupulous gang of cat thieves and smugglers placed sparrows in cages as bait and used a remote-control system to shut the traps as soon as each cat entered. Of course, many of the cats were in a terrible state being emaciated and clearly in discomfort or pain. You can see them crammed together which is totally unnatural and incredibly emotionally stressful. They must have been permanently terrified.

RELATED: Mumbai’s dog and cat meat eaters.

One of the volunteers involved in the rescue said "Our discovery of dozens of live sparrows used as bait to lure the cats was also a big shock."

They believe that most of the rescued cats were household pets. They've been sent to animal shelters. There were 31 sparrows. They are a protected species in China and they were released back into the wild immediately.

I'm told that the smugglers may be in breach of laws concerning the hunting of birds, property theft and for violations of animal epidemic prevention rules, which I believe concerns the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as Covid.

It is only in the south in China's Guangdong and Guangxi provinces where they eat cat and dog meat and this dates back thousands of years. These are the China hotspots for this barbaric business. Apparently throughout mainland China cat meat is not part of the food culture.

RELATED: Coronavirus pandemic must encourage cessation of cat meat trade.

Thanks to Covid-19 there has been a reduction in a desire to eat cat and dog meat because of a fear of acquiring a zoonotic disease from the unregulated slaughter of these animals. 

The Guandong cities of Shenzhen Zhuhai banned the consumption of cats and dogs from April 2021 but they are the first cities in China to do so. To the best of my knowledge, cat and dog meat is still a thriving industry but the sooner it is banned the better. It is horribly cruel and completely out of step with modern life in the West.