OPNION: I am annoyed at the news media again because they are creating click bait articles about the outbreak of FIP (feline infectious peritonitis) in Cyprus. FIP is a coronavirus but the way the articles are written they give the impression that FIP is a form of Covid-19 about which people are frightened. It is not.
The spotted cats of Cyprus. Not all cats on Cyprus are spotted (spotted tabby). Image: PoC.
The news media is deliberately creating a frightening situation or scenario to get readers. The situation on Cyprus is not a problem for the UK because although FIP is contagious it requires direct contact between cat and cat and a transmission of, for example, saliva between those two cats for the infection to be transmitted between them. It can't be transmitted like Covid-19 in the air like a typical virus.
It's impossible to envisage a cat in Cyprus suffering from FIP transmitting the disease to a cat in the UK because there are thousands of miles apart! A cat on Cyprus might travel to the UK with their owner on an aeroplane and they might transmit the disease to one cat in the UK but that'll be about it.
And, in any event, less than 1% of cats who catch FIP develop the fatal version and die. Most often the disease is asymptomatic or it creates mild symptoms. Cats with mild symptoms of FIP which they cure themselves end up being carriers. This is a concern obviously but we shouldn't be frightened about this outbreak in Cyprus.
And, in addition, the news media has grossly exaggerated as have the Cypriot authorities the number of cats dying of FIP in Cyprus. They have quoted the figure of 300,000 stray and domestic cats dying of the disease on that island.
The island is famous for two things: there are more cats in Cyprus than there are humans and, secondly, the earliest recorded domestic cat lived on Cyprus around 9500 years ago as judged by the unearthing of the skeleton of a tame wildcat next to their owner.
This is a cross post. It's important. The brilliant White Coat Waste Project (WCW) are an incredibly important organisation. They work independently and they lobby the US government to change their incomprehensible ways. They call it 'madness' that Americans through their taxes fund cruel animal experiments abroad. They are correct. It is mad on several levels.
And isn't just any old foreign country. The American government has been funding through the Department of Defence (DOD) and via a disgraced Wuhan lab funder, EcoHealth Alliance, experiments on the coronavirus found in bats discovered in a mineshaft in the north of China.
On my research, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been involved in military biowarfare testing. They have connections to the military. This novel coronavirus was discovered in bats. It killed people early on and it seems that it was decided to develop it as a biowarfare agent.
And it is now believed by many that the Covid-19 pandemic started at the Wuhan lab. And to think that via EcoHealth Alliance American taxpayers were funding this laboratory.
It is madness as WCW state. But through tireless campaigning and lobbying, WCW have achieved a very important milestone. They have convinced the US government to stop this funding.
White Coat Waste Project stops American taxpayer funding of cruel animal experiments in foreign countries. Image: WCW.
The American taxpayer was also funding cruel tests on cats in Russia for, as I understand it, military purposes. Clearly, this went under the radar from the perspective of the American public. Through WCW the ridiculousness of this funding was exposed and through tireless campaigning they have stopped it.
I received an email from WCW which states that the US House panel that funds the Department of Defence (DOD) has passed its 2024 spending bill which includes key language that WCW wanted to see in the bill and which cuts DOD funding to the Wuhan animal lab and other laboratories in China, Russia and other adversarial nations.
And the bill also cats funding for other animal experiments and virus hunting as they call it or other projects in China.
The WCW campaign documented at least 32 animal testing laboratories in Russia and China which were receiving funding from American taxpayers.
Also, following their efforts, the NIH (National Institutes of Health) has recently disqualified the Wuhan animal lab and all animal lives in Russia from taxpayer funding.
If and when the bill is passed by the full US House and becomes law later in 2023 the then statute will disqualify all labs across China and Russia from Pentagon funding as well.
WCW worked with House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Members Reps. Chris Stewart (R-UT) and Dave Joyce (R-OH) to include this important measure in the bill. They commented as follows:
Statement from Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President, White Coat Waste Project:
“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for foreign enemies’ animal experimentation labs, and we’re proud of the progress we’re making to find, expose and defund this waste and abuse in Wuhan and beyond. If signed into law, this bill would prohibit the Pentagon from sending tax dollars to white coats in dozens of animal labs run by China, Russia and other adversarial nations. Our Worldwide Waste campaign first exposed how the DOD, NIH, USAID, and other federal agencies recklessly ship billions of tax dollars to unaccountable foreign animal labs, including how EcoHealth funneled funds to the Wuhan lab for dangerous gain-of-function animal experiments that likely caused COVID and how taxpayer unwittingly funded a Kremlin-linked lab crippling cats. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
Statement from Congressman Chris Stewart (R-UT)
“Our foreign adversaries, particularly China, have proven they should not and cannot be trusted with American taxpayer dollars to conduct laboratory research and experiments. Cutting American funding to research labs in adversarial nations that pose a threat to our national security should never be a partisan issue. I’d like to thank my colleagues who have recognized the importance of this effort.”
The headline comes direct from Reddit.com because I can't beat it. This is happening all over America and Europe; cats suddenly and unceremoniously left without their human companion who they've been close to for 18 months or thereabouts due to social distancing measures i.e. lockdowns.
Wife went back to the office this week, her favorite cat is waiting sadly at her empty desk. Photo: Reddit.com user: u/HawkTheHawker
The same is happening for dogs perhaps even more so. This is because a lot of people adopted dogs during the coronavirus pandemic and all they've known is to be with their human companion all day long. Suddenly, their owner is going back to work at the office and bingo, a puppy who's lived most of his life with an owner who was always there is suddenly alone. This is going to cause a lot of distress for the dog and I guess for the owner if they are genuinely concerned.
And cats aren't quite as independent as people make them out to be. Domestic cats have become social creatures and they love to have their owner at home with them. As you can see in the photograph they particularly like the desk with a computer because this is where their owner has been working and of course the computer gives off some heat which they also like.
The cats are simply not going to understand it. It will take some time for them to settle down and revert back to the old routine. In the meantime, I would guess that some of them will suffer from separation anxiety. There will be a few cases of cats being a bit naughty because if they become stressed it can be manifested in what people describe as 'bad behaviour' such as spraying urine or perhaps scratching and even perhaps becoming a little more aggressive because they are irritated.
Their owners will be distressed too because they will miss their cats. There is a big argument that people should be allowed to take their pets to their workplace. Apple, as I recall, allow dogs or is it Google? I think it's actually Google who allow this. Google has a very open attitude towards the workplace which is very evident. Everything within a Google office is untypical but geared up to creative thinking and productivity. The presence of a companion dog arguably improves productivity. There may even be a study on the topic which supports this.
It is much harder for cats to be brought to the office for obvious reasons although it does happen. The Foreign Office of the UK government used to have an office cat called Palmerston but he didn't really like it and he was pensioned off. Larry at Number 10 Downing Street is more at home and he's been there for quite a long time. It's worked out well and I'm sure he contributes. These are high profile examples of working cats and offices. There should be more but the complication is that a person or persons need to look after the cat and these will be volunteers. That's what happens at Number 10 Downing Street. And I recall they even use their own money for the purpose because there is no official funding for Larry. Larry was spraying when Dilyn the PM's dog was adopted.
A lot of animal rescue organisations are particularly concerned about dogs because they foresee a lot of abandonments of newly adopted dogs by inexperienced people who haven't really researched what dog ownership entails because they've hastily bought into the idea of adopting a sweet flat-based puppy such as a French Bulldog during lockdown.
They discover that dog ownership is unviable when they return to the office which is happening right now. So, they offer the dog for sale online. They have to sell because their cute puppy cost them £3,500 which is a lot more than they normally cost due to market forces. And if you sell a companion animal online you generate some problems, at least potentially.
And the dog, of course, is then being pushed around from pillar to post which is unhelpful particularly when they are young and going through those developmental years. It could result in the dog becoming badly behaved i.e. developing bad habits which lead to the possibility of the new owner passing on the dog. These are the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic in respect of companion animals.
A lioness who was asymptomatic of Covid-19 at the Arignar Anna Zoological Park, near the city of Chennai in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has reportedly died of the disease and eight other big cats in the zoo had tested positive for the virus. I have been following the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to cats quite closely and I have not read a report until today of a cat dying of the virus.
Female lion in Indian zoo the first cat to die of Covid-19?
In fact, the reporting is that domestic and wild cats who contract the disease have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic and they resolve the matter quite quickly. So, this is an unusual story. Of course, India is having a disastrous time of trying to control the virus for various reasons including bad management, a slow rollout of vaccinations and what appears to be an ill-disciplined approach by citizens with respect to social distancing and lockdowns which are understandably difficult to do because it results in job losses in huge numbers.
The lioness concerned was named Neela. She died on June 3 while samples taken from her to test for Covid 19 were being processed.
It is also reported in The Sun newspaper that two white tiger cubs died of Covid-19 in a Pakistan zoo in the early part of 2021 after an outbreak. They were 11-week-old cubs at the Lahore Zoo. They were being treated at the zoo but sadly died. Veterinary staff believed that there were suffering from feline panleukopenia.
The lions at the Indian zoo are being treated in house by their veterinary team together with experts of the Tamil Naidu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University.
Yes, pet theft is certainly a crime in the UK but sadly many people regard it as a minor, trivial crime. It is a crime which falls under the Theft Act 1968 and the maximum penalty is seven years imprisonment. But that maximum is misleading because almost always the punishment is much less. There is, however, a gradual awakening to the fact that pet theft is more than stealing an object. It is the breaking of a close bond between a person and their beloved companion animal who they regard as a member of the family. That aspect of the theft is factored in or should be nowadays.
There needs to be a unique crime of pet theft in the UK. Image: Pixabay.
However, there needs to be a specific crime of Pet Theft – rather than it falling under the Theft Act. It is, arguably, insulting to the relationship between pets and their owners to place this crime under the Theft Act because it equates a companion animal with an inanimate object. Times have moved on. That concept is out of date. A lot of emotional harm is caused by the callous criminals who ruthlessly and sometimes violently steal companion animals on the streets. There are many distressed people in the UK who have lost their companion animals this way.
Thankfully, Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, has written about this on the Mail on Sunday newspaper which is published online on Mail Online. He does not regard the theft of companion animals as a trivial matter for two reasons. Firstly, this kind of crime which is still regarded as very minor can lead to more serious crime. This is the "broken window theory". It's a theory which states that if there are broken windows in buildings it encourages crime.
"At present this crime is far too often dismissed as relatively trivial – on a par, say, with shoplifting....I don’t agree." - Boris Johson.
The police need to stamp on relatively minor crime in order to make an impact in reducing more serious crime. Secondly, there is, as mentioned, the emotional connection in pet thefts. It is a unique kind of crime in that regard. It is not simply the theft of an animal. The thieves are stealing the bond between person and animal. This is a loving, supportive bond upon which many people depend on for their contentment. The theft of companion animal can break people. I'm not sure that everyone realises how emotionally distressing it can be.
In this vein, Boris Johnson's government has set up the Pet Theft Task Force to try and make sure that the criminal justice system is dealing properly with pet theft. I believe that it is an attempt to focus more intently on this aspect of criminality. This is particularly important at this time because of the surge in pet thefts due to the coronavirus pandemic. I'm sure that pretty well everyone has read about the surge in mainly dog thefts because of their increased value as a consequence of many more people adopting dogs at this time for company during these long lockdowns.
So the coronavirus pandemic has brought into focus pet theft in the UK and the need to do something concrete about it rather than letting this aspect of criminality languish within the umbrella of the Theft Act which is highly unsuitable.
Yes, pet theft is a crime in the UK but it is not being dealt with properly and the callous criminals who participate in this activity are rarely caught and I suspect that the animals are also rarely reunited with their owners. Sometimes the stolen animals are used to breed more animals for sale, if they are not sterilised. So a charming female dog might end up in some grubby property constantly breeding puppies for the remainder of her life. The thought of that in the mind of her owner is highly distressing.
This is a quick note to record the fact that San Diego Zoo has vaccinated 9 apes, one of them an orangutan named Karen, against Covid-19. The connection to cats is that the vaccine was developed by Zoetis with cats and dogs in mind.
Karen an organgutan first non-human primate to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Photo: San Diego Zoo.
The reason for the vaccinations? Their lowland gorillas caught the virus. There is a discussion about the potential for animals to form a reservoir for the virus. This is the first time non-human primates have been vaccinated for this virus.
All nine apes have had both doses. No adverse side-affects have been noted. A 49-year-old silverback gorilla got the virus last month and suffered from pneumonia. He's recovering after receiving experimental antibody treatment. Eight other gorillas are also recovering after falling ill.
Karen is a Sumatran orangutan born at the zoo on 27 August 1994. She is the first orangutan to have open heart surgery.
This is what I would describe as a behind-the-scenes story. It doesn't hit the headlines because it concerns Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, a small island and not for example America which leads the way on domestic cat news.
But it is a very telling and a sad story. It's reported that there has been a 30% increase in the abandonment of domestic cats on the island. They are sometimes left behind as people leave the island. I'm referring to expatriates possibly possibly British people who feel they haven't got the money to afford to take their cat back home with them.
Spotted street cats of Cyprus. Read about them by clicking here.
These people may have dual residency. I know that a lot of British people have second homes in Cyprus or they moved to Cyprus in retirement. But they've been squeezed economically by the Covid-19 pandemic. Dawn Foote who runs a rescue centre where there are 800 rescue cats, all of which are neutered, said that, "People, at the moment, have just got no money, and it's expensive to get a cat to another country. You've got passports to pay for, you've got transport carriers to pay. It's heartbreaking."
If it's not people going home is local residents who feel that they can no longer afford to look after a domestic cat. Once again is about money. The poignancy of this problem is that, currently, Cyprus is famous in the cat world for being the place where archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the first domestic cat in a grave with their owner. The grave is dated to about 9,500 years ago. So the island had a significance in the cat world. The cat would have been a domesticated Far Eastern wildcat. They look like rangy tabby cats.
There appears to be criticism of people who feed stray cats on the island without ensuring that they are spayed or neutered. I don't know how prevalent this is but simply feeding a stray cat is not enough sadly. You have to ensure that they are spayed and neuter otherwise you simply promote and increase in the number of unwanted cats that should be living in homes. There should be government-sponsored TNR programs which includes spaying and neutering at least as part of the process.
There is criticism of the government strategy with claims that it is not working that well.
Because of social distancing and an increased fear of contracting the Covid-19 virus, doors have been opened to unscrupulous kitten and cat sellers who exclusively ply their trade online. It is very dangerous to purchase a kitten online without visiting the breeder at their home and watching the interactions between kitten and mother and asking questions of the breeder. There is no shortcut to this and if you simply select online you really do not know what you are buying for sure.
This is a 5 week old kitten but not Lola mentioned below. Photo: Martin.
As the head of advocacy and government relations at Cats Protection, Jacqui Cuff said, "The Covid-19 pandemic has created the ideal conditions for unscrupulous sellers to thrive, as they appear to have a credible reason for not allowing buyers to view the kitten with their mother first".
It is very difficult for buyers of kittens online to be sure of the kitten's background and health. You simply cannot buy a kitten sight unseen and judging their health and welfare from a photograph online which is often of poor quality. I know people are very keen to adopt pets at the moment for companionship but it is easy to be scammed and the UK is full of scammers believe me. There has been a surge in puppy adoptions for instance and a lot of scammers are in the dog marketplace too.
It can lead to real problems both for the adopter and the kitten or cat. A story highlights this. It concerns a kitten sold online whose name is Lola. She was advertised in October for £200 and it was said that she was 10 weeks of age. She was purchased but the new owner who gave her up to Cats Protection. That early abandonment of itself is instructional. It's points to what I would call impulse buying of a sentient being. This is always very unwise because it's a lifelong commitment. We know that.
It was discovered by Cats Protection staff that Lola was five weeks old when she was sold which is far too young and which may result in behavioural problems due to early weaning. She's been rehomed at nine weeks old but it's just another example of an unscrupulous seller lying.
All the people in the know say that if you want to adopt a cat you must visit the person who is transferring the cat to you either free of charge or for sale. And you have to be sure what you're doing. You have to ask yourself whether you are adopting for the lifetime of the cat and if you can't answer that question in the affirmative then you should stop. Cats are quite expensive to keep. You must have some money in the bank and an income otherwise it is not going to work out very well if at all.
How can it be that the coronavirus pandemic is no one's fault? This is what Nicola Sturgeon believes or it is what she stated before the cameras at one of her coronavirus updates to the nation. There is no rhyme nor reason why she should say this. Does she believe that the coronavirus pandemic is no one's fault? Surely it must be someone's fault? It would not have happened if the relationship between people and wild animals had been better regulated in China. This catastrophic disease would not have jumped from animals to people.
Go to 13:23 on the video:
The experts state that the cause of it is abuses of nature and that abuse or mishandling to put it more kindly of nature took place in the more than 20,000 wet markets of China. These are places where wild animals are slaughtered in unhygienic places and under circumstances where the killing of animals was and probably is not properly regulated.
All the evidence points to fault being placed at the feet of the authorities who regulate how the wet food markets operate, in this case in the city of Wuhan. Clearly more evidence is needed and we may never get it because the Chinese will hide the evidence but what we have points to Covid-19, as it is now called, because transmitting from a wild animal possibly a pangolin in one of these wet markets to the human who was killing it. This released the virus to the person and other people in the wet market where it was then transmitted to other people rapidly. The disease is a zoonotic disease which is one which can be transmitted from animal to person and person to animal.
I put the blame at the feet of the Chinese government. I don't want to sound xenophobic or racist but that is where it happened and I think the world would agree with me. I will allege, and this is strictly an allegation, that Nicola Sturgeon was asked to make this very strange statement in her speech to the nation by the Chinese ambassador because he promised her investments and a possible deal if and when Scotland becomes independent or even before that. Scotland's economy is in a bad way. It was in a bad way before the pandemic and it will be worse afterward. They need help. They spend more money than they make which is what Nicola Sturgeon describes as progressive government. I'm afraid that she cannot face reality. I read somewhere that more than half the nation in Scotland do not contribute to the wealth of the nation. In other words they are takers rather than givers to the nation in terms of tax contributions. Scotland is running a big deficit year-on-year, the worst in the EU. Although they blame the UK as a whole. They are given billions under the Barnett formula which was meant to be temporary.
What has this got to do with cats? Well a lot. Cats get coronavirus. Wildcats get coronavirus. The trillions of dollars poured into trying to protect people because of the coronavirus would have been better used in conservation of the wild cat species and it would have been better used in combating climate change and many other issues regarding the natural world. Now that money will never be available. It is devastating for conservation never mind the effect that it is having on human lives.
It's emerging, gradually, that a considerable percentage of cats and dogs can get Covid-19 from their owners. They even have the same symptoms. A recent study suggested that 88% of cats contracted the disease from their owners or other people in the home as they had Covid -19 antibodies in their blood. And their owners said that they had symptoms similar to theirs such as breathing problems. Where does it leave us?
Montage: PoC. Pics in the public domain.
If further research reveals that our beloved cats and dogs present a danger to their owners because they are a pool or reservoir for the disease then it may come to pass that governments place restrictions over cat and dog ownership. I'm speculating wildly but it seems quite feasible that this may happen. It depends how the coronavirus pandemic develops. However, it is not going away. A second spike is developing and winter is arriving. Humankind is depending on a vaccine to see us through this and to get back to normal.
However, we know that vaccines take a long time to develop (many years normally). We also know that vaccines are less effective in people who are overweight and obese. In Britain around 60% of the population are overweight. Will a Covid-19 vaccine arrest the disease sufficiently for life to get back to normal? These are known unknowns but there's no doubt that we're going to have to live with this disease for the foreseeable future, perhaps indefinitely. That being said, I can see restrictions being placed upon pet ownership. Even today there are calls by some experts to treat companion animals who have showed signs of having the disease in the same way that we treat people who've had the disease. This means social distancing from our companion animals.
I foresee that this is going to be impossible to do and to enforce. It's also going to cause some consternation. And here's the deal: people are becoming tired of being dictated to by governments on how to curb the spread of this disease. A lot of people regard the current regulations as an attack on their freedoms and civil rights. They'd rather take the risk of getting the disease that have their rights constantly curtailed and restricted. Therefore governments will lose their authority. There may be civil unrest. We are seeing it already in fact with people responding angrily well asked to wear a face covering inside shops by staff members.
My personal view is that people should adopt the Swedish model which means going for herd immunity and taking the risk of getting the disease. People should make their own decisions. They are sensible enough in my view. Older people and those who are more vulnerable can self isolate and protect themselves while younger people can get on with life normally. Leave the decision-making to the citizens rather than dictate downward to them from a floundering government which is failing going forward, stumbling and making mistakes as they go.
The citizens can apply common sense to their own individual situations provided the government gives them all the information that they need to make those decisions. They should give clear statements to the public about the risks so that people can judge for themselves. This will allow for a much more finely tuned and nuanced approach to tackling the virus.
The government say that they have followed the science but it seems to me that they have followed a very narrow form of science. We regularly see two senior science officials. One is an epidemiologist and the other is the chief medical officer for the country. What about the behavioural sciences? I think the UK government needs to take a wider picture. At the moment they're focusing on saving lives and keeping down the infection rates at the expense of the economy. I feel greater emphasis needs to be placed on the economy. After all, at the moment although the infection rates are showing a second spike, the death rates are probably lower than many other illnesses on a month by month basis. We are not locking down the country for reasons of cancer for instance.
She became emotional when people offered to help. She needs food and supplies including cat litter. She has a Go Fund Me page if you'd like to contribute. It has raised a huge $43,000 at the date of this post. The anchor/reporter at ABC7 News, Dion Lim had visited the place and she tweeted about it, I guess with the intention of publicising their plight.
The UN secretary-general Antonio Gutterres has more or less blamed male leaders for the coronavirus pandemic, for bad management throughout the globe and for leading the world into situations which "damages everyone-women, men, girls and boys".
Gutteres' tweet.
He is clearly a very strong feminist and we can't blame him for that. It is still a male dominated world. The reason why I am mentioning it on this website is because this site is about animal welfare and the coronavirus was ostensibly caused by animal abuse, I think it is fair to say. It was caused by messing with nature to put it in very general terms. Either that or the Chinese deliberately started it in their Wuhan bio lab in order to gain advantage over the rest of the world. We know how aggressively ambitious they are and how they will stop at nothing to gain an advantage.
I must not digress. The point is that Antonio Gutterres has created a backlash from people who have suggested that he should resign; he is after all a man running a leading organisation and if he is so anti-men he should step down and allow a woman to lead the UN to a more peaceful and ameliorative planet.
Antonio Gutterres calls it a "millennia of patriarchy". I have to admit, however, that I don't think that the coronavirus pandemic would have happened if a woman was the president of China. Perhaps she would have placed greater restrictions on the wet markets of which there are 22,000 in China and where, it is thought, the pandemic started; the virus having originated in bats.
Mr Gutterres foresees a "horrifying global surge in domestic violence" due to the fear of the virus and the fallout from lockdown's combined with anxiety. There has indeed been an increase in domestic violence in the UK and I'm sure this applies to other parts of the world.
The coronavirus pandemic will fade but the virus will stay and the world will have to adjust. Deaths are being managed far better. Although infections are rising again in a second spike, deaths are remaining very low. I suspect that deaths from the virus are no higher than deaths from many other causes and therefore we should treat it as just another potential health problem. I don't think we can do anything else because we have to get on with living.
However, it is a great shame that we did not take the opportunity of the coronavirus pandemic to alter society dramatically. I wanted to see a great shift towards improving the welfare of the planet and of nature. It is an abuse of nature which caused the pandemic and therefore there is an obligation on humankind to alter its relationship with nature in their interests. Humans cannot keep distance from nature. We are part of it. We come from it. We must reconnect with nature and perhaps a woman leader may help us achieve that.
There is a possibility that in the USA, the president after Joe Biden (on the presumption that he makes it to the White House) might be a woman because his deputy is female. Perhaps we can look forward to a world which Mr Gutterres craves but don't bank on it.
NEWS AND ANALYSIS: An early study on domestic, abandoned, hospitalised and shelter cats in Wuhan by scientists from the Huazhong Agricultural University found that 15% of the cats had antibodies to Covid-19. This means that they had been exposed to the virus because their bodies had created antibodies to defend them. 11 of the cats had neutralising antibodies meaning that they had blocked the infection.
Wuhan during the early stages of the pandemic indicating that residents had abandoned homes and pets
None of the cats tested positive for the virus but they had been exposed to it which is why they had created antibodies. The sample of 102 cats included 41 from five hospitals, three from animal shelters and 45 abandoned cats. 15 of the cats were from families i.e. they were domestic cats in a home.
Three of the cats with the highest levels of antibodies were owned cats. The researchers decided that some of the cats had been affected by other cats from those that had been abandoned or were in pet hospitals. Owned cats had got the disease from their owners it is suggested. None of the cats displayed obvious symptoms and none of them died.
They concluded that these cats got the infection from an environment that had been "polluted" with the Covid-19 virus.
The research is not that significant in my opinion. We know that domestic cats can get the virus from humans but we don't know whether domestic and feral cats are a danger to people in terms of their ability to spread the disease back to people. They say that precautions should be taken. The only interesting aspect of this study is the percentage of cats that had caught or been exposed to the virus which is much higher than previously thought.
This morning I was listening to the radio. A woman who had three children said that she had grown closer to her children during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Before the lockdown she admitted that everything was done in a rush. She would get the kids to school after having rushed breakfast. In the evening there was more rush. She did not recognise that she was failing to give herself quality time with her children. She was trying to fit parenting her children around her work and was as far as I can tell run off her feet.
We can thank the coronavirus pandemic for more of this. Photo: public domain.
Working at home during the pandemic and having more time with herchildren flicked a switch in her brain. She realised that she needed to spend more quality time with her kids and work out a better work-family balance. She did not want the years to go by without enjoying spending time with her children.
This got me thinking. The exact same conclusion might be drawn with respect to cat companions. During lockdown, in the UK, many millions of employees are being furloughed and therefore receiving 80% of their pay. They have had a lot more time with their cats.
I've not heard any reports about this online but it must have happened. If it didn't then cat owners have failed to take advantage of a great opportunity to give their cat the interactions with them that their cats deserve. I'm convinced that in many households domestic cats are left alone too much. People can't be blamed because they have to go to work. They rush out of the house and when they come home they are perhaps too tired to want to play with their cat.
I hope that the lockdown has open the minds of cat owners - who in the past failed to be great cat owners because of work pressures - to the possibility that they can do better and try and find a better work-family balance. It is reported that many firms will be allowing their employees to work from home where suitable.
Certainly Facebook has accepted that about half of their workforce will, in the future, end up working from home. In addition, Twitter, as I understand it, is allowing almost all their workforce to stay at home to work. This will be a permanent arrangement. These are good examples of how employees of companies involved in digital media can take the advantages that the pandemic has offered to alter their lifestyles to the advantage of their domestic cat companions.
