Azul Cubano (cat)

The Azul Cubano is a very little-known cat breed from Cuba. It has a "blue" shorthaired coat but it can be semi-longhaired and it was registered in 2010 in Cuba. It is better known as the Cuban Blue. I will refer to "Cuban Blue".

Cuban Blue cat aka Azul Cubano. Image: Reuters.

The Spanish word "azul" means blue in English as you might have guessed. But of course, blue does not mean the colour blue as we know it. It means gray with a slight bluish tint. That bluish tint comes about because blue is a dilute black. When you dilute black because of the presence of a dilution gene you create this slightly blue tint to the gray.

Reuters reported on what was then described as a "new breed" on May 27, 2011, almost 12 years ago. Almost nothing has been heard of the breed since. That tells you how insignificant this breed is in the world of the cat fancy. In fact, it may have fizzled out completely

At that time, the president of the Cuban Association of Cat Enthusiasts, Angel Uriarte Rubio, described the breed as "very docile, very playful. They have a very agreeable personality".

Mr Rubio spearheaded the effort to have the Cuban Blue recognised as a new breed. The breed is described as looking similar to the Russian Blue. Apparently, people had trouble differentiating the two.

But as there are no Russian blue cats in Cuba, they decided to create a new breed. At the time, Mr Rubio said that the poor relations between the USA and Cuba might prevent the Cuban Blue becoming a registered breed in the USA under the CFA and TICA. To this date they have not registered this cat as a new breed.

I have no information about how the breed started other than the cats just turned up. What I mean is that a cat somewhere in Havana, Cuba, possibly a stray cat, had a litter of gray kittens or at least some of the kittens were gray. These appear to be the foundation cats for the Cuban Blue. I don't know any more than that at this time.

Discussion on cat owner who went to an airport to abandon her young cat

NEWS AND COMMET: This is a peculiar story. Initially it made me scratch my head but I saw the issues later when writing this. A cat owner who might have been identified through CCTV cameras, apparently decided to abandon their five-month-old cat at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. They didn't catch a flight so the indication is that they travelled to the airport and then left on the RTA train going downtown.

Cat abandoned in airport bathroom. This is a photo-edited creation! Not the cat in the story. Image: MikeB.

They abandoned their gray-and-white cat in an airport bathroom near a pre-check in area. The cat was in a carrier sitting on a sink. The illustration on this page is a mockup by me so this is not the actual cat and neither is the carrier on a sink! It's presence is to illustrate the page.

The cat and carrier were discovered by a Southwest Airlines employee. Initially they thought that this wasn't a purposeful abandonment of a cat but an accident. They announced the cat's presence over the tannoy system without response.

Airline staff contacted Meredith Janik who rescues and fosters cat. She appears to have put them in touch with Deborah Bartowick of Able Animal Clinic in Parma who are/were holding the cat for three days in case somebody came forward but there were no enquiries.

The cat will be adopted out. Deborah Bartowick voiced the concerns and thoughts of others when she said:

"I think they’re a horrible person. You don’t do that to a living creature. They don’t know the animal could have ended up in worse hands".

She also said:

"From previous experience I’ve seen other animals who weren’t able to fly, and not able to be accommodated. They were just left next to the trash can at the airport. They’ve indicated that the airport found a Beagle this week from a person who decided that they were going to travel, leave their animal and continue on their trip."

The feeling is that the person should be prosecuted for animal abandonment, fined and punished in some way. They've got to find them and I'm not sure that there will be enough commitment to do that either from the staff at the airport and the prosecutors within the justice system.

On the face of it, it appears to be very peculiar way, however, of abandoning a cat. The cat was found in good health with no fleas. This was clearly a domestic cat, well cared for it seems but the person decided that they wanted rid of "it" and further decided that the best way to do that was to take the cat to a busy place where somebody would find it. That's what happened. At least that's a good aspect of it. Perhaps then no so strange.

It's better than abandoning a cat nearer rescue center at the weekend in the middle of winter. But it would have been so much better for all concerned if the person had gone to a rescue center. Perhaps the were concerned that the cat would be put down for 'behavioral issues'.

I can see the issues. If you are a decent person perhaps it is hard to relinquish yourself of cat ownership in a way which is guaranteed to be safe for the cat.

The story is reported by 19 News online.

"Anyone missing a cat?" Cat chaos on San Francisco-bound flight

"Anyone missing a cat?" the flight attendant announces as she holds the said cat at arm's length while walking down the aisle.

Cat escaped from carrier (or released) is found and reunited with owner! Screenshot.

This is one of those American internal flights with cats and dogs in carriers under the seat except a couple 'escaped'. Well, I'm not sure that they exactly escaped but perhaps were released 😉👍. Result? Cat wandering around the cabin where he/she was found by a nice flight attendant who doesn't know how to carry a cat 😃. Or she is a little nervous and holds the cat at arm's length to avoid a scratch perhaps. Fair enough.

@david.hislop Well that’s a first ✈️🐈😹#cats #catsoftiktok #unitedairlines #united #southwest #southwestairlines #reels #catstagram #catslovers #airlines @United Airlines ♬ original sound - David Hislop

It is all quite cute because cats add some soul to an aircraft's cabin when in mid-flight don't you think? It is sort of more homely and friendly. As long as a cat does not escape their carrier while the aircraft is landing! And then wanders out of the door and down the steps. 

I mean along the gangway to arrivals. That would be chaos. This little episode seems to have been fairly manageable. 

Note: I can't promise that the TikTok video on this page will continue to function for years ahead! I expect it to fail fairly soon. Sorry if that has happened.

If cats were human, they could be declared legally blind. True or false?

Answer: false in my view but we don't really know. If you are a human, living in the UK and perhaps elsewhere, you will be declared legally blind if your vision is 20/200 which means that if an object is 200 feet away you have to stand 20 feet from it in order to see it clearly.

Under daylight conditions, domestic cat eyesight is less good than humans'. However, under dusk and night time conditions it is better I would argue. Domestic cat eyes have evolved, as you know, to see under dusky conditions because that is when prey animals are around.

I was one of the first web owners to produce a pictorial comparison between domestic cat and human eyesight. Other websites have followed since. You can see that page by clicking on the link below:

Cat Vision Pictorial Examples

Two of the image comparisons are below.

How domestic cats see by MikeB

How domestic cats see by MikeB

What colors do cats see? Cat see colours pretty well but it believed they are colorblind to red or red/green (brown). The picture above is intended to replicate this color blindness. However, cats have superior eyesight in other respects which you can read about on the page linked to above the image.

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The problem with deciding if domestic cats will be declared legally blind by human standards is that you can't really apply human standards to domestic cats. You hardly ever can.

Also, despite preparing a pictorial example of comparison we don't really know exactly how domestic cat see the world. We have a good idea but we don't know precisely how they see it.

In my considered opinion, they would not be declared legally blind partly because their eyesight is so good at night. And their field of vision is wider than that of humans.

Cat Field of Vision Compared to Human. Image: PoC.

The big problem with domestic cat eyesight is that they see colours less well than humans and the image is a bit softer.

They say that a dog's eyesight is a little better than that of cats.

I think we can probably argue that overall a domestic cat's eyesight is less good than that of humans because some of their other senses are superior to make up for this slight deficiency. They have a better sense of smell and better hearing.

Domestic cats use their sense of smell to identify objects and they can locate prey animals with their hearing very precisely. These senses compensate and when a cat's senses are bundled together, they are certainly equipped to the same level as humans.

Petition making it a legal requirement for drivers to stop and report collisions with cats will fail

A petition on the UK government website has 102,436 signatures. It was open for 6 months. Its demand is to "Make it a legal requirement for drivers to stop & report collisions with cats". This is a campaign that has been going on for a long time (since at least 2014). It is a good campaign. Drivers have to stop and report accidents with other animals including horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats or dogs, but not cats or wild animals. 

Image: MikeB

Because it reached over 100k signatures it has to be debated in the House of Commons. It will be next week. But it is a waste of time because the government will not enact new legislation to comply with the petition. Their reason?

Here is the Department of Transport response on the petition website:

"The Government has no plans to make it an offence to drive off after hitting a cat. A focus for this Government is to make roads safer for all users, which will in turn reduce the risk to all animals. 

Under section 170 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, a driver is required to stop and report an accident involving specified animals including horses, cattle, asses, mules, sheep, pigs, goats or dogs, but not cats or wild animals. This requirement arises from their status as working animals rather than as domestic pets. To introduce such a measure within the provision of section 170 would require primary legislation. 

Having a law making it a requirement to report road accidents involving cats would be very difficult to enforce and we have reservations about the difference it would make to the behaviour of drivers, who are aware that they have run over a cat and do not report it. 

Although there is no obligation to report all animal deaths on roads, Rule 286 of The Highway Code advises drivers to report any accident involving an animal to the police, and if possible, they should make enquiries to ascertain the owner of domestic animals and advise them of the situation. 

The Government recognises how distressing it can be for someone to lose a pet, especially without knowing what has happened. We committed in our Manifesto, and reaffirmed in our Action Plan for Animal Welfare, to introducing compulsory cat microchipping and plan to introduce the necessary legislation this year. We understand that the vast majority of local authorities now have arrangements in place to scan dead cats and dogs found by them and we will continue working with them and other stakeholders to develop and promote best practice in this area. " - Department for Transport.

That was a massive campaign by some great women to plug a loophole in UK legislation which is unfair on domestic cats. 

The underlying reason why the government won't make new law on this is because they are too busy trying to fix so many profound problems in what many people believe is a broken Britain.