Watermelon Cat - Obese Cat

Shocking and intriguing in equal measure. A grossly obese cat that no longer looks like a cat from the angle the photograph has been taken.

Water Melon Cat or Bowling Ball Cat or.....

Please, Mrs & Mr Cat Owner, do something about this. It is very unfair on your cat to feed him to the point where this happens.

Diabetes (type 2) is on the rise in the domestic cat world and one reason is the rise in obesity of cats. Another could be the dangerous, high in carbohydrates dry cat food. Feeding too much and the wrong stuff.

Tough love is tough to do but cats don't hate you if you ask them to wait a bit for their dinner. Or if you give them less and no treats. Fat cats are due to a human weakness - a need to be loved and scared to lose it. Silly. Cats don't think like that.

Note: there is an alternative take on this picture: it is photo-edited and unreal. Sort of looks like that but can't be sure either way.

Large Dog Befriends Cutest Disabled Kitten

Such a cute kitten, who has an inherited neurological condition which causes her to shake her head as she does. A sort of tremor. She - I think she is female - is playing with the dog. She turns herself side ways on and arches her back to look large. This is play fighting. Typical of kittens. The dog is a cattle dog and massive in size, compared. Such little kittens always look so vulnerable in the presence of large dog companions but this dog has nothing but love for his friend. The kitten's medical condition is not life threatening and does effect her enjoyment of life it seems.

The kitten has a bobbed tail too (shortened tail). I wonder if these conditions are linked?

Trapped fishing cat mistaken for leopard in Greater Noida

Trapped fishing cat mistaken for leopard in Greater Noida

A fishing cat, once again, has been mistaken for a leopard and this time it happened in a place that's not too far from New Delhi, the capital of India.

I must say, that over the years that I have been reading about the wild cats, I have noticed that it is not uncommon to read about leopards and medium to large wild cat species being trapped in wells.

Read about the fishing cat. This image is copyright Michael Broad. Credits are on the linked page.

That is what happened to this fishing cat.  The cat was found in a well.  It had wandered into a village because its habitat had been shrunk through unregulated urbanisation.  The fishing cat lives on wetlands as can be imagined because it feeds on fish as a primary prey.

The big question I have is why are so many wild cat species ending up at the bottom of village wells?  It seems to me, and I am very sceptical these days, that villagers are herding the cats into the wells to protect themselves from what they see as a dangerous animal.

The fishing cat isn't that dangerous because it is a small to medium-sized wild cat species.  It is a strong cat and it does bring down fairly large prey on occasions but I don't ever recall reading about a fishing cat attacking a person.  It is just that people mistake the fishing cat for a leopard, which surprises me because the leopard is many times larger. By comparison to a domestic cat the fishing cat is about twice the size.

We're not talking about distant sightings of a wild cat.  We're talking about people being quite close to a frightened wild cat who has wandered into a village.  Surely, after all these years villagers should be able to distinguish between a fishing cat and a leopard.

Apparently, this wild cat was recovered from the village well and taken to a zoo where no doubt it will be miserable for the rest of its life all because it happened to have wandered into a village having been forced off its own habitat.  Sorry to be so negative but that is the truth of the matter.

PoC Pays $200 For X-rays for Declawed Cat

PoC Pays $200 For X-rays for Declawed Cat

Pictures-of-cats.org makes a donation to a cat charity every month based upon the number of comments made during the month at $.05 per comment.  This is not a fixed way of calculating a donation because sometimes more is given.  For example a regular contributor to the website, Marc, gave $1000 on one occasion which is an amazing act of generosity.  That said, this website has given many thousands of dollars to charity to benefit cats over the 7 years that it has been in existence.

I know that I am blowing my own trumpet but I need to do it because the Internet is a very competitive place and very few websites donate regularly to animal charities.

For me, it makes the website meaningful.  Just making some money through advertising is not enough.  There is a great need for well placed charitable donations to organisations that benefit cat welfare.  This is because there are far too many unwanted cats. There are also abused cats and used cats, lost cats and declawed cats which are in pain.

The whole purpose of this latest donation is to assist a cat owner in America who cannot afford  x-rays for her cat which are required to assess whether declaw surgery that took place many years earlier when she was a kitten left in her paws shards of bone which as one can imagine can cause great discomfort.

This is the link to the original page about this cat whose name is Mollie.

Bengal Tigers In The Wild With Half Orange, Half White Coats

Why do I sometimes see Bengal tigers in Indian tiger reserves with a coat background colour that is half white and half orange?

As can be seen in this image the change in background colour starts in the middle of the tiger. This is the case each time I have seen it. I am surprised no one has mentioned this. Perhaps they have but I have not noticed.

This is not a golden tabby tiger (strawberry tiger) because they only exist in captivity and in any case the coloration is different and the background color fades vertically in strawberry tigers. In the tiger I refer to the orange color fades horizontally.

I don’t think this is a genetic mutation and neither do I think it is caused by age. My preferred reason for this coloration shading is health and/or nutrition. The pigments in the fur are: eumelanin which is brown/black and pheomelanin which is yellow/reddish brown. The balance between these two affects the coat color, as does the overall presence of these pigments.

As the pigment fades from orange to white (transparent – no pigment) it would appear that there is lack of pigmentation in the rear half. I know that in the domestic cat a lack of tyrosine causes black fur to become rusty. Tyrosine is an amino acid in certain foods. Is the Bengal tiger in some reserves getting a good diet or it is deficient in some nutrients?

If the “problem” (is it a problem?) is caused by diet then it must link to available prey. That would not surprise me because not only is the tiger under threat in reserves so are its prey. Tiger prey is poached like the tiger itself. Or is the tiger being poisoned?

I am sure someone will come forward and leave a comment which poo poos what I have written and which provides a full and sensible answer. Good. I look forward to it.

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