Baby squeals in delight at the arrival of the family cat

A charming little video and a cat lover in the making, very definitely. This sweet baby squeals in delight at the arrival of the family cat to her cot and her mother lets their cat walk around the cot under supervision. I like that. Very controlled but beneficial to cat and baby, I'd say.

A lot of stuff has been written about cats and babies and whether cats are beneficial or detrimental to babies' health. In the old days they superstitiously believed that cats sucked the breath out of babies. They considered cats to be dangerous to babies. That was hundreds of years ago.

RELATED: Cat snuggles up to baby: beautiful and mutually beneficial (supported by science).

And then the early part of the 21st-century doctors thought that there were dangers in putting cats with babies because of transmission of disease and parasites et cetera but more recently, perhaps over the past 5-10 years, paediatricians believe that placing domestic cats near to babies and even in contact with them is beneficial to babies in terms of strengthening their immune system and desensitising them to allergies.

Baby squeals in delight at the arrival of the family cat

It is the latter which is the more powerful benefit. It helps to create a more robust child in general terms on my understanding. And so there are real health benefits to babies in having the family cat around.

RELATED: Quick Guide On Introducing Cat To Baby.

On a wider issue, if a baby has a great experience with a domestic cat it can only be good for cat welfare going forward. There will be one more adult in the world who is concerned about cat welfare and the world needs more of them.

This little child is going to be a cat lover and almost certainly an animal lover. She will do great things to improve animal welfare I believe!

Japan: restaurant owner rescued stray cats and they rescued his business

NEWS AND COMMENT-JAPAN: This is a nice story of symbiosis, to use a rarely used word, certainly in this context. It means a relationship in which both parties benefit the other. And in this instance both Naoki Teraoka, the owner of a model railway themed restaurant (Tetsudokan) benefited greatly after he rescued stray cats near his business.

He was going through a very difficult time because of Covid. A pretty typical scenario for huge swathes of businesses in entertainment and hospitality. He has a model railway in his restaurant to create a theme and added interest. And he loves model railways.

Photo: believed to be by @Caferest_bar_Fe.

It's a popular restaurant and he was going bust because of Covid. He noticed a stray kitten next to his restaurant and decided to help because the cat needed help in terms of food and medical treatment. He named him Simba. And a few days later he noticed Simba's mother. He took both of them in. After all, he had plenty of unused food as there were no customers 👍. This implies, by the way, that he fed them human food which is not a good idea but I am pretty sure he also fed them cat food.

And then Simba's mother brought him three more kittens. He became a cat rescuer and the entire concept of his restaurant changed as a result. You can see the photographs on this page. They kind of occupied the place as they do; no doubt because they were delighted to be looked after.

Rescue cats occupy model railway themed restaurant and boost business. Image in public domain (believed).

He is very tolerant of them climbing all over his model railway which looks as if it was meticulously built. I'm sure they did some damage but I guess he accepted it because the presence of the cats attracted customers and media attention. The photographs of his rescued cats on his model railway went viral. It was a happy accident which he had not foreseen.

Japan: restaurant owner rescued stray cats and they rescued his business. Photo in public domain (believed).

He said: "It was a financially difficult time for us, but we decided to help the cat family. Yes, we thought we were helping them, but they were the ones who helped us."

His restaurant business appears to be back on its feet. He has now become a cat rescuer as well. There are 14 stray cats in all. It appears to have become a cat café/model railway themed restaurant 😊. He has opened a cat shelter and cat boarding cattery on the second floor. This allows his clients to go upstairs to adopt a cat should they wish. Thus far he has adopted out 100 cats I'm told by MSN News.

There is a moral behind the story: you reap what you sow. It's an old adage which is clearly applicable.

Do you think having cats is a burden?

A British woman living in London asked the question in the title. And the answer must be that cats are indeed a burden sometimes but the pleasure they bring you in various forms hugely outweigh the burden. 

But it cannot be avoided that the responsibility of looking after a domestic cat companion can be a burden. There are chores to do. There is money to spend. There is worrying to do about your cat's welfare and health. There are vets to see. There are litter trays to clear and there are sofas to protect from scratches. There are cat scratching posts to purchase from Amazon up and so on and so forth.

This is the woman's beautiful grey cat. She complained about him knocking over water and of having to clear out the litter tray of a prodigious amount of shit. She appears to have flushed it down the toilet. This is not recommended by the way.

Perhaps the biggest burden is the worry in providing your cat with good levels of security and safety. But if you keep your cat indoors all the time, which is much safer, there is the worry about entertaining your cat and making sure that they are fully stimulated. The worry of boredom creeping into your cat's life is ever present. Worry is a burden but it is all part and parcel of being a cat caregiver.

But if the British lady was asking whether domestic cats are a burden without benefit then firstly she's wrong and secondly there is no point in her having cats. For about half the human population of the world cats are just a burden with no benefit. They don't really like cats.

However, a noted advantage of cats over dogs is that they are less of a burden than dogs, I would argue. You take a dog to a park in winter for a walk and you have got some serious cleaning up to do afterwards. They end up covered in mud. And dogs look to their human master for leadership. You got to provide it. That's responsibility and responsibility is by definition a burden of some sort.

Cats are more independent it is said. This is a slight misinterpretation of the human-cat relationship in my view because they are not independent by any means. But they give the impression of being independent. They don't look to their human for leadership as dogs do. They look to us for companionship, food, warmth and security.

The bottom line in answering the question is that where there is benefit as there is in the human-to-cat relationship, for both parties, there must by necessity be an equivalent burden of responsibility. It's one of the laws of nature 😟.

Obviously, if you live with more than one cat or several cats then responsibilities are magnified and so is the burden. There comes a time in that formula in my opinion when the burden outweighs the benefits. What I'm saying is that there is probably an optimum number of cats that a person should look after and live with. That optimum number would range between 1-5 approximately in my view.

If a person looks after 10, 20 or more cats then the chances are that any increase in benefit is out done by the extra demands in terms of caregiving.