My First Cousin Is Billy Idol and He Brutally Killed a Kitten

My first cousin is Billy Idol. He was having an argument with his then girlfriend and this is back in the 1980s as I understand it, and I suppose in order to get at his girlfriend he allegedly threw his girlfriend's kitten against the wall of the room and killed the kitten. That's about it. It's in complete contrast to me because I am an animal advocate.






I hate animal cruelty. It is obviously entirely unnecessary. It is objectionable. It is horrible. It is criminal behaviour but there is little chance that he will be prosecuted because it happened such a long time ago.

The information comes from a memoir by a guy called Adam Bomb. He refers to Billy Idol's then girlfriend Claire O'Connor. It was Claire O'Connor who owned the kitten as I understand it. She disclosed the information to Adam Bomb. She said that Billy could be nasty sometimes. This was an example of that behaviour. But this is an allegation let's not forget.

We don't know whether Billy Idol was drunk or drugged at the time but what he did was unforgivable quite obviously. I am ashamed of him. I am connected to him because Billy Idol is the son of my late father's brother (also now deceased). He is therefore my first cousin. My name is Michael Broad. Billy Idol's name is William Broad.

As I recall, I played with William many years ago when he was a teenager or even before that. I can't recall. I could have met him at a party that he attended which was a party to celebrate Billy Idol's father's life because at that time he was dying. He did not come down from a bedroom in his father's house so I was unable to meet him.

Do cats have a collarbone?

Cats do not have a collarbone. This anatomical peculiarity allows a cat to fit through any opening which is the size of his/her head. A cat's forelimbs are attached to the shoulder by free-floating clavicle bones.

What was the penalty for killing a cat in ancient Egypt?

In ancient Egypt's the penalty for killing a cat was death. However, I have decided that the ancient Egyptians were not really cat lovers because they killed hundreds of thousands of cats, perhaps kittens, in sacrifices to their gods. This seems to have been a trade, a business involved in breeding cats and then killing them to appease the gods. Any nation who loves cats and who worships them would not do that.

Although the penalty was death for killing a cat, I wonder how efficient enforcement was! You can imagine how bad it was. There was no police force in ancient Egypt as far as I'm aware. You can kill cats surreptitiously without anybody seeing. And there would have been no animal welfare laws. So saying that the penalty was death is missing the point somewhat.

Can a cat see in pitch black?

The answer to the question, "can a cat see in pitch black?" must be NO because you need some light to impinge upon the retina for the retina to then send a signal to the brain. Pitch black means absolutely no light. Despite the fact that the cat's eyes are more sensitive to ours and their vision at night is excellent, they cannot see in total darkness. No animal can.






Light reflected from the cat's retina. A typical nighttime scene. Hence the phrase "cat's eyes" to mean the center line road markings by reflective glass marbles invented in Yorkshire, UK.

Wilmington, North Carolina, smells like cat urine. Why?

When I read the headline of an online newspaper, Winston-Salem Journal, "N.C. town stinks so badly of "cat pee" that there is an official state memo about it", I felt that this was another attempt to denigrate feral cats and to find a reason to kill them. It seemed as if the article was about a town being overrun by feral cats. However, that positively is not the case.

These cats did not cause the smell! The picture is for illustrative purposes only.

Wilmington has been suffering from a intermittent and faint cat pee odor for many years apparently. The NC Division of Air Quality has received several complaints about a cat urine-like odor. It is investigating but is yet to pin down the cause.

Some residents believe that it's caused by illegal manufacturing which takes place at night and others believe the cause is a naturally occurring swamp gas and/or decaying vegetation.




One resident, Sue Newell, said that she has smelled the odor since the late 1980s which seems extraordinary because you would have thought something would have been done about it by now. She said:

"The pungent odour is a concoction that can include swamp gas and fumes from a number of industrial plants along the Cape Fear River".

Apparently living near downtown Wilmington you will probably wake up to the smell of cat urine. I wish they had not chosen to use the phrase "cat urine" to describe the smell. I'm very sensitive to people who dislike cats using health issues and the like to denigrate the cat particularly feral cats as it can lead to abuse.