Male cat has 'sex' with bed clothes

This is actually pretty normal and certainly not very unusual although the owner was nonplussed. My cat does something similar on my arm when I am wearing an old fleece dressing gown. I let him do it and this owner should let his cat do it. Why? Because it pleases him, and it does no harm and it's not really an inconvenience for the human caregiver in my view. Human caregivers should do all they can to please their cat. This often means allowing them to express natural behaviour.

Male cat has 'sex' with bed clothes. Screenshot.

It is entirely instinctive. You can see that he wants to hump his owner because he has grabbed the fictional female by the scruff of our neck in his jaws. He is clearly confused because he thinks that the bedsheet is a female cat.

It sort of proves that cats are very instinctive in their behaviour, and they don't rationalise what they're doing. If they did this cat would understand that he has a bedsheet in his mouth that he is trying to hump.

To me, it doesn't signify any mental health problem. It's just, as I said, instinctive and an outlet for his natural drives and motivators. Dogs like to hump their owner's leg sometimes for the same sort of reason. Our pets need an outlet for their sexual urges and there's not much of an outlet for them.

And notably, domestic cats can still have an urge to procreate even when they are neutered i.e., their balls have been removed. I think that it is a very cruel operation but a very necessary one at the same time. Losing the production of testosterone does not sometimes prevent their urge to procreate.

On that basis, it seems that the origin of the urge to procreate does not come from testosterone but survival of the species, I guess. Testosterone probably heightens the urge and drives male cats harder to pass on their genes.

 

Note: sometimes embedded videos stop working or malfunction, something I cannot, regrettably control.

14-year-old cat head butts 1.5-year-old child

This charming photograph is on the quora.com website on a page which discusses the photo-editing of pictures of cats. And the person who started off the discussion said that pictures of cats should never be photoshopped because cats are charming enough as it is, and they don't need to be photo edited. 

And you should never add human teeth to cats which, incidentally, is something we see a lot of on the Internet.

Anyway, one person who joined the conversation added a screenshot of a photograph of a 14-year-old cat head-butting an 18-month-old child and that is the photograph that you see on this page.

It is charming and it is to be expected to be honest. The ginger tabby obviously has a nice connection with this child. And he is doing what he would do with an adult person which is to scent exchange. That means he deposits his scent from the glands around his head onto the child and in doing that he receives the child's scent onto his head.

There is a metaphorical merging of minds and beings which is reassuring for him. It's a bit like saying that the child is part of his family. And as the child now smells more like him, he is part of the family.

If you click on this link blow you can read more about scent exchange.

Based on what I have read and seen on the Internet, domestic cats are curious about babies, and they often form good relationships with babies. I don't see any real danger to babies from domestic cats. There is a fear probably by some mothers that a baby might be harmed but it doesn't happen.

And there's quite a lot of work on whether a baby benefits from being in a home with a cat and indeed being close to a cat such as when sleeping with a cat on their bed at night. This is still work in progress but my reading of the science on this is that it can strengthen a child's defences against allergens. 

In effect, when a baby is in a relationship with a domestic cat it desensitises them to allergens in the air for the rest of their life. But, as mentioned, the science is not entirely conclusive on this.

The feline allergen, Fel D1, is carried around the entirety of the home on cat dander, which is a kind of dandruff, but it is in fact small skin particles and bits of hair on which is dried saliva and the dried oils of sebaceous glands in the skin both of which deposit the feline allergen onto these tiny particles which are 5 µm across.

Is cat dander bad for babies?

They are so small that they can float in the air very easily and they land on bits of furniture and so on which is why a person who is allergic to cats can feel the effects of the allergy even when they are a good distance from the cat in a home where a cat resides.

Anger in the community as alleged multiple cat killer appears in court

Accused cat killer in court. Screenshot from video below.

The video explains the story. It is pretty horrible, but the guy is innocent until proven guilty as we all know. The protesting ladies are sure that he is the cat killer because he was captured by a security camera abducting one of the cats and the footage is sufficiently clear to identify the individual.

The guy is 18-years-of-age. He looks much older.

 

Please remember I can't guarantee that the video above will remain functional as it is embedded here and served up by a computer beyond my control.

The video caption is "Orangevale alleged cat killer appears in court. Madisen Keavy was outside the Sacramento County Main Jail where she questioned the accused cat killer and spoke with neighbors in Orangevale".

There are many cat killers in many countries. In fact, all countries have cat killers because the domestic, stray and feral cat polarises opinion and there are many disturbed people, almost always men or boys, who need to express their anger by killing innocent and available animals. 

The outside domestic cat is a very convenient target sadly. 

EV charging point sign looks like a cat charging point sign!

EV stands for electric vehicle as you probably know. Charging points are springing up around various countries where the sales of EVs are sometimes outstripping diesel-engine cars. And so, we have charging points in public places. And in this instance, we have a car charging point sign which looks like a cat charging point sign because the sign is tipped up vertically. If you flip the sign through 90 degrees to the right (turn the picture on its side), you will recognise the outline of a vehicle.

Image: Nigel Stewart

The person who spotted it said:

"Woah, didn't know you could get electric cats. Can finally get rid of my petrol one."

Here it is flipped through 90 degrees to the right.

Image as above.

The sign is outside a supermarket chain in the UK called Morrisons. Nigel Stewart had nipped down to his local Morrisons in Kirkham, Lancashire to get some bits and bobs for his dog, a nine-year-old Cavachon Fozzie when he spotted the interesting sign.

I wonder if the draughtsman who drew the image thought the same thing. I don't think he or she did because if they did realise, they probably would have altered the orientation of the image and kept it horizontal.

Stupid risk averse Westerners don't set off fireworks like this!

Take a look at this. I know that it is not directly about cats, but it is indirectly because it is about being risk averse.  Risk aversion goes to the heart of everything we do and achieve. Modest risk aversion is good but being overly risk averse is bad as it stunts development and experiences. It leads to less of a life. This philosophy affects how we care for our cats. 

Risk aversion is part of decision making in cat caretaking - Michael

In fact, it goes to the heart of the debate on full-time indoor cats and indoor/outdoor cats. I am not saying that the full-time indoor cat life is bad. Far from it. Often it is very sensible. I am saying though that a lot of the time the reason why cat owners confine their cats to the home is for peace of mind. It is primarily for the benefit of the human and not the cat.

This guy (not living in the West) is not risk averse. No sir. Image: Screenshot from video. Sorry the quality is so poor.

And there has to be an 'and', when domestic cats are confined to the home for their life, they become zoo animals in effect. The owners do not compensate by entertaining their cat sufficiently. The environment is insufficiently enriched. 

I can think of only one example where the cat owner truly committed to designing the interior of their home half for the benefit of their cat companions and half for themselves. And I have seen tens of thousands of pictures and examples.

This is the big, hidden failure of the full-time indoor cat argument. If all homes with full-time indoor cats were built half for cats and half for humans plus a large catio, I'd accept it. But it is not like that.