Will Powers is a celebrity seeker living vicariously through his Guinness World Record Savannah cat

OPINION ON THE NEWS: Dr. William John Powers of Farmington Hills, USA is all over the news and has been for about a month. There are endless numbers of pictures of him with his Guinness World Records titleholder as the world's tallest living domestic cat.

Fenrir and Powers. The Guinness World Records tallest domestic cand his owner. Image: Guinness World Records.

The accolade goes to Fenrir, a second filial Savannah cat measuring 18.83 inches to the shoulder on January 29, 2021.

I have a strong sense that this man, a Michigan physician and HIV specialist, is desperate for celebrity and he gets it vicariously through his cats.

I say 'cats' because four of Powers' cats have officially won the following Guinness World Records:

1. Altair Cygnus Powers – The Guinness World Records title holder for the longest tail on a living domestic cat. His tail measures 16.07 inches.
2. Arcturus Aldebaran Powers – The Guinness World Records title holder for the tallest cat ever, and previously held the title for the tallest living domestic cat. He died in a fire in 2017.
3. Cygnus Regulus Powers – A silver Maine Coon who held the record for the longest tail on a living domestic cat. Cygnus also died in the 2017 fire. 

He always names his cats after him. More publicity seeking in my opinion.

Mr Powers story is rather remarkable because two of his previous record holders as you can note above died in a fire.

But what is apparent is that he is constantly chasing records. I think he does this because he knows he will achieve celebrity. And I don't like it. There is something wrong with the man.

There is an absurd obsession by humankind in chasing cat records. What is the point of this record? It is the tallest domestic cat from the ground to the shoulder. Does that really mean anything?

It just means that the cat has long legs! Unsurprising as the wild cat ancestor of the Savannah cat is the serval which has the longest legs to body size of all cats. 

It doesn't mean that Fenrir is the biggest domestic cat. There are some extraordinary Maine Coon cats which are bigger than this Savannah cat.

This particular Guinness World Record is, as I have suggested almost meaningless, but Mr Powers has latched onto it, perhaps realising that it is a rather artificial award but nonetheless gone for it and achieved the result he wanted.

In an earlier post I suggested, tentatively, that Fenrir was a little bit overweight. He seems to have fixed that problem but in a recent interview he states that Fenrir is "ravenously" hungry. This has put pressure on Mr Powers to limit his cat's diet because he was getting too big.

It seems, therefore, that I was correct in my assessment. However, in more recent photographs it appears that he has lost some weight.

It is nearly always Savannah cats which achieve this particular award. The most famous Savannah cat to achieve it was Magic. I made a video about this cat. Actually, I made more than one video. She was a female. I don't know whether she still alive.

She was an F1 Savannah cat. Fenrir is an F2 Savannah cat which means second generation from the wild. Normally F1s are larger than F2s but clearly that is not always the case.

As I recall, Guinness World Records did away with the world's fattest cat because it encouraged people to overfeed their cats and make them unhealthily fat.

I personally don't think Guinness should be involved with world records for domestic cats. I'm being a grumpy old man, but it tends to encourage human behaviour which is not really desirable.

CCTV captured cruel cat owner beating his cat

The MailOnline and other news media outlets are reporting on the cruel behaviour of Artur Zakowicz, 46, roughly picking up his cat, Bashik (tuxedo cat), by the loose skin on his back (not the scruff) and hitting him six times with his hand and flattening him to the ground. It is all on CCTV video and the quality is good.

I can't show the video here because the advertisers will object. And in any case, it will be unpleasant. Sorry, if that is disappointing but why watch an unpleasant video of cat cruelty? I will publish a distant video screenshot which should be okay. See below. 

If you want to see the video and some more stills, please visit the MailOnline page by clicking on this link (opens new page).

Artur Zakowicz beats his cat Bashik in the street with CCTV watching. Credit: see image.

Ironically the CCTV cameras appears to be on a police station building (Blacon Police Station).

Bashik clearly struggled to escape as you would expect and managed to do so after 34 seconds precisely of being beaten.

There is no doubt that the experience must have been frightening and painful for his cat. He was tracked down by the RSPCA from the video footage.

RPSCA inspector Naomi Morris accompanied a police officer to Zakowicz's flat where he admitted the attack.

Bashik. Credit as per photo.

I think it is fair and useful to state that Zakowicz is a Polish name. Just for the record. Poles have a higher proportion of prisoners relative to their population in the UK than all other nationalities (868 in prison) bar Albanians who are miles out in front (1.5 million). I am being factual, please note.

By the time a veterinarian examined the cat it was 23 days after the assault and the cat had recovered.

However, the vet said that: "Persisting signs of bruising and soft tissue swelling would not be expected when considering the examination was carried out 23 days after the CCTV incident."

There were no skeletal injuries. Zakowicz was convicted of causing unnecessary suffering to a cat under the Animal Welfare Act 2006.

Bashik was seized and taken from him and will be rehomed by the RSPCA. On the 14th of October he was banned from keeping animals for five years. And sentenced to 15 days of rehabilitation activity (that won't do much good!), 200 hours of unpaid word, and pay a victim surcharge of £114 and costs of £500.

President Xi Jinping President of the People's Republic of China supports animal cruelty

My bold statement in the title is backed up, time and again, by the cruelty against cats and dogs perpetrated by the traders of these animals in supplying them to the cat and dog meat markets in the south of China; specifically, the city of Guangzhou where cat and dog meat is very popular.

That's the first point. The second point is this: President Xi has openly declared to the world in a speech that he supports the cat and dog meat market. He sees it as a tradition which should not be eradicated. Behind his permanent, plastic, fixed half-smile is a man who is cruel to animals.

That sinister fixed grin:

Xi Jinping can change things at a stroke but refuses to. That fixed grin hides a cruel heart. Picture: Wikipedia.

The president is very fond of Chinese traditions which is to be expected. What is not to be expected and what is not to be desired is to retain cultural traditions which are abjectly and obviously cruel to animals.

This shows a myopia in the president. It's a disregard of animal welfare. If the general disregard of animal welfare by the culture of the Chinese living in China interest you, you should read an article I wrote recently about the famous contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, who currently lives in Portugal.

He has exhibited all over the world and is a renowned artist. He is also well known to be a cat lover and he finds cats more interesting than humans.

RELATED: Brilliant, compassionate Ai Weiwei loves cats and finds them more interesting than humans.

In addition, he has shed some light on the cultural traditions of the Chinese living in China which helps explain why there is a prevalence of animal cruelty in that country combined with an almost total lack of animal welfare laws. There is no legal protection in China to almost all the animals in that country.

It is hard to comprehend that fact in the modern world. This is the 21st-century. Even the most backward country has animal welfare laws of some sort. And yet China resolutely refuses to introduce them.

And once again a story from that country emerges which supports this neglectful and archaic attitude towards animals.

Death Truck

It's all over the Internet news media. Every so often we get the same story from China about animal cruelty. In this instance almost 400 dogs and cats died in a China death truck. The animals were being shipped south as mentioned and because they pile the animals together in a rickety old truck in rusty cages lots of them die on the way. They die of starvation, lack of water, suffocation et cetera.

In all, almost 1500 animals were being trafficked on this occasion. Police stopped the truck on a highway heading south. It was halfway on its 1200 km journey according to Humane Society International.

Fortunately, there are some emerging animal welfare organisations in China which can step in and rescue these animals on occasions.

Rescuers gathered at the scene including staffers from Capital Animal Welfare Association.

It discovered hundreds of dead cats and dogs and the ones that weren't dead were found to suffer from open wounds, broken bones, respiratory disease and severe dehydration.

They were treated as best they could at the roadside and then transported to a nearby school as a holding facility in preparation taking them to shelters when and where possible.

The estimated that most of the 718 dogs on the truck was stolen pets. Yes, they were snatched from homes.

One worker said: "I’ve attended many rescues of dogs and cats from the meat trade, but never before have I encountered such a shocking scene. 

This was a death truck, crammed full of desperate, frightened, traumatised animals caged up with their dead and dying companions. The smell of death, diarrhoea and vomit was overwhelming, and the sound of the animals whimpering and crying for our attention, was just heart-breaking."

Many of the workers were shocked and had tears in their eyes. One of them said: "Such appalling cruelty bring shame on China and shame on the majority of Chinese people who want nothing to do with this despicable trade". If that was correct the people of China would be up in arms about it but they are not.

The truck drivers were detained by police and the trader is facing an investigation by the Agriculture Bureau. It is said that they may face charges for transporting sick animals across provincial boundaries without legally required quarantine papers.

Notice that they are in breach of some technicality. There's nothing wrong in China in shipping thousands of dogs and cats south to be eaten after being brutally slaughtered.

It is truly time that this stops and the best way to stop it if the President of the People's Republic of China bans the trade immediately.

2 tips to keep down cat poop odours

One of these tips is common sense and the other I had not heard of before. A lot of cat owners are probably concerned from time to time about the smell from their cat's litter tray. On the Internet, there is a lot of discussion about keeping down odours. 

I remember one resourceful man with about a dozen cats having an entirely odour free home because he had built a very sophisticated extraction system for several cat toilets. I was very impressed because his home was entirely odour-free. Not many people can do that.

RELATED: Foul ammonia odour exposes homes where there are too many cats.

Coffee grounds are an odour suppresser apparently. Image in public domain.

The first obvious tip is to clean the cat litter as soon as your cat has gone to the toilet. That solves the problem more or less. The difficulty is that you have to be retired or working from home to do this.

Many more people work from home thanks to Covid. So, this obvious tip can be employed.

And it helps to have a litter tray which is easy to get out. There are some beautiful pieces of furniture with litter trays inside them. They fit into the elegant home very well. But access to the litter tray inside is trickier. 

This slight barrier to getting at the litter tray may put off the owner clearing up the litter. This means that odours could leak out of this elegant furniture. The suggestion is that you should have a litter tray which is not tucked away in a nice bit of furniture. This comes down to how houseproud you are and how practical and pragmatic you are.

Multi-cat homes are an added problem in this respect. You should have one cat litter tray per cat. I'm sure people living in multi-cat homes get used to the odours. That's the next tip! Ignore the smell. Get used to it. And don't have any guests in the home! And keep your windows shut 😎. My neighbour does all of this.

I've just read other fancy little tip about reducing the smells of use cat litter. I guess people throw it away in the trash can or waste bin. My cat goes to the toilet outside these days. When I had a cat litter tray, I used to bag it up very carefully which kept the odours in before throwing it away.

Note: read the last paragraph, please.

But a lady from Edinburg in Virginia, USA says that she throws a handful of cheap coffee grounds in the container which effectively suppresses smell. She said: "There's no longer a smell of something dead being in there".

I researched coffee masking or suppressing the smell of poop. Coffee contains caffeine which contains nitrogen which increases carbon's ability to eliminate sulphur from the air. Fancy stuff.

However, you have to carbonised coffee grounds to make them useful as an older suppressant. Perhaps coffee grounds still work to a certain extent in suppressing the odour of cat poop. That must be the explanation as to why the lady from Virginia found it so effective.

You might like to give it a try and if you do, please make a comment.

P.S. Coffee grounds can be used as a cat deterrent! People shouldn't use coffee grounds to suppress the odour of cat poop by putting them next to the cat litter tray. I think that's important. Cats like the smell of their poop. They don't like their litter tray to be deodorised and smelling of perfume. It can put them off using it.

Also, caffeine apparently is toxic to cats and dogs and therefore this tip is only about suppressing the smell of waste cat litter. That's important too.

Wood-eating yeast in cat food is okay

If you are concerned about sustainability and the environment and most people aren't in my judgement you might be interested to know that a wood-eating yeast in cat food has been found to be highly palatable and digestible. 

Torula yeast. Picture believed to be in the public domain.

It's a fungus and it can be used as a pet food ingredient. The yeast is called torula yeast (Cyberlindnera jadinii). It feeds on woody biomass and that's useful because there's a lot of forests being cut down and therefore a lot of biomasses lying around facilities which can be used to grow this yeast.

Apparently, it is easy to manipulate and extrude and therefore it can be converted into a pet food ingredient conveniently. It doesn't contain allergens or heavy metals, but it does provide amino acids. Unbeknown to many cat owners some cat foods contain heavy metals.

Torula yeast is approved as an ingredient by the AAFCO in America. It has a safe history of use. A Kansas State University study compared cat food made with torula yeast and others made with chicken meal, soybean meal and pea protein extract. 

It came out of the tests well on my reading of a summary of the study. Crude protein digestibility is similar to the other three ingredients. Chicken meal had a higher gross energy digestibility than the yeast, but the fungus was similar to the other diets.

When torula yeast is deactivated and dried it looks like a powder. It adds a smoky flavour to foods. It has a meat-like taste. It's been added to dog food, cat food and human food. And therefore, cat food manufacturers who claim that they only use human grade ingredients can add torula yeast without lying!

In human food the yeast sometimes substitutes monosodium glutamate as a flavour enhancer. It can improve the texture and flavour of many foods. As I understand it torula yeast is sprayed onto dry cat and dog food as a flavour enhancer.

For those people who do actually read the label for the ingredients of cat food, if they bump into torula yeast as an ingredient they should not be concerned on my understanding and having carried out some research. But this advice is provided without liability! Please do your own research ✔️😎.

What can I do to protect my cat and myself in a nuclear attack?!

A topical question bearing in mind the current tensions in Europe and Ukraine is whether you are thinking about preparing for nuclear war! I don't know about you but sometimes it crosses my mind that I should do something to protect myself and my cat in the event that Putin does the unthinkable and commences a nuclear war. 

The fortified door of a shelter. Apartment blocks in Finland often have such shelters in the basement if there is no community shelter nearby. Note the international civil defence symbol on the door. Photo: MPorciusCato (Wikipedia)

It is very unlikely that there will be a nuclear war, but it is not implausible to believe that he might set off a series of tactical nuclear bombs which may escalate to nuclear war. It would certainly escalate to NATO intervening on the ground, I think. That in turn may result in a catastrophic nuclear war. Putin has hinted at this.

So, what do you do to help save the life of your cat and yourself? I did a bit of research and as you might expect there is not much to do 😢😒 but obviously it depends where the bombs go off 😊😒.

The first problem is that there won't be any real warning. So, as mentioned, it depends where the nuclear bomb goes off. If you live deep in the countryside and the bomb goes off in the capital city of the country in which you live, you've got to think about radiation and whether you are downwind of the explosion.

If you are within say 5-10 miles of the explosion, you'll probably die anyway because the blast wave will demolish everything unless you have a shelter.

And all the advice given, always comes back to shelters but how many people have a shelter underneath their home or in their backyard? Not many. The rich and famous probably have shelters stocked fully with some great food, a bathroom and a toilet et cetera et cetera but for the masses living in apartments or homes we don't have these extravagant facilities.

If you are outside when the blast occurs, and you survive find shelter and remove all your clothes and dispose of them and shower to get rid of any radiation on you.

@perkyprepper Reply to @ashleybrookenicol Nuclear Survival 101 🙏🏼 #nuclearprep #nuclearwar #preppertok #russia #nuclearfallout #ww3 #ukraine #shtf ♬ Blade Runner 2049 - Synthwave Goose

Some countries are more tuned in to the possibility of a nuclear war. Finland appears to be an example as they have public shelters. The Helsinki metro stations double as hard shelters. The Finnish shelter system is among the most comprehensive in the western world, being capable of accommodating the country's urban population completely. 

This is because their neighbour is bloody Russia!

And that means you'll have to find a public shelter of some sort. I live near London and I know of no shelters except there's the underground which would be a substitute shelter for millions of people. But you've got to get to it and that might not be feasible after the bomb has gone off. That's the big issue; getting to the shelter without you and your cat being poisoned by radiation.

If it's not feasible, the advice is to go to the middle of your home or the basement if you have one and close all the windows and stay put for at least 72 hours if not a couple of weeks to allow the radiation to disperse. And of course, the same applies to your cat companion. That is going to mean keeping him or her indoors for a very long time which will be very difficult if they are used to going outside unsupervised.

You should also cover all your skin and face when hiding inside your home if you don't have a proper shelter. This is to protect your skin from burns.

It also means having a lot of cat litter available and plenty of black bags to dispose of it. It seems the key to all this is that you got to stay inside unless you can find a shelter nearby either private or public.

This means that people should have a stockpile of foods both for themselves and their cat companion including medication if they are on a repeat prescription.

It also means that you should have plenty of bottled water or you can drink from your toilet cistern but that won't last long. This recommendation is important because there is a distinct possibility that the water from the main supply will be contaminated.

So that means a lot of food for yourself and your cat. It's the kind of preparation you can take if you genuinely believe that a nuclear strike will occur. The US government apparently suggests that their citizens should only eat or drink packaged food items or items that are inside a building.

Another important survival technique is to have a radio which is not powered by batteries. This will allow you to listen in on the news and find out what is going on while you are isolated in your home. You can buy hand cranked radios and I am sure that they are available on Amazon.

Once again this is down to preparation and how far you want to go. The problem is there is no warning because if there was a warning of an imminent nuclear strike perhaps in 12 hours then you could jump in a camper van or any other vehicle and get yourself to the deep countryside, to a place which is not downwind of the explosion (understand the prevailing winds of your country to work this out). And if in that place there was a fully stocked bunker together with other facilities, you would be doing pretty well the maximum you could do to survive.

But there's no point in jumping into a camper van with your cat if a nuclear explosion has gone off about 10 miles away because you are more exposed in a vehicle to radiation than you are tucked away in a safe place in your home. I guess the basic instruction here is to place as much mass between you and the radiation to protect yourself from it.

One website says that the dangerous fallout zone can reach up to 20 miles from the explosion depending upon the size of the bomb and the weather conditions. That's a question of luck whether the bomb goes off near you or hundred miles away as I see it.

But if you live in the countryside with no obvious targets within 50 or hundred miles of you then it is highly unlikely that a bomb will go off near you. But if you live in London or near London there is obviously a much greater chance that you and your cat will be incinerated or receive a killing dose of radiation if you survive the 3rd° burns which would kill you anyway and your cat.

How many cats does Martha Stewart have?

We don't know how many cats Martha Stewart has today (but it might be 2 Bengal cats) at this time 😒😢, but we do know that she has had, over the past 40 years, at least 20 cats. Martha Stewart has also adopted many other animals over this time including two dozen dogs, canaries, parakeets, ponies, donkeys, 10 horses, goats, sheep, guineafowl, turkeys, geese and 10 chinchillas. She is clearly a big fan of animals and likes to live with and care for them.

We do know that she has at least 2 cats at the moment because today, October 12, 2022, we can report that Martha Stewart has expanded her feline family. On her Instagram channel, she reported on Tuesday that she has welcomed two Bengal cats to her farm menagerie. One of them she has called Kipling. She describes Kipling as "curious" and a "mischievous feline!".

Martha's 2 new Bengal cats Oct 2022. Photos: Martha Stewart.

She said that they are acclimatising to their new surroundings which is a farm and therefore I would suggest good surroundings because they can go outside safely (I hope) and enjoy things. She said that her Bengal cats are "adventuresome, very fast and devious". The "devious" reference is probably to their ability to escape any confinement. In July, 6 of her pet peacocks were killed by coyotes in broad daylight, she said.

Her animal menagerie is possible because her estimated wealth today is around $400 million, down from a high of $2 billion at her wealthiest. The reduction in her wealth was due to a criminal conviction after a charge of nine counts of securities fraud and obstruction of justice.

My reading of the situation is that it was quite a minor crime relatively speaking as she was alleged to have gotten inside business information in order to avoid over $45,000 in stock losses.

She appears to have made a bad judgement over a relatively minor issue which cost her around $1 billion at the end of the day but in leaving herself with 400 million she's not going to starve at the age of 81.

She has the means to look after a lot of animals and good for her. We don't know how many cats she had or has at any one time, but she's been through some tragedies.

RELATED POST: 123 celebrated ailurophiles (cat lovers).

Martha and her late Princess Peony a calico Persian. Image: TMZ composite.

News media on Monday, 4 April 2022 reported that Martha Stewart was mourning the death of one of her cats, a beautiful calico Persian, after she was mistaken as an intruding animal by her four pet dogs. The Persian cat concerned was called Princess Peony. She was about 12 years of age.

At the time Stewart said: "Burying the beautiful and unusual Princess Peony. the four dogs mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenseless little self. I will miss her very badly. RIP beauty"

It does seem a little odd that her dogs mistook a resident Persian cat as an intruder as stated. Apparently, they lived together for several years. Martha's love of animals resulted at one time in her having 25 dogs and 20 cats in and around her home.

There is a hint on the TMZ website that Princess Peony died for some other reason other than as stated. I guess we'll never know. One possibility for the attack by dogs on a resident cat is that the cat was bathed completely which removed her natural oils and therefore her body scent. 

As dogs and cats identify others through their scent, it is plausible to suggest that the dogs concerned no longer recognised Princess Peony and attacked her as a stranger as a result.

It's an example, if I am right, that it is normally unwise to bathe a cat in multi-animal homes. It is probably fair to say that Persian cats are more often bathed than other cats because of their long fur which needs to be kept in good condition to prevent it matting.