Pathetic slap on the wrist for Ryan Ross for gross cat abuses

OPINION AND NEWS: I have just read that this Oak Creek man, Ryan Ross, has been ordered to pay a total of $100 in fines for what I consider to be a massive abuse of domestic cats. The fine is poultry, pathetic and insulting to the general public. The judge should be assessed for his suitability to the task.

Ryan Ross. Image: Fox 6.

Ross was charged in 2019 when it was discovered that 117 cats were 'living' in a home in which he used to live. More than half of them had to be euthanized. Obviously, there were a very large number of very sick cats due to his acute neglect. In specific numbers, the rescuers of the cats decided that 67 of them had to be euthanised because they were in such a state that it was not possible to treat them and rehome them.

Briefly, Ross began taking in unowned cats in 2017 without ensuring that they were sterilised and therefore rapidly became overrun and couldn't cope. He eventually left the home leaving the cats there and a neighbour said that they hadn't seen anybody at the home for at least two months which prompted the investigation. You can imagine what the home was like, the usual piles of faeces and rubbish et cetera.

The prosecutors said that there was no food or water for the animals. The company supplying the water said that water had not been used at that property since early May 2019. He never took the cats to a vet and he admitted that he couldn't cope. The usual horrendous ammonia smell emanated from the property. There were cats at windows. It was a classic case of cat hoarding, neglect, inadequacy, irresponsibility and ultimately cat cruelty and death. It appears that some cats starved to death, a very painful process.

He was charged with four counts of animal mistreatment and his maximum punishment could have been six years in prison according to my online research. I'm not sure how they decided those four counts of animal punishment. I would have thought that it could have been 67 counts of animal mistreatment because 67 cats were euthanised because they were beyond hope of treatment. It seems to me that the whole process has been dealt with poorly and not seriously enough by the authorities. It's a classic case of "it's only cats" meaning that the animals had an incredibly low value to the prosecuting authorities and the judge.

There is no possibility of an improvement in the animal-to-human relationship if people value animals this poorly.

Couple of domestic cats in Western Australia painted with sticky blue paint

PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA-NEWS AND COMMENT: The RSPCA in Western Australia is investigating the painting of two domestic cats with blue paint as shown in the photograph. It's reported that the cats were 'doused' in sticky blue paint but nobody knows who did it if indeed it was done by a person. It may be accidental although unlikely by the nature of the painting. You see a black longhaired cat with his face covered in blue paint. 

It is difficult to see how that could happen accidentally. Perhaps a cat could fall into some paint but it would be highly unusual. An interesting aspect is that the blue paint is sticky. I think it was sticky because it was thickly applied and it was wet.  It must have happened not too far from the cat's home because the paint was wet and domestic cats don't normally wander far.

Couple of cats in Western Australia painted with sticky blue paint. Photo: Ladbible.

If I were the police, I would take a sample of the paint from this cat's face and analyse it. The analysis might point to the manufacturer. Armed with that information you could probably find the retailer and then you could interview the retailer to find out who bought the blue paint. If the paint was a specialist product, tracking down the perpetrator (if there is one) would be much easier.

One of the cat's owners lives in Perth's northern suburbs. She was distressed having discovered her cat with paint all over their face and other parts of the body. When she discovered her cat, the paint was still wet. The RSPCA say that they are unable to tell if it is an intentional act of cruelty. They are monitoring the cat's health while the paint is being removed by his or her owner.

The RSPCA are looking for people to assist them if they know anyone in the Quinns Rocks area. Another woman also reported her cat being drenched in paint. She said: "Same thing happened to our cat last night, not sure if it was an accident or not, also in Quinns Rocks. I never let him out, he must have snuck out."

As expected, the RSPCA recommends that people keep their cats indoors to protect them and wildlife. In certain parts of Australia there are some bylaws which mandate that citizens keep their cats indoors full-time but in Western Australia there are no state laws governing cat containment although there are some local governments i.e. local councils, which have implemented bylaws making cat containment obligatory.

Further comment: I've seen domestic cats painted like this before. The one that comes to mind was an example of accidental self-painting. A cat was covered in green 'stuff' when they rested in some disused building. I was discovered that the material on which they rested was covered in a green liquid or material which was deposited on the cat.

One domestic cat in India put eight people in hospital!

NEWS AND COMMENT - DALAIPETA, INDIA: The Indian news media reports on something astonishing but I don't have a lot of detail to allow a decent analysis but here it is. In a village in India called Dalaipeta, which is towards the north-east coast of the country, it's reported that a domestic cat went on a mad attacking spree at midnight. 

Scared cat fights back. This is not the cat in the story because we don't have pictures but I expect the cat that injured 8 people behaved like the cat illustrated. Picture in public domain.

The cat attacked eight people leaving them with minor injuries requiring medical attention at a hospital in Dalaipeta village. The police officer said that "A mad cat did attack people indiscriminately in Dalaipeta village and seven people require treatment in a nearby hospital whereas one person was admitted in Chinameringi CHC."

They say that the cat went on a biting spree at Saturday midnight. The cat then vanished. One official thought that the cat bit the people out of fear or they had consumed something intoxicating from the forest. They will increase their surveillance of the area to avoid another attack. No one has mentioned rabies which is a possibility and because it has not been mentioned I will ignore that possibility.

Comment: I'm going to have to guess what happened. And I think it's not too difficult actually to guess reasonably that the cause of this domestic cat attack is the behaviour of the people concerned. I suspect it all started off fairly innocent with one person mishandling the cat which provoked him or her to attack defensively. 

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Then his friend stepped in and maybe attacked the cat and so the cat attacked that person as well. Then others became involved and there was a melee and at the centre was this poor cat. The animal must have been terrified and I suspect there was violence on both sides until the cat ran away.

I think that those are the only circumstances under which I would have thought a domestic cat would be attacking eight people unless it was rabid. It is almost impossible to envisage such a scenario. Domestic cats simply do not do this unless heavily provoked. And I am, by the way, making the presumption that this is a domestic cat without further information. I think that, too, is a reasonable supposition because feral cats normally run away from people and this cat got very close, close enough to do some damage.

I suspect, too, that the injured people went to hospital as a precaution but if you get bitten by a cat, even if it is quite a nasty bite, you don't automatically go to Accident & Emergency in your nearest hospital. You watch your wound and wait to see whether an infection develops and if it does you immediately see your doctor for antibiotics which cures it 100% of the time. And you do that promptly.

I've got to deduce, therefore, that it is likely that these people dived into hospital unnecessarily but nobody can criticise them for it because they were taking precautions without knowing more about the potential issues.

Note: We are told that at this time the hospitals are flooded with Covid-19 victims as the pandemic is out of control in India. Attending hospital for a cat bite would be a bad idea under these circumstances.

Cat climbing the outside of apartment block falls 6 stories and runs off

This is one of those classic and extraordinary domestic cat feats of apparent survival. A black domestic cat is climbing the outside wall of a very tall apartment block and he is six stories up on my reckoning including the ground floor. Note: I have assumed he is male for the sake of convenience and to avoid calling him 'it'.

Cat climbing the outside of apartment block falls 6 stories and runs off

He's actually clawing his way up the outside wall which is obviously rough and which allows him to grab hold of the wall with his claws. But he finds it's all got too much for him because he's going nowhere and he falls off and sails to the beach below. 

This is a soft landing, thankfully, which allows him to run off. Although he hit it at 60 mph! We don't know why the cat was climbing the outside of this building. It would seem that he went onto the balcony of the fifth floor and then started to climb up the wall. The motivation to do this? No idea, except perhaps he felt confined to the apartment and wanted to get out of it and thought he could make it to the top of the building which wouldn't have been any good in any case. 

As you see him fall, he fans out in legs to create maximum air resistance which is absolutely typical and reached the terminal velocity which is considerably less than it would have been if he had not fanned out his body. My research indicates that domestic cats reach a terminal velocity of about 60 miles an hour. 

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In other words, the velocity is at a maximum and it stays there. That is why, by the way, that when they fall further distances and hit the terminal velocity, they can sometimes incur less serious injuries. It takes a while for them to turn and fan out their bodies to slow themselves. 

 You can see a large crowd watching and filming but doing nothing about it. Perhaps they could do nothing about it and felt that as the beach was below, he would be all right. Although there was no absolute certainty that he would clear the ornamental flower containers (that is what they look like) at the base of the building. He did thankfully.

He ran off but this does not automatically mean that he was not injured. Cats can run for a while even when badly injured. I suspect though that he is not badly injured. They often suffer cracked jaws of ribs.

via Gfycat

Note: This is a video from another website. 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.

Horace Walpole's favourite cat drowned in a goldfish bowl

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was, by all accounts, a careless pet owner. He was an English writer, artist historian, man of letters, antiquarian and a politician. He is described as an 18th-century Gothic writer by The Times. The newspaper reports that his favourite cat, Selima, drowned in a goldfish bowl while trying to grab the goldfish. As a consequence, Walpole the author of The Castle of Otranto, asked his friend, the poet Thomas Gray, to write an epitaph for his beloved cat. It is called: Ode On the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes. The poet described her as the "demurest of the tabby kind". His favourite cat was a tabby cat.

That famous goldfish bowl was placed on top of the pedestal as a memorial to Selima and it is to go on display at Strawberry Hill House, the Gothic-revival mansion in Twickenham south-west London, the home he built from 1749 onward. I have visited this house. It is a very interesting place and the photograph below was taken by me which gives you an impression of what it's like, I hope.

The goldfish bowl is being displayed as part of a series of exhibitions about objects associated with the property. The reason why I have stated that Horace Walpole was a careless pet owner is because The Times also reports that in 1739 his King Charles spaniel, Tory, was killed by a wolf in the Alps. The next dog that he lived with, Bettina, died when falling from a balcony in Florence. Another spaniel that he lived with, Rosette, died in a fire.

Perhaps he wasn't careless but just too busy to really care for his companion animals carefully. He created a pet cemetery at Strawberry Hill.