Bosses have decided that homeworking is a disaster. What happens to your cat?

During the long Covid lockdowns both myself and my friend, Barry, agreed that the extensive periods of working from home which employees enjoyed would lead to disasters in terms of productivity. 

Bosses have decided that homeworking is a disaster. What happens to your cat or dog? Image: MikeB

It was a common-sense assessment. Notwithstanding this, the government promoted the benefits of working from home and of course employees in general loved it. 

They had found utopia and many took the opportunity to adopt a cat or dog. They might have been thinking about it for a long time.

However, very often this was a short-term decision. Adopters during Covid lockdowns were often not looking long-term. They was simply taking advantage of that moment and seeking animal companionship.

And now, getting on for three years after those early days of Covid, bosses are gradually becoming enlightened about the lack of productivity that working from home brings to their corporation.

It is human nature to take advantage of a lack of supervision. Humankind is essentially lazy. And if humans can gain advantage for free, they will. Not everyone falls into this mentality but the vast majority do.

It seems that many leaders simply forgot this basic characteristic of human nature. There is an article in The Times today by Gerard Baker - an opinion piece - which he has titled: "Zoom and bust: why homeworking's a disaster".

He states that Netflix streaming data used to show that peak usage was during the weekends but now, in the UK, it is weekday afternoons! Does that surprise you?

Homeworkers are taking an extended break in the afternoon to watch a movie on Netflix or one of their series. Richmond Park is inundated with cycle riders mid-afternoon, mid-week.

There are numerous tales of a sharp drop-off in aggregate work performance over the past years according to Gerard Baker. Labour productivity has plummeted since the middle of 2020. And he says that "anecdotal evidence of the inefficiency of working from home is plentiful".

The tech companies of Silicon Valley are shedding staff in their tens of thousands. They hired extra staff during Covid lockdowns. There's been a big falloff in activity and share values have also plummeted. Even Google's market value is down by one-third from its peak about a year ago. Meta's value (formerly Facebook) has dropped by nearly two-thirds.

The truth of the matter is that these big tech companies got very fat, lazy and sloppy. They were making too much money. It was too easy. I have visited Google's offices in London several times to work with them. Compared to the average office theirs is a like a playground for adults. Rows and rows of computer stations without anybody using them. Free food, free this and free that. The average wage is £250,000 according to my research. And many of the employees are in their mid-20s. It was unsustainable in my view. Perhaps that unsustainability has come to fruition.

That is the long introduction. The bosses want the workers to come to the office and return to the status quo and work harder, I guess. Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter points to a radical rethink on how big tech operates.

James Gorman, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, had a warning for employees: "They don't get to choose their compensation. They don't get to choose their promotion. They don't get to choose to stay at home five days a week."

They've got to come in. For the cat loving aficionados and dog owners this can spell the end of a good relationship if they were thinking short-term or if they hadn't really foreseen the possibility of being forced back to work at the office.

They're going to have to give up their companion animals. For someone like me the critical issue is not the person but the animal. What's going happen to them - the animals? They're going to end up in a shelter. They're going to end up being sold online, on Facebook. They going to end up, some of them, being euthanised at shelters because suddenly the marketplace is full of unwanted cats and dogs.

I have painted a very bleak picture and I don't think it is actually that bleak because many people will retain their companion animal. But even under those circumstances the animal is going to be left alone all day. Some dog experts say that a dog should not be left alone for more than four hours.

Many people believe that the domestic cat is temperamentally ideally suited to being left alone all day. Wrong. Cats are sociable animals. They rely on the human caregiver very often for the only company and interaction that they have. We can't expect them to be alone all day, snoozing and killing time and be content. They are liable to suffer stress, over-groom and perhaps develop cystitis.

All these problems are due to a lack of foresight. The whole of the UK was lockdown for many, many months. Sweden did not employ the lockdown. They relied upon their citizens to use common sense to socially distance. They lived normal lives with this modification.

This was a much cheaper way of reacting to Covid. The £400 billion borrowed in the UK to give 80% of their salary to people confined to their homes plus grants to businesses has left this country with a £17 billion monthly bill on interest payments alone. 

This is killing any possibility of spending into welfare which is greatly needed. For example, there is a great need to fund social care. That's impossible now because the money has run out and we are being bled dry by interest payments.

It's a disaster both of people and their pets. They should never have believed that working from home was viable for the long term. It suits some professions but even then, employee should not stay at home because they lack productivity.

People have to come into work and interact and be stimulated and supervised. When they do that, they will have a different perspective on whether they are in a position to adopt a companion animal. Very often they should not because they cannot provide quality caregiving.

Texas is introducing restrictions on what landlords can financially impose on tenants with pets

The Texas legislature is debating a bill - a proposed law - which would restrict what landlords can demand from their tenants if they are pet owners. Essentially, it limits what landlords can include in the landlord-to-tenant agreement which is normally some kind of lease.

An apartment for a cat owner! Image: MikeB at PoC.

If the bill passes the legislature and is signed off by the governor the legislation “would allow landlords to either cap a monthly pet fee at $20 or collect a one-time refundable pet deposit at the outset of someone’s lease. However, the proposal would prevent them from doing both.”. 

Nathan Winograd, perhaps America's greatest animal advocate currently, says that this sort of legislation is long overdue "as is an outright ban on housing discrimination for families that include an animal companion" to use his words.

At this time, I do not have any more information about this change in Texas's legislation but clearly it is great news because arguably there is an undersupply of accommodation for tenants who live with a companion animal. It can be a great barrier for these people. 

There are many excellent people who can't afford to purchase their own property and therefore have to rent who are in effect barred from adopting a companion animal. Or, they have to give up their existing companion animal when they move into rented accommodation.

This is one reason why cats and dogs are relinquished to animal shelters which is unacceptable. Landlords have always had the ability to protect their interests when letting their accommodation to pet owning tenants. 

They can simply increase the deposit to pay for any damage by a companion animal and they can adjust the terms and conditions of the agreement which makes the retention of that deposit when the tenant leaves more likely. The new legislation restricts the financial imposition applied by landlords on tenants with pets

Terrifying picture of a cat sitting under a bunch of lilies

The cat's caregiver urgently but innocently asks: "HELP! I've heard lilies are toxic to cats. I was given this bouquet today as a bday gift and she keeps following it wherever I put it (outside, inside, living room, bedroom, bathroom). I cut the pistils and vacuumed the pollen and spores, not sure if that's enough. Are cats also attracted to lilies?"

Picture by u/Idrialis on Reddit.com

I find the picture terrifying to be honest. Anybody who has done some research on the effect of lilies on domestic cats should be terrified of this plant. There is no place for this plant in a home where there is a domestic cat or cats. They should be completely banned from the home. Even if they are a present on a birthday as is the case in this instance. Lilies and cats should be separated permanently and completely.

Why are lilies toxic to cats?

Even a small amount of pollen from one of the toxic lily species can kill through kidney failure. The lady says that she has removed some of the toxic elements of the lily and hoovered the area around the lilies but this is not enough. Not in my view. Perhaps I'm being a little bit over reactive but the problem is this: the risk is very high and because they can be fatal there is no place for them.

The top 10 cat poisons in the USA and lilies are in the number 1 spot.

There are some species of lily which are non-toxic. The problem is it's very difficult to know which ones are and which ones are not. Unless you are an expert and you can recognise lily species. There's quite a large number.

There are other plants you can put in the home although most popular plants, my research, can be toxic. Domestic cats like to eat plants sometimes because they like to eat grass and grass is a plant. They eat vegetation to improve their health which is ironic.

Dr. Desmond Morris says that domestic cats eat plants to ingest folic acid which is contained within grass. This helps with the transportation of haemoglobin in the blood around the body. That's his theory. Another theory is that they eat grass as roughage to help pass hairballs through their digestive tract. And another theory is that it makes him sick to throw up hairballs. Take your pick.

All these reasons are another reason why lilies should be removed from the home and never accepted even if it is your birthday and they are a nice present.

The lady in question posted her picture about 24-hour's ago. I hope and pray that her cat has not ingested a small amount of lily material during that time. If they have, they may be on the way to death. That sounds exaggerated. I don't think it is.

The ultimate video of a cat getting into a vase. Manic and awesome.

I have seen many domestic cats obsessed with getting into glass jars, vases and boxes including very small boxes. But this when I think takes the biscuit. It's a supreme effort. Although I have seen a Bengal cat get into a billiard table pocket! Yep, equally extreme behaviour. Cats love tight spaces and they love investigating which is why they need 9 lives 😃. 

Here is that Bengal cat doing his extreme thing:

And here is a link to the page: Bengal cat gets into a billiards' table pocket.

The largish cat has to make two stabs at it. Determined. Admirable. Some cats love the security of tight spaces and it doesn't matter how they achieve that sensation: box, vase, jar you name it. 

Father and daughter 'wear' the same 'mask'

My reading of the genetics behind this father and daughter cat looking as they do (very cute and very rare) is that they have the white spotting gene or piebald gene in their genetic makeup and it has caused this highly unusual Zorro mask to develop. I guess it is just by chance that the white spotting gene had this effect upon the way the pattern developed. I don't think that there is any special genetic mutation going on here.

Screenshot.

The white spotting gene normally simply results in a standard bicolour cat. These two are bicolour cats but the markings are remarkable. Normally the markings are just black-and-white blobs or a white background with markings being created by darker coloured fur. An example of a bicolour cat is the Harlequin. I have a page on bicolor cats. Please click on the link below.

Solid and white cat coats.