The Economy and Companion Animals

One reason why I was at the G20 Summit demonstrations was because the broken banking system has affected the economy and what affects the economy affects ordinary people and what affects ordinary people affect companion cats and there are numerous examples of that (see, for example, Homeless cats and people).


A professional version of my vid (below).

There is a sort of a war out there. There are those people who want change, those who want to keep things as they are and those who don't care or think about it. The people who want change as those at the bottom of the pile. The people who want to keep the status quo intact are the people who make the most money out of the current system. They maintain their status because they run the world and when the people at the bottom protest as they are at the G20 Summit it is all forgotten eventually and nothing happens. People have short memories. Politicians and bankers use this to maintain their position.


G20 Summit demonstrations outside the bank of England. The building in this picture is not the Bank of England by the way.

What of cats? Cats that are in decent households want the status quo maintained. Sure they don't express it but if things changed downwards they would object! Those cats that are abandoned because of the economic crisis don't complain (cats don't, they put up with things) but if they could voice their opinion they would make it clear that they wanted things to change. The abandoned cat and the feral cat are at the bottom of the social ladder.

Update: Here's the funky, 1960s style video:



I would even expect the lives of feral cats to have taken a turn for the worse because cat charities are less well funded. I can think of a major charity in the UK which has almost certainly lost £11 million in the collapsed Icelandic banks scandal. This is Cats Protection. This is the UK's oldest cat charity and rescue network, created in 1927. They invested unwisely and all in one place. Their huge loss has affected the welfare of many thousands of cats. See Cats Protection Organisation.



The Economy and Companion Animals to Teh Kitteh

G20 Summit affects Cats!

The G20 summit affects cats because it affects all of us and cats are a part of the family. I was in London today protesting at the Bank of England. There were about 4,000 people there. Many more were, I believe, expected. This was disappointing. A lot of the people were spectators, or part-time protectors and then there were the press. There were a mass of photographers. I myself was interviewed by Reuters about the G20 Summit. Despite the fact that all the corralled people at the time were being peaceful the police insisted on falsely imprisoning all of us (except the press) for several hours after the demonstration had effectively ended.


G20 Summit protest opposite the Bank of England, London (the City). Photo by Michael Broad. Please provide a credit if and when using it.

Despite my arguments with the police I was unable to leave the area in front of the Bank of England. No warning was given that we would be, in effect, imprisoned and many people were deeply upset by this. Out civil liberties were taken from us (freedom of movement) and the police refused to listen. The police were uncaring and showed no sign of behaving decently and with discretion. They could have made judgments about individuals and let them go home but no. Everyone was corralled into about 10 acres of roads in and around the Bank of England for about 3 hours or more. As stated this was false imprisonment, technically. Individual policemen failed to explain themselves. One policeman quoted something to do with a law which allows them to override the crime of false imprisonment. It was extraordinary to be imprisoned like this. The news later on television hardly mentioned it. Yet for the 4,000 people on the ground it presented a massive problem and for no apparent reason. The reason most protesters gave was to provoke a riot. I don't think that is true. The reason was because the police were intent on dividing up the protesters and quelling in, my opinion.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states:

• Article 13 - Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
• Article 9 - No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile

I think that there is an arguable case that government is in breach of these articles. I was at the protests because the G20 Summit affects cats and us all and I owed it to us and our cat companions to be there.



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Cat Has Nine Lives

We understand the principle behind the phrase, "a cat has nine lives", meaning that the cat is resilient and tough. But why nine. Why not 6 or 10, for example? These sayings hark back to another age, of superstition and ill formed beliefs. In this instance it refers to what was considered a lucky number, 9 in ancient times as it was the sum total of the "trinity of trinities".


Holy Trinity - Father, Son Holy Spirit, one God - photo by A. Davey

Trinity means 3 and the trinity of trinities means 3 x 3 = 9. Since the 3rd century the Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been explained as "the one God exists in three Persons and one substance, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". Three persons in one Godhead. (src: Wikipedia - for Trinity)



Cat Has Nine Lives -- Photo: published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License -- this site is for charitable purposes in funding cat rescue.

No Room to Swing a Cat

This is the origin of the phrase, "there is no room to swing a cat". The word "cat" in this instance refers to an instrument of punishment, a form of whip, used in the British navy used in the 17th and 18th centuries (and probably other countries). The whip had nine separate knotted thongs and its full name was a "cat-o'-nine-tails" (a cat of nine tails). The word o' was a shortened version of the word of.

Navy personnel were punished by being flogged with the "cat". This happened above decks as down below it was too cramped. There wasn't enough room for the person enforcing the punishment to swing the whip, the cat-o'-nine-tails.

One last point. The reason why the whip's name is based on the humble cat, is because it cut the skin of the seaman and left scars that were reminiscent of the damage done by a cat, presumably a large wildcat.

Here are a couple of young men trying it out!!.......

• No Room to Swing a Cat to Having Kittens
• cat sayings (3)

Having Kittens

This is the origin of the English phrase, "having kittens". It is used like this. "She'll have kittens when she finds out about it". So the phrase is intended to tell us that the person in question will be distraught and upset when she finds out about something. For example, she may have been away on holiday and her neighbor discovers that her home has been burgled and speaks to a friend about it and uses the phrase in the conversation.

At first sight there is no obvious connection between having kittens and being distraught. The only possible connection is the case of a pregnant women having a miscarriage because she is very upset, emotionally distressed and possibly angry. But why kittens? {note: In the English language the verb "to have" can be used to mean to give birth to, "She's going to have twins, you know"}

Surprisingly as recently as the 17th century a women might cite that she had, "cats in the belly", as a reason why she needed an abortion. And she would have meant it, it seems. This was a throwback to medieval times when people believed in witches and when black cats were seen as witches "familiars" (companions).

During, what seems now like a dark period of English life, if a pregnant women was in pain it was sometimes believed that she was bewitched and that she had kittens inside her and the kittens were clawing at her womb. It was also thought that as she was a witch she could destroy the kittens to terminate the pregnancy.

The connection then is made between being in great discomfort, emotional distress and pain to the subject of giving birth to kittens ("having kittens").

This is the real thing! No humans, no superstition. Just plain simply kitten birth. You know cats in medieval times didn't have ridiculous superstitions which caused untold misery to people (witches were burnt). Today in part of Africa some people still believe in withcraft and it still causes untold suffering and criminality:





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