Try feather-light petting to see if it pleases your cat more

I'll try and explain what I mean in the title. My belief is that many cat owners apply too much downforce with their hands and fingers when petting/stroking their cat. I'd like to see more try a different method in which a feather-light touch is applied. The petting is very delicately applied. Much more delicately than one imagines. And it should be carried out very slowly too.

Slow and delicate is an alternative style of petting which particularly applies to men I would suggest. I think an experiment using this technique is worth trying to see your cat's reaction.

I sense that many cat caregivers have never really given much thought to the amount of downforce that their petting should deliver. We pet our cats in an instinctive way which suits us. It is as we are doing it to a fury little human and therefore the downforce is correct for humans.

But is it correct for domestic cats? I sense not. I think cats can sometimes find their human caregiver a little too heavy-handed. And if that is correct it slightly undermines the relationship.

The feather-light handling should be accompanied by a quiet melodious and friendly voice too. The sound should project friendliness and gentleness.

I am simply questioning the status quo. Is the default pressure applied when petting your cat companion entirely pleasant from your cat's perspective? 

The primary objective of petting is to please the cat. Is that forgotten sometimes? Do some people only think about pleasing themselves?

Are there stray cats in the Vatican City?

Yes, there are stray cats in the Vatican. And they are well cared for! We know this because Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (a Jesuit) feeds them and he posts tweets about them. He is an American priest who works as the Assistant for New Evangelization for the Curia of the Society of Jesus in Rome. He is a techie guy with experience in commuting.

Stray cat at the Vatican. Image: Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ. Click on it for a larger version. Cat is on the balcony!!

He's well known and has a Wikipedia page! I'll let Wikipedia tell you more about him. He is high profile priest who thankfully likes cats and is compassionate towards them. He is active on Twitter which is the source of this photo and video.

Here is the video of him feeding some Vatican stray cats. Rome has hundreds of thousands of stray cats. They are a feature of the city. The Mediterranean countries in general are known for their stray cats because the climate is conducive to survival on the street. For example, there are more stray cats on the island of Cyrus than people. Israel also has a stray cat problem. Same reason:

The problem is a lack of comprehensive TNR programs to sterilise them. 

Vatican City is a city-state surrounded by Rome, Italy, and is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. It covers 0.17 mi².

What the bible says about cats

The bible says nothing about domestic cats. Nada. Zilch. Some wild cats are mentioned. Dogs are poo-pooed.

A search for 'domestic cat' on the openbible.info website produced nothing at all. I know this from previous searches. The domestic cat is not mentioned in the bible at all. Other animals are. The dog is. The domestic cat, no. Wild cats are sometimes referenced but rarely; such as the leopard and lion below. P.S. The dog is mentioned over 40 times in the bible but nearly always in a derogatory and contemptuous manner.

What the bible says about cats. Image: MikeB

Genesis 1:26

Then God said, 

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 

Search for 'domestic cat' produced no references in the bible as mentioned twice already!! A search for 'cat' produced the above. 'Cats' produced the following (a reference to the leopard):

Daniel 7.6: After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard, with four wings of a bird on its back. And the beast had four heads, and dominion was given to it.

 The lion mentioned on search for 'lion'. There are other mentions.

Psalm 104:21: The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.

Why isn't the domestic cat mentioned in the bible? The Bible Research Today website says this:

"The most common explanation for the omission of the cat within Hebrew biblical texts is that it was a reaction by monotheistic Israel against the Egyptian practice of worshipping cats (or gods that were fashioned in the form of cats)."

In an earlier article I wrote years ago I suggested that the domestic cat was irrelevant to the topics discussed in the bible and was not mentioned as a result. A common-sense viewpoint.

When it comes to the bible forget about the domestic cat which was very much part of the lives of some Jews at the time of Christ (plausible and reasonable suggestion). Perhaps they were quite rare among Jews. 

The domestic cat existed at that time as the Egyptians had domestic cats for thousands of years before Christ. There were probably fewer pet cats than pet dogs among the Jews.  Today the Jews are generally very kind to stray cats. There are lots of them in Israel. Too many actually! Ironic that.

Remember too that the bible was written over the course of almost a century after Jesus' death. That's a factor. It is an historical account.

Cooling down the dogs on a dog meat farm

CHINA - OPINION: Go to Twitter and search for 'dogs China'. All the top search results are dogs being treated cruelly in dog meat farms. Or dogs being cruelly transported on lorries to be driven to the south for the dog meat market. 

The dog are compressed into small metal cages. They are on top of each other. They are confused and terrified but they have blank expressions on their faces as if numbed by the experience. 

For them the alpha dog (the human) has turned against them when they should be supporting them. Alpha dog wants to eat pack member. That's what is looks like to the dog destined for the dog meat market.

Here, in this video, sickly sweet Chinese music plays over a dog meat farmer as he cools down the dogs in more rusty metal cages. These animals will be transported to the dog meat market.

It looks like a humanitarian, kindly act. No. He just wants to keep his dogs alive long enough so they can be brutally killed at the market so the meat is fresh. It is a commercial decision; not one based on animal welfare. I don't think the phrase 'animal welfare' exists in the Chinese language. Animal welfare laws certainly don't.

All these dogs, as far as I know, have been snatched from the street or from back or front yards. They are street dogs, domestic dogs or stray dogs. It doesn't make any difference to the brutes who make their money from this abject animal cruelty.

The law does nothing. Correction. There is no law in China to stop this. Imagine trying to do this in the UK or Sweden or the USA. You'd be in the criminal courts as fast as you could say 'dog meat'. 

An example of ridiculous, pathetic human madness in Vietnam resulting in black cat cruelty

OPINION: I want to briefly revisit the Covid-19 pandemic because in so many ways it illustrates humankind's madness. This particular example comes from Asia. In general, you will see more abuses and cruelty against the cat in Vietnam and China than anywhere else based upon my research. You simply can't avoid it when surfing the Internet.

Superstition is a human weakness. It is, for me, a form of human madness. It leads to animal abuse. Superstition is based upon fear. Humans are fearful of everything and anything.

Black cats farmed in Vietnam waiting to be boiled alive and turned into paste to cure Covid!! Image: SWNS.

In Vietnam in the middle of 2020, when the Covid pandemic was perhaps at its height, black cats were turned into paste and sold as coronavirus remedies. I can remember seeing a child eating black cat paste to protect them against Covid-19 (see link below).

Black cat paste packaged for consumption to cure Covid-19. Image: SWNS.

It was reported that at that time black cats were being boiled, skinned and cooked and then turned into a paste to be sold as a medicine against Covid-19 according to South West New Service (SWNS).

A barbaric, utterly cruel and mindless human practice that was centred around the city of Hanoi. The crazy concoction was sold online. They even fed it to a baby.

RELATED: Vietnamese toddler drinks liquid of dead black cats to protect from coronavirus.

There is a video online somewhere which I don't want to even search for which shows rows of dead cats drying out in the sun after being slaughtered as well as a live cat being boiled. This seems to be another superstition that if you kill cats in a brutal way they taste better and their "medicine" is more effective. How mad does it have to get? How cruel does it have to get before the international community does something to stop it?

Obviously, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever which supports the superstition that eating boiled black cat protects you against Covid-19, which, incidentally, has not died out yet. It is still there infecting people often in hospitals. Be aware of that. Don't visit a hospital to see your ill friend unless you really have to.

It's ironic, too, that the cat meat trade which includes the one mentioned above, can itself spread disease because of the way that they are killed; highly unregulated. Pathogens from this kind of animal slaughter can be transferred to the people doing the slaughtering. That's how people believe the Covid-19 pandemic started in the first place.

Like I said, how mindless does humankind have to be before something is done to stop these people.

I'm told, also, that in Vietnam and Indonesia other "exotic meats" were sold at the time as a cure for Covid-19.