Feline hyperesthesia is more commonly seen in Siamese cats

You can read about feline hyperesthesia on this page. In short cats have times when their skin twitches, their tail whips. Their skin seems sensitive and they don't like being touched. Another symptom is dilated pupils.

The cause could be behavioral or neurological. Science has not yet decided.

It is reported in Cat Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook that Siamese cats suffer from this condition more commonly than average. So do Burmese and Himalayan cat breeds, both of which are related to the Siamese.

Silencing the noisy Siamese cat

The title is a bit brutal. Personally, I am fine with a vocal cat unless it is three in the morning. But for some cat caretakers it might grate a bit from time to time. Also cats ask for food and a lot of us, most of us, respond by giving it. If we don't our cat asks again and again...If your cat is a Siamese cat the ask might sound like a shout!

Linda P Case in her book The Cat, Its Behavior, Nuitrition & Health, says that for cats that are very vocal, and the Siamese heads that list, the cat can be silenced eventually when meowing excessively for food, by "withdrawing all interactions whenever a cat meows...".

This leads to "extinction" of the meowing under those circumstances. Perhaps a balance is needed. I feel that a complete withdrawal of response it not good on the basis that it is a failure to interact and we keep cats to interact with them.

Seal Point Siamese with a bit of tabby cat

Photo by NH53 (Flickr)

This is a Siamese cat in Italy; Tuscany in fact. A beautiful part of the world and this is a beautiful, clean standard looking Siamese cat. There is nothing extreme about this cat, which I think is what makes him or her all the more attractive.

What I would like to ask, however, is whether this cat is purebred and whether there is hint of tabby cat lurking inside. You can see the banding on the tail and on the sides of face and in fact on the forehead.

These indicate the presence of the genes that create the tabby cat and the lynx point Siamese cat. I don't know but I would doubt that this cat would do well at cat shows. That is not to criticise. It is more in praise. Perhaps this is normal for Siamese cats but you don't see banding in Siamese cat show cats as far as I am aware.

There is a nice patch of dark fur on the left thigh area. This would indicate that that area is cooler than the rest of the center part of the body. I wonder why.

An Exceptional Veterinary Surgeon

September 2011: Jallal Kaal is a Libyan veterinary surgeon. He was trained in Dublin, Ireland. He is a magnificent veterinarian. There are very few like him.

Many people with cats and dogs understandably fled the Libyan capital, Tripoli, when fighting started there at the end of the violent revolution overthrowing Gaddafi. Some, perhaps many, left behind their companion animals. I don't know if I could do that but under extreme circumstances I might discover that I can.

However, Jallal Kaal, without initial payment or payment at all, has saved these abandoned companion animals and at great risk and cost to himself, reunited them with their human caretakers. I am in awe of this guy. It is the kind of behavior that soars above all the bloodshed and mess.

People abandoned their pets in different ways. Some begged Dr Kaal to take care of their pets until they could return. Some got to the airport and phoned from there to ask Dr. Kaal to pick up their cats from their home. Yet others phoned him from the USA or Europe!

It appears that every time the good doctor responded positively and did as asked. He protected the animals and cared for them. When there was no room left at his clinic he asked friends to home them temporarily or he went around to the abandoned home and fed them.

Some pet owners returned to collect their pets and I hope pay Dr. Jaal. But for many animals Dr. Jaal had to prepare the certification necessary to ship them out of the country. That meant vaccinations and microchipping etc. in complying with international pet travel. It is quite complicated and time consuming.

To give a flavor of his heroic behavior, he made 12 journeys of 15 hours each in a van packed with companion animals when taking them to Djerba airport in Tunisia.

I bet this vet doesn't declaw! I bet it is not even on his radar. He says, "I was involved in another kind of war - one to save animals."

Well done Dr. Jaal. You deserve all the praise you can get.

Wild Cats in Captivity

Wild cats in captivity don't do well and are poorly managed. That is a generalization and possibly a little unfair. However, having prepared a list of some wild cats and their status in captivity, I am compelled to come to that conclusion with one exception. The snow leopard enjoys creative and concerned conservation together with excellent management in captivity. What is it about the snow leopard that sets it apart from the other wild cat species in respect of conservation? Perhaps it is because the snow leopard has a chance of survival in the wild, living in the mountains.

The two barriers to successfully keeping wild cats in captivity is that they get ill fairly easily or in some cases routinely and early on, plus they tend not to breed. This leads to low genetic diversity and inbreeding seems to be commonplace. Inbreeding leads to inbreeding depression which in turn leads to poor sperm quality and reproductive failure. It is a downward trend.

There is also the problem of cross-breeding which is probably due to a need to expand genetic diversity and to boost low zoo populations of certain cat species. Breeding a Siberian tiger with a Bengal tiger leaves us all with a cat that is neither.

What you might be looking at through the perspex glass of a zoo is an inbred hybrid, rather than the real thing. Am I being a bit harsh again? A single example (there are many others) is the sweet looking sand cat. The zoo population is small and "highly inbred" says Jill D. Melden one of the authors of the respected book, Great Cats - Majestic Creatures of the Wild. They are likely to become extinct in captivity she goes on to say.

There are also far too many instances of zookeepers and pet tiger owners being stupid and careless in their dealings with the large wildcats. These careless encounters lead to the death and/or injury for human and cat (shot). The cat in all cases is simply behaving normally under the circumstances, which are often stress inducing. Wildcats have large home ranges. The male Siberian tiger has a range of 800-1000 square kilometers! Small enclosures are unsuitable.

It is just that I don't like the idea of wild animals in zoos. And neither, it seems, do the animals.

Update: Seidensticker and Lumpkin who edited Great Cats (ISBN 0-87857-965-6) say that "the captive populations of most species of small cats in both North America and Europe are headed towards extinction". Their book was first published in 1991.

It could be argued that establishments that keep wildcats in captivity that profess to be involved in conservation are in fact a net drain on conservation in the wild because they need to import wildcats from wild habitats to prop up the captive cat populations in terms of breeding health (i.e. to try and inject fresh genes into the captive population).

The AZA ( Association of Zoos and Aquariums) Feline Species Survival Plans are concerned with the survival of wildcats in captivity not repopulating wildcats in the wild for conservation reasons.

Then we must not forget the blatant exploitation of tiger in tiger farms. These are a pretense at conservation etc but they are just farmed tigers for body parts. Totally commercial and quite brutal.

Jill Mellen and author of Great Cats says that that wild cat species in captivity with a population of fewer than 30 individuals will die out unless something is done quickly. However, nothing can be done it appears. It is pointless and probably illegal to import cats in wild into captivity for the sole reason to stop the captive cats become extinct. That is upside down conservation. It tells us a bit about the flaws in the captive animal business.

She says that the rusty-spotted cat, manul, sand cat, black-footed cat, pampas cat, Asian golden cat, Geoffroy's cat and Scottish wildcat are inbred and have small captive populations.



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