Microwave 4 king prawns for 5 seconds for a delicious cat treat

Each cat has their own individual preferences but I would be surprised if this treat fails to please your cat. It is my cat's favourite. He requests it when I come in from buying the newspaper. It is one of those routines we all set up when living with a domestic cat. Don't overdo treats. If you do, they are no longer treats and your cat will be less interested.

Microwave for 4 king prawns four 5 seconds for a cat treat. Pic in the public domain.

I use cooked king prawns bought from a local supermarket. You might think that the price is high but with the cost of high-quality cat food equalling on a pound-for-pound basis that of human food I don't think the cost of king prawns is particularly high particularly when it is used as a treat.

I take 3-4 out of the packet and spread them out on a plate. I put the plate into my microwave and microwave them for a maximum of five seconds. This warms them up nicely. It is not essential to warm up the prawns because cats love the taste of prawns normally. But if you do warm them up it's a bonus for your cat because they absolutely love the smell and taste.

Warming up any cat food is a good idea when feeding your cat particularly when they have lost their appetite. But in the case of prawns, it must be done very gently to an absolute minimum otherwise you destroy the product. 

I then break each prawn into two pieces leaving eight small pieces of prawn on the plate. I deliver these to my cat. The reason why I break them apart is because it lets out more of that aroma which he loves and which in turn encourages him to eat. It also makes them slightly easier to get into his mouth. I have watched him push around whole prawns trying to get a grip of them.

Shrimp is a healthy product that it is high in several vitamins and minerals and is a rich source of protein. It has a high content of omega-3 fatty acids and the antioxidant astaxanthin. Antioxidants are good for health as they mop up free radicals which can damage the cells of the body. 

Free radicals can contribute to health problems such as cardiovascular and inflammatory disease, cataracts and cancer. One website calls free radicals "unstable atoms that can damage cells, causing illness and ageing."

That's my personal tip for a treat for your beloved cat companion. What about the downside? You can't feed your cat prawns all the time. They must only be a treat because they are not a balanced diet. Your cat will miss essential nutrients such as taurine and arginine.

As for environmental issues, it is said that shrimp farms tend to occupy coastal land which used to be covered by mangroves. The mangroves are drained to make way for aquaculture. This is harmful to the atmosphere because the farmers destroy the trees and vegetation of the mangrove swamp. It is akin to clearing forest for cattle to provide meat for humans. This is an environmental downside of giving shrimp treat to your cat.

Family mistakenly donated their cat to a Denver thrift store

The owners of this ginger tabby accidentally donated him to a thrift store in Denver, Colorado, UK. The way it happened is interesting. The cat had hidden inside a recliner chair. No doubt he had made a little nest for himself there. He had probably done it before several times. 

As a side note, it should be added that recliner chairs are dangerous to kittens and puppies and even adult companion animals because they go underneath them and when a person sits on them and reclines,  the mechanism under the chair shifts position and it can crush the animal.

Montequlla inside the recliner inside the thrift store. Photo: the store or Denver Animal Protection.

But that is another issue. In this instance the cat, whose name is Montequlla, was hidden inside the recliner and the family donated the recliner to the thrift store. They did it because they were moving home

They realised that they were missing their cat and had no idea what had happened. In the meantime, the store noticed the cat (meows) and called Denver Animal Protection. They scanned the micro-chip but it had not been updated. Therefore they could not contact the owners.

Jenna Humphreys of Denver Animal Protection, told the Denver Channel: "Sure enough, there's a recliner out front, and there's a little orange tabby stuck inside. Very friendly, couldn't get out. They said that they had noticed the meowing shortly after somebody had dropped it off."

The recliner. Photo: Denver Animal Protection (believed).

In the meantime, the family were frantically searching nearby houses but then realised that he could be inside the store, inside the recliner. They returned to the store. The employees of that store gave them the phone number of Jenna Humphreys at which point they were able to reunite with their cat.

They put the event down to Montequlla being stressed and a bit frightened about the impending move to a new home. Perhaps there was quite a lot of noise and commotion in the home. His home territory was being disrupted quite dramatically. He decided to hide in a place which she had used before.

Humphreys said that "It's not uncommon for us to be call to help remove animals from those situations, but this was a new one."

Good ending 👍. Photo: the husband I expect.

The family are very happy that the story ended well. And they are thankful to everyone involved who managed to arrange the reunion. I bet Montequlla is happy too. Although he now has a move to do. He won't like that. It is going to cause some more problems.

RELATED: 5 tips to make moving home with your cat a success.

There is a Facebook post on the event by the Denver Animal Shelter which is below.

Montequlla's family donated a recliner to the thrift store when they were moving. They didn't realize that their cat was...

Posted by Denver Animal Shelter on Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Dog's head turned out to be the backside of a cat!

The catch line is: Purrfectly confusing! The video was made by Carolyn Muylaert, from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, after she was baffled by what she saw on this roof. It appeared to be a disembodied dog's head staring back at her. Carolyn made a hissing noise and the "creature" moved to reveal a white-and-black cat looking at her.

Dog's head turned out to be the backside of a cat! Screenshot.

Dog's head turned out to be the backside of a cat! Screenshot after the cat turned to the videomaker, Carolyn.

It was just a simple case of the black markings on the backside and the tail being black against the white background giving the impression that this was a dog's head pointed towards her. It was an 'optical illusion' for the want of a better description.

Here is the video:

Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.

Cheetahs to be reintroduced into India after being extinct there since 1952

This is a bold project but it is nice to read about it. India is going to reintroduce cheetahs into the country. The idea was first thought of in 2009. It is finally coming to fruition. The plan is to release 35-45 cheetahs into and around Kuno National Park over the next five years said the Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav. This park is in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. The cheetahs will come from Namibia and South Africa. Namibia is the African country where there is the largest population of cheetah's in the world.

Cheetah. Image by Barry Reed from Pixabay.

The cheetah became extinct in India because of hunting under the British Raj together with loss of habitat. There were once large numbers of cheetahs in India. Emperor Akbar apparently had about a thousand of them. He used to go hunting with them because cheetahs are quite friendly and they can be semi-domesticated so you can hunt with them. You send the cheetah off to hunt some prey animal and enjoy the excitement of it. And they are very pretty wild cat. They look amazing when they run so that I guess is where the enjoyment comes from.

As mentioned in the title, they declared the cheetah extinct in India in 1952. India gained independence on 15 August 1947. The extinction in the wild of this wild cat occurred five years after independence was declared. Therefore the authorities in India must have contributed to this extinction by failing to recognise the precarious population numbers and the fact that they were at that stage near extinction. They could have taken steps to protect them but failed.

It's amazingly sad then to think that back in the day under the British Raj people took pleasure in killing them. 

The plan is to fit the animals with GPS collars and they are going to ask local residents to protect them against poachers.

It's a risky project but my research indicates that cheetahs relocate pretty well. They are one of the better wild cats in respect of relocation. They are tolerant of a wide range of environmental conditions. They don't pose a threat to humans. They just need to be protected from predation by other animals and from retaliatory killings by people.

In the past, a farmer in Namibia used donkeys to protect his calving herds. The more aggressive donkeys chased away jackals and drove away any cheetah that attempted to attack.

And the Cheetah Conservation Fund tried using guard dogs to protect livestock. They used four Anatolian Shephard guard dogs brought in from North America. It appears to been a successful because six more were later donated by a private breeder in North America and placed with collaborating farmers according to Mel and Fiona Sunquist (Wild Cats of the World).

Reintroductions of this nature can go badly wrong if the cheetah is too inexperienced to survive in the wild. They could end up being killed by predators or simply starving.

Cat fascinated with the bellybutton of their pregnant owner

Cat fascinated with the bellybutton of their pregnant owner. Screenshot.

The title to this Reddit.com video is "Cat realises owner is pregnant". But when you watch the video you see this charming cat primarily interested in the smell of this pregnant woman. And it seems to me that this cat is particularly fascinated with the smell emanating from the woman's bellybutton. That's the central object in the short video. 

We are not sure why this cat is so fascinated with that aspect of this woman's anatomy. It must be the smell. And perhaps the smell is linked to the woman's pregnancy. Does a woman smell differently when they are pregnant? I'm sure they do.

Well perhaps, I am not be so sure. Although a woman's sense of smell apparently improves when they are pregnant. This may account for the belief that they feel that "stink". This does not explain why this cat is particularly fascinated with this smell of her bellybutton.

It seems that it is not uncommon for a cat to sniff a woman's bellybutton. On the BabyCenter.com website a visitor said: "My cat sniffs my bellybutton but only since I've been pregnant. It's the strangest thing."

And in response to that comment, another woman said that cats know [when you're pregnant]. This woman is convinced that dogs know as well. Her dog puts her ears up against her belly to listen to the baby. And another member of this website says that her cat has been trying to lay on her belly since she got pregnant. She prevents it happening because it is uncomfortable.

And yet another says that animals know when you're pregnant. One pregnant woman said: "My cat hasn't left me alone since around the time I found out! He constantly wants to be on me or at least next to me with his head resting on my belly or some part of him touching me LMAO! "

She let him do it because she loves him to death. Her husband is deployed she said. I presume that means that her husband is in the military and is deployed to another place for a certain time. Therefore it's nice for her to have "a little extra attention sometimes, even if it is from the cat ha ha!"

The big questions are: do cats know when their owner is pregnant? And what does the smell of a pregnant woman say about her to a cat? Does it tell the cat that she is pregnant? Or that she has change in some way? We know that cats identify others by their body odour. I am sure that cats recognise the change in a pregnant woman. It is a mystery what it means to a cat.

Note: This is a video from another website which is embedded here. Sometimes they are deleted at source which stops them working on this site. If that has happened, I apologise but I have no control over it.