Police night patrols by undercover officers catch alleged serial cat killer

NEWS AND COMMENT: In the UK, there has been another spate of cat killings - 20 in all - on a council estate in London (Pleydell Estate in Islington). From time to time these criminal events happen in the UK. The residents on the estate became concerned because dead cats were appearing.

Police night patrols by undercover officers catch alleged cat killer. Police tent outside the block of flats. Image: The Sun.

They raised their concerns with the police and it is nice to report that in this instance the police demonstrated some commitment to catching the perpetrator. They appear to have sent out undercover police officers on night patrols. Amazing. They were doing some night shift work. I am surprised they did that.

Perhaps the senior police officer in this department is an animal lover. My experience in reading about these sorts of stories is that the police can tend to be ineffective and show a lack of commitment. One of the problems of course is finding the criminals because they operate at night under cover of darkness and in a very surreptitious way. Evidence can be hard to find.

Nonetheless, they have arrested David Avhanvhondo, 56, and charged him with causing unnecessary suffering and carrying out a prohibited procedure on a protected animal. That last aspect of the charge is rather sinister, isn't it? It implies that he has been mutilating the cats either after or before they were killed.

He was arrested at 4 AM on Sunday. That, too, would imply to me although this is unreported, that he was caught red-handed by the undercover officers.

The man appeared in court on Monday and pleaded not guilty to both charges. The police have been investigating these cat deaths in September 2022.

The report also implies that there may be more than the 20 deaths reported so far. Avhanvhondo lives in King Square, Barbican, London. He will reappear in court on February 28.

Picture of a grossly obese and grossly matted abandoned cat is shocking

NEWS AND COMMENT: The RSPCA have named her Big Bertha. She is a young two years old tabby cat. The past owner appears to have grossly overfed her and then abandoned her. She was dumped in Calthorpe Park, Birmingham, UK and weighed 11.8 kg in pounds (26 pounds). The average domestic cat might way around 8-10 pounds.

Picture of a grossly obese and grossly matted abandoned cat is shocking. Image: RSPCA.

The Birmingham Animal Center's supervisor, Emma Finnimore was shocked. She said that "This is the largest cat I have seen in my 22 years working for the RSPCA".

They found her in this bag:

The bag in which Bertha was found. Picture: RSPCA.

So, what did they do? The only thing they could do was to clip off all her matted fur and put her on a gradual weight, reduction diet. The clipped off fur weighed 0.3 of a kilogram incidentally. Dieting of this sort needs to be gradual to avoid fatty liver disease.

She was too large to go through a cat flap and the RSPCA had to adapt a cat run for her until she went to a foster home.

Foster carer Emma Cureton, said:

 "The weight has gradually come off and she's already lost an amazing 3.82kg - which is a third of her body weight. She's still got a little way to go but she'll get there and will soon be ready to find a new home. She was in such a sorry state when she arrived at the rescue centre with her matting pulling on her skin. We don't know how she got so large as she is only a young cat. We think maybe someone had been constantly feeding her as she was so large, she was left unable to groom herself."

Pretty well everybody knows that this kind of obesity is a major health problem leading to high blood pressure, diabetes, problems with the liver, skin and heat tolerance and damaging the joints.

Separately, the RSPCA said that there has been a 25% rise in the number of abandonment incidents. In 2021 there were 10,519 abandonments of pets while in the year up to October 2022 there has been 13,159.

The report does not say why, but I think I know and other reports have confirmed this namely that there were too many self-indulgent pet adoptions during Covid-19 in order to keep people company and to entertain them during those long lockdowns. 

Many of these adoptions have now gone wrong and the owners are either abandoning their cats and dogs or selling them on the Internet through social media.

Incidentally, there has been a worrying upward trend in harassment of farm animals by badly trained dogs in the countryside. This, too, has been put down to the same root cause namely adoptions by people who do not have sufficient knowledge about dog welfare and behaviour during the pandemic.

So, we are, in the UK, feeling the effects in a very major way, not only in respect of pet ownership but in many other areas of Covid-19 and its legacy.

Man who owns the world's tallest domestic cat spends almost $500 per month on pet food

Physician, Dr. William Powers, is known for being the man who owns two world record domestic cats: the domestic cat with the world's longest tail and the domestic cat who is the tallest to the shoulder. The former is a silver tabby Maine Coon and the latter is an F2 Savannah cat whose name is Fenrir Antares Powers. The Maine Coon's name is Altair Cygnus Powers. He is also known for losing 2 world record-holding domestic cats in a devastating house fire.

Powers and his overweight world record holding F2 Savannah cat. Image: Photo: Guinness World Records 

When I read that he spent upwards of $500 per month on pet food it made me perk up a little bit and I ask myself why and how because it seems to me to be an enormous amount of money.

And the reason is this: firstly, he has six cats in all including the two mentioned. And perhaps more importantly, he prepares a special diet for his F2 Savannah cat who is always hungry. 

The last point is an important one because not that long ago, I wrote an article stating that in my opinion this F2 Savannah cat was overweight at that time. It appears that Dr. Powers has been giving in to his Savannah cat's demands for more food. 

And I wonder whether he is having trouble keeping his Savannah cat entertained and stimulated. Perhaps the cat is bored but I feel fairly certain that he was overweight and at 36 pounds that, too, would seem to be excessive even for such a large domestic cat.

Apparently, he's a very friendly and outgoing Savannah cat but he is very big, as expected, for a domestic cat. And no doubt he is active because Savannah cats are active or more so than typical domestic cats. They are also more intelligent and therefore need more stimulation which in turn results in more activity.

He makes a custom diet made out of raw meat, mainly chicken but sometimes other animal sources. And he adds supplements like essential amino acids, long chain fatty acids, porcine bonemeal and other additives such as nutritional yeast flavour.

So, seems that he provides a raw diet for a Savannah cat as the main diet. This doesn't surprise me at all. He probably feels that it is necessary as this cat has a lot of serval DNA in him and a well-prepared raw diet containing all the nutrients that a domestic cat requires plus excellent storage is probably going to be better than standard high quality wet cat food. 

But that is a matter of debate and most veterinarians recommend that cat owners do not prepare a raw diet for their cat.

Of course, this doctor is going to be more critical about food preparation and so on which is why he is probably well-qualified to do what he does.

We don't know what the other cats get but I suspect that it is more of a standard commercially prepared cat food diet.

40-60 wildcats to be released in Devon and Cornwall, UK

I am both surprised and pleased to read this story in The Times today. They are going to release European wildcats into parts of Devon and Cornwall in the UK. As I recall, the last wildcat in England was shot by a rich landowner in the middle of the 19th century. 

The European wildcat is very similar to the tabby domestic cat but a little larger and definitely fiercer! Image: in the public domain (believed).

Before that they were killed by hunters looking for their pelts. They were exterminated completely in England, Wales and Ireland but it is believed that around 200 remain in Scotland.

The problem with the Scottish population of wild cat is that it is probable that most if not all of them are hybrids being first-generation offspring from matings between a genuine, purebred wildcat and a feral cat or even a domestic cat wandering around outside as these two species can make quite freely. 

This is unsurprising because the domestic cat is a domesticated wildcat, specifically the North African wildcat.

So back to the rewilding. Like I said, I'm surprised because there's been talk about this for a long time and historically farmers dislike the rewilding of countryside with predators. Separately, there's a lot of talk about rewilding the New Forest (near the south coast of England) with lynx but the lynx is quite a lot bigger than the wildcat.

The wildcat preys on rodents and small mammals and of course birds. That won't please the ornithologists either.

As the title states, the plan is to introduce between 40 and 60 wildcat into parts of Devon and Cornwall which is in the south-west of England. It's very nice countryside down there. It is a place, if you live outside of the UK, where retired Londoners live.

The designated wildcats to be reintroduced have been bred by a conservationist and re-wilder whose name is Derek Gow. He has five breeding pairs of cats on his farm in Lifton, Devon which is 5 miles from Bodmin Moor.

The breeding wildcats were given to him by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. He is working with the charity to release dozens of them into coastal scrubland and dense forests.

Mr Gow, 57, said: "animals have a knock-on effect on the ecosystems and wildcat were a key part of that until they were hunted for their fur."

I hope they survive and that they are not persecuted.

Pill treats diabetic cats without daily insulin shots but is it a good idea?

This is a pill which apparently entirely substitutes giving a diabetic cat insulin jabs. It is therefore highly convenient. The drug is called Bexacat and it works by lowering blood sugar levels by causing it to be excreted in urine.

Made by Elanco Animal Health Inc., Bexacat was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December and is expected to be available in the U.S. in the next several weeks.

Pill treats diabetic cats without daily insulin shots but is it a good idea? Image: MikeB

RELATED ARTICLE: How common is diabetes in cats? It varies depending on where you are.

Often, domestic cats with diabetes in the USA have contracted the disease because of obesity. And as obesity rates are rising among the feline population so is diabetes. 

I'm told that between 1 in 100 and 1 in 500 cats in the US have been diagnosed with diabetes. Feline obesity apparently is approaching 50% of the domestic cat population in the USA.

This figure is constantly being forced down our throats! It is a dire statistic. But I have the distinct impression that if you make it more convenient to treat diabetes it's going to lead to more diabetes. This is because the cause of diabetes is carelessness in cat caregiving if that cause is obesity.

Convenience emboldens carelessness. The big pharma companies are really using human neglect to make some more money. The far better solution would be to try and find a way to ensure that people don't allow their cat companions to become obese. Perhaps that is impossible but it should not be.

Research, by the way indicates a clear reason why this bill has been manufactured. Owners of diabetic cats often have their cats euthanised. Statistics tell us that 10% of cats with a new diabetes diagnosis end up being euthanised. And within 12 months another 10% are euthanised because of the difficulties of giving them insulin jabs.

There are some downsides to this wonder pill, Bexacat. The first issue is that you can't go from giving your cat insulin jabs to then giving them Bexacat. That apparently is a no-no because this drug is dangerous and I think under those circumstances you could kill your cat due to a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis.

Also, before being prescribed this drug by your veterinarian, the cat has to be subjected to a health check for liver, kidney and pancreatic disease. The drug is not for every diabetic cat, they say.

And lastly, another barrier to its use, is the high cost. I'm told that most vets will double or triple the cost of the drug which is about $53 a month. That means they're going to be charging around $100 to $150 a month, which, it seems to me, is a substantial barrier to its use.

And on reading about the price, I suspect people who have been optimistic about using it will be brought down to earth rapidly and it may lead them to deciding to euthanise their cat.

Clearly, it's a good drug in many senses but I see a lot of downsides. Above all, it facilitates maintaining a diabetic cat.

It is harder to look after diabetic cat it may encourage cat owners to reduce their cat's weight which would in turn ease their burden in treatment. Perhaps I'm being too simplistic.