Spanish court orders dog support payments by husband to wife on divorce

European country's laws (except UK) regard animals as sentient beings. In those countries where animals are treated as sentient beings under the law you have to make provision for the caretaking of a companion in a court order when you divorce if you can't agree. 

Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Portugal among other European countries recognise animals under their laws as sentient beings. In the UK, companion animals such as dogs and cats are regarded as inanimate objects under the law which is a throwback to many years ago when they were regarded as "chattels" to use an old-fashioned word. It means objects, dead objects, owned by the divorcing couple.

Yes, in the UK dogs and cats are divided up like the television and furniture and if they can't agree then the court makes an order.

But in this story, from Spain, a court in Pontevedra ruled that the father i.e. the husband or former husband must pay €75 a month per child and €40 for the dog per month which represented "half of the extraordinary expenses [and] veterinary bills."

So you can see that in Spain, on divorce, if there is a dog or cat - a member of the family - and if the parties can't agree, a court will make an order for the dog or cat's caregiving in exactly the same way that the court would make an order for the children. It's great and it's a very good example of the power of regarding animals as sentient beings. It dramatically improves animal rights.

In this instance, the dog went to live with the wife which is why the husband has to make this payment to the wife to look after the family dog. It appears that they couldn't decide who the dog should live with so the court also made an order that the dog lives with the wife.

The order was made under the reform of the Animal Welfare Act in 2021. This law facilitates shared custody which hopefully can be arrived at by agreement but if not, as mentioned, the court steps in, makes an order and the order is enforced through subsequent court proceedings if required.

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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.

In terms of serious disease, rats are no more dangerous than other animals

Maite van Gerwen is an animal scientist running a consultancy, Amino Animalis, in, I believe Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She believes that rats (usually the brown or sewer rat) are treated unfairly. She believes that our relationship with rats is unbalanced and a gross example of speciesism.

She also believes that in terms of serious disease, rats are no more dangerous than other animals. They've been demonised in Europe and across the world since that dreadful event, the Black Death from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries in which an estimated 25 million were killed.

The rat is blamed for the spread of the bubonic plague which today can be cured with antibiotics. You may remember that the cat was mercilessly slaughtered because at the time people thought the cat spread the disease but afterwards they decided it was the rats because fleas carrying the disease were present on the rats.

However, Gerwen says that in 2018 there was a report from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara which debunked the theory that rats spread the bubonic plague. These reports found that lice and fleas carried by humans not rats were the primary cause of the disease's spread.

Gerwen wants people to treat rats with a bit more respect. They keep themselves fastidiously clean and they clean each other despite living in sewers and in very dirty conditions.

Sewer workers appreciate their presence because they tend to de-block sewers by eating lots of fat residue which has been dumped into the sewer from people's kitchens.

She is referring to speciesism on a grand scale. The rat is certainly the animal that is most subject to negative speciesism.

Gerwen describes the rat as intelligent, cheeky and funny and a social opportunist. She says that, "if a cat or dog is killed, the animal ambulance will come and pick it up. A dead rat is left lying around, [it] goes in the garbage bin."

And she added that "sometimes the site of a rat is interpreted as a nuisance and a signal to take action. We must also ask ourselves what exactly is the nuisance?".

She has dismissed the fears of the rat as a transmitter of disease as mentioned and has urged the people of Amsterdam to learn to live with the rat as their neighbour. To be at risk of infection from a rat, an individual will have to be bitten by one or have contact with their excrement and urine.

She added that "where there are people there are rats. Why do we want certain animals around us and not others? In new build houses, facilities are made in the cavity to provide bats with a home. Rats are controlled with clamps, glue plates and poison."

In conclusion, she thinks rats are unjustly victimised. I agree with her. People are frightened of rats anyway. They have a very negative image thanks to centuries of negative publicity. It's going to be impossible to get rid of that indoctrination which is firmly fixed into our minds.

But if you think about it she's correct. Everything I read about this animal except for the article in The Times newspaper which is the source of this article, is very negative about rats. People take pleasure in killing them in anyway possible perhaps using dogs or shooting them for fun. It's an endless process of extermination. But is it fair and wise and correct?

The Latin, scientific name for the sewer rat is Rattus norvegicus.

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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.

Google search console core web vitals Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) can be caused by website Menu

This is a rapid note! I have thought this for a while but Google search console core vitals Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) can be caused by the menu on a website. 

That sounds odd but when a menu is quite heavy with lots of submenu items compared to a very light one it can cause CLS issues. 

This will have a negative impact on the Google search console assessment and it may, have a slightly negative impact on Google search engine results.

I'm just flagging up this point for anybody who is struggling with CLS as I did for a while. I have resolved the problem on my WordPress website with a couple of plug-ins and in reducing the menu to a very simple state where there are no submenus. It looks weak and rather simplistic but it works.

There may be compounding factors but core vitals can be complicated and hard to fix - almost impossible sometimes - so a simple fix is welcome.

I don't think menus are important either. How many visitors click on menu items? Very few I would say based on my experience.

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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.

Very friendly cat rescued from car in junkyard before she was crushed

Cat owners should check under their car's hood if it's about to be crushed! Well this is a story which illustrates the famous nine lives of the domestic cat. This cat probably used up all nine in one go. I wonder if it is a unique occurrence. It might have happened before.

Lilly is a vaccinated, microchipped and spayed, loving female domestic cat who almost lost her life in the most horrendous way: in a car crusher in Asheville, North Carolina.

Images believed to be in the public domain and believed taken by the rescue center.

Lilly's owner was searching for her when he allowed his car to be taken to a junkyard for crushing. Just before his car was crushed, a worker decided to remove the battery under the hood and Lilly hopped out into his arms.

For there she was taken to a local rescue center: Brother Wolf Animal Rescue and from there reunited with her caregiver. 

The owner was notified by the rescue center after the junkyard notified the rescue center that the car's owner was searching for his cat.

The story is told on the Storyful website.

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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.

Five death bed regrets according to a palliative care nurse

The five death bed regrets according to a palliative care nurse who has been with dying patients.

1. 'I wish I hadn't dedicated so much of my life to working so hard.'
2. I wish I'd lived my life the way I wanted, not how others expected me to behave.
3. 'I regret losing touch with so many of my friends'.
4. 'I wish I'd been brave enough to express my feelings more'.
5. 'I wish I'd let myself be happier'

Is there a common threat running through the five regrets? Probably, yes. I see the common thread as regretting not being adventurous enough to live life as fully as possible; to take some risks. 

Being overly cautious curtails life dramatically. It means the person does not life a full life and does not maximise the chance of new experiences.

Caution is very understandable as the world can be scary to a lot of people. Anxiety is a massive, sometimes hidden problem but anxiety stops a person pushing their boundaries and living as fully as possible.

People need to take a few risks in life to get more out of it. It takes energy to maximise life. I guess it is an example of what you put in you get out. 

The palliative care nurse's name is Bronnie.

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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.