Donating to Some UK Medical Charities Can Mean That You Support Experiments on Animals

I'm sure that most people are unaware of this. Many people donate money to some of the UK's leading medical charities such as Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation. Both of the charities mentioned fund experiments on animals. There are others.

The Victims of Charity website helps us understand and empowers people to challenge recent examples of charity-supported experiments on animals.

I've mentioned the British Heart Foundation. This charity has supported a catalogue of repulsive experiments including dogs and pigs being deliberately given heart attacks, pregnant sheep being surgically mutilated and partially suffocated, and rats being deprived of oxygen for two weeks.

The Cure Parkinson's Trust has co-funded an experiment in which marmoset monkeys were brain-damaged by a toxic chemical overdosed with a Parkinson's disease bug to induce debilitating side-effects. They were also given ecstasy or a derivative of it.

The Alzheimer's Society has co-funded research in which mice were genetically altered to suffer from a crude version of Alzheimer's disease and they were subjected to highly stressful behavioural tests such as being forced to swim around in a pool of water looking for an escape route.

The Cancer Research UK charity has co-funded experiments in which genetically modified mice without fur were injected with human cancer cells and forced to endure the growth of a tumour inside them for three weeks before some of them were treated. Other rodents were poisoned for around six months with an industrial chemical to induce the development of cancer.

People should be aware of of the above information. When people give to charity a lot of them would be horrified to know that they are funding cruel animal experiments.

There are many organisations that only fund non-animal human-relevant research. To find out the names of these charities and to find out about the policies of charities on vivisection you can go to the animalaid.org.uk website and I also urge you to visit the victimsofcharity.org website.

In writing this short article I have quoted sometimes verbatim from a pamphlet given to me by a representative of the victims for charity and animal aid websites. I do so in order to pass on the message. The pamphlet certainly enlightened me. I hope this helps.

Do Cat Owners Feel Guilty When Their Cat Is Abused?

I'm sure that you probably think that a cat owner will feel guilty if their cat is abused by somebody. The point is this. It depends on who did the abusing. If a neighbour or somebody the cat owner does not know at all or not very well abuses their cat in some way shape or form then a study has revealed that the cat owner will not feel guilty because they feel that they could not have foreseen the abuse.

They feel this despite the fact that they may have let their cat go outside unsupervised. To some people it would seem that the owner is partly to blame for the abuse under the circumstances. However, the owner appears to accept that all the blame is placed upon the abuser and that they are not culpable.

However, the position is quite different if a cat owner's partner or live-in lover or anybody else's living with them and with whom they are intimate, hurts their cat. Under these circumstances the cat owner does feel guilty.

The reason for this guilt is because the owner feels that they could have avoided the abuse if they'd done something about the presence of the person with whom they were being intimate: for example getting rid of them.

Another reason would be that the cat owner feels that the person doing the abusing wants to hurt them (emotionally) and that their cat is a vehicle for this purpose. Therefore they feel some blame because if they were not the object of the abusers actions their cat would not be abused. The cat is an innocent party in an abusive, difficult relationship. Under the circumstances the cat's owner has a responsibility to sort the matter out to ensure that their cat is safe. If the person doesn't do this she feels guilty.

Women who live in abusive situations appear to be more concerned about the welfare of their cat than themselves. Some women protect their cat or find ways to protect their cat from an abusive partner. They understand that their partner is abusive. They understand that he is no good and that their cat may be in danger. But they are unable to dissociate themselves from this person. Therefore they may take steps to protect their cat but they do not, on occasions, take the ultimate step of getting rid of the person.

There are no doubt many instances of men who batter their female partner who do so because they are alcoholics or are troubled in some shape or form. Sometimes there is co-dependency with respect to the female partner. Under these circumstances the cat owner, the female partner, will almost certainly feel guilty having placed a cat in these difficult and hazardous circumstances.

To recap: when a cat owner is in an intimate relationship with an animal abuser, the owner feels guilt if the abuser hurts her cat. Where the owner has a distant connection with the abuser then she does not feel guilt or does not normally feel guilt if a cat is abused by that person.

These findings come from a study which probably requires verification but it concerned interviewing a number of people, cat and dog owners, who had suffered anguish because of the abuse of their cat or dog.

The owner of a cat or dog should sit down and think how they would feel if there companion animal was abused by somebody; either killed or injured. They should then ask themselves whether they would feel guilty and bad about that. If they answer, YES, then they should take proactive steps to protect their cat from hazardous circumstances under which the abuse may take place. Only then will they protect themselves as well from the emotional anguish that long-term guilt will bring them.

You can read an alternative version of this topic here.

Can cats get colds?

Yes, cats can get colds. The symptoms are like ours but the viruses causing the cold are different; herpesvirus and calicivirus. The cause upper respiratory infections which people refer to as URIs.

That's it really in terms of answering the question in the title. You can read about feline viruses on this page.

The best disinfectant is bleach. However there is a link between bleach and infections in kids.

Some breeders use L-lysine to help manage persistent herpes virus infections (read more).

The feline herpes virus is a bit of a monster in causing a lot of ill-health. There are many pages on it.

What is Good Photography?

Good photography is not just recording what is in front you. It is seeing merit in what is front of you and then transforming that into an image which speaks to all about life so that it touches the emotions of viewers.



To see merit in the subject is itself a skill. To then enhance and transform the record/image to something which powerfully speaks to viewers is creating art (sometimes). Not many people can do this. Those who can are good photographers.

Photography is about communication. It is about touching the sensibility of viewers whereby they learn more about themselves and the world they live in.

In creating "art" there is usually a lot of thought. It does not come easy.

Note: the photo is by me of my cat. I don't profess to say that it is good photography. Just fun.

Photo Websites Are Spoilt by "Gaming the System"

I realise that this is not directly about cats but I want to get it off my chest. There are many photo websites where genuinely good photographers can publish their photographs.

One of the sites is the well-known Flickr. The trouble with Flickr is this: the most viewed photographs are not always the best ones. The photographs which are viewed the most are the ones which are heavily publicised the most.

The way photographers publicise their photographs is to "game the system" which means they join hundreds of groups and promote their photographs there or they follow thousands of other photographers and in doing so the photographer who they follow feels an obligation to return the favour and/or they favourite lots of other photographs so once again that photographer often returns the favour.



You can see, therefore, that photographers game the system and in effect through their efforts "buy" views and favourites and suchlike. On these photo website you can't just put your photograph up on the site no matter how good it is and expect it to receive lots of views unless a Flickr editor picks it whereby it is then promoted by Flickr itself. But that is relatively rare and they don't always pick the best photographs.

500px is a more professional photo website with a higher standard than Flickr and there is less gaming the system in order to obtain views on this website but it still exists to a certain extent. I would expect that all photo websites to have this deep flaw, which is disappointing because only the best photographs should receive the most views and that certainly isn't the case.

For the record this is not a personal moan because my photographs have been picked by editors before and they have received thousands of views. I'm just making the point that I don't think these photo sites should allow users to game the system so flagrantly and so frequently as it undermines the integrity of the website and the quality of the photographs presented to the public.