Cat owners in Cyprus are abandoning their cats because of the Covid-19 pandemic

This is what I would describe as a behind-the-scenes story. It doesn't hit the headlines because it concerns Cyprus, in the Mediterranean, a small island and not for example America which leads the way on domestic cat news. 

But it is a very telling and a sad story. It's reported that there has been a 30% increase in the abandonment of domestic cats on the island. They are sometimes left behind as people leave the island. I'm referring to expatriates possibly possibly British people who feel they haven't got the money to afford to take their cat back home with them.

Spotted street cats of Cyprus. Read about them by clicking here.

These people may have dual residency. I know that a lot of British people have second homes in Cyprus or they moved to Cyprus in retirement. But they've been squeezed economically by the Covid-19 pandemic. Dawn Foote who runs a rescue centre where there are 800 rescue cats, all of which are neutered, said that, "People, at the moment, have just got no money, and it's expensive to get a cat to another country. You've got passports to pay for, you've got transport carriers to pay. It's heartbreaking."

If it's not people going home is local residents who feel that they can no longer afford to look after a domestic cat. Once again is about money. The poignancy of this problem is that, currently, Cyprus is famous in the cat world for being the place where archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the first domestic cat in a grave with their owner. The grave is dated to about 9,500 years ago. So the island had a significance in the cat world. The cat would have been a domesticated Far Eastern wildcat. They look like rangy tabby cats.

There appears to be criticism of people who feed stray cats on the island without ensuring that they are spayed or neutered. I don't know how prevalent this is but simply feeding a stray cat is not enough sadly. You have to ensure that they are spayed and neuter otherwise you simply promote and increase in the number of unwanted cats that should be living in homes. There should be government-sponsored TNR programs which includes spaying and neutering at least as part of the process.

There is criticism of the government strategy with claims that it is not working that well.

Domestic cat calcium levels low. A reason.

When a domestic cat is suffering from a deficiency in calcium i.e. their blood-calcium concentration is low, it may well be due to inadvertent damage to the parathyroid glands during a thyroidectomy operation. This is an operation to remove the thyroid gland because the cat is suffering from hyperthyroidism. A dramatic fall in blood-calcium concentrations can be life-threatening. Cats who have been through the thyroidectomy operation should be hospitalised for a few days after surgery so the blood-calcium concentrations can be monitored.

Thin, elderly cat suffering from hyperthyroidism. Picture: PoC.

Hyperthyroidism is fairly common in older cats and is caused by an increase in the production of thyroid hormones from enlarged thyroid glands in the cat's neck. Most often it is caused by a benign tumour hence the operation. It should be noted that second hand cigarette smoke may be a contributory factor in developing this disease. Surgery is an option to remove the cancerous gland. If both thyroid glands are removed the cat will need supplemental thyroid for the remainder of their life.

Alternative options are radioactive iodine to destroy the cancerous tissue or an oral medication called methimazole. This drug lowers hormone production. It is given daily. The administration of this drug can it seems be difficult but the manufacturers are making it more palatable. Perhaps they have done this because my information comes from a book written in 2008.

If hyperthyroidism is caught early before the heart and kidneys are damaged it is a treatable disease. However, if these organs are damaged they will need treatment after the thyroidectomy. A thyroidectomy is a straightforward operation with an excellent success rate but beware the parathyroid glands!

Diagnosis for hyperthyroidism is carried out by a vet examining the cat's neck area for enlarged glands and they check the heart rate and blood pressure. The cat's general health is also evaluated because hyperthyroidism is often associated with other conditions and it can predispose a cat to other conditions. Therefore they need to be checked for associated conditions.

P.S. Other potential reasons for low blood calcium in cats might be kidney or liver failure, parathyroid tumour, hypoparathyroidism or poor nutrition during pregnancy to name some examples. I'm not a veterinarian so I won't go on.

Sources: Dr Bruce Fogle, Drs Eldredge, Carlson, Carlson and Giffin.

Friendly clouded leopard climbs all over Patrick Aryee

 

I am sorry, I don't know the name of the photographer. Please advise.

Patrick Ayree is a biologist and is now a documentary filmmaker and wildlife television presenter. In this picture you see him with a clouded leopard all over his head. I don't know much about the picture except for the obvious which is that this clouded leopard must be domesticated. He is clearly enjoying the experience (and so is the cat!). The clouded leopard is a wonderful arboreal, medium-sized wild cat species. They live in Asia and are fantastic tree climbers. They have this beautiful coat after which they are named. Of course they are persecuted for their coat. What else can we expect?

Click here to read some articles about the clouded leopard.

Are tigons fertile?

Tigons are a hybrid cross between a male tiger and a female lion. These are man created - correction person created (I don't want to be sexist although it is always a man who does it) - wild cat hybrids. A lot of private zoo owners in America like to mess around with ad hoc big cat breeding to entertain themselves and any customers who wish to pay money to see their miserable establishments. 

There are a lot of private zoos in America but they've been tarnished and discredited by Carole Baskin of Big Cat Rescue (BCR) who has exposed them for what they are: seedy, exploitative businesses where young big cats are exploited and where their parents are disposed of when they are no longer financially profitable. Enough of my distaste about private zoos in America.

Picture in the public domain.

Read another post on the same topic with more detail if you wish

The answer to the question in the title as to whether tigons are fertile or not is that the female is often fertile but the male is invariably not fertile. There comes from Sarah Hartwell who is an expert and I trust her implicitly. Other websites and other experts say different things. The Smithsonian Magazine say that they are fertile and that second-generation hybrids are created from first-generation hybrids such as the tigon and the liger. And yet another website said that they are infertile. Clearly there is some disagreement but it seems that it's a grey area as Sarah Hartwell hints namely that some are fertile and some aren't. This probably has led to the disagreements.

Sometimes wild cat hybrids can have what is called hybrid vigour. When you crossbreed different species the resultant offspring can be larger than either of the parents. The tigon can be a large animal as shown in the photograph above. This sort of hybridisation would never occur in the wild because lions and tigers live in entirely different places and therefore never bump into each other. It is only when they are forced together in deliberate breeding in cages that they mate with each other.

It is unnatural and only done for financial profit and only viewed as a form of voyeurism from paying customers. It should be banned and probably will be banned in America because Carole Baskin is introducing new legislation which restricts ownership of big cats by Americans unless under certain specified conditions. The legislation would do away with the sort of exploitative place that I refer to and run by people such as Joe Exotic who you may remember is in prison serving a very long sentence (22 years) because he conspired to murder Carole Baskin. Joe asked Pres. Trump for a pardon! He did not get it.

They are archenemies but Carole Baskin is the good one. They are not the same sort of person which is why Baskin is annoyed at Netflix with their documentary called Tiger King which paints Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin as the same ilk. They certainly are not. Baskin saves the lives of tigers and other wild cat species from abusive private owners. She deserves a lot of recognition for what she does but she has enemies. Probably the enemies are people who like to exploit animals and don't see any reason to be decent and sensitive towards their welfare. There are a lot of people like that regrettably. 

There is one last point to make which is this. Through Darwin's theory of natural selection i.e. the survival of the fittest, animals become more specialised which enhances their prospects of survival in the places where they live. They are adapted to those environments. If you dilute their genes through hybridisation the resultant offspring is less specialised and therefore less likely to survive. Therefore this form of casual hybridisation goes against nature and natural selection as described by Darwin.

Cat thrown away in Russia saved from a waste processing plant

This video, in a tweet on the Twitter.com website, shows us a Russian waste processing plant worker removing a tuxedo cat from a sack inside a box next to a fast moving conveyor belt on which there is a ton of waste products being conveyed to a device which probably crushes it. 

If the worker in the video had decided to throw the sack onto the conveyor belt the cat would have been killed in minutes. So this man has been praised for rescuing this cat. The cat was apparently healthy and has been checked out by a veterinarian. The cat has also been taken to the ministry in charge of waste in Russia where he will be looked after by the employees and I would hope live out the rest of his life safely. 

The minister in charge has praised the employee who saved the cat and in a commonsense way advised that if people don't want to keep their cat they can take the animal to a shelter rather than putting them into a bag and throwing a bag on the rubbish dump. Common sense indeed but it takes a particularly callous person to do it.

Кота в завязанном мешке обнаружили на мусоросортировочном комплексе по обработке ТКО в Ульяновске. Он мог бы попасть в сепаратор, если бы не бдительность одного из работников.

Видео: vk/gorkomhoz73 pic.twitter.com/HO2ExUJpEn

— ТАСС (@tass_agency) December 22, 2020

This sort of human behaviour is not confined, obviously, to Russia. It happens everywhere on the planet and is a wanton example of animal abuse. To treat a sentient being as an item of rubbish is psychopathic behaviour. But you might be surprised how often it happens. There are countless examples on the Internet of domestic cats being abandoned deep in the countryside in cat carriers which are locked, incidentally, where they die of starvation. Or kittens are thrown out of car windows when crossing a busy junction. The chances of the kitten surviving under those circumstances are remote but some remarkably do. And there are some equally remarkable rescues from busy roads by decent people and sometimes police officers. They rescue the cats at a genuine danager to themselves.

Translation of the tweet: "A cat in a tied sack was found at a waste sorting complex for MSW processing in Ulyanovsk. He could have got into the separator, if not for the vigilance of one of the workers."

The best thing about this Russian cat rescue is that we have it on video, I suppose because the facility has inbuilt security cameras which record everything. The bloke who took the cat out of the sack was obliged to do it under the terms of his employment so it was not a deliberate act of cat rescue. He was just looking for certain objects which cannot be placed on the conveyor belt. He, therefore, had to open the sack to see what was inside. Tuxedo cats are black cats with a small white areas on the front, on their chest. They may have white paws but by and large they are wholly black cats with small areas of white caused by the piebald gene.