Showing posts with label cat eating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cat eating. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 September 2024

Story about Haitians eating cats was third or fourth hand and unsubstantiated


Note: see update at end of article. The Daily Mail tells us that Erika Lee is the person who posted information/rumours about Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio killing and eating cats. But she got the information according to this paper through a neighbour who told her daughter about the rumour. The neighbour's name is Kimberly Newton. Kimberly Newton heard the rumour through a friend. And her friend heard the rumour from the alleged cat owner!

So I make that three stages through which the story passed i.e. through three different people, may be four if you count her daughter.

It's the kind of rumour that carries zero weight in terms of evidence in a court. It's third or fourth hand, a rumour or anecdote, there's no first hand evidence here. It's just highly speculative and Erika Lee regrets what happened.

She has posted to Facebook about this and about how the evidence is so weak that it has to be ignored.

Lee's initial Facebook post sparked panic across social media after screenshots were circulated around X in which she warned Haitian migrants were hanging cats from a branch like you do a deer for butchering.

And she went on to talk about dogs suffering the same fate and ducks and geese. And she said that people should keep a close eye on their animals.

As the entire world now knows, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance picked up on this and made complete fools of themselves with Trump raising it during that critical debate with Kamala Harris. Since then both Trump and Vance have tried to row back from that egg-on-the-face moment.

But Vance has dug a bigger hole for himself by saying that all along he spewed out the story to make a point about illegal immigrants and the reason for their existence in America namely Kamala Harris's policies. But that ridiculous claim has also backfired because it looks transparently fictitious. He's making it up as he goes along.

But this post is about one thing: the fourth hand rumour mill which ended up a hard fact in Trump's mind much to his ultimate chagrin.

'It just exploded into something I didn't mean to happen,' Erika Lee told NBC News.

Update 18-9-2024:  Huff Post reports the following:

An Ohio woman whose police report was used to power racist rumors about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating neighborhood cats has admitted her pet was found in her home, just days after she reported her Haitian neighbors to local police.

It appears that the cat owner is Anna Kilgore who filed the report but who she "told the paper that her pet, Miss Sassy, was found in her basement days after she contacted the police."

There you go. Another nail in the coffin of this silly story and another dollop of egg on Donald Trump's face. 😎

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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. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Monday, 16 September 2024

"My cat killing claim was all bull" said J.D. Vance

OPINION AND NEWS: In my view, J.D. Vance has dreamt up, over the last few days, a way to row back from the absurd claim he made about Haitian migrants in Springfield Ohio eating pet dogs, cats and ducks. He was heavily criticised. There was an avalanche of Mickey taking and he got burnt as did Trump. So he is backtracking and is doing it by saying that what he said was all lies. Quite a neat idea but more gasoline on the dying embers.

"My cat killing claim was all bull" said J.D. Vance
Image: Wikipedia.


J.D. Vance has admitted that he "created" the story about Haitian migrants eating pets. Speaking to CNN yesterday, Vance, 40, said that he created the unsubstantiated claims about Springfield which have been dismissed by the local mayor. He did so he says to "draw attention to the Biden/Harris immigration policies".

He said that he had to do this to draw attention to what he argues is sloppy policies by the Biden and Harris administration on matters concerning immigration. He claimed that he has to "create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do."

He added (emphasised) that "I say that we are creating a story, meaning we are creating the American media focusing on it. I don't create 20,000 illegal migrants coming into Springfield thanks to Kamala Harris's policies. Her policies did that."

Sidebar: I'm not sure that migrants in Springfield are actually illegal. In a previous post it was claimed that they were legal but that needs to be clarified.

And he further added: "But, yes, we created the actual focus that allowed the American media to talk about the story and the suffering caused by Kamala Harris's policies." The third time he said it.

So there you go, he is arguably backtracking and trying to brush over what I argue was a massive faux pas on his behalf and also by Donald Trump. And I've also argued in another post this morning that the recent attempted assassination of Donald Trump while he was playing golf just might (allegation) have been set up by Don Trump himself and his team in order to garner more support in a faltering campaign brought partly about by Trump and Vance's irresponsible statements about these Haitian immigrants.

My guess is that Vance's team dreamt up this latest idea. He probably had a fraught meeting about it and asked for ideas. They came up with this. 

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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. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.

Tuesday, 6 December 2022

Picture of a full-bellied lion cub after feeding

 

Full-bellied lion cub
Full bellied lion cub. Image: Reddit user u/asilvertintedrose on Reddit. I don't expect that this person is the photographer, however.

This lion cub looks zonked out after feeding to the maximum on raw flesh judging by the blood on his forelegs and on his muzzle and on chin. And of course, we can't forget the belly, which is completely full, but you can't blame a lion cub for eating to the maximum because they are never quite sure when the next meal is going to arrive.

I think that it is a great picture. It is almost too good to be true and looks as though that it might have been set up but then again, the blood looks very real.

The distended belly is enormous I wonder whether he has overdone the feeding. I have never seen a lion cub with such a full belly. I think that he has eaten enough to keep him alive for a week ✔️😊.

It is a convenient moment to talk about feeding. You might know that in general, lions eat enormous amounts of meat (flesh) at a sitting. One male was recorded eating 33 kg of meat during a night.

In a pride of lions, as expected, the strongest male lion will eat first followed by other members of the pride. Lionesses will feed before cubs and cubs get the scraps.

Arguably, by human standards, a lion pride is a misogynistic society because although females conduct most of the hunts the top male lion feeds first followed by the other males. As mentioned, the females feed secondly and then the cubs who have a hierarchy of their own.

Sometimes male lions tolerate showing their food with cubs.

The point being made is that as cubs get the scraps, it is unsurprising that you will see a cub as you see in the photograph on this page, fully sated after overeating because he or she has probably struggled hard to get what was available and therefore they ate the whole lot just in case there'd be a long break before the next meal.

Wednesday, 15 June 2022

2 ways to encourage your cat to eat if they are picky

Sometimes domestic cats can be picky about what they eat. Perhaps they are fed too much or they are just picky like some people. I know of two ways and there might be more of encouraging a domestic cat to eat. 

The first is to gently stroke your cat on their back when the food bowl is presented to them. If they didn't eat before, in my experience they will begin to eat if you do that. Why does this happen? It probably has something to do with newborns being licked by their mother and nursing. It is a throwback to those early weeks.

Stroking a cat can encourage eating
Stroking a cat can encourage eating. Image: Pixabay.

The second method is well known which is to gently heat the food in a microwave. It should be a matter of seconds only, perhaps about four seconds. Heated food will smell more strongly and as domestic cats rely on smell to identify food and its palatability, this should help.

My cat likes prawns which I keep in the fridge. If I want to make them particularly attractive to him, I break them open which helps the smell to come out more and I warm them with a 3-4 second microwave session at 100%. 

His behaviour indicates to me that this makes him more interested in the food. A counter argument to the above is that if your cat rejects the food that you give him, he is not hungry enough. On that basis you should do nothing and not try and encourage him to eat it. If a cat is genuinely hungry, they will eat what is placed before them.

I sense that there is a pattern of behaviour in some homes in which the cat, out of routine and to a certain extent boredom, meows for food but is not hungry. This is similar behaviour to people who eat out of habit at certain times of the day even if they aren't hungry.

Or when they settle down to watch some television, they like to eat at the same time. It's a double pleasure which is better than a single pleasure.

Domestic cats should only eat when they are hungry and the same goes for people! The feline obesity epidemic is partly due to eating were not hungry and for pleasure just as humans do.

Please read Sandi's comment below about adding warm water or broth to cat food to make it more palatable in lieu of warming it up in a microwave.

Sunday, 20 February 2022

Grey cat manically eats dry cat food with left paw and stuffs the pellets into his mouth

Get this 😃. I have never seen a cat eat dry cat food pellets using their paw in such a manic manner. This cat looks starved to me. And there is no benefit to eating the pellets with his left paw. He would get them into his mouth faster if he ate in the conventional way. 

No matter. It makes for an interesting if slightly disturbing video. Eating with paws is not that unusual. It is just the crazed performance of this cat which is. 

People ask why cats sometimes use their paws to eat and drink. I think it is natural. It is easier to eat with the mouth directly but an alternative is to use a paw, usually the left incidentally which indicates that cats are generally left-handed and/or ambidextrous.

Grey cat manically eats dry cat food with left paw and stuffs the pellets into his mouth
Grey cat manically eats dry cat food with left paw and stuffs the pellets into his mouth. Screenshot.

Humans use hands to eat sometimes. And humans eat direct from the plate using the mouth sometimes (rarely 😉). Anyway, to get the food into the mouth is the objective especially when starved. The same rules apply to the cat. Cat paws are pretty dextrous. They are good at grasping objects.


Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. 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.

Wednesday, 15 December 2021

Starving, diminutive kitten behaves like a tiger eating a freshly killed wild buffalo

Note: This is an embedded TikTok video. 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.

It is a cute reminder that kittens are born ravenous and carnivorous. A mentality inherited from their wild cat ancestor. It certainly pays dividends to remember that domestic cats are wild cats at heart; a whisker away from their wild ancestor in behaviour. 

And this carnivorous mentality is all apparent in the short video. In terms of mentality there is no difference between this cute little kitten and a big tiger on a reserve in India. They just want to bolt down the food as quickly as possible. I wonder, though, if this kitten has been starved a little bit to make sure that he behaves as you see in the video and as desired by the video-maker.

Starving diminutive kitten behaves like a tiger eating a buffalo
Starving diminutive kitten behaves like a tiger eating a buffalo

The video has been engineered to be interesting which it certainly is. But you wouldn't feed a kitten a raw steak like this normally. It is not a good lesson in how to feed your cat. Let's put it that way. 

Because that steak does not contain all the ingredients that a cat needs. It contains some of them but not all of them., In that way, therefore, this is a slightly careless video but we shouldn't snipe at it because it teaches us the lesson that domestic cats need a meat diet or one that replicates it accurately. 

In fact, it is bigger than that because when a wild cat eats a prey animal they eat more than just the flesh which humans call meat. In human language the word "meat" means muscle. Meat is a euphemism for the flesh of an animal. 

The video is duplicated below but it is from a different platform in case the TikTok video above fails. The one below may also fail 🤞.

Wild cats and indoor/outdoor domestic cats eat all the animal including the gut and the contents of the stomach, the fur and some bones et cetera. It is the whole which provides the balanced diet with all the requisite ingredients.

We exactly what ingredients are needed by domestic cats and can add them in commercially made food. If you feed your cat a raw diet you can buy a powdered supplement which contains these essential nutrients to add to the mix. 

See: RAW DIET FOR A CAT FOR A FULL EXPOSITION ON THE TOPIC.

Friday, 27 May 2011

A tip about making a cat eat

Sometimes for whatever reason your cat won't eat. Or her appetite is poor. A poor sense of smell in an old and senile cat can lead to what looks like a poor appetite. A cat will gauge how appetizing the food is through its smell.

That is why heating it up a bit can get the low appetite cat to eat it. I sometimes microwave cat food that has been left for a few seconds just to give it a bit more odor.

However that is not the tip! This is: I have always found that if I present my cat to the food and then stroke her before and during eating it encourages eating.

I am not sure how this works. I think it is a feeling of reassurance that it gives the cat. It might mimic what happens to a new born kitten when nursing.

Stroking is a human version of a cat's lick after all. Give it a try and report back if you have time.

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