Showing posts with label survey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label survey. Show all posts

Saturday 12 October 2024

UK cat adopters-purchasers prefer purebred pedigree cats these days

Cats Protection is one of the UK's premier cat rescue organisations entirely based on foster caring. And they are able to tell us that there has been a surge in the purchase of purebred cats over moggies. I normally refer to "adopting" cats but you have to purchase a purebred cat. Obviously it's an adoption as well but it is also a big and quite expensive purchase which might amount to several thousand pounds and more.

Taylor Swift and her Ragdoll Benjamin Button. She is the world's biggest influencer and has enormous powers to change the attitudes of today's young and old alike. Image: her Instagram pages.

And according to Cats Protection, on their website, based upon a report from the charity Cats and Their Stats, 45% of all cats acquired between March 2023 and March 2024 in the UK were pedigree or purebred cats at 715,000 while non-purebred cats i.e. moggies amounted to 685,000. The remainder they say are made up with "cross-breed cats". I believe that's a reference to hybrid cats such as the wildcat hybrids.

They tell us that this is the first time that pedigree cats have overtaken moggies and it's a "complete reversal from three years ago when an estimated 715,000 moggy cats and 490,000 pedigrees were purchased respectively (51% and 35%).

They suggest that the surge in purchasing a purebred cats may be due to the influence of social media with many celebrities flaunting their latest acquisitions. My mind immediately turns to Taylor Swift and her beautiful cats which are, as I recall, a Ragdoll cat and two Scottish Fold cats (see below). She influences many millions of people. It would not surprise me if she alone had changed the attitudes of people wishing to adopt a cat.

I have always argued - and this is entirely my opinion - that high-profile celebrities like Taylor Swift have a duty to adopt healthy cats and the Scottish Fold is not a healthy cat. I believe that she is doing the public a disservice although I don't want to criticise her. There is a big argument that the Scottish Fold should not have been created as a purebred cat in the first place because of its inherited health problems (it is 'torture breeding').

Cats Protection wisely tell us - and of course I agree - that either the influencers and celebrities are unaware of the hidden health risks of some breeds with extreme characteristics and/or the buying public is often unaware of the health risks of some breeds with extreme characteristics. Or they don't care! 😎😉

It's important that the purchasing public of purebred cats to their homework. Some cat breeds are healthier than others. And with an inherently unhealthy fancy cat you take on the expense of veterinary treatments. And you take on the expense of pet healthcare. I'm talking here of what can be the heavy expense of looking after a purebred cat which should be budgeted in when considering adopting a purebred cat. There has been a high number of abandonments of purebred cats to shelters post-Covid.

A good example about inherited diseases will be a recent infographic I created on the extreme-bred Persian cat with the flat-face. This contemporary Persian cat has, as I recall, 14 inherited diseases. Or at least potential inherited diseases. It's important that each person who wants to adopt a purebred cat does their homework and this website has a lot of articles on the inherited diseases of purebred cats which can be accessed and found using the search facility at the side of the page.

Taylor Swift's cats:

Taylor Swift has three famous cats:
  1. Meredith Grey – a Scottish Fold, named after the character from Grey's Anatomy.
  2. Olivia Benson – another Scottish Fold, named after the character from Law & Order: SVU.
  3. Benjamin Button – a Ragdoll cat, whom she adopted after filming the ME! music video in 2019.

Her cats are often featured in her social media posts and have become quite well-known among her fans!

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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. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.

Friday 30 August 2024

UK's unhappy teenagers should deeply concern us all

The unhappy teenagers of the UK should be of deep concern to the country's leaders. It appears that the UK's teenagers are unhappy. They are experiencing what is described as a "happiness recession". They are more unhappy than their European counterparts. This is according to a charity, the "Children's Society". They say that their results are deeply worrying and indicate a trend of lower life satisfaction in Britain compared to other European countries.


They took their data from research over several years which indicated that the wellbeing of UK's teenagers was lower than neighbouring countries.

The most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) survey for 2022 show that on average just over a quarter (26%) of 15-year-olds in the UK had low life satisfaction. The European average is 17%. This puts the UK at the bottom of 27 ranked countries.

Indeed this is very troubling. And they found that in the UK 30.9% of girls aged 15 reported low life satisfaction. This is more than for boys at 19.8%. It is also higher than the European average for girls which stands at 21%.

The also found that socio-economic inequalities continue to be important factor and worryingly the report also found that those aged between 10 and17 in households under financial strain were more likely than their peers to have low life satisfaction.
"Alarm bells are ringing: UK teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-old's recording the lowest life satisfaction on average across 27 European nations. Particularly affected are girls and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Equally alarming is the high level of food poverty found among these young people. The UK ranks fourth highest for food poverty among 15-year-old's across 21 European countries, underscoring the severe impacts of societal inequalities on their well-being." - Mark Russell, the chief executive of the said charity.
The government said that "We understand the pressures teenagers are facing and that is why we are taking action to deliver our mission to break down barriers to opportunity and improve the life chances of every child."


Source: The Times newspaper - many thanks.

Reasons for their unhappiness?


I feel obliged to make some suggestive reasons as to why British teenagers are unhappy. I don't know the answers but this is what I think.

The world today is far more complicated. Today we have the Internet which speeds everything up. There is social media to which teenagers are often addicted or somewhat obsessed. This creates added pressures and expectations. People present themselves on social media as successful or iconic and a young man or girl wants to emulate what they see but what they are seeing is not real.

There are these unattainable expectations. And young people are a kind of litmus test as to what older people feel. Perhaps they are more sensitive than older people or more vulnerable to life's vicissitudes. I'm sure they observe the world and see Putin's invasion of Ukraine which is very troublesome. It is worrying as is climate change. These are things which are happening now but which affect the future greatly.

I believe that young people look to the future and too many don't have optimism about the future based upon as mentioned the Ukraine war and the possibility of China invading Taiwan. We've just had Covid which is still present and has undermined society. The legacy of Covid is being felt in society in many ways including education.

In addition I think young people see the breakdown of some societal norms in the UK. The breakdown of normal services like the NHS which is failing and education is pressured due to large classes due to increased population. 

The justice system is broken pretty well. The prison system is overcrowded which feeds back to the justice system making it impossible for judges to sentence criminals properly.

There is this sense of a broken Britain which also makes it difficult to be optimistic about the future. Universities are in trouble in Britain. Degrees have become somewhat useless in many instances because they been dumbed down. Personally if I was a young person now I would not do a university degree but choose an apprenticeship instead; far more valuable and useful.

Jobs are more competitive. Once again these things feed into a lack of optimism for many youngsters regarding the future. There are other things I'm sure but of all these things I would point towards the damaging effects of social media, unrealistic and impractical expectations which cannot be met, a lack of desire to grind it out and progress through one's life in the long term. 

To work hard for one's objectives and rewards. I sense that a lot of young people don't relish the idea of working hard in the conventional sense over many years to attain a reward which is a stable family life with some savings.

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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.

Sunday 19 May 2024

Assessing cat personalities through owner questionnaires

In my view, it's not possible to gather accurate information about the personalities of different cat breeds by surveying their caregivers. This is due to the subjective nature of owners, who, in my honest opinion, may not possess the objectivity necessary to make a personality assessment meaningful. Moreover, personality assessment itself is inherently imprecise, especially when applied to domestic cats.

Assessing cat personalities through owner questionnaires
Scottish Fold owner filling out questionnaire on the personality of their cat. Image: MikeB

There are two imprecise processes at play: an evaluation by an owner who is biased due to their strong attachment to their cat, and the ambiguous task of assessing personalities, which tends to yield unreliable information. This is the case with the Burns Pet Nutrition survey, as reported by the Daily Mail online.

They say that the Burns Pet Nutrition survey has revealed that the Scottish Fold has been named as the top cat by the British. The survey participants said that they were most intelligent cat breed (75%) and the most affectionate (67%). 

Taylor Swift and other celebs have promoted this cat. That too has had an influence on responses to the questionnaire.

Of course, at this stage I've got to mention the fact that the Scottish shouldn't be a cat breed at all because it is inherently unhealthy due to the genetic mutation which it carries causing the cartilage of the cat to be malformed which results in the flat ears and potentially defective cartilage throughout the body. 

Breeders of the Scottish have to be incredibly careful and they can't breed Scottish Fold with Scottish Fold because if they do the result in offspring are unviable.

This is why there are many "Scottish Straights". These are Scottish Fold cats without the folded ears because half the cats that the breeders produce don't have folded ears because of the above-mentioned breeding requirements. I don't think enough people realise this.

And I don't think enough Scottish Fold owners realise that this is a very contentious cat breed which in Germany would be banned because of their torture breeding laws.

Anyway, to return to this survey. "A whopping 92% of cat owners found them [the Scottish Fold] the easiest to train compared to other breeds."

I find this last point extraordinary. How many people train their cats in the first place? Very few. I think what this means is that Scottish Fold owners found that their cat companion picked up routines and habits through informal training which happens in every cat owning home. I think this is a very subjective finding.

The survey also found that over half of British cat owners rated Ragdolls as the most affectionate ahead of Maine Coons at 46%. And in terms of personality more than 50% of Brits said that Ragdolls had the biggest personalities 46% choosing Maine Coons and 41% preferring Bengals.

There were over 2000 participants who also said that the calico cat is easiest to train with 80% of owners reporting that they responded best to instructions. The calico cat is a tortoiseshell-and-white cat and nearly always female. Once again I think this is a subjective assessment which should not be taken seriously.

Apologies for the negativity, but I am aiming for realism. If you consult scientists conducting thorough surveys on feline behaviour using questionnaires, they will agree that the results are often dubious. It seems to depend on how the questionnaire is drafted and if it allows for crosschecking and weeding out inaccurate responses. There might be some merit to that, but generally, questionnaire surveys of cat owners, such as this one, ought to be regarded with skepticism.
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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.

Wednesday 24 April 2024

Almost 50% of cats and dogs have their own dedicated room

Almost 50% of cats and dogs have their own dedicated room
Cat caregiver enjoying the company of their cat. Image believed to be in the public domain.

A survey commissioned by Homesense, part of the TK Maxx family in the UK, found the following facts about cat and dog ownership which may interest people:
  • 48% of cat and dog owners allocate a certain space in their home, a dedicated room often or a space in the garden for their pets.
  • Just over half, 55%, wanted their cats and dogs to have their own area where they can chill out.
  • 34% of the respondents of which there were 2000, wanted to ensure maximum comfort for their companion animal.
  • 30% wanted all their possessions kept in one place. By this I mean cat and dog products of various sorts.
  • 80% of the respondents dedicated a certain space in their home so that their companion animal's things and toys et cetera don't take up space in the rest of the home.
  • 46% of respondents designed a home around their cat or dog.
  • 21% admitted they were unlikely to buy items just to please their companion animal if those items didn't match with the interior of their home.
The study was in partnership with Kelly Brook to launch a pet an interiors content series “Barkitectural Digest”.

Kelly Brook said that certain parts of our home are designed around her dog, Teddy. Through the study she found that she was not the only one. She is pleased to help others.

The top changes made to dog and cat caregivers' homes included moving delicate things higher up (29% of the respondents) and adding a cat flap (in 21% of the respondents) and installing a garden fence (20%). Also:
  • 16% of the respondents replaced carpets with hard floors.
  • 11% bought scratch-proof furniture.
  • 9% chose dark furnishings to disguise cat and dog fur.
  • 17% installed baby gates to stop wondering cats and dogs.
  • 19% used blankets to cover up damage to furniture and household items.
  • 75% of respondents struggled to find pet products that were of good enough quality and reasonably priced.
The research was carried out by OnePoll.
  • They also found that 41% of the respondents had discovered that owning a companion animal is more expensive than expected. The cost of food and insurers being the expenses that surprised them the most.
  • 15% claimed that they spent more on their cat or dog than they do on their children. The same percentage said that they spent more on their cat and dog than their car or holidays.
  • The average cat and dog owner spent £708 annually.
  • 59% said that they compromised on buying pet products because of the expense.
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.

Sunday 10 December 2023

Many couples who adopt a cat or dog do so as a starter child

I've just read a survey which I think was conducted in America which contains one startling piece of information namely that 40% of American cat and dog owners adopted their companion animal as a kind of 'starter child' to see whether they were able to cope and do a good job. It's a kind of test in preparation for the real thing. That's my interpretation.



And it's a bit worrying, I think, because it means on a strict interpretation of that statistic (acquired by the poll company OnePoll) that 40% of Americans are adopting cats and dogs for the wrong reason! Or am I being too tough.

Perhaps it's a kind of two-stage process. They decide that they will get married and then they decide to have children but are not completely sure about it so they tell each other let's adopt a cat or dog first and we will gradually build up to producing a child. That's my take on this. And of course they keep the cat or dog once they have created their offspring or at least I hope they do.

In respect of cats there is actually a probably significant number of women who decide to get rid of the family cat at the time they have a child because they believe that they might acquire toxoplasmosis from their cat which can dramatically affect their pregnancy. 


There is this genuine problem with toxoplasmosis which as you know is a zoonotic disease which can be transferred from the cat via oocysts in the cat's faeces which are only present for a short period of time in their entire lives to the human. The cat is a vector for this zoonosis.

Pregnant women can deal with this problem with common sense strategies such as getting someone else to clean up the cat litter tray but the fear is there. And it must be added that unwashed vegetables and undercooked meats are far more dangerous in acquiring toxoplasmosis that the family cat.

Anyway, I am digressing. The point is that the domestic cat or dog can be a starter child.

I've touched on the issue of cat and dog poop above and unsurprisingly almost half of the respondents, of which there were 2000, in this survey said that they had little panic attacks about their pet's bowel movements. And a similar percentage (47%) were concerned that their dog or cat were eating normally and that their pet's poop was of a good consistency.

The survey produced the general finding that, nowadays, there is a great desire to treat the family's companion animal, usually cats or dogs, as true members of that family and in doing this people tend to anthropomorphise i.e. humanise their pet. This is lovely in one way because it means the animal gets a lot of great treatment but slightly problematic in another way in that they might expect something from their pet which they can't deliver.


Sometimes, in a modification of that expectation management problem, people regard their cat as a dog and once again there may be expectation problems. It's important for people to respect a cat as a cat and a dog is a dog and understand their natural behaviours which will lead to great communication and an environment in which both cat and dog can thrive.


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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.

Monday 23 October 2023

People care less about their cats than they do about their dogs

If, like me, you are a cat lover and caregiver, it is rather depressing to think that, in general, cat owners care less for their cats than dog owners care for their dogs but the difference depends on cultural attitudes which in turn depends on the country where you live.

To be honest, I've known this for a long time. Many years ago, I looked up what American citizens spent on veterinary services on their cats and dogs. I went to the AVMA website and in quite a shocking revelation, I noticed that dog owners spend a lot more on their dogs then cat owners spent on their cats in terms of veterinary care. This showed a marked difference in emotional connection between people and their pets as this had little to do with disposable income. Although money is no doubt a factor.

And now we have a quite profound study, an important study, published online which compares cat owners and dog owners and their emotional connection with their companion animals.

In essence, they concluded that cat owners really do care less about their cats than dog owners care about their dogs. Although there is a cultural difference depending upon where you live. In this survey they looked at cat and dog owners living in Britain, Denmark and Austria.

They used for different methods of measuring cat and dog owners' concern about caring for their companion animals:

  1. The Lexington attachment to pets scale (LAPS). This is a well-known test for measuring the emotional connection between owners and their pets.
  2. Whether owners had taken out a pet health insurance policy.
  3. How willing were owners to pay for life-saving treatment?
  4. And the expectation of owners as to veterinary diagnostic and treatment options.

The difference between dog and cat owners was greatest in Denmark. Austria was in the middle in terms of treating cats and dogs differently and there was the least difference between dog and cat owners' attitude towards caring for their pets in the UK.

More dogs and cats were insured in all three countries but there was the least difference in the UK in this respect. The difference was much greater in Denmark.

In terms of expensive life-saving treatment, more dog owners than cat owners were willing to spend over a certain amount in all three countries. However, the difference was most pronounced in Denmark compared to the United Kingdom. The researchers felt that this criteria revealed a clear difference in concern for the welfare of cats and dogs.

In Denmark and Austria, dog owners expected more veterinary treatment options to be available than cat owners. But the difference was not noticeable in this respect in the UK.

The researchers concluded that in all three countries, "people care more about their dogs than their cats but with a clear cross-country variation and a very modest difference in the United Kingdom. Therefore, it does not seem to be a universal phenomenon that people care much less about their cats than their dogs.".

What they're saying there is that there is a clear difference between how people care for their dogs compared to their cats; the former getting better treatment than the latter but this difference in caregiving depends upon cultural attitudes in different countries and in Denmark there was the greatest difference whereas in the UK there was the smallest difference.

My personal opinion as to why people care for dogs better than they do cats is because the dog is a pack animal and they look to their owner as the alpha leader for guidance. This helps to generate a better connection between owner and companion animal. And with that better connection on an emotional level the person is more likely to spend more money on their pet because the emotional bond can be greater.

Conversely, the domestic cat is seen as independent which by the way is a misguided myth in large part, and therefore there is less of a close connection in many homes between owner and cat. This leads to the belief that the domestic cat can be left alone to live their lives and come into the life of their owner as and when they need to. This automatically leads to less caregiving and therefore less expenditure in terms of veterinary care.

There are misconceptions about both dogs and cats. For example, the media: books, movies and advertisements and online adverts et cetera can stereotype the dog as being loyal, affectionate and in need of care and attention. They are a "man's best friend". Conversely, cats are sometimes depicted as aloof, independent or less in need of human companionship. This may portray the concept that they require less care.

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