Unconditional Love of Cats

There was a recent article in the press about the outgoing president's lack of unconditional love of cats. He had two it seems. One, Ernie, a stray moggie that Mr Bush adopted when he was running for president in 2000. He gave away Ernie to a friend when he moved into the White House to protect the furniture. The Bush's other cat was called "India" and was, I am told, a black American Shorthair (purebred) who has sadly just died (but after a long life) . The Bush family kept India throughout her/his life. It looks like Mr Bush used Ernie to help him get elected president. When the job was done, it was goodbye. Does this show a lack of integrity? Have I got the story wrong?


Yes, this is a dog. The same rules apply and it's a great photo in which there is a lovely sense of relaxed acceptance and tenderness between these two. Photo by carf

Frankly this all seems rather typical and one can't really criticize because Mr Bush did improve the moggie's life, it seems. However, the unconditional love of cats is the mark of a true cat lover and animal lover. It also might be the mark of a better kind of person but one who finds it more difficult to integrate into life.

Wikipedia states that, "Unconditional love separates the individual from his behaviors. The individual is loved unconditionally as a "perfect" child of the Higher Power. However, the individual may exhibit behaviors that are unacceptable in a particular situation." (reproduced under Wikipedia's creative commons license - this is an extract from the full article).

So, it seems the Bush family had unconditional love for the purebred but not the stray. The point is that to love truly unconditionally is, I would argue, quite rare. It is an almost saintly act in this flawed word. Mother Teresa comes to mind and even she was flawed. But with cats it is particularly important to love unconditionally as a cat's behavior can frequently clash with our ideas of what is acceptable behavior. Cats do behave differently to humans and anyone thinking of keeping a cat needs to ask themselves whether they can fully accept that behavior. In other words accept the entirety of the animal not just the appearance and presence of the cat. The unconditional love of cats will result in no behavioral problems of the cat provided the cat is healthy. If people turned their minds to these things before adopting there would be less adoptions and less abandonments and less feral cats and less pain and less killing of feral cats.....

The concept of declawing is a good example of a lack of unconditional love. It demonstrates a highly modified and truly conditional form of love. "I'll love my cat if she is turned into a modified cat, a human version of what I want a cat to be." In fact, highly conditional love of cats can lead to poor or abnormal behavior in cats and so is self defeating. To love unconditionally allows the cat to behave normally. A normally behaved cat is easy to live with. People who dislike cats (see e.g. i-hate-cats) are also unable to love anything unconditionally.

A person who is able to provide unconditional love of cats is a person who is able to behave in a way that is very pure. It is behavior that is untainted by self interest. I argue that this sort of person will sometimes have difficulty integrating into society because most peoples' actions are driven by self interest. There is a clash.

Book: Unconditional Love: Love Without Limits

Audio Book: Four Pathways to Success: Succeed in Life Using Discipline, Wisdom, Unconditional Love, and Surrender

Unconditional love for cats to choosing a cat breed

Wild Cheetah Licks Photographer

A wild cheetah mother caring for her young licks the hand in affection for the photographer photographing her.

Here's a really nice video produced by National Photographic Wild Chronicles in which the mother cheetah who they filmed with her cubs, licks the hand of the photographer while he is photographing. Remind yourself of the plight of the cheetah: Jaguar Cheetah Animal Print Lunch Box Cooler Gifts & Gift Ideas



Wild cats in Africa are used to being tracked in vehicles and I suppose being photographed but it seems very charming to me that this happened. The photographer said that it was a great privilege to photograph the cheetah and felt a strong responsibility towards them. He reiterated what I have been hammering away at namely the loss of habitat in Africa and the world over that is driving the cheetah and the other wildcats to extinction in the wild. CITES and the IUCN red List really don't seem to be having much effect in preventing this gradual process of extinction.

See IUCN Red List for Cats and CITES in relation to Cats.

Wild Cheetah Licks photographer to Cheetah Habitat

Cat Leash Laws

"My backyard is infested with stray cats. Where I live stray cats are everywhere. They're like maggots. They dig up my precious plants, spread disease, scratch my car, terrorize me and sh*t over everything.... cat leash laws are needed in my area, now.........."


Cat on leash in USA (Philadelphia) - the photographer was shocked to see it. Photo by damonabnormal

The above text is fictional and based on fact. Please discuss. Want to buy a cat leash? Try this: Size Right Cat Harness - Black.

Some pointers:

-- in the United States cat leash laws have been discussed but not yet enacted (as far as I am aware)

-- cats are not that suited to leashes as they require more training than dogs and really need a harness rather than a leash

-- the impracticality of cats on leashes can be gauged by the extremely few cats one sees on a leash although it can be done (see Helmi Flick and an F1 Chausie on a leash)

-- if there are cat leash laws, what happens to the cats (actually the people) who break the law? They'll no doubt get rounded up if they are outside and sent to a cat shelter where they will likely be killed. The cat pays with her life for a misdemeanor perpetrated by the human. Wrong?



-- there is a lot of fiction written about cats killing wildlife. Obviously some wildlife is killed by stray cats but nothing like the numbers quoted by people (experts?) serving their own interests. A classic case is the Australian feral cat problem. See ground shooting of feral cats and Savannah cat ban is wrong.

-- cats should be kept indoors full-time instead? (see cats indoors or out).

-- cats should be "confined" - kept indoors and if let out, then only into enclosures or enclosed gardens - the best solution but not practical for many.

-- cats should only be kept by people who can comply with the confinement principle? This couldn't work because it couldn't be enforced.

-- any laws on cats will be largely ineffective because they will not be adequately enforced. The police don't enforce major laws in the UK (i.e. burglary) and the RSCPA or the US equivalent can't be everywhere.

-- all cats should by law be spayed/neutered and microchipped (to identify ownership - is it safe?) - this is good, I feel, but once again there is simply no political will to do this. It requires too much work and will it work (i.e. can it be enforced?)

-- the solution is education and responsible cat ownership....discuss.

Cat Leash Laws to Home Page

photograph published under:

Cat Fanciers Association against Cruelty?

Is the Cat Fanciers Association against cruelty to cats? Well I guess this answer must be a resounding , "Yes".

In fact all cat fanciers who are usually cat breeders and people associated with cat breeding and cat showing will be against cat cruelty. But when one thinks about it, this is not necessarily automatically the case, it seems to me.

I'd like to mention the Cat Fanciers Association (CFA) in this post and address a little known fact. You may have heard of Alexa. It is a part of Amazon and it is an internet business that provides information about websites, including traffic levels. Obviously people who put websites on the internet want people to see it. The CFA are no exception. Therefore traffic levels are vital and webmasters do all they can to improve and maintain them.

The Alexa service also provides information about which country the traffic comes from. The CFA as expected receives most of its traffic from the USA, where it is based. The CFA mainly serves the United States. However, a substantial part of its traffic comes from China (about 20+ % ususally). This is highly unusual. I know of no other cat website whose traffic comes substantially from China.

Pictures of Cats.org (this website) gets no traffic from China as it is almost certainly blocked by the Chinese authorities as there are some pages on this site in which I justifiably criticize a small section of the people of China for acts of cat cruelty and the Chinese government for not enacting animal protection laws (see cat meat name and shame).

Then there is the thriving cat and dog fur market. This has been banned from Europe but it will continue to thrive in my opinion. In China, the world's primary supplier of cat and dog fur, the cats and dogs are kept, killed and skinned in the most cruel fashion.

The CFA website is clearly not banned by the Chinese authorities who monitor the internet. Why not? There cannot be any criticism on their website of the cat fur trade or cat meat trade or lack of animal protection legislation. Wouldn't you think that they would have something on that? They are the experts. It is simply not possible to reconcile breeding beautiful purebred cats and cat cruelty elsewhere in the world . You can't do the former without tackling the latter it seems to me.

So, I return to the question, "Is the Cat Fanciers Association against cruelty to cats?". Answer: I am not sure.

Cat Fanciers Assocation against cruelty? to too many cat associations

Cat and Dog Fur is Banned?

The Ban

Cat and Dog fur is banned in the European Union, from 1st January 2009 or so I have read yesterday. It took an MEP (Member of the European Parliament) 9 years campaigning to achieve this. His name is Struan Stevenson and he should be on the honours list next year. You are one of us kind sir.

This is a massive move in the correct direction as more than 2 million cats and dogs give up their skins for the pleasure of humans. Most people just don't think about the fur on the inside of their gloves or the trimming on coats etc. But it could well be, and probably is, the fur of someones cat, brutally killed in China and skinned, quite probably while the cat is still alive. The same fate awaits dogs. Please don't buy anything with fur on it or in it, unless you know where the fur came from. If the product is made in China, forget it and move on.



Photo by adriansalamandre published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License.

Switzerland and Russia - the bad boys

OK, progress is being made but how much progress? The center of import/export of cat and dog fur on the European continent is Switzerland, I thought, and Switzerland is not in the European Union (see Cat Fur - Switzerland). Neither is Russia in the EU and the Russians are the biggest consumers of fur products. I guess in that cold climate they like their fur coats etc.

Yet, Russia is a country where there is a cat fancy (cat lovers), where they like their cats. Fancy purebred cats have come out of Russia; the Kurilian Bobtail and the Russian Blue spring to mind. So come on Russian Cat Fancy! Let us hear you shout out at the top of your voices against wearing fur products. You, I am afraid to say, owe a duty to the cats of the world not just your little cat fancy world to stop rank cruelty to cats. You cannot wear cat fur coats and keep purebred cats at the same time.

Although cat and dog fur is banned in Europe it seems we have a long way to go before we can shut out from our minds the frightened squeal of a cat being skinned alive. Lets remind ourselves that it is not only Russia and Switzerland that trades in this fur. Belgium has a record and Germany likes the stuff and there are more countries. What about the eastern European countries. Romania, for example, has a very poor animal rights track record. Cat and dog fur is banned? I doubt it.

The Products

These are the products to avoid buying (come on now, its the recession - please stop buying this stuff:

--Full length full coats
--Fur Jackets
--Fur trimmed garments
--Hats
--Gloves
--Decorative Accessories
--Stuffed toys
--Key fob gizmo
--Any small object with fur on it

The Pain

Here is a brief reminder of the kind of ways cats are killed for their fur in China where there are no animal welfare laws to protect domestic companion animals. I find it hard to write this, believe me, but it must be done. I refer to cats. Dogs are treated just as appallingly.

Cats at cat breeding farms in the city of Hinan, Hebei province, are killed by hanging. Or they are hung by a wire while water is poured down their throats through a hose until they drown. The stomach is then slit open and the fur removed starting at the head. The cat may still be alive. At the time of the HSUS investigation (probably a year or so ago) there were over 100,000 skins in storage at one factory alone. Mass slaughter on a grand scale. I am sure there are many more and brutal ways of doing it.

Apparently long haired cats are kept by some Chinese as pets while shorthaired grey and ginger cats are kept tethered outside on a wire before slaughter. It's a kind of Armageddon in China for the domestic cat. About half a million cats are kept and killed like this in China each year during the "killing season" (my phrase) of October to February. Do the Chinese care that cat and dog fur is banned in Europe? No, the black market will thrive and anycase there are other countries.

The Pricing

Gray and orange cat skins $2.60 each. They can vary between 50 cents to $2.60 it seems. 24 cats make one coat.

Germany

Fur in Germany dog fur is known as "gae-wolf". Do they know it's dog fur from a dog brutally kept and killed? Do they care? Calling such fur gae-wolf is so typical of humankind. We love to hide behind language that misrepresents the truth because we can't face the truth about ourselves, it's too horrible. There are internet sales of fur products (coats) in Germany and importers. Cat and dog fur is banned in Europe but will Germany stop importing it from China?

France

They have their own misrepresenting language. They call dog fur loup d’Asie, or “wolf of Asia". Nice one France, very imaginative. It is used on coats and imported (direct?) from good ole China. Cat and dog fur is banned in Europe but will France enforce the ban? Can they enforce it?

Italy

They make great shoes. Shame the insole fur came from a once loved dog brutally killed and skinned.

USA

Fur imported is impossible to track as to source. Cat and dog fur is categorized as NESOI (Not Elsewhere Specified or Otherwise Indicated). Or perhaps “Mongolia dog fur”. Mislabelling and misleading specifications etc are commonly used to disguise the source. Commerce wins over morality, it always does. Cat and dog fur is banned in Europe but will go on unabated in the massive market of America? Is that fair comment?

Cat and Dog Fur Banned? -- I don't think so. Do you?

Cat and Dog Fur Banned to Home Page