Are these the two women who dumped two cats at a pet store in Dewsbury, UK?

NEWS AND COMMENT: Remarkably, it appears that a couple of women dumped a couple of cats in a carrier which was taped up at the outlet of a well-known chain of pet stores called Pets at Home in the UK. This particular store is located in Dewsbury.

The cats were frightened but unharmed and they been taken by the RSPCA to their hospital, Greater Manchester Animal Hospital, for a check-up and routine deworming and de-fleaing treatments.

CCTV footage from the store has been passed to the RSPCA which shows a couple of women entering the store with the carrier at 3:06 PM and leaving within just minutes later at 3:09. In very much looks like that these are the people who dumped the cats. Here is the pic:

Are these the two women who dumped two cats at a pet store in Dewsbury, UK? Image: Pets at Home CCTV.

It is quite unusual if not rare to put faces to people who abandon cats in this kind of way. There are many ways to abandon domestic cats. It's unusual to abandon cats at a large pet store but I guess their thinking was that the cats would be found quite quickly and then taken by a rescue group to a vet and then be rehomed. That must have been there thinking actually.

So, perhaps we have to give them some credit for the fact that they didn't dump the cats on a quiet road in the countryside somewhere where they might have died quite quickly bearing in mind the sub-zero temperatures overnight in the UK at the moment.

The carrier was sealed up with tape. The cats apparently were healthy and in good condition. But neither were micro-chipped.

Although unlikely that anybody using the store will read this post, if you know anything about this incident then please contact the RSPCA on their appeals line number on 0300 123 8018.

------------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Britain's worst hoarder with bodies of up to four mummified cats on shelves wrapped in newspaper

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is certainly one of Britain's worst hoarding cases but I would doubt that it is the worst because there are some truly horrendous examples of hoarding. And the hoarding of inanimate objects spills over to the hoarding of animate objects such as domestic cats which is why you find both junk and the bodies of cats in a home occupied by a hoarder.

RELATED: Gabapentin substantially improves adoption rate of shelter cats rescued from a hoarding environment.

Image: Blanchards/Triangle News.

I just written an article about cat hoarding and the mental illness behind it which may interest people and if so you can click on this link. It's quite an in depth article. We have to be compassionate about cat hoarders although through their hoarding they often harm cats and sometimes kill them through neglect so they need to be criticised as well as treated for their mental illness.

In this case a 70-year-old man lived in a property in Lancashire, UK, alone. The home was so stuffed full of junk that the people commissioned to clean it had to enter the upstairs through a ladder set against an upstairs window. There was no way in to that part of the house as I understand it.

It is reported that there were at least four mummified, pet cats wrapped in newspaper placed on shelves in the property.

The hoarding got so bad that he couldn't get rid of the cats he had killed through neglect or perhaps they died of old age, we don't know. It's likely that this man neglected the cats to the point where they were harmed and possibly died unnecessarily.

One of the great problems with hoarders - and I'm including cat hoarding here - is they don't look at things objectively. They don't have the financial means necessary to take a cat to a veterinarian, and they are sometimes unaware of the illnesses suffered by cats. They are blinkered because of their mental health problems.

It took a team of cleaners 45 hours to make some headway in cleaning the property.

In my view, the cause of hoarding of all kinds is anxiety and at worst fear. Hoarding reassures the anxious person. I've argued that everyone has 'the hoarding gene' as I've put it but almost everyone manages to control it. Most people like to possess objects. They enjoy buying objects. They don't like to get rid of them. Over the years they acquire objects and the home becomes fuller.

Occasionally we read about high profile celebrities having a mass clear out of high quality, expensive possessions. These people are - in an elegant and high profile way - hoarders of expensive possessions. Normally hoarding relates to inanimate possessions but as mentioned it can spill over to animals and interestingly we never hear about dog hoarding but cats are a prime target for hoarding perhaps because they are perceived as being independent and able to cope by themselves which they can't by the way.

And there is historically a looser connection between domestic cats and owners. Put it this way, it is easier to park a cat in a corner of a home and forget about them as a cat hoarder might do but much harder to do the same with a dog. A dog is more in your face.

And there are lots of cats that need rescuing. There are lots of stray cats, feral cats and unwanted cats from people who allow their cats to breed. We have to put some blame on the people who create unwanted cats which facilitates the activities of a cat hoarder.

RELATED: Cat hoarding – full discussion.

-----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

21 kittens found in minivan in severely cold weather in NYC

21 kittens found in what appeared to be an abandoned van in New York City. Screen grab from video below. Video by NYPD (believed).

This is the tweet accompanying the video. 

NYPD 19th Precinct: Cold cats left in a car overnight rescued! Shortly before 5am, we received a 911 call of kittens locked in an unoccupied van. With freezing temps our cops acted fast and with the help of our Emergency Services Unit, freed the 21 felines and transported them to @NYCACC for care. https://t.co/798PcVtgKU

The story is that 21 kittens were found in a parked minivan in Lenox Hill on a freezing morning over last weekend.

A neighbour spotted the vehicle on East 63rd Street and First Avenue at about 5 a.m. on Saturday and immediately dialled 911, according to police.

There was a code blue weather warning in place at the time. The police received a 911 call regarding kittens locked in the van which was unoccupied.

The police acted with the emergency services unit to rescue the kittens from the van and then transported them to a shelter facility (Animal Care Center) for evaluation.

Vets decided that the kittens were in good health. The owner was located and the cats returned to them.

A spokeswoman for Animal Care Centers, Katy Hansen, said that "The owner insisted she was only away from the car temporarily", as reported by the Daily News.

Comment: Great vigilance by the person who spotted the kittens in the back of the van and they acted promptly. Nice to see this kind of concern for animal welfare. No harm done to call the police even though it appears that the owner had not abandoned them.

It might have looked that way. It has happened in the past. People abandon cats and kittens in the most imaginative of ways!

Also in the past you'll find stories of cat hoarders living with around 20 cats inside their car or van as they have been evicted from their rented accommodation because of their cat hoarding.

--------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Experiences before and during stay at animal shelter leaves dog terrified (video)

This is not news. It is pretty obvious if you know anything about animal shelters and the kind of life dogs and cats can have before they are rescued. The combined experiences can leave the cat or dog terrified. It may be be that the shelter alone scares the dog because they can be scary places.

Perhaps they can sense that death is around the corner. If they've been placed on a list of dogs to be euthanised, perhaps some of them sense this and understand that their death is impending. We don't know. But dogs are very sensitive and intelligent. It's certainly plausible to suggest that they might understand that their lives are in danger.

Combine that with the small space they are living in. The sterility of the place. The noises. The unnaturalness of the environment and you might have a scared dog.

A dog might have come from a good home and then suddenly thrust into sheltered life which would be a great shock to them. Either way, the video we see on this page is not, in my experience of researching these matters, unusual. This dog looks terrified. She won't even turn her head towards the person petting her. You can see that they have covered her up perhaps to make you feel more secure.

One great problem with a dog becoming scared like this is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Dogs that are scared and timid and hiding or trying to hide become unadoptable. This means that that they are earmarked for euthanasia.

Or perhaps their reaction will be aggression in defence of what they consider to be a hostile environment. This also can make them unadoptable.

It just looks to me as if like this video indicates a failure in dog domestication. This is what it has come down to in this instance. It shouldn't be like this.

Fortunately, I can report that this dog has been fostered and once they live in a foster home they often flower and their personality comes out. They behave more normally and become unadoptable. 

That simple step of going into foster care can save their lives. Perhaps you know all about this because it's quite common knowledge but if not this little video which I find very difficult to watch might be instructional.

Terrified dog at animal shelter. Screenshot.

-----

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

An example of why people don't stop their car when they hit a cat on the road

Recently I wrote an article about the reasons why people don't stop their car when they hit a cat on the road. And nearly everybody doesn't stop in my opinion. There's no statistics on this so I can't make that statement with absolute confidence but common sense and my gut feel tell me that I am correct.

The reason is that people just don't value cats enough to warrant stopping and disrupting their day. And it will be a disruption because you've got to check the cat which is going to be very upsetting indeed to a lot of people if there are severe injuries. 

You don't know what you're going to see and what you are going to need to do which will probably mean finding out where a veterinarian is and taking the cat to the vet for a check up and possibly to identify the owner through a microchip.

All this takes time and in the story from the Isle of Man, a woman was going to work in her car when she hit a cat at 8:30 in the morning. She didn't stop because she was going to work she said although she added that she was very upset.

Fortunately a good Samaritan saw the accident or saw the cat in the middle-of-the-road and checked the cat which was brave of him or her and found that the cat was concussed but otherwise healthy (damn lucky). They took the cat to a vet the following day.

The cat was placed at an SPCA and then on adoption page on Facebook where the owner spotted their cat and, greatly relieved, was able to be reunited. The cat was semi-feral and therefore this was a very loose relationship between owner and cat. But the ending was happy and this little article is about the reason why we don't normally stop.

There's been a lot of discussion in the UK about making it a legal obligation to stop when you hit a cat on the road which is the case for dogs (click for the UK reasons for the difference). Yes, there's a difference between dogs and cats in the UK when you hit them with a car. And this law is out of date and is based upon the fact that the dog is a working animal much like a goat or horse. This is not entirely true these days because dogs are companions just like cats.

The government doesn't want to introduce a law which would require primary legislation and therefore debates because it would take too long and it would clog up the legislature. They've got more important things to do (the cat devalued again). 

And they argue that there are enough protections currently in place for people to find out who owns the cat that they hit. I'm afraid it doesn't work.

The declared reason online why the government won't introduce laws to make it obligatory is because the proposed law would be to difficult to enforce. I get that but then if it would be difficult to enforce the same applies to dogs so that argument doesn't wash for me.

-------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Video inside cabin as couple rescue 3 kittens from Serbia and fly them back to Chicago

Couple rescue 3 kittens from Serbia and fly them back to Chicago in the cabin. Screenshot.

This is cute. I am amazed that it worked out so well. The kittens started off in carriers and ended up outside but behaved well and the other passengers were disinterested or at least no one complained or appeared to have questioned what was going on. Although the aircraft was fairly empty. Thankfully. They flew Air Serbia from Belgrade to Chicago.

We found 3 kittens in a village in Serbia at 3 weeks old with no mom🥺 so we took them in and decided to keep them! Now they travel Europe in our van with us… but we were going home for the holidays so of course they had a come with!

This is an embedded video. If it is removed at source on Instagram it will stop working here. Sorry if that has happened.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by IAN & ANA RYAN / travel & vanlife (@ian.and.ana)

-------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Veterinary nurse decapitated two dead cats and took the heads home

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is a macabre story about a locum veterinary nurse with 2 years experience who remains anonymous to protect her identity because of a feared backlash, who reportedly used a scalpel to cut off the heads of two dead cats so that she could take them home and display the skulls. The heads were kept in a freezer for three weeks.

Veterinary nurse decapitated 2 dead cats and took the heads home. Image: MikeB

She said that she meant no disrespect to the animals and that she appreciated their bodies. I will presume that the cats were euthanised by a veterinarian or a vet nurse at the clinic or hospital where she works.

The veterinary nurse was before a misconduct panel at a Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons committee.

She's been referred to as 'B'. She's been charged with removing heads from dead bodies of cats other than for veterinary purposes.

One of her jobs was to sort out animal bodies stored in a walk-in freezer before collection by crematorium services.

It's reported that she asked if she could remove the heads from stray dead cats and she claimed that she was given permission by a member of the staff. She then took two bodies into the prep room and removed their heads with a scalpel before taking the heads home in a cadaver bag which she placed into her freezer.

She said that she had an interest in the heads and that she has some mealworms "which ate away at the cat's flesh, leaving the skull".

It was suggested to her that stray cats should be afforded the same dignity as pets and in response, it is alleged that she said "strays were not anyone's property."

She thought that she hadn't done anything disrespectful. In fact, it's reported that she thought it was a way of "appreciating the body". She accepted, however, that others might have a different viewpoint.

She disagreed that there were animal welfare issues. She said: "I would like to make it clear that I have the utmost respect for animals and actually consider cats to be my favourite domestic animal and I own three cats myself. I consider my own cats to be family members and am incredibly attached to them. I do my best every day to make sure they are happy and healthy.”

She added: “For me the keeping of ashes and bones is meant to be an appreciation of the animal or person, it was in no way meant to be disrespectful.

“Professionally, I am hugely interested in anatomy and learn best visually, so have always been interested in and keen to be involved with veterinary post-mortems. Bones and skulls are especially interesting to me.

“I have heard many stories of other professionals unknown to me who do similar things in various ways, which include taking whole skeletons from strays, bringing in road kill and dealing with them in a veterinary environment, taking strays and/or wildlife to be used for taxidermy, also of cat cadavers used in approved educational ways to be dissected.

“Alongside this, I have seen adverts for live human and animal dissection that is used for entertainment on TV, and am aware of celebrated artworks involving body parts of animals and cadavers.”

She admits now that she feels guilt and shame and embarrassment. And she is deeply apologetic for her misjudgement. The committee found her guilty of serious professional misconduct but accepted that an official reprimand was adequate punishment. They told her that her behaviour had been inappropriate but not scandalous and that she was unlikely to repeat it.

The committee chairman said that she had an obligation to treat the cadavers with respect but had not done so and had abused her professional position.

---------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Istanbul street cat is feed with a knife and fork at a restaurant

Istanbul street cat gets his way at a restaurant. Screen grab.

This is what I like to see only street cats can have fleas and sometimes very badly but this fella seems very healthy so perhaps he is looked after. I think he is a bit of a feature at this Istanbul restaurant and in being known he manages to get his way which is great.

The Turkish are pretty sensitive to the needs of stray cats which are often better described as community cats. Turkey (Türkiye) is the land of community cats.

This is a nice guy. The person with whom he is eating predicted the cat would arrive as they have their camera ready.

Street cats in Istanbul be like
byu/ledim35 inMadeMeSmile

In Istanbul, street cats are a bit of a feature and there are several reasons for this. I can think of three or four. Firstly, Turkey is an Islamic country and you probably know that the Prophet Muhammad loved cats and this has fed through over the centuries to the 21st century. 

His love of cats helps to protect stray cats today across the world where the Islam faith is predominant. Although it doesn't completely save them from being abused because even within the Islam faith you will find good and bad people and some people liking and some disliking cats but there's this background appreciation of the cat thanks to the Prophet.

Secondly, there are lots of tourists and visitors to Istanbul which is situated on the Bosphorus Strait. Tourists like to interact with the cats and feed them. In fact, the man in the video might be a tourist but I don't think that he is.

And perhaps the cats have become a tourist feature of Istanbul, part of the attraction of the city for tourists.

And thirdly, it's probably fair to say that Turkish residents might have a less than optimal attitudes towards spaying and neutering cats and therefore when they become strays they procreate. Although the municipality of Istanbul has implemented various initiatives to control the population with TNR programs.

And fourthly, Turkey is quite a warm place and this helps to foster the procreation of street cats because they are protected by the climate.

----

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Scottish wildcat suffered "extinction by sex" and is making their last stand in the Cairngorms

Arguably, the Scottish wildcat is already extinct because even the best experts find it difficult to distinguish a hybrid Scottish wildcat from the real thing. The Scottish wildcat has been mating with domestic and feral cats for a very long time although it's become a lot worse over the last 60 years according to genetic research. The Times science editor, Tom Whipple, puts it very nicely by saying that it is "extinction by sex".

Scottish wildcat. A hybrid or a genuine wildcat? It's hard to tell the difference from appearance. You have to do DNA testing. This picture, I believe, as in the public domain.

As the habitat of the Scottish wildcat became fragmented because of human activities and as there are more people in Scotland than many years ago when there was a Scottish wildcat population, and as, as a consequence there are more domestic and feral cats in Scotland, and further, as there are less Scottish wildcats, the existing ones were much more prone to mate with domestic and feral cats than before. There was a gradual speeding up of what is called hybridisation which is the creation of hybrid Scottish wildcats, a cross between the purebred wildcat and the domestic or feral cat.

They look quite similar to the real item but if they are not purebred Scottish wildcats, they are not Scottish wildcats in my opinion. Anyway, they've bred some in captivity and released them in the Cairngorm region of Scotland with GPS collars and they hope that they will survive the winter. It is believed that they will but as I see it, this isn't just about appearance.

The Cairngorm region of Scotland where they hope the Scottish wildcat will make their last stand and thrive and grow their population. The image, I believe, is in the public domain.

A hybrid Scottish wildcat is not going to be as hardy and as capable in survival as the original wildcat that roamed the Scottish mountains thousands of years ago. In fact, the wildcat also lived in the south of England before around 1835 when the last one was shot by a landowner.

Yes, the wildcat lived in England but was persecuted to extinction except in Scotland where they were so much as persecuted as became extinct, as mentioned, by mating with domestic cats.

It's rather sad that for over 2000 years or more the Scottish wildcat lived happily throughout large parts of the UK and perhaps primarily in Scotland, mating with each other and remaining purebred and successful. But as human population numbers grew, humankind gradually encroached upon their lives and eroded their chances of survival.

As David Barclay, a conservation manager at Saving Wildcats said: in India where they have a similar problem trying to protect and conserve the Bengal tiger, at least you can recognise a Bengal tiger from all other cats. However, with the Scottish wildcat you can hardly tell the difference between a non-purebred wildcat and a purebred one. The markings are slightly different and in my view the hybrid version is a little bit more slender than the stocky and solid original, genuine item.

But this is where the problem really lies. It truly is extinction by sex and as I recall, it is the only example of this kind of extinction where you have a wild cat species which looks like the genuine article more or less but which isn't. 

Do you treat this cat as a Scottish wildcat? It seems that we have to because as I also recall the captive cats that they bred and have released are not purebreds, they are hybrids. This the best we can do and let's hope they survive the Cairngorm winter.

----

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Richest 1% cause 16% of carbon emissions. Time for greater equality.

Did you realise that the richest 1% of the world's population are responsible for as much carbon dioxide being emitted as the poorest 66% according to Oxfam.

The rich of the world have carbon-heavy lifestyles. This elite, rich 1% of the world's population emit the same amount of carbon dioxide as the poorest 5 billion people on the planet according to Oxfam's 2019 study which is based on research with the Stockholm Environment Institute.

"It would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99% to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year. Governments [must] tackle the twin crises of inequality and climate change, by targeting the excessive emissions of the super-rich by taxing them more. This could raise much needed revenue that could be directed to a range of vital social spending needs, including a fair switch to clean, renewable energy as well as fulfilling our international commitments to support communities who are already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis"- Chiara Liguori, the senior climate justice policy adviser for Oxfam

-----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Social media "influencers" must put an advert label on their video if they're paid to promote a product

In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has introduced rules which affects how TikTok influencers and other social media users promote products of all kinds including cat products which is my area of interest.

I have just visited a TikTok page where the influencer appears to me to be promoting all kinds of cat products including a cat massager which amusingly appears to be operated by a blue British Shorthair cat (Ciccio) without any intervention or help from their human caregiver!

You can see the video below.

To me, the video promotes this product. But I don't know if this woman or man (I think it's a woman) is being paid to promote it. But she does tell viewers that there is a link on her TikTok page where interested viewers can find out more about the product.

That seems to be a way of selling this product but I can't be sure. But under the ASA rules if an influencer is being paid to promote something they have to put on their video or over the video a label to tell viewers that they are being paid to promote the product.

I'll quote The Times newspaper which explains it nicely:

Since then the ASA has drawn up rules that state that influencers are required to put an advert label on content if they have received payment, and any other incentive or are personally or commercially connected to the brand."

And The Times newspaper reports that ASA did some research to find out whether people were complying with this rule and it showed that 65% of adverts on social media were still insufficiently labelled. 

The rule applies to all kinds of social media content but often times it is on TikTok which has become a very powerful promotional tool for advertisers.

In essence, these people are advertisers. TikTok has become an advertising medium effectively and a very powerful one because the video you see on this page has been seen 48 million times. My guess is that a lot of people have bought this product on the back of the video.

Screenshot.

The TikTok account is cicciothebrit.

--------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

If your cat is really, really anxious going to the vet you can now give them pregabalin in the USA

The FDA has approved pregabalin as an anti-anxiety drug for cats when they go to the veterinarian because, as we know, a trip to the veterinarian is sure to make a cat anxious. And we mustn't forget the cat's owner who is going to be equally anxious or even more so. It's a reason why not enough cats get the opportunity to go to the vet when they need to see a vet. You will see a stark difference between cats and dogs in this respect.

Note: this is a cross-post.

Image: MikeB

The testing of pregabalin called Bonqat in the USA didn't produce stark differences between the drug and a placebo. There was a difference and therefore it does benefit cats who are particularly anxious but the improvements were about 20% on my reading of the facts available to us on the Internet and therefore it begs the question whether alternative methods to reduce anxiety would be preferable particularly as humans are advised to handle this drug with great caution. Why then are we allowed to put it into the mouths of cats?

My overriding feeling is that Bonqat should be used reluctantly to calm down a cat in a pre-vet visit. It'll be a matter of choice whether you think your cat is sufficiently anxious and, in any case, you will need a veterinarian's prescription before you can administer the drug to a cat.

Bonqat is given to cats orally as a single dose of 5 mg/kg (0.1mL/kg) approximately 1.5 hours before the start of the transportation or veterinary visit. It is packaged in 50 mL bottles containing 2 mL of dosing solution with a child resistant closure and that adapter.

Pregabalin is a DEA schedule class V drug which is why it has to be prescribed by a veterinarian. The FDA states the following about the success rate of pregabalin in reducing pre-vet anxiety visit:

A little over half of cats given Bonqat had a good to excellent response during both transportation and the veterinary visit compared to about one-third of cats given placebo. In addition, 83 of 108 (77%) cats given Bonqat showed improvement in levels of fear and anxiety over the course of the two physical examinations, compared to 46 of 101 (46%) cats given placebo.

------------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Social media celebrities Travis Nelson and his cat Sigrid were knocked off their bike in London

You may have heard of Travis Nelson and his beautiful, white Norwegian Forest Cat, Sigrid. Sigrid is an amazing cat because she is incredibly calm and she sits in a basket at the front of the bike while Travis peddles around London in the thick of traffic it seems to me.

CLICK THIS FOR SOME BACKGROUND STUFF ON TRAVIS AND SIGRID.

It looks hazardous but until now Travis has avoided any incidents. He's become a celebrity as has Sigrid in her own right (she has hundreds of thousands of social media followers). Travis has written a book which is available on Amazon and good luck to him. Click this to buy the book.

This celebrity social media lifestyle started quite quietly during Covid lockdown when he decided to take his cat out and it gradually evolved into this very special relationship where Sigrid insists on going out on his bike as a passenger while he travels around London. He captures all his exploits on his bike with Sigrid on his smartphone which make very nice social media videos which you can see on TikTok.

The accident

Travis and Sigrid knocked of their bike by a moped. The moped rider apologised and admitted that it was his fault. Travis was magnanimous. Screenshot.

He also publishes his videos on Twitter and I guess YouTube. And here we have his video of him being knocked off his bike in central London by what appears to be a moped coming up rapidly on his right-hand side. The moped driver knocks into his handlebar which results in Travis losing control and falling off his bike with Sigrid.

Sigrid takes it all in her stride. Travis grabs her to make sure that she doesn't run away. After the accident, a lady comes up to him and asks if he is okay and he says that he is.

His knee is injured and he says that he will have difficulty riding his bike in the immediate future. The police were also there and they I think queried why he wasn't wearing a helmet.

Criticised on social media

And finally, on social media, he was harangued and criticised for taking his cat out in London in the unusual way that he does. He was threatened with reports to the RSPCA! This is a major overreaction I think by what appears to be slightly nasty people. Leave the guy alone. He is a good cat caregiver. He is providing his cat with a lot of mental stimulation and excitement. And he is making a few quid at the same time.

-----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

One key factor in making more money as a social media influencer

There is, according to a study, one key aspect of making more money if you are in the business of being a social media influencer, which, I have to add is incredibly competitive. Very few make it big in this profession and the kind of money you can earn in the lower echelons will be tiny. However, there appears to be a universal rule to make more money and the formula is: the more skin someone shows, the more profitable the post.

JoJo Barbie has 10.3 million followers. She flashes the flesh a lot while showing off her bum and breasts. Image: Instagram. This is her latest post at 16th November 2023.

An assistant professor of Erasmus University Rotterdam did some research on this. She first started to get interested in the topic after buying a fitness programme from the site of Amanda Bisk, a yoga teacher and Instagram influencer.

She asked herself why did she buy into this fitness programme and how does Amanda influence her? And there was a clue in that Amanda shows a lot of flesh. She wondered whether this was the key reason why Bisk is successful.

She decided to study it more scientifically. She asked an influencer agency for the market rates for the top 100 accounts in each of the following five categories: fashion, fitness, music, photography and food.

For those who don't know, most Instagram influences make their money from posting sponsored content on their Instagram pages. The advertisers pay influencers to create posts promoting their products.

And for the top accounts ranging from 1.4 million to 65.8 million followers (an awful lot as you can see) the average estimated price paid for each sponsored picture is about £14,500 (as at the date of this article)!

Most of the influencers post twice per week and therefore they make almost £30,000 a week!

There are other factors such as how many engaged followers there are i.e. those they make comments and enter into a dialogue, and how many 'likes' there are. 

Male influences earn more than female influences which is unsurprising.

Armed with the information from the agency she studied the nudity factor (as I have called it), which is if the post featured nudity to the point where more than 50% of the person was naked or the image focused on the breast or bottom, they found that the advertising revenue was 4% higher!

So, flashing the flesh, breast and bum increases earnings by 4%. Think on that. And if you are new to the market and have a nice body and don't mind showing it off it probably pays to flash the flesh.

Newcomers should also realise that the top influencers have a team working for them who help decide what is more successful and what is likely to fail. Essentially it appears that the advisers are able to better target an audience and provide the audience with what they want. Perhaps they are able to look at things far more objectively which means they are more businesslike.

But the underlying principle or formula is to be 50% naked!

------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Cat has five ferret servants

This is a very pampered cat and perhaps an even more pampered group of five very active but completely domesticated ferrets. And the caregiver loves them all. She treats her ferrets like royalty, takes them out on walks on a lead and allows them to play vigorously with her cat who leads them around the house as if they were his servants. The cat is very tolerant when they surround him and play but no doubt, they have grown up together and become very familiar with each other and so there is no fear but just friendliness.

I have set the video to start where the ferrets interact with the cat. You can adjust it if you want and go back to the beginning obviously.

Interspecies relationships are always interesting. Of course, the greatest interspecies relationship of all is the human-to-cat relationship and the same would apply to the equally popular, perhaps even more popular, human-to-dog relationship. It's useful to remind ourselves that these are interspecies friendships.

They very rarely happen in the wild. Interspecies relationships and friendships are really the domain of domestic animals.

Here the cat is the leader followed by his 'servants'.

The above are screenshots from the video.

---------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Is there are matchup between cats of a certain character and people of a certain character?

I think I can keep this short and concise. The question is asking if, for example, gentle, shy people get along better with cats that are shy, gentle and timid. Or whether aggressive people get along with more dominant cats. Or perhaps they'd get along with submissive cats? There are a huge number of permutations. And also, both human and cat personality is very fluid and complex. It is difficult to categorise both human and cat personality with precision. Do opposites attract or repel?

The news media like to find neat answers to the question by saying that this cat breed is a perfect match with this type of person. The problem there is that you are only referring to cat breeds and not moggies which means you have cut out of the discussion the vast majority of domestic cats as pedigree cats are much rarer than random bred cats. 

And the breeds can have different characters in general terms while moggies don't. For moggies it is all about the character of individual cats. But that applies to purebred cats too. For purebred cats there is the character of the breed and the character of the individual cat working together. Although the character of the breeds is exaggerated by news media and the cat fancy.

The answer to the question in the title is almost certainly No. I don't think it is possible to create a nice neat chart which cross references the breeds with people of a certain character. I have just visited a website where they did that and it is all fiction. The truth is that online media like to neatly package things to make it easy to digest for the mass of internet surfers but they are being misled if they believe the stuff.

The only way to match up a cat of a certain character with a person of a certain character is for the latter to meet the former and see if they get on. To see if the cat comes forward and appears to enjoy the company of the person. It is a one-on-one encounter to see if they are compatible; have chemistry. Then you build on that in the relationship. Actually, it can start badly and warm up. Sometimes the most unlikely partnerships between cat and person blossom and become great.

Don't rely on charts and formulae which look too good to be true because they are. And don't believe what the experts say about the differences in cat breed character. There are some differences but they can be subtle and they can be overridden by the character of an individual cat. There are two overlapping factors: cat breed character (an umbrella concept) and the character of an individual as mentioned.

-------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Keeping a good news secret will improve your energy levels

A recent study has suggested that people would do better to keep positive secrets to themselves as it can help energise them and make them feel more invigorated. It's an interesting concept.

The study is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The researchers worked out of Columbia University in New York.

The report states that: "Prior research on secrecy has focused on the effects of negative secrets, secrets that involve information that people consider unpleasant, objectionable or embarrassing. Yet many secrets are positive in nature, from marriage proposals to gifts, to surprises to unexpected good news. Although negative secrets have been found to be fatiguing, we proposed that positive secrets can be energising. We define feelings of energy as feeling alive, alert, active and invigorated."

The moment a person discloses a good secret should be delayed so that the person can "spend more time savouring the information, reflecting on its meaning or considering possible joyful reactions to sharing the secret."

The experiments were conducted with 2,500 people. In all there were five experiments and they found that more than 75% of participants instinctively wanted to tell people good news immediately. Yes, I can understand that. It is common sense to tell others good news and counterintuitive to talk to others about it but it may be an opportunity missed.

They were shown 40 types of common good news such as winning on a bet, becoming pregnant, getting engaged or clearing a debt.

They were asked which type of good news they had experienced and which they had shared with others or those that kept secret for a while. And there were asked how they felt under these different circumstances.

They were also asked to imagine they had a piece of good news and to envisage two scenarios. In one they chose not to tell their partner until the end of the day. And in the other they try to call their partner but couldn't make contact and therefore had to wait until later.

In the first scenario they made a deliberate choice to keep the secret for a number of hours and this led to positive feelings while the second scenario did not.

Of course, secrets are very nuanced and very variable. Some so-called positive secrets don't make people happy when kept close to their chest. It might be a secret to avoid embarrassment because good news can make others feel worse about their situation. 

Or the good news might lead others to judge you negatively. A typical example would be if you bought a nice but expensive present for yourself, which might elicit negative reactions in others for reasons, perhaps, of envy.

-------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Conflict between customers and management at Tesco, Hornsea over ginger tabby who likes to visit the store

Op-ed: Lincoln is a ginger tabby indoor/outdoor cat who likes to wander quite a long way by the look of it from his home and in particular he likes to spend some time at the local Tesco in Hornsea, North Yorkshire.

He likes to rest on the compost by the front door and watch the comings and goings. He also likes to sit on the store's wheelchairs and also watch the comings and goings there as people collect their trolleys and return them.

Lincoln has become a feature at the store and the customers like to see him. He's a calming presence. He makes them smile. He adds a bit of soul among the fruit and veg.

Lincoln resting and watching on the compost bags as they are nice and comfy. Image: Facebook.

But the management are being a little bit narrowminded although I understand their position. They don't want Lincoln there and so they're going to gently encourage him not to come into the store. At least they are going to be gentle.

In response to this upsetting news, some customers have said that they are no longer going to return to the store. They will take their business elsewhere. And now as you can see, Lincoln is in the news, in news media outlets on the Internet and this will probably put a bit of pressure on management to change their point of view.

Firstly, I can't see any reason why they should get rid of Lincoln. What's he doing that upsets them? Apparently, they think it unhealthy to have a cat sitting on the compost bags but how can that be unhealthy? He's nowhere near the food. In any case, domestic cats are no worse a hazard to human health than other humans!

This is a misconception: the belief that domestic cats and dogs are disease carriers and are going to spread disease to all people. I think that if you did a bit of research on this you would find that humans give humans more diseases than cats give humans diseases. The same would apply to dogs.

That's really because nearly all diseases are not zoonotic. Most feline diseases stay in the cat world and they cannot jump across to the human world. There are some which can such as toxoplasmosis and Covid can also transmit both ways and bird flu too but the cat version of the common cold cannot affect people. Nor can cat flu and nor can a pile of other feline diseases affect people. So I don't know where this fear of cats carrying diseases comes from.

I think it is very unfortunate and a misplaced thought. I would hope that the management reconsider but if they don't, they're going to losing customers.

RELATED: Bodega cats. These are American corner shop cats. Lincoln is a shop cat and his presence should be embraced by a more enlightened management.

------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Feral cats are becoming a nuisance at British military bases abroad

NEWS AND COMMENT: this, for me, is a slightly sad story but at least the outcome is going to be reasonable. 

British military base in Cyprus. Image: AP.

The British military have a variety of bases abroad in countries such as Cyprus where there are several and where they are the UK's main defence in the Middle East as they are just a few hundred miles from Israel. 

There are three bases in Belize. And there are also three bases in Brunei Darussalam. In all, there are four bases in Cyprus and my research which also indicates that there is a base in Canada.

The British military have four bases in Germany, three in Nepal, two in Oman, four in Iraq, seven in Kenya and one in Sierra Leone. A lot of bases and in total they occupy about 98 mi².

In all, they are home to 3,500 military personnel 7,000 civilians. The problem is that somebody decided that the feral cats are becoming a nuisance and therefore they are going to do something about them which I hope will be humane.

I'm told that they are going to operate TNR programs on the feral cats to sterilise and microchip them. The cats that are deemed to be in very poor health will be euthanised as I understand it. The project will take three years.

Sounds humane to me and let's hope they stick to the plan. They'll be using a contractor so someone will have to ensure that they act humanely and don't cut corners.

-------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Cat's hind leg has a mind of its own forcing the cat to fight back

This video is scarcely believable because what we see is a cat losing control of his right hind leg to the point where the hind leg in question has a mind of its own and starts to attack the cat. The cat then fights back. That's what it looks like and it is incredibly odd.

My brief thoughts about this strange video is that the right hind leg was scratching the cat's neck which is very typical cat behaviour. And my theory is that this scratching process is an automated, instinctive process perhaps partially governed by the autonomic nervous system which is the nervous system which runs the beat of the heart and the breathing.

And therefore, the hind leg takes on a mentality of its own almost which in this instance annoyed the cat so he or she fought back.

That's just a thought but you have to try and understand what's going on and there does seem to be a fight between the hind leg and the cat who owns the hind leg! But it ends up in play-fighting. Cool. This cat does not need a caregiver or another cat to play with!

Sometimes cats do something similar with their tails.

--------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Hind leg fights back! Screen grab from video above.

Jamie Lynn Spears blames Tesla cars for killing her cats!

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is hardly a story worth repeating but it is interesting in a way that Britney Spears's sister won't want to read about. Her name is Jamie Lynn Spears and she has accused Tesla EV cars in particular of killing her cats. Note that it is in the plural and therefore more than one cat of hers has been killed by a Tesla car.

Jamie Lynn Spears is a cat owner and she lets then go outside where more than one has been hit by EVs. Image credit: see base of page.

She is basically blaming Elon Musk who I am sure is totally disinterested in this.

Jamie Lynn, 32, claims that her beloved pets (note once again that it's in the plural) are being killed by Teslas because the cats can't hear the cars coming.

Tough but realistic comment: if you've lost one cat in a road traffic accident concerning a Tesla car, I don't think you should let your other cat outside or you should take some steps to protect your cat. It appears to me that she lives on a road which is not quiet and where there is a possibility that an outdoor cat can be hit by a car. You take measures to stop that happening which doesn't seem to be the case for Jamie Lynn.

I have read similar stories about cat owners complaining about road traffic killing their cats. The solution is in the hands of the owner. Don't blame cars or roads. Don't try and deflect the blame as it all comes back to the owner.

She wrote on social media:

"We have now lost — I don’t want to tell you how many cats — because they don’t hear the Tesla crank and unfortunate things happen and it’s really devastating and tragic for everyone involved. Elon Musk, let’s figure this out. You owe me a couple cats.”

I don't think the problem is with the quietness of EVs but with allowing cats to walk onto the road. Personally, I don't have a problem with the quietness of electric vehicles. They do in fact make a sound. And you have the sound of the tyres on the road which can be quite pronounced. There's no question that you can hear an electric vehicle coming.

Despite that, I'm told that as of 2020 regulations in America mean that electric vehicles have to emit sounds louder than a certain decibel level which is about the level of a washing machine. I don't know if that's true and if it is I think it's silly because one advantage of an EV is that it is quiet. Why take that away with some artificial sound box tucked underneath the dashboard? I just don't get that at all.

The bigger issue on electric vehicles is that the insurance on them is rising rapidly to unsustainable levels because, the insurance companies argue, that repair of electric vehicles is very expensive because the batteries are very expensive to replace. The cost of repairing electric vehicles is pushing up insurance policies across the board but particularly for EVs.

This will curtail the purchase of electric vehicles which, indirectly, will help Jamie Lynn because they'll be more diesels and petrol-engined cars on the road pretty soon if this electric vehicle crisis continues.

On the upside it is nice to know that Jamie Lynn likes cats. Shame she is an irresponsible cat owner.

Image credit: By NickRewind - Jamie Lynn Spears Talks NEW Zoey 102 Movie ☀️ #Shorts NickRewind, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136214583

-----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Pumba the pet caracal is anxious almost all the time living with humans

Pumba is anxious at best living in the human environment. Screen grab from video below.

I have written about this so-called 'pet caracal' called Pumba before (not a pet at all actually). You might like to read my latest article (see link below). I am somewhat fascinated with this cat not because I am interested in exotic cats as pets but because I'm concerned for the welfare of this cat who is overweight because he's bored and wants to escape. He lives in Latvia and was adopted as a kitten.

RELATED: Video tells you why ‘pet’ caracals are not pets at all.

But, having watched some of the videos on the owner's (Deniss Jegorovs) TikTok account, every one that I've seen shows Pumba hissing indicating extreme anxiety. He hisses when his owner approaches him. He hissed when his owner approached him to video him and he hissed when his owner fed him and also videoed him as you can see in the video on this page.

This is entirely not what should be the case for a so-called domesticated wild cat. This cat is not domesticated at all. The cat is tame to a certain extent but in my opinion this cat is terrified at worst and probably permanently anxious at best.

And the reason for that is this cat is not socialised to people. He is behaving like a feral domestic cat. He is living in a hostile environment permanently. He has one friend, a domestic cat who also lives with this man.

And of course, the hiss is quite strong as this is a medium-sized wild cat. It's a very intimidating hiss. I don't know how the owner can put up with this because this is a precursor to being attacked. The ears go back and the hiss is a message to the owner to back off and go away otherwise you will be attacked. That is the message which indicates a dysfunctional relationship between caracal and human.

This is entirely unsurprising because, as mentioned, this is a somewhat tame caracal but not a domesticated cat and this cat is unsocialised despite being adopted as a kitten.

This caracal will never be a good cat companion and never be domesticated and never be fully socialised to humans. He will only be relaxed and happy when around other cats he knows but humans to him are large and potentially dangerous. Although Pumba might easily attack a domestic cat if he escaped and met a neighbour's cat.

All of this, for me, points to the fact that one should never purchase a caracal as an exotic pet unless you fully understand what you are getting into but even then, it's wrong because you are doing something which has a negative impact on caracal conservation and wild cat conservation in general.

The videos of Pumba sends the incorrect message that small and medium wild cat species can be pets when the message should be that they should be left in their natural environment, in the wild, and people should leave them alone to live their lives as they should live them. Then they can be happy but not like this.

--------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Retired lawyer and professor shoots dead two environmental campaigners on a highway in Panama in front of video cameras

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is an extraordinary story of a man who appears to have completely lost rational thought because he will surely live the rest of his days in prison. In front of cameras operated by the news media, he shot dead a couple of environmental protesters who were campaigning about the destruction of rainforest in Panama to make way for mining for the next 20-40 years. 

The contract had been organised by the government and clearly some citizens of Panama strongly objected to it for environmental reasons and in terms of climate change.

The exact moment when Darlington shot dead one of the protesters. You can see the smoke coming out of the barrel of the gun. He looks calm and in control of himself. His life as he knows it has ended because he will surely be convicted of the murder of two men. He shot them because they had barricaded the highway and he wanted to get through. The photograph comes from the Daily Mail newspaper

This man, Kenneth Darlington, 77, was blocked on the Pan-American highway in the Chame district about 50 miles from Panama City, by the protesters. He went to clear away the barriers, and approached two protesters one of whom challenged him to shoot as by this time Darlington had raised his handgun and pointed it at them.

Clearly, the campaigners thought that Darlington was simply trying to intimidate them and would not shoot as that would be the end of his life as he knew it. Remarkably, Darlington did shoot both of the men dead. Clearly planet Earth is becoming a very stressful place on which to live.

The first man, a teacher, dropped to the ground and died at the scene. His name is Abdiel Diaz. The other man, Ivan Rodriguez, died in hospital a little while later having been shot in the shoulder apparently.

The Times reports that last week another demonstrator had been run over and killed in a separate incident.

The protests have changed the Panamanian government's opinion about granting licences to mining companies causing the destruction of forests. They have suspended these contracts indefinitely.

The existing contract is said to be worth $375 million annually to Panama. Panama is the 14th largest copper-producing country in the world and copper is required in EVs - electric vehicles. 

As you can imagine, there is a big demand for precious metals and metal such as copper to make electric vehicles. There is a shortage of some of these precious metals and therefore the prices are going up rapidly. 

That apparently is the case with copper as well. It's obvious a very profitable mining operation but then again mass deforestation is today, a highly sensitive topic because of global warming which is becoming more and more pressing as governments refuse to curb carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

For example, in the UK, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has decided to issue licences to extract oil and gas from the North Sea where once these areas had remained dormant because it was too expensive to extract. Now apparently it isn't and he's doing it against public opinion which is arguably in favour of vigorously dealing with climate change rather than going into reverse and ignoring what appears to be a catastrophic future for the youngsters of this world.

----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.