The "Lioness", the world's first smart vibrator!

I am entitled to write about this device for women - and I admit that it is a sensitive topic - because of its name "Lioness". This site is about chatting about cats and that justifies my intervention; just about😎. This smart vibrator is described as "essentially a pelvic floor biofeedback instrument". 

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It costs US$229 (£187), which is expensive as I understand it but the cost is justified because it contains an array of sensors which pick up data during use which help to analyse a woman's orgasm which in turn allows women to better understand their orgasm and therefore to maximise their pleasure which further in turn will help to bridge "the orgasm gap". What is the orgasm gap?

This is the fact that in a 2016 study from the Archives of Sexual Behaviour it was found that 95% of heterosexual men report that they usually or always orgasm during sex compared with 65% of heterosexual women. The device has to be inserted for it to work and pick up the data.

Anna Lee and her smart vibrator the Lioness. Image: her Instagram account.

It seems to be based on the fact that researchers at Charles University in Prague have identified three key patterns of pelvic floor contractions in the female orgasm, as reported by Jane Mulkerrins in The Times.

The Lioness vibrator was created by Anna Lee, a 31-year-old Buckley educated mechanical engineer. She began her career at Amazon Lab126 which is the concept engineering arm of the tech giant.

She was interested in developing the vibrator because she felt that after eons of orgasms by humans the experts had not got to the bottom of how to maximise the female orgasm and people were left in the dark as to how it worked.

Lee intends to build an orgasm database. The idea is that the Lioness team collate and aggregate the information received from thousands of users to enable them to establish a full and informed understanding of female arousal and orgasm.

Scientists have identified three main types of female orgasm: avalanche, wave and volcano. These are the scientists who work at Charles University in Prague. They state that: 

"The wave looks like undulations or successive contractions of tension and release at orgasm. The avalanche rides on a higher pelvic floor tension, with contractions that lower the tension downward during orgasm. The volcano rides on a lower pelvic floor tension but then explodes into tension and release during orgasm".

The description comes from a man - which may irritate some women - and whose name is James Pfaus, a professor of neuroscience at the University. Their study is reported in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. I expect that you can access it online for a small fee.

Small dogs beat cats when looking for love

I am afraid that this is something that domestic cats can't really do very well or hardly at all: walk on a lead with a man! How often do you see that? Almost zero is the answer but research from the University of Jaen in Spain indicates that men who are unlucky in love might have a solution in the shape of a pint-sized pooch.

Orlando Bloom looks safe to women! Photo: WireImage. On July 16th 2020 it was reported that he was heartbroken about the loss of his dog.

Scientists in Spain found in a study involving 300 women that when they looked at men with small dogs, they were perceived as being less intimidating and threatening. The women said that they felt "more in control, safer, and calmer" when around men with small dogs. It appears that big dogs don't do the same thing which is unsurprising seeing as the kind of men who like big dogs are probably quite big (or aggressive?) themselves and, in any case, big dogs are intimidating.

The female participants in this study were showed a range of photographs of men and women on their own or with a small dachshund dog or a medium-sized Portuguese podengo-like mixed breed dog.

They were shown two types of photograph. In one, the context was positive i.e. a well-lit urban space in the daytime. In the other the context was negative being a dimly lit quiet street at night. The participants were asked to imagine they were alone and that the person was walking towards them.

When those people who were walking towards them were accompanied by a dog, either small or medium-sized, the participants responded more positively than when they were alone.

The researchers said that:

"The small dog prompts more positive emotional reactivity and higher levels of safety than the medium-sized dogs in most emotional contexts, pointing out that emotional and safety benefits from dog presence might also be related to size."

One of the study authors, Raphael Delgado, suggested that the presence of a dog would indicate that a man was nurturing and capable of caregiving which made them less threatening in the eyes of the female participants.

He also said that a dog's presence "promotes a sense of safety". And even in intimidating and frightening settings such as a dimly lit street the presence of a dog had a soothing effect.

Sadly, this is where dogs outdo cats. As I recall, when women see men with cats, they think they are gay or weak. Perhaps I have exaggerated but it is something like that.

Hannah Betts of The Times writes amusingly about her boyfriend's experiences when walking with their whippet. She says that their whippet increased her boyfriend's allure from their very first outing. She said:

"As she danced around the park like a tiny gray form, women of all ages charged from every corner, shouldering me out of the way to pay homage to man and pup. Later, when she became tired, Terence had to carry her up the Kings Road tucked into his Barbour. Cue a conga line of fainting Sloanes."

Clearly, for Hannah Betts's boyfriend, Terence, the small dog works wonders if a man is looking for love.

Amazon delivery driver gingerly places packages on porch and briskly retires (cat food on porch)

Screenshot. Words added.

On this person's front porch is a small bowl of cat food. I guess the bowl is a cat food bowl judging by its size. The female delivery driver spots the bowl and pauses (see pic). She then gingerly proceeds to place the two packages on the porch and moves away quickly. Gotta be scared of cats or is allergic to cats!? But she does a nice job of delivering the packages despite her concern. It is a nice little vignette of modern life as lots of us depend upon the God Amazon for all our needs. Are we getting lazy? Or are we lazy? Heck it is no wonder we struggle to keep our weight down.

Please remember that this is a video served by Reddit.com and therefore I have no control over it. It might stop working or leave a link to their website to see the video there. I have added a screenshot in case the video disappears.

Cat plays with Ukrainian machine gun bullets

I find the juxtaposition of this cat playing with deadly armaments rather sickening to be honest. On the one hand we have humans killing each other with deadly force and on the other hand we have a playful cat who has no idea what is going on in respect of human warfare playing with machine gun bullets. It goes right over their head. Until they are killed in a Russian bomb explosion or a bullet or the apartment in which the cat lives is destroyed.

I'm told in a report by Nathan Winograd, an American animal advocate, that more than 300,000 animals have been killed in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. It is not talked about enough, hardly at all but it is in the background and it is horrendous and it should deeply trouble the world's animal advocates.

Screenshot. Cat plays with bullets

But Ukraine must keep on fighting until they have kicked the Russians out of their country. And it has been argued today that they will have to kick them out of Crimea as well. And it is a fallacy to argue that the West is fuelling this war. 

The war has been created by Russia and nobody else. It can be stopped by Russia and nobody else. To argue that the West should stop supplying armaments to Ukraine as a way of ending the war and negotiating a settlement in which Ukraine hands over a part of the country to the Russians is a false argument. 

If you do that the Russians will simply take more of Ukraine in the future. It is an argument of defeat and failure and there comes a time when you have to do the right thing. There are occasions when things are black-and-white, good or bad and this is one of those occasions.

On World Cat Day, Ukrainian combat cats help the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to load the tape with cartridges😺🇺🇦#CatDay #CatsOnTwitter #CatsofTwittter #Caturday #cats #Ukraine #UkraineRussiaWar #Ukrainian #ZSU #ArmedForces pic.twitter.com/gtTNxjl4Yv

— Vitalis (@VitalisViVa) August 8, 2022

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Leopards move on to land reserved for new cheetah arrivals in India

You may have heard that the Indian authorities want to reintroduce the cheetah into India after they became extinct in that country in 1952 due to persecution by hunters, diminishing prey and a loss of habitat. It is a brave policy to reintroduce the cheetah into India perhaps primarily because there might not be enough space for them. They are fussy about where they live as they like open grasslands and scrub forests and there is not much of it in India.

The beautiful cheetah. Leopards have moved onto land reserved for new cheetah arrivals in India. It has caused some consternation among the rangers.

They've chosen the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary a.k.a. Kuno National Park. And sadly, their efforts to bring cheetahs back to India for the first time in 70 years have been undermined by native leopards as they have moved into the enclosure set aside for the new arrivals.

The plan was to bring eight cheetahs from Namibia in Africa which is the place where most of them currently exist on the planet. But park rangers at the Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, have been forced to jump into action having discovered that six leopards invaded the 5 km² fenced area of the National Park allocated to the cheetahs.

The rangers have managed to trap and tranquilize three leopards and moved them to a different area of the park which is located 60 miles west of Shivpuri in central India. The three remaining leopards have yet to be trapped and the rangers are becoming nervous.

Amritanshu Singh, who is in charge of the enclosure, said: "The camera traps show us the path the leopards are taking and where they are. We have set up leghold traps, which do not hurt the animal but set off an alarm telling us they are inside the cage".

The last cheetahs in India were hunted down by a maharajah following decades of declining numbers. Narendra Modi's government was very proud in declaring the reintroduction of cheetahs into his country after a deal with the authorities in Namibia.

The plan is to import more from South Africa over the forthcoming five years to a maximum of 50. Wildlife campaigners have questioned the practicalities of this project and whether the conditions are right for cheetahs to return to India. They have described the project as a "vanity project".

The authorities have prepared for the reintroduction of the fastest land animal by moving about 100 deer into the area so that they have access to prey in what will be initially unfamiliar surroundings.

They fear that the cheetahs may struggle to acclimatise in part because they would have to compete against the big cats. They mean tigers and leopards. I don't know whether tigers are in this part of the park, probably not. I suspect that cheetahs will purposefully avoid leopards but it will curtail their movements.

Singh said: "African leopards do not typically like cheetahs so it may be the same with Indian leopards, who, moreover, have never seen a cheetah in their lives. It will be interesting to see their reaction."