Why are a cat's eyes always dilated?

The first important point to note is that the question asks why a cat's eyes are ALWAYS dilated. In other words, this is a permanent state of affairs. In this state of affairs, the irises do not contract to a narrow pupil but there are always wide open with a big circular black orb for the eye and almost no visible iris.

Dilated pupils of a cat.

The second point to note is that the muscles of the iris contract to allow much less light through the pupil on a bright day. And they relax to let in more light when the conditions are dark. There is a 135 times difference in the amount of light that the iris allows to pass into the eye between wide open and closed to a slit.

The nerves of the retina send a signal to the brain which sends another signal to the irises to relax or contract depending upon the light conditions.

If the retina is malfunctioning and not able to convert light into an image the brain receives a signal that the light conditions are dim and then directs the iris to open up to allow more light in to the eye.

And if the retina no longer works at all due to a disease such as progressive retinal atrophy or retinitis, then there will be a permanent signal to the brain to say that no light is being received and therefore the brain tells the iris to remain permanently wide open; the muscles of the iris are completely relaxed. Like a camera lens the iris is not going to be 'stopped down'. This, as stated, is a permanent state of affairs.

And behind this situation is a retina which is either malfunctioning or is no longer functioning. And therefore, if they cat's eyes are always dilated, in my view, it means that the cat's retina is malfunctioning and the cat is functionally either going blind or blind.

Progressive retinal atrophy is a gradual degeneration of the retinal cells. This is a disease that is inherited in certain breeds such as Persians, Abyssinians and possibly Siamese. It is caused by an autosomal recessive mutated gene as I understand it. There is no treatment.

Retinitis is a disease in which inflammation of the retina leads to degeneration and destruction of the light respecting cells in the retina. It may occur because of hypertension or perhaps an eye injury or for unknown reasons. High blood pressure or hypertension is one of the most common causes of retinitis. And hypertension is usually associated with hyperthyroidism and/or renal failure.

RELATED: Different pupil size in a cat's eyes - time to visit a vet.

Retinitis is also associated with feline infectious peritonitis, lymphoma, cryptococcosis, feline infectious peritonitis and toxoplasmosis. These are the underlying diseases which can lead to damage to the retina which in turn these to the eyes always being dilated.

It is normal for the eyes of a person or a cat to dilate from time to time when conditions are dark but in my view, they should not be dilated all the time. Something is wrong and a veterinarian needs to be consulted.

Girls are like cats and boys are like dogs!

What do you think? Are these the wise words of a young man on TikTok or just a nice, convenient analogy? I don't think it is as straightforward as he makes out. It get the message but you can't pigeon hole all females in the same group in terms of their attitude towards dating and the same goes for males. 

It is all depends on many things. Today in particular with the woke movement, you cannot pigeonhole all females and all males as separate groups. There is an entirely fluid group in the middle made up of members of the LGBTQIA+ community and so on. 

The sexual preferences and gender of all humanity is a spectrum. You cannot compartmentalise it in the little boxes. It is far better to visualise it as a continuous spectrum. Nonetheless, I quite like this bloke's analogy which he delivers with confidence and clearly with first hand experience.

Note: to run this video, click on the center play button followed by the play button bottom-left 😎. High tech.

Although there is another error in his analogy. He says that when you pick up a cat the cat becomes pissed off. This is not necessarily correct. 

If a stranger picks up a cat, she/he will likely be frightened, be pissed off and jump out of the person's hands. The person may get scratched if they resist. But often a cat will want to be picked up by their human caregiver and be given a nice cuddle.  Cats often ask for this. Mine does in the garden.

RELATED: The wild cat within the domestic cat which holds them back.

It just depends upon the circumstances and who is picking the cat up. I know I am stating common sense but it is wrong to paint all domestic cat with this behavioural trait. It ain't true. There is a general truth here about not forcing a cat to do something. That never works. It is far better to use one's intelligence and trick a cat to do something or you train them! The same applies to women 😎. The cat's 'independence' comes out when you try and force them to do things. That said the same also applies to men, don't you think?

Dr Fogle DVM says that some cat owners treat their cat as a dog (or as babies) which is not going to work very well. Dogs are far more obedient than cats.

RELATED: Idiotic study tries to equate cat behaviour with psychopathic human behaviour.

Ukrainian mother refugee in UK misses her cat in Ukraine and will return

Olga Pavolvska and her daughter, Masha are refugees from Ukraine who were welcomed in the UK as a consequence of Putin's invasion of their country. They are among more than 82,000 others from Ukraine in the UK. Olga found settling in the UK difficult. Her daughter, Masha, has found it easier because her English is better and being younger she is arguably more adaptable. She has made friends.

Masha and her mother Olga. She will remain in the UK while her mother will return to Ukraine. Photo: Vicki Couchman.

While her mother will return to Ukraine shortly, Masha, 15, will stay and has been offered a free place at a private school in September. She plans to go to university in the UK afterwards. Of course she misses her home in Ukraine and her friends the but it appears that she is settling well in the UK.

In an interview with The Sunday Times newspaper, Olga said: "It has been difficult and sad. I miss my dog Bekky, my cat Dafne my home and all my plants."

And of course she misses her husband. She has been married for 26 years. And she is worried that her flower business in Lviv, where she and her husband own two shops with three employees, might fold without her presence.

As I understand it, her home is in Kyiv, the capital, from which millions of residents departed and became refugees travelling towards the West and thence to Poland and thence some to other European countries. 

But Putin stopped his assault on the capital a couple of months ago and there is therefore relative calm in Kyiv while all the fighting now takes place in the east. The capital's mayor, Vitaly Klitschko, said that nearly two-thirds of the city's 3.5 million pre-war population had returned.

Olga says that Kyiv is safer that it was and the cost of living in the UK plus her home sickness and the fact that she misses her cat and dog and husband so much means that she is going back together with 2.8 million return crossings at the Ukraine border according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The cost of living in the UK is forcing many Ukrainian refugees to return. With inflation running at near 10% the cost of living is rapidly becoming more expensive than ever.

Yes, Olga is joining 2.8 million other Ukrainians returning to their country. I hope, for their sake, that Putin continues to leave Kyiv alone and that the war can be confined to the east only. This now seems to be the sole target because he wants a corridor from Russia to the eastern part of Ukraine to the Black Sea for trade purposes. And of course because he found out that he can't win a broader war and annex the whole of Ukraine.

My thanks to Hugo Daniel for his article in The Sunday Times June 26th, 2022. My apologies for stealing the photo.

Holding your cat to kill a mosquito is not a good idea

There is a video called: "Cats go bug-hunting after spotting mosquito in the house". The description is misleading. The owner is holding up his cat above his head in the hope and expectation that the cat catches a mosquito. It seems horribly contrived and it looks like they decided to make a funny video but actually it's very boring.

cat held up to catch a mosquito. Silly idea and it might cause a health problem for the cat. Screenshot from video,

It happened in the UK. One of the cats is a Siamese called Pixie and the other cat is a tabby called Wrex.

Not only is the video badly contrived, I do not think that it is a good idea either. It seems possible to me that a mosquito could bite the inside of a cat's mouth if they are held up to a mosquito like this. Or they might bite the ear flaps where the fur and skin is thin.

Although the possibility of disease transmission from mosquito the cat is slight, it must exist. In the UK I would have thought there is little risk of transmission of disease but nonetheless a mosquito bite on the ear flat would be very irritating. Or a bite just inside the mouth, on the lip for example, might be possible and I just don't see this as being practical. I am told that mosquitoes can transmit heartworm disease to cats.

This is different to allowing your cat to catch a fly and kill it or perhaps even eat it. I don't see a great problem in that. To my knowledge, cats occasionally catch flies but they don't eat them. They might occasionally but I don't think they are bothered about eating them.

The Independent newspaper reported on this silly video but the journalist made no mention of the possible health implications to the cat. They regard the video as funny and entertaining. I don't see it as entertaining at all but silly.

Of course, domestic cats treat insects as prey animals because they are part of their diet. I just see a slight risk element which is unnecessary considering this method of catching mosquito it is idiotic in the first place.

All I can do on this page is present a screenshot from the video because I can't embed it.

Sofia from Bucha, Ukraine lost her arm, her mother and her cat.

Sofia from Bucha, Ukraine lost her arm, her mother and her cat.

Sofia from #Bucha lost her arm, her mother and her cat.
Now she is in safe, but thousands of Ukrainian children continue to suffer because of russian aggression.#ArmUkraine now to save human lives and stop the killer state!
Photo by alenglish_ Sofia’s sister. pic.twitter.com/MMvEm3w1p3

— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) June 24, 2022

Note: This is an embedded tweet. 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.

Please don't forget Ukraine. Don't let the war tire you to the point where you forget about it. All of us in the free West should support Ukraine's defence against the tyrant Putin until Ukraine pushes the invading hordes out of their country. Then we should force Russia to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild Ukraine while bankrupting bloody Russia. This is part of the price Putin must pay for his mass murder and torture of innocent women and children and criminal destruction of hundreds of thousands of homes. Plus we must not forget the cats, dogs and other pets injured, starved, terrified, killed and so on. F**k Putin.

RELATED: Putin’s troops force disabled woman in wheelchair clutching tortoiseshell cat to flee her home.

Sofia. Photo by her sister.