Should I remove a tick from my cat as soon as possible?

Yes, ticks should be removed as soon as possible. What I like about this photograph - even though it is ugly because of the fact that there are tics attached to this cat's ear - is that it shows you where tics often end up on cats which is, as mentioned, inside the ear flaps. 

I guess this is a convenient height for a tick because they sit on long grass and then crawl off the grass onto a cat that has perhaps been sitting in the grass for a while. Or they are passing through slowly.

Ticks on a cat's ear flap. Image: u/PrashantThapliyal

The ticks walked off the grass onto the cat and attached themselves to the insides of the ear in this case. This particular cat has several tics. Perhaps he or she goes to the same place outside the home all the time and it happens to be a place where there is an infestation of ticks.

The owner asks on social media what they are and what to do about them and whether he should remove them.

This leads me to the next issue. Ticks should be removed quickly. In fact, an owner should check their cat at convenient moments if they are an inside/outside cat. What I mean they should be checked at any convenient moment when the caregiver is handling their cat or interacting with their cat in some way including petting.

Lyme Disease in Cats (reinforcing an indoor lifestyle).

It's important because studies have shown that infected deer ticks (infected with the species of bacteria that causes Lyme disease - Borrelia burgdorferi) begin to transmit the bacteria to the host after they've been attached for 36-48 hours.

This means that there is a window of opportunity between the time that they became attached to their host and the beginning of the time when they deliver the bacteria to the host in their saliva. And that window is around 36-48 hours.

If you remove a tick within that timeframe there is very little chance of the host contracting Lyme disease.

Anyone removing a tick should wear gloves and avoid touching the tick with bare hands. They should wash their hands after disposing of the tick in a jar of alcohol. This is because the aforesaid disease can be transmitted to humans just as easily as it can be to cats or any other animal who is the host for this ectoparasite.

"Although deer ticks have been identified in every U.S. state except Hawaii, they are most commonly found along the eastern coast of the United States from Florida to Maine and as far west as Texas. They are also located in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwest United States." - Tick Check website.

What is the native American word for 'panther'?

Realistically, you can't answer the question in the title. I will tell you why. There are hundreds of different Native American tribes and languages. The native-languages.org website lists the most popular Native American languages of which there are 30. 

These are the most popular but, as mentioned, there are far more. It is simply impractical and I would suggest impossible to find out how these Native Americans used or still do refer to the mountain lion in their own language.

Image: MikeB

I'm going to presume that the word "panther" in this context is a reference to the mountain lion which is better described as the "puma". This is the most scientific term.

The puma has the most names in any case, not including Native American languages, of all the wild cat species. This is a very complicated picture.

Let's take one of the native languages of the Americas: Cree. I have selected them at random. It is spoken by more than 70,000 people across southern Canada and into Montana. It is an Algonquian language apparently. And there are five major Cree dialects. 

The Cree are Canada's largest native group with 200,000 registered members. There are dozens of self-government nations.

The most popular or commonly spoken native language is Quechua. There are approximately 8 million speakers and they live in the Andean region of South America. It is the language of the Inca empire of Peru.

Interestingly, the official name of the mountain lion, as mentioned, the puma, is a word which comes from the Quechua language.

The name puma first appeared in 1609 when Garcilasso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan Princess wrote, "Lions are met with, though they are not so large not so fierce as those of Africa. The Indians call them Puma." 

The AI computer ChatGPT responds to the question in the title as follows:

"The native American word for panther varies among different indigenous cultures. Some common words for panther include "puma" or "cougar" in the Americas, and "mountain lion" in some western tribes. In some Eastern tribes, it's referred to as "catamount." The exact word used for panther can also depend on the specific language and dialect of the indigenous culture."

I thought that it is wasn't very helpful 😎.

Woman in China locked out of her home uses her cat to get in (video). True or False?!

USA Today introduces the video below with these words: "A woman in China was locked out of her home after forgetting her keys. Luckily, one of her cats was able to unlock the door for her."

Do you see the ginger cat unlocking the door? I don't. They don't question whether this is implausible. It has to be a false assessment. A lie - a fake. Strong words but I feel that they are true words.

The cat lets the owner in by jumping up onto the door's handle and pulling it downwards using their weight. They did not turn any key or adjust any locking mechanism inside the door. They simply pulled down on the handle as stated. This means that the woman outside on the other side of the door was able to pull down the handle in just the same way. 

Therefore, she was not locked out. Also, it means that this is a fabricated video as so many are to try and get some views and a little bit of internet fame for the video maker vicariously through their companion cat. 

It is incredibly tiresome for someone like me and it is compounded by the blind journalism simply regurgitating what they've been told in the video or by somebody else.

This video may disappear over time as they often do and if so, I apologise but I can't control this as it is embedded into this site but held on USA Today's server.

Guardian journalist overcame her fear of cats using 2 methods

Having read Annalisa Barbieri's article in The Guardian online newspaper, I can take from it two methods that she used overcome her irrational fear of cats.

There is no doubt that she suffered from ailurophobia which is the scientific name for a fear of cats. It was a lifelong fear which she readily admits in the first sentence.

Annalisa Barbieri and Sidney. Photo: Dan Burn-Forti/The Observer

This fear ruled her life until she became a mother and her children asked for a cat. She said no. And then gradually, she decided to take the plunge and adopt a kitten.

But she wasn't really prepared for it. She felt that she wanted to do this but I sense, reading between the lines, that she had not got her head in gear. She dived in and initially it did not work out.

She admits that she thought that domestic cats were tricky and that they wanted to harm her. And then a friend of hers, Tasmin, a person that she describes as being "a cat pro" came over and spent the day with her because clearly Tasmin understood that Annalisa was having trouble and she wanted to help.

Her adopted cat is a beautiful gray (blue) male who they named Sidney. He was 13 weeks old when they adopted him. A young cat. But he has a very beautiful personality, very calm and ideal for Annalisa.

Despite his personality she was fearful because of a deep, ingrained irrational fear. She watched Tasmin play with Sidney and noticed that Sidney genuinely wanted to play. However, when Sidney played with her, she felt that he was trying to be tricky and wanted to harm her.

Having seen Sidney behave under these two scenarios she was able to make the rational decision that she was perceiving Sidney's behaviour in the wrong way. The problem was hers she admitted.

So that objective appraisal of her mentality unlocked the door to enable her to follow the normal route of acclimatising herself to a domestic cat in baby steps. That is the way you overcome a fear of cats or any fear. You do what you are frightened of but in very small steps which makes each step manageable. In doing so you chip away at that irrational fear.

And that's what happened. There came a moment when she realised that she loved cats. She could kiss Sidney. She can 'read' him and understanding him and no doubt this skill is reciprocated.

The key, in conclusion, is to realise that the problem is yours and not the cat's and then to chip away at that fear in tiny steps because if you take big steps you reinforce your fear. That's because the interaction can go wrong.

There is no doubt that if a person is fearful of a domestic cat, they are not really going to interact well with them which might encourage their cat to take a swipe, perhaps in play. That would be enough to set back the whole process to square one and even worse potentially.

90-year-old couple take their elderly cat for a homemade cat stroller walk daily!

Cool. What makes it even cooler is the homemade cat stroller (re-purposed) used by an elderly couple to give their equally elderly cat, Angus, some mental stimulation. 

This is not the real thing but a neat substitute for an elderly cat who stays put. There's no roof on the 'stroller'. No problem. He has no intention of jumping out. They are a great elderly threesome, and I bet they catch the eye of pedestrians.

90-year-old man pushes a homemade cat stroller with elderly cat on a walk for himself, his cat and his wife who is the same age. Image: Screenshot.

It is their granddaughter who posted the video below on TikTok. They've got some attention there too as the video is heading towards 1 million views. Although TikTok fudges the viewing figures because they put the videos on a loop which probably doubles the true number.

Look, there is hardly anything better in the world of cat ownership and caregiving than seeing an elderly couple adopt an elderly cat (I presume from an animal shelter) and then use a cat stroller to provide some mental stimulation for their cat and some exercise and mental stimulation for themselves at the same time. Wise.