Imaginative Humane Society fundraiser goes viral

The Animal Friends and Humane Society, in Hamilton, Ohio have come up with an imaginative fundraiser on their Facebook page. They are asking visitors to provide them with the name of an ex-partner who they believe behave badly towards them. That name will go onto the base of a litter box and the litter box will be used for the rescue cats in their care.

Humane Society fundraiser goes viral on news media. Image: MikeB

They are accepting donations between February 1-12 and on their Facebook page there are instructions on how to make the donation. It is via an American mobile payment service called Venmo which is owned by PayPal.

There is a QR code on their Facebook page which you can scan using your smartphone or "search the Charity @AFHStreasurer2011." Your chance to kill 'two birds with one stone' to use an appropriate saying. You can clear your conscience of that pesky relationship that you had which bugs you and you can do some good for animal welfare.

A pathetic reason for giving up a cat to a shelter or they lied

This story on social media irritated me. All I have is the headline. And it is this: "This cat was handed into my shelter for eating the family hamster". I think that is a pathetic reason for giving up on your cat and putting them in jeopardy (unless they lied). 

Putting a cat into a shelter does indeed put them in jeopardy because it depends upon another person coming along to adopt him or her. If they don't, they are in dangerous territory; they can be euthanised.

So why is the reason for relinquishment pathetic? The people who adopted the cat in the first place either had a hamster at that time or they bought a hamster while they had their cat. Either way, they knew that there would be a danger of their cat attacking the hamster. 

A pathetic reason for giving up a cat to a shelter or they lied. Image: skeletonclock on reddit.com

They created the conditions under which their cat eventually did attack and kill the family hamster.

If fault is to be apportioned it goes a hundred percent to the human care givers. The cat was simply behaving instinctively and naturally. I don't need to go on about this because it's obviously wrong for the owners to give up their cat for this reason. It is also obviously wrong for them to place a cat and hamster together.

I'm not saying it was deliberate. It can't have been but it was due to carelessness in some shape or form. Perhaps the hamster escaped their cage. Perhaps the owner was playing with the hamster and it jumped off onto the ground and their cat was not too far away and attacked it.

No matter how you interpret it the problem always goes back to humans. It is probably fair to say that every time a domestic cat is relinquished to a shelter the underlying problem is human behaviour. The only time that it can't be is if the cat is mentally ill, otherwise it is instinctive feline behaviour reacting to human-made circumstances.

There are very, very few mentally ill domestic cats requiring drug treatment of some sort. Rather sadly, the person who posted on social media completed their title with the word "Reckon she did it?" It's irrelevant except to say that the owners might have made up the story in order to give up their cat.

That wouldn't surprise me one bit. Perhaps it's a very good question. People like to make up stories when they walk into a shelter with their cat to give them up. They want to divert attention away from their mistakes and inability to care for a cat. If they did lie, they fabricated a silly excuse.

Everybody knows that when you adopt a cat you do so for the life of the cat unless some extraordinary and exceptional circumstance intervenes. That's the target. And there will be ups and downs. There will be difficult moments. There will be times when you want to give up your cat (maybe).

But just like a marriage between man and wife or man and man or woman and woman, you make sure that you go through those moments and sort them out. Often when you come out the other side the relationship has improved.

New Zealand's state sanctioned animal AND CHILD abuse by indoctrinating kids to kill non-native species

New Zealand's Ministry of Education encourages children to kill non-native mammals including cats which they label 'pests' (yeh, not 'pets'). It is state sanctioned animal abuse and the abusers are indoctrinated kids. Horrible.

In an astonishing conclusion to his lengthy analysis, Michael C Morris of the Royal Agricultural University, concludes that "even the Ministry of Education resources, encourage children to kill non-native mammals, show them how to set traps, and emphasised to teachers how they need to impress on children the importance of eradicating pests."

New Zealand's state sanctioned animal AND CHILD abuse by indoctrinating kids to kill non-native species. Image: MikeB

Other organisations in New Zealand including four government agencies, three conservation NGOs and one education NGO, promote the killing of non-native species by children.

"Non-native" means a species of animal which has not evolved in the country concerned. The domestic, stray and feral cat in New Zealand is a non-native species. It is therefore an alien species and regarded as a pest by New Zealand's authorities despite the fact that there are many cat loving care givers with cat companions in that beautiful country.

Shame, therefore, that despite being visually beautiful, the mentality of the Ministry of Education is far from beautiful and indeed quite ugly.

All the organisations promote trapping and poisoning to eliminate feral cats and other non-native species. The objective? To preserve biodiversity. To conserve native species because feral cats are very good hunters.

Shockingly, no consideration whatsoever, according to Mr Morris, is given to alternatives "such as changing human activities, non-lethal contraceptive or gene drive techniques, more localised and targeted pest control or translocation techniques such as Operation Nest Egg."

Mr Morris has not mentioned a very well-established alternative with respect to feral cats namely TNR which is widely practised in America where they, too, have a feral cat problem.

TNR is simply not on the radar in New Zealand. Well, it might be in the minds of some decent citizens of New Zealand who want to help feral cats but it is not in the minds of the country's administrators.

New Zealand introduces words such as "war" and "invasion" to describe the "pests" that are the feral cats in their country. For me, it is the feral cats who are the victims as much as the native species upon which they prey. 

The feral cats of New Zealand were introduced to the country as is the case in Australia by immigrants to the country bringing domestic cats with them and allowing those cats to return to the wild and procreate.

The back story, the root of the problem, is not the feral cat which is the 'messenger' of the bad behaviour of humans.

It appears that New Zealand is unique in mandating and encouraging children to kill non-native species which are perfectly good and decent animals. It is entirely inappropriate to single out non-native species as a target for eradication. It's a happenstance due to human carelessness that they are non-native and feral.

For the state to encourage children to kill animals is a form, in my opinion, of state sanctioned child abuse. 

It is indoctrinating them to believe that the cute possum or the cute feral kitten is an enemy of New Zealand. These children probably love the sight of cute possums. That is their natural instinct. And then, the Ministry of Education reprograms their brains to think that they are pests to be killed. It is simply unacceptable.

There are studies which have found a causal relationship between children who've witnessed animal abuse to then being more likely to be animal abusers themselves. 

If the children are animal abusers (which is what this program makes them), they are certainly more likely to become animal abusers and even human abusers when they are adults.

Larry, Downing Street's cat was selected because he was calm and unbothered when picked

There are a couple of news items in the press today about Larry, Downing Street's resident mouser to 5 prime ministers. Interesting to me, is how he was selected above four other candidates at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. 

Larry, Downing Street's cat was selected because he was calm and unbothered when picked. Image by MikeB at PoC.

He was selected by a guy called David. We know this because a woman, Helen, wrote into Times Radio to mention it. She'd met David while queueing to see Queen Elizabeth lying in state at the Palace of Westminster.

And David told Helen that Larry was chosen because he was calm and unfazed about whether he was picked or not. The other four candidates were more needy. They meowed and wanted attention. David was and perhaps still is a Downing Street staff worker and he was selected to choose the resident cat. He is an Australian incidentally.

It seems that the criteria for being a Downing Street cat is that they should be unruffled by all the comings and goings that inevitably occur at the center of UK government. So, it seems to me that the right criteria was used. 

Larry should be in the background doing his bit and keeping the staffers company and adding a bit of 'soul' to this large building which appears to be much smaller than it actually is.

Health

There is a health story about Larry as well. There were concerns about his health because there were claims that he was poorly after he received treatment for cysts following a trip to the veterinarian. We are not told where these cysts were. I hope they were not on his kidneys because that would be a very serious illness.

He's now been declared to be in good health after being given antibiotics (which indicates the disease was not serious). 

A Downing Street source told The Sun:

"Larry saw the vet that last month for a routine checkup. He remains in Downing Street and is feline well!"

Larry is between 15-16 years old at the time of this post. A good age with some mileage left I should think. 

Why is the cat omitted from the Chinese zodiac? It is not!

Answer (my answer!): the cat is listed as one of the 12 zodiac animal species as the tiger, a specific species within the cat family. The creators of the zodiac therefore included the cat but as a distinct species and not generically as at the time of creation of the zodiac - 2,500 years ago - there were no domestic cats in China.

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There are 12 Chinese zodiac signs, in the following order: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. There is ostensibly a shocking omission: the 'cat'. With the domestic dog, the domestic cat is the most popular companion animal in the world.

However, the cat is listed in the zodiac as a specific species namely the tiger. If you read the serious version set out below, you'll see what I mean.

Chinese zodiac of 12 animals. Image: MikeB

There are 2 versions for the reason for the omission. One serious and the other a myth. 

Serious version

The Chinese Zodiac was created about 2500 years ago. It hasn't changed since that time. At the time of its creation the domestic cat had not arrived in China. This occurred when pet cats were introduced to China along the silk Road during the period 386-589 A.D. around 1600 years ago.

On those figures, the Chinese Zodiac was created 900 years, almost 1000 years, before the people who created the Zodiac had seen domestic cats.

Comment: I think that's a pretty weak argument. My research indicates that the South China tiger was in China 2 million years ago. There must've been tigers in China when they created the Zodiac.

Tiger

This is why the tiger is listed as one of the signs of the Chinese Zodiac. The tiger is obviously a cat, actually the world's largest cat species. Therefore, they could not include another cat species in the zodiac when the domestic cat arrived a thousand years later. Logically this must be the reason why the "cat" is not specifically listed as a generic name for all the species of cats.

The problem is that they have taken one species of the cat family - the tiger - and listed it whereas for the other animals they have used generic terms and not broken it down into specific species.

Myth

The myth plays out as follows. The divine Jade Emperor organised a race for animals and there would be 12 winners each one getting a spot on the zodiac.

The cat and the rat were in the race but they were friends. They joined the race together and they hitched a ride on an ox to cross a river. While they were crossing the river the rat pushed the cat off the ox because they were fearful of being beaten by the cat in the race.

The cat did not drown but lost the chance of securing one of the 12 zodiac signs. This, incidentally, is why the cat hunts rats which is not actually true because modern day rats are a little bit too big for the average domestic cat!