This is an extraordinary story. A group of employees at a Mars Petcare kibble manufacturing facility are suing the company in negligence in exposing them to pesticides and other toxins in the preparation of pet food. How can employees of a company manufacturing dry pet food (kibble) be exposed to pesticides and other toxins? Well, what they're saying is that the raw materials coming into the factory from which the dry cat food was made had been fumigated. But the raw material was not listed as having been fumigated. It went straight into making the pet food. The word “fumigated" in this instance refers to being treated with phosphine gas. Phosphine is a pesticide. So pesticides were being introduced into the facility. There are monitors in the factory to detect these pesticides. This by the way proves that it is commonplace to have carcasses treated with pesticides. The employees claim that the monitoring of the presence of pesticides was illegally or fraudulently tamp

They are not great photos; more snapshots. But it was all I could get on a recent visit to this vast, ornate building near the Palace of Westminster. Palmerston is named after a former Prime Minister. His job is to keep down rodents. He has caught 22 mice since being hired not long ago. He wanted some peace a quiet so slopped off to a quiet corner where the public could not go. He is very laid back. As you can see he is a random bred black-and-white; a tuxedo cat.

There has been a spate of terrorist activity in America, most recently the pressure cooker bomb exploding in New York City's Chelsea district wounding 29 people. Law enforcement is trying to find out who is behind it and the reason for it. It occurred to me that the reason for it could be to ensure that Donald Trump becomes the next president of the United States of America. If that is the reason and it might sound far-fetched then the organisation behind these bombs could be Russian intelligence as directed by Vladimir Putin. This is because Putin believes that if Donald Trump becomes president there will be a rapprochement between the two nations which will lead to the lifting of financial sanctions against Russia. Sorry for temporarily putting on hold posts about cats. I only do this very rarely. Russia is in dire need of financial assistance. They are burning through their reserves very quickly. There is no likelihood of a price rise in oil in the near or medium-term futur

Why do cats rule the Internet? It is a peculiar phenomenon. However, it is not that peculiar when you analyse it. The short answer as to why cat videos and funny cat pictures have been so popular on the Internet is because they make people feel happier, less anxious and less sad. It is about as simple as that as far as I can tell. The result of a study at Indiana University lead by Asst Prof Jessica Myrick came to the above conclusion. There asked 7000 people how they felt before and after watching cat videos. I suppose when you think about it the fact that cat videos make is happy has to be the right answer. Perhaps it could be said that cat videos make us the happiest amongst all the videos which are intended to make us happy. The cat video which has been viewed the most is called “Nyan Cat". It's a rather peculiar video in my opinion - designed to be viewed by younger people who are the most likely to visit YouTube. It is short and you can see it below.

Domestic cat milk contains eight times more protein than human milk and three times as much fat. Did you know that? I think is an interesting bit of domestic cat trivia as I've called it. I also think it's pretty impressive. Kittens grow rapidly (hardly surprising feeding on that kind of milk) as their mother uses her body reserves to produce milk. In one study it was found that mothers lost about 5.7 g per day when lactating. Kittens from larger litters are smaller and put on weight more slowly than kittens from smaller litters. Female cat can give birth to between one and ten kittens. The average litter is about four or five kittens. The largest litter ever recorded was 13 kittens. Each kitten weighs about 3% of their mother's body weight at birth or around 90 to 110 grams. Source: Wild Cats of the World pages 108 and 109. Get this book.

I would like to take a different angle on the question in the title. I think it's a silly debate. I think it's pointless to ask this sort of question for various reasons. Firstly it is very difficult to measure intelligence of humans because there are various types of intelligence and therefore it is next to impossible to reliably measure the intelligence of companion animals. The test that have been devised generally, as I recall, favoured dogs as being slightly more intelligent than cats but as mentioned there are different types of intelligence and how good are these tests? How reliable are these tests? I suspect they're not very reliable. I don't think we need to know whether a cat or a dog is more intelligent than the other. We know they are of similar intelligence; let's just say that and focus on more important things which are to do with us not cats and dogs. We should ask questions as to how we can improve animal welfare. We should ask questions as to how

 If you search in Google for “why are cats" every result on page one completes the sentence like this: "Why are cats frightened of cucumbers...!? I find that surprising in many ways, but unsurprising in one way.  This is because there are a lot of videos on the Internet of cats being terrified at the sight of a cucumber.  There's been a lot of debate about why cats are terrified of cucumbers. The answer must be the logical one and the straightforward one which is that the cucumber is a foreign and strange looking object to the domestic cat and when it is placed on the floor behind a domestic cat without the cat's knowledge then the cat will be frightened when he suddenly sees it. This is because in that instant the cat does not know whether the object is alive or dead, inanimate or living, and therefore the cat's immediate reaction is defensive and to get out of the way as quickly as possible. That is it and it's rather bizarre in some ways that