In short, kittens cannot be born with fleas but they can get them from their bedding or their mother very quickly. For me this means that anyone who's involved in breeding their cat (which should not happen by the way unless they are a breeder registered with a cat association) needs to ensure that the queen's nest is spotless in terms of fleas. No fleas in the mother's den would seem to be common sense. Or on the mother. And around the home generally. Cat flea. Image: MikeB I am sure though that in homes where cats are breeding informally there are piles of fleas because the owner is behaving irresponsibly. I can visual that scenario quite easily. Many kittens will have a flea infestation at an early age and it will be a treat to their life. Resistance to fleas is age related: old and young are more vulnerable. They have less resistance and they will be debilitated and some will probably die. Worms Neither can kittens be born with worms but they can be infected through nur

For how long should I cuddle my cat? The short answer is not long. Image: MikeB. These are my unresearched views on the topic. Please share yours in a comment as I'd be pleased to hear from you. What do cats do? For how long should I cuddle my cat? This is a question people ask on the Internet. The short answer is not long ( normally , but there are exceptions). How often do you see cats cuddling each other? And if you do see one domestic cat with their 'arm' (foreleg) around the other (which happens) for how long do they do this? To the first question the answer must be rarely if not sleeping together and to the second question the answer must be for a short time (unless sleeping together). Domestic cats regard us as surrogate mothers. That's why we keep them in a mental state of kittenhood. On that basis, they wouldn't expect to be cuddled, human-style, by their feline mother other than for a short time unless they are sleeping together. That's a point worth m

Newborn kittens. Image: MikeB It should be very limited. I'll quote from an excellent resource, Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook, 3rd edition: "Most queens [breeding mother cats] display anxiety when their very young kittens are constantly handled by unknown people or if unfamiliar pets or other household animals [that] they are not comfortable with are allowed near the kittens." This statement points to minimising contact with newborn kittens both by humans and other pets. Leave them alone but make sure the nest and environment is top class. You have to know what you are doing in cat pediatrics. It is a big skill and complicated. Seek veterinary advice promptly. Newborn Kitten Care (comprehensive guide) . Socialisation later After sex weeks social interaction with unknown human beings and pets such as dogs and exposure to new and nonthreatening situations are important for the proper development of the kittens. It's what makes them domestic cats and is esse

Forbes Advisor has produced some interesting statistics about pet ownership in the United States of America. Perhaps the leading statistic from this research is in the headline. Generation Z as they are called are far more likely than other generations to have a pet with, for example, 86% having a dog and 81% having a cat.  It doesn't stop there because 46% have a bird and 30% keep a hamster or guinea pig. By contrast, baby boomers, those born after the Second World War, are the least likely to have a pet; 50% have a dog and 42% have a cat. Only 6% have a hamster or guinea pig by comparison. Image: MikeB - Gen Z pet owners (ages 18 to 25) are far more likely than other age groups to have a variety of pets. Big increase in pet owners So, there's been a massive increase in the number of pet owners in America and the same applies to the UK by the way. And this increase is mainly coming from Generation Z, the country's young people.  Covid They are turning to pets and I wonder

In a rather nasty development, trophy hunters are threatening to sue a British Member of Parliament, Sir Roger Gale, because he used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills in an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Banning Trophy Hunting report dated June 2022. This looks like the trophy hunters are using their intellectual property rights to try and delay the passage of the bill to ban the importation of trophies into the UK and to send out a general signal to others. I plead fair use in using the photo of the sport hunter and his bloody lion kill. I don't think the photographer of Lineker will mind me using the photo. There is an educational requirement here that needs to be fulfilled. The report contains 78 photographs. The trophy hunters are demanding £1200 per photograph. They are therefore demanding a grand total of £93,600. And if they don't pay up, they are going to sue him they say. I have used photographs of trophy hunters with their kills on my websites and criti

The man asks on Reddit.com whether he behaved badly (AITA) when he felt he was forced to rehome some rescue cats that his girlfriend had found. The title sort of indicates that he might have behaved badly but when you read the story carefully, he hasn't at all. Reddit's AITA category for discussion. His story He works from home and he owns his home. His girlfriend of two years lives with him in his home. She also works from home. She does not pay rent. She found a box of 6, 2-week-old abandoned kittens by the side of the road (that stuff happens which is appalling). She asked him whether she could bring them in to the home and he agreed even though he has a severe cat allergy. Although he asked whether she could take them to a shelter but she didn't want to do that and he relented. Conditions he set But he said he would allow them to come into his home on condition that she adopted them out at eight weeks of age. In the meantime, they should stay in the guest room/bathroom.

The brilliant Ben the Vet on TikTok tells us in one of his inimitable videos that domestic cats do not have regional accents. Is he correct?  He was querying why a cat appeared to have a scouse accent (an accent from a person from Liverpool or environs in the UK). He researched the topic and I feel happy to rely on his research. Also, it seems like common sense to me. But once again I ask if this conclusion is correct. The cat you hear in the video just happens to meow with a scouse accent. There is nothing in it Ben would say. It's just the way this individual cutey cat is meowing. What does it tell us that domestic cats can't develop accents like humans? It takes a culture or society or if you like a race of people to develop an accent over a very long time of evolution. English has been spoken in the UK for 1500 years. These English accents evolved gradually. They probably start with a few people saying things in a certain way because of their anatomy which is linked to the

Alternative cat show commentary of a Persian cat by a veterinarian. Screenshot. This video appeals to me because veterinarians have the status in society to have their voice heard and listened to. And there is a need to educate the public about the irresponsible breeding of Persian cats which has been going on for donkey's years with the acceptance of the cat associations. People should not be creating animals that are inherently unhealthy. Simple. Full stop. And yet it happens all the time because appearance trumps health in the cat fancy. It is worse for dog breeds. There are some horrendous stories.  For instance, the Boxer has 74 inherited health problems thanks to unregulated selective breeding over a very long time which has reduced this breed to a living catalogue of major health issues . Here is Ben's video on Persians. I suppose I should not harp on about the Persian too much but it is the paradigm example of cat breeding gone wrong. Someone in the cat fancy decided

Well, this is interesting and a bit different. A woman has videoed her black-and-white cat bringing a newborn rabbit into her home and delivering it to her. Her cat then led her to the spot where the mother rabbit's nest was buried in the ground outside, covered in fur and straw.  Cat brings baby rabbit home and identifies mother's nest so it could be returned to its siblings. Screenshot from video below. Inside were the baby rabbit's siblings. She reunited the lost and found sibling with the rest of the family and left them alone. She confirmed that the mother rabbit had returned and continued to care for her family which confirmed that her intervention had not disturbed her parenting. Her assessment is that the rescued baby rabbit had crawled out of the nest and was found by her cat who took it up in her jaws and brought it inside. The cat was handling the rabbit as if it was one of her kittens it appears. It was totally unharmed. In bringing the rabbit home the cat was a

This TikTok video demonstrates what I mean in the title. The couple's cat constantly tries to wake them up by biting their arm and pricking their noses. It looks bad because it is 2-months' worth of action compressed into 2 minutes but the message is clear: their cat is active during the night as domestic cats generally are and they are not. Their cat wants them to join him. As domestic cats relate to us as surrogate moms and therefore as cats, they find it impossible to comprehend why our behaviour is so strange in that we refuse to be active at a time when cats are naturally active. @laurenjenel12 Did we sleep at all? Yes. Was it good sleep? 🤷🏻‍♀️ #fyp #befyp oupage #catsoftiktok #cattok #catsvideosoftiktok #securitycamera #blinksecuritycamera #trending #laurenjenel12 #catsvideo ♬ original sound - The preppy three🌸 Domestic care are generally 'crepuscular' meaning active at dawn and dusk but they can be active at any time, often at night. Their circadian

NEWS AND COMMENT: A spokesperson for PETA said:  "Grimsby – the centre of the UK’s “seafood” processing industry is catching some heat from PETA with a new lenticular billboard – showing a smiling fishmonger holding a limp fish from one angle and a dead cat from another – urging locals to see fish as intelligent, sensitive individuals and opt for vegan fare instead." PETA chose Grimsby, UK because it is a fishing town; historically connected with fishing and they put the sign outside a fish and chip shop. PETA compares eating fish with eating dead cats. Image: Grimsby Live. Apparently if you look at the billboard poster from different angles you either see a fish or a dead cat.  A clever aspect of the billboard is the use of the word 'sea' which sound like 'see'. They are asking people to see more clearly what they are doing. Separately, it might be worth noting that thousands of people in Asia like to eat dead stray and domestic cats particularly if they have

I am going to have the temerity to name America's two greatest animal welfare advocates as at 2023. They are Carole Baskin and Nathan Winograd. And neatly, we can divide their efforts into two camps.  Carole Baskin is an animal advocate for cats, specifically the big cats, wild cats in general and even wildcat hybrids (she hates the idea of creating wildcat hybrids).  And on the domestic cat side, Nathan Winograd, has been and continues to be a tireless campaigner for the rights of rescue animals in America's shelters and pounds. Baskin and Winograd. Image: MikeB based in images in the public domain. Carole Baskin You might know that she campaigned relentlessly for an improvement in welfare of big cats. There were far too many at private zoos all across America. America was and still is - until the Big Public Safety Act fully takes effect - the nation where there were the greatest number of big cat 'pets' in private zoos. Join us in celebrating the passage of the Big Ca

Those of us who know cats also know that they have individual personalities. We know this from personal experience more than any other way. However, we - the cat and animal lovers of the world - can now rely on hard science to back us up. Domestic cats have as much personality variations as humans! Image: MikeB Alexander Weiss of the University of Edinburgh, one of the lead authors on a study which concluded that "wild male chimpanzees scale the social ladder more successfully if they have more bullying, greedy and irritable personalities" has said that the personalities of animals vary as much as human personalities. That is a big statement as it goes further than most other scientists in stating that animal personality is as wide ranging as human personality. In the 1950s and 1960s the famous Jane Goodhall was accused of "the worst kind of anthropomorphism" when she said that the chimpanzees that she was studying in Gombe National Park, Tanzania had a range of per

Charles Barkley. Image: Getty. Charles Barkley has a presence and a voice on American television (see about him below). He is a sports pundit and recently made a rather strange statement: "A cat is not a real pet because it’s not a dog". "Man, Chuck can never cease to surprise us with his opinions and takes. NBA Twitter heard the same and they couldn’t help but troll." What does it mean?! No one knows!! Seriously, I'll take a pot shot at interpreting this bizarre statement made on television. As is probably typical of many male American basketball players, he is almost certainly a dog lover to the point where he regards dogs as the only true companion animal. This excludes cats. He may believe that cats are too independent and not domesticated enough compared to the fawning, obedient and human-worshipping dog to be classified as pets. He may be scared of cats! A lot of people are. They think they are aloof and sinister. They don't understand cats and don'

To those of us living in the UK we are seeing more headlines about rats getting larger. They say they are as big as cats. If it's true there is little prospect of domestic cats being usefully employed as rat deterrents. Today's domestic cat ratter will just run away from these monsters. Massive rat as big as a cat. Image by MikeB based on an image in the public domain. But in general, I think they are mythical. People like to believe that they are very large. It adds to their story of woe. But if they are larger, it must be an evolutionary process over a very long time. Animals may evolve to be larger over time as a result of natural selection. Larger individuals may have advantages in terms of survival and reproduction. For example, larger animals may be better able to defend themselves against predators, compete for resources, or attract mates. Additionally, larger size can confer other benefits, such as the ability to travel further or withstand harsh environmental condition

The Mail Online promotes what the author considers to be a wonderful device for a cat owner. It says that you can feed your kitties from your phone. The device costs about £80. It is an automatic cat feeder which will keep your pet happy but not hungry and it can even stop them from overeating! Great. And they start off by saying that if you go out to work during the day and then after a hard day's work you like to have a pint with your pals in a local public house, and then get home around 10 PM, you can feed your feline during those long hours apart. Automatic cat feeder controllable by a smart phone is a bad idea. This must be a very poor idea for a cat owner and worse for their cat. The device promotes feline separation anxiety. It encourages people to stay away from their cat all day and long into the evening. RELATED:  How long can I leave my cat ‘home alone’? And if their cat lives in an apartment with nothing to stimulate them throughout those long hours, what are you going

NEWS AND COMMENT - NIZHZY, RUSSIA: A woman abused this placid and apparently accepting cat (or was the cat drugged) in order to smuggle drugs in baby clothes and a baby snow suit. The cat was dressed head to toe in baby clothes including a nappy and put inside the snow suit. The narcotic drugs were hidden in the snow suit. I guess the nappy was added purely for a functional reason to allow the cat to go to the toilet. Thoughtful! Screenshot. Young grey cat dressed as baby as a way of hiding drug smuggling. The criminal enterprise failed and the woman was arrested. The police discovered powdered methylephedrine. Each package contained 170 grams of the drug. I have to look at this story from the standpoint of animal welfare.  Clearly there has been animal abuse. The cat seems to be okay but we don't know. Perhaps the cat was drugged. I'd suspect that they had been as it is hard to envisage a cat complying with that kind of extreme confinement without complaining and making a cons

NEWS AND COMMENT-Wetumpka Alabama: this is a good news story. It is a story which tells us that there is a little bit of common sense in the American judicial system. You may remember the two elderly ladies, Beverley Roberts (84) and Mary Alston (60) who routinely fed and looked after feral cats on public property but were then suddenly arrested by the police for criminal trespass and then disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental operations . Here is the video and below that a still image: Elderly lady arrested for feeding feral cats in Alabama. Image: body camcorder on officer. To outsiders, and to 100% of cat advocates, it looked farcical. Two old ladies doing something good for the community being jumped on and stamped on by the police and then suffering criminal charges which were successfully prosecuted. They were convicted and sentenced to 2 years' probation and 10 years in jail. The sentence was suspended. Trapping, spaying and neutering, and rehoming or releasing (T

This interesting looking small cat was bred in China and adopted by a couple in America which is very unusual in itself. It looks like the Chinese breeder is creating Chinchilla Persian-like dwarf cats. She is called Mochi. It is the first time I have heard of a Chinese cat breeder exporting internationally from the country where they eat domestic cats in the south. Mochi. Image: Instagram (Greg McDouglas). Mochi has become bit of a star because of her unusual appearance. And that has come about because of a very severe illness she suffered after she arrived in America. She developed ischemic dermatopathy.  My understanding is that this was an autoimmune response which attacked her body leading to widespread inflammation which further led to necrosis in parts of her body. That's why her ear flaps were amputated and her tail. She also lost the paw of one leg But, of course, it hasn't slowed her down one bit. She's made a full recovery and is flourishing in a home where she i

Spain has decriminalised bestiality!! True or false? See below. Screenshot. Get this! This attractive woman (speaking in Spanish with subtitles and dubbing) on TikTok explains very concisely that in Spain they have decriminalised bestiality and therefore people can have sex with dogs but because they've got restrictions on dog breeders dogs can't have sex with other dogs.  Note: this applies to any animal but dogs are the chosen species in this discussion. That is her point. And it begs the question whether she is correct because a website called The Local (local news from Spain I presume) states that Spain has not legalised bestiality. This is her video announcement. She ends it by saying you can't kill a rat in Spain but you can have sex with it. However, when you go to the European Parliament's website, it states, "Spanish breach of European animal health legislation". That heading is dated 6 March 2023. It is therefore recent to this post. And I will quot

I am not going to talk about this a lot because it is too distressing. But in the photograph just below this paragraph you see a very strange, indeed weird, situation. You see lots of dogs clambering around the driver's and passenger's seat in a van parked in Hampton, Oakland, New Jersey, USA. It is just not the kind of picture you see, ever. It caught my eye and as expected it reveals a horror story behind it. Dogs inside van packed full of dead and sick cats and dogs. Image: Fox News. Looking at the picture you can see that the unamed woman who owns these cats and dogs was living on a shoestring. They've repaired the dashboard with duct tape. It looks very grimy. The dogs look very sad and confused. We are told that inside the vehicle there were 38 dogs and eight cats. Rescuers made the discovery last Saturday, April 8. The vehicle had been parked for two days at least. There were dogs running around the parking lot. A foul odour emanated from the vehicle unsurprisingly.

Kolo, a male tabby cat, lived near Southmead Hospital in Bristol, UK. He clearly liked to visit the hospital particularly the Accident & Emergency department. It is not that unusual for a local domestic cat to visit an organisation like the NHS because there is no doubt in my mind that these individual cats have been left alone all day and they need the stimulation of interaction with people. That's a result of their domestication. And so, they go and find people. Kolo. Photo: Julie White (believed). And if they wander into an A&E department of the local hospital and are not rejected by the people there, they will return. And that's how you develop a nice relationship between the hospital staff and in this instance Kolo. By all accounts he was a very sweet boy. He was loved and he helped to keep the mood up in the hospital by providing comfort to the patients and they appreciated it. Julie White, who works for North Bristol NHS at Southmead found Kolo to be a wonderful