12 K-Pop idols who love cats

Here's a list of a dozen K-Pop idols who're said to be seriously in love with cats. But I wonder if they truly are sometimes. Aren't these pop idols artificially created by producers and entrepreneurs? They are the guys who make the big bucks. They filter some of the money down to the artist. Minimum wage stuff! It is a production and I wonder if part of that production is the cat. The cats are always beautiful, sometimes pristine white to match the beautiful girls and androgenous boys.

Jisun and white cat. She is said to love cats. Photo in public domain.

• Jooheon (MONSTA X)
• Lisa (BLACKPINK)
• Kun (NCT)
• Jisun (fromis_9)
• Kang Daniel
• Rina (WEKI MEKI)
• Jaejoong (JYJ)
• Jimin (BTS)
• Hyolyn
• Yura (Girl’s Day)
• Handong (Dreamcatcher)
• Kyulkyung (PRISTIN)

To a Westerner it looks a bit strange. It certainly looks artificial. No doubt these are talented girls and boys but they are plastic caricatures of real people. And I believe that the cats are there to dress them up. They are the accoutrements of being a South Korean pop idol. You've got to throw all these bits and pieces into the mix. Domestic cats are innocent and popular and therefore if a pop idol likes domestic cats, they have got to be decent people. They've got to be pure of heart and the producers and creators of these K-Pop idols want that kind of image. It is the innocence of the cat adding gloss to the innocence of the pop idol. Just my take on it. 

As mentioned, the boys are nearly always androgenous. Sometimes you can't tell if they are male or female. Why is this? They are not very real as mentioned. They look very pure and innocent too. There are lots of tweets on the internet of the K-Pop boys sometimes with a cat or behaving like a cat or juxtaposed against a cat. It is all feline association to improve the image of the artists.

Lisa and terrified cat. Photo in public domain.

Minghao with a kitten

Minghao with a kitten. I have chosen this picture because I think it's very nice although I'm not completely convinced about the way the kitten is being held by Minghao. Better not to treat cats and kittens as babies. 

I'm also not completely convinced that this is Minghao! :) The Twitter caption is not clear but I think it is. And if it is, Minghao is a Chinese singer, songwriter and dancer living in South Korea and a member of the South Korean boy group Seventeen. I have seen another photograph of Minghao with another cat so this guy likes cats. 

His alternative name is interestingly "The8". It is a very novel name. It is a stage name. The number 8 is liked by many people in China. When it is "laid down" (whatever that means - rotated?), the infinite sign appears. That may be partly why it is considered a nice number.

Minghao with a kitten. Instagram.

It's interesting that if you search for "cats" on Twitter you invariably get a huge number of tweets from South Korean boy bands. These are all very attractive, girly, or androgynous looking boys. I think this is a good thing. It is nice to see the boundary between female and male broken down. It is very much a modern concept.

It would appear that South Korean girls (who are the biggest audience for K-pop) like this kind of neutral, in-between the genders, beauty. And that is fine. Perhaps when they grow up, they may be more attracted to the more masculine (in the classic sense) male appearance.

They are groups that have been created artificially, I would say, by producers who want to make a lot of money out of them. I don't want to misrepresent the situation, and I am guessing, but it is likely that these boys are exploited. I wonder how much money they get out of their songs? No doubt the producer who created the band gets by far the biggest slice of the profit.

On an associated issue, there are a lot of celebrities who like to have companion animals. And they almost invariably create an Instagram account to tell the world about this. Sometimes the photographs are excellent and they genuinely are entertaining to their fans.

Of course, when a celebrity associates themselves with an attractive companion animal it helps to promote that celebrity. It also helps, incidentally, to promote the animal which is often nowadays a purebred cat, sometimes the Scottish Fold because this particular breed has been promoted by Taylor Swift. I have some doubts about the ethics of that because the breed has potential health issues. But that is another matter which I won't go into here.

Here's a bit more about Minghao. He was born on November 7, 1997 and attended Beijing Contemporary Music Academy. The boy band Seventeen debuted in 2015. Minghao was awarded the "Prime Minister's Commendation" from the Prime Minister of South Korea for his contribution to the development of the country's contemporary pop culture and arts.

Jeongyeon’s cat 'Bomb' copies her when she taps her leg

This is cool. Jeongyeon is a 'celebrity' as I like to call them. A created celebrity as a producer created the band of which she is a member. She is a 24-year-old South Korean singer and member of the South Korean girl group Twice. She obviously lives with a cat. Here we have her cat copying her as she taps her leg. It is a clear example of domestic cats learning by observation which they are very good at as they learn to hunt and become independent when living in the wild as a feral cat. Kittens learn fastest when observing their mother or a close relative. I guess that, instinctively, they trust them the most.

Jeongyeon on Instagram.

Note: this is an embedded tweet. It may disappear over time as it may be deleted at source on Twitter. If that has happened, I am sorry but I can't control it.

Jeongyeon also has two dogs: Nanan the poodle and Bbosong the white Pomeranian (source: aminoapps.com). The same source says "she also has a cat named Bami, a Scottish Fold cat, [who] technically belongs more to Jeongyeon’s sister, Gong Seung Yeon". 

Jeongyeon’s cat 'Bomb' copies her when she taps her leg. Screenshot.

"The actress brought Bami into the family when he was 8 months old". This appears to be the cat in the video. She seems to have two names from her Scottish Fold: Bami and Bomb. The cat is a grey solid colour. There is a problem with celebrities adopting Scottish Folds probably because Taylor Swift adopted one. This breed should not exist arguably because the mutated gene that creates the folded ears can cause serious harm to the cat if the breeding is not accurate and ethical. How many Scot. Folds are 'culled' at birth? No idea. Perhaps none, perhaps some.

Jeongyeon’s cat Bomb copying her taps on her leg pic.twitter.com/MLqLVn8pm9

— hourly cats (@hourIykitty) July 29, 2021

woo!ah! (우아!) – 겁쟁이 (SCAREDY CAT) Animated Lyric Video

This is an animated video from South Korea I believe. I don't understand! :) But I like the fact that it is made in South Korea and I think a website about cats should explore every possible avenue. This is an international sort of video because if you look at it, you'll see these cats (are they cats?) in different countries including London, UK and Rome, Italy. You will also see them in Egypt at the Sphinx monument. Like I said, I don't know what it's about but perhaps it is simply an animated video to provide a background to the music which isn't bad even for an English person like myself.

Do me a favour and don't watch it on YouTube! Watch it here, please. And please read the below message.

Note: This is a video from another website. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Animal Clones

Photo copyright imranchaudhry published under a creative commons license fully complied with. This is an image of an image it seems to me and the original might not be the copyright of imranchaudhry - please advise.

NEWS AND OPINION: Animal Clones and particularly pet cloning is in the news again. We do like to play around with science don't we and fool ourselves into believing that it is for the good of humankind? I think we need to spend more time and expend more energy on some basic issues like human and animal rights the world over before we play God with pets. We need to get back to some basic and sound thinking on real and pressing matters. Animal clones are being used for medical research but it has now been proposed that animal clones are produced as a replacement for a pet that has died. This post deals with this aspect of the process.

We know that animal cloning is about money, profit. As I have said elsewhere it is hard enough to reconcile cat and dog breeding with ethical and moral behavior, never mind cat and dog cloning. And I am not some rampant animal rights activist. I just like to think of the welfare of animals as opposed to making money out of them.

Why the production of animal clones as a process of pet replacement is wrong in my opinion:

1. It prevents the naturally hard wired and natural cycle of birth death and grieving after death.
2. Animal cloning of pets might prey on vulnerable (and I guess wealthy) people who cannot accept the death of a beloved cat or dog. We shouldn't feed this vulnerability but make ourselves stronger.
3. Animal cloning is simply about commerce and profit at the expense of animals.
4. It is a classic and perfect example of how we are going in the wrong direction as a world. The world is dysfunctional. It is driven by self-interest (as is cloning), with little committed, common purpose.
   
5. It produces another pet when there a many hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of cats (and dogs) that need re-homing
6. The process of cloning is experimental and causes a lot of animal cruelty
7. Cloned pets will not on my assessment be the same as your previous pet. She may look the same but will she have the same character? How can you replicate the character? This is surely impossible.
8. Animal and pet cloning is a reflection of our obsession with appearance and fear of death. We would be happy to have a look-a-like replacement for our dead pet but she won't be the same pet.
   
9. One major player in the pet cloning business is the disgraced South Korean scientist and cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk. He is seeking foreign investment for a new business. As an aside, South Korea is a country with a lack of respect for cats. In some parts of S. Korea they eat them. Not a good place to conduct animal experiments.
10. Animal cloning shows the worst of us. It treats our fellow creatures as products no different hardly than a washing machine. When it breaks you replace it. When your pet dies you replace it.
11. Animal cloning is dressed up as scientific research for the betterment of humankind. It is a fraud.
12. We need to get closer to nature to be in balance with life and animal cloning draws us further away from the natural order of the world. This is not an old-fashioned concept. It is possible to be scientifically advanced and progressive while still respecting nature.
    
13. It runs counter to nature. When you do things that are unnatural there may be apparent gain but there will always be a natural downside that cancels the perceived upside out.
14. Animal cloning sits somewhere between the manufacture of a Japanese animal robot and cat breeding of the poorest kind.
15. People who truly love their pets will not take up the offer of a cloned pet. It is only those who have too much money, not enough sense and who are highly consumer orientated that might - the wrong type of person to be involved in the pet keeping world in the first place.
    
16. How many cats and dogs die in the production of one successful clone and in any case how successful are cloned cats and dogs. Apparently, 99% fail. We don't hear about what happened later. How long do they live? How healthy are they? It is probably too early to tell.
17. It is another example of humans' arrogance and inflated sense of worth resulting in a profound lack of respect for our fellow creatures. Can we please start to respect other animals? It will make life better on this planet.

Fortunately, it seems, that 80% of people don't agree with pet cloning (src: HSUS). Recently a past Archbishop of Canterbury called the world "broken". The production of animal clones as replacement pets is, I submit, one symptom of a broken world.

Sources:

• HSUS
• San Francisco Chronicle

Animal Clones to cat pain

Cruelty to Cats

Why is there cruelty to cats? Where does this desire originate in the mind of humans? It seems difficult to imagine how someone can be cruel bearing in mind the fact that humans have the ability to empathize with other animals. 

In other words, we understand that if we are cruel and cause suffering the animal will feel pain. This should be a form of resistance to causing pain. For some if is not. 

Clearly if the person thinks that the cat (or obviously any animal) does not feel pain then there can be neither empathy nor cruelty. That is (at least in part) why some Chinese and Koreans kill cats so brutally and eat them (this is not a racist remark. 

It is a rational statement commenting on a country's culture). But cat cruelty is also frequently encountered in the West, in countries such as the UK and USA, countries where there are a lot of animal and cat lovers. Here are two cases; one killed the cat by punching and drowning and the other man killed a neighbor's cat by sealing the cat in plastic bags and throwing the weighted bag into a canal. 

 What is going through the head of people from these countries when they are cruel to cats? They are getting a "high" on an endorphin (or endorphin) rush when they are cruel. When endorphins are released in the brain, we feel better. This is the reward, feeling better. Why should people get an endorphin rush from cruelty to animals? 

Because being cruel is closely associated with the innate predatory exploits of mankind. Many thousands of years ago (and still today in certain parts of the world) in order to survive humans had to hunt and kill. Successful hunting produces an endorphin rush. The kill, the blood and the side effects of hunting are associated with the release of endorphins. 

It is the pleasure from this release that helps to drive us. We get the overlap between the reward of feeling better for successfully killing an animal to survive and the step further for causing pain, a by product of killing. 99% of us rationalize this and control it. 

Those of us who are living more on their instincts due to a lack of education or poor upbringing or poor experiences step over the barrier and cause pain to cats through cruelty without compunction and take pleasure in the act. 

In Britain causing unnecessary suffering to cats (and other proscribed animals) is, under a successful prosecution, punishable by imprisonment for a maximum of 51 weeks and/or a maximum fine of £20,000 under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. One last point but an important point. In the USA 20 million cats have been declawed. 

This is a legal procedure in the USA even though 99% of the time it is carried out for non-therapeutic purposes. This is cruelty to cats by veterinarians. Shocking but true. Only one place has banned it: West Hollywood, California.