Woman allows her cat to repeatedly knead her face with claws out. The claws must have been trimmed beforehand. Image: Screenshot. Would you allow your cat to do this to make a high-hitting TikTok video. She did and I'll tell you why she is not being scratched to blazes! She trimmed her cat's claws before she started videoing! Simple. That's the only reason why the cat is not drawing blood because untrimmed front claws are often very sharp especially immediately after the cat has sloughed off the outer sheath of the claw on a scratching post.  The woman is smart because (1) she knew it would make a high-hitting TikTok video and it has at 83m and (2) she knew that doing a careful job of trimming her cat's claws would save her from pain! This is clearly a close relationship. Normally domestic cats knead their caregiver's lap. The motivation for doing so is exactly the same. The cat, in their mind, is a kitten because the owner keeps them in that mental state and they a

The news media reports that staff at an animal charity in Warrington, Warrington Animal Welfare, say that they are going to be heartbroken if a mother and daughter duo,  Isobelle and Phoebe ,  who have lived at the shelter for a considerable time, are split up.  The pair are aged four and two respectively. They say that they are the longest staying shelter cats at their rescue and if they can't be rehomed together there may have to be split up and rehomed separately. Isobelle and Phoebe at Warrington Animal Welfare. Photos by the rescue. But if they are rehomed separately the staff at the shelter would be upset. But I question whether they should be upset because in the natural course of events, daughters and sons of parent cats become independent at a certain point in time.  In the wild, they would leave the natal range and find their own home range and thereby find their own home. They would become independent at a certain age after their mother had shown them how to kill prey an

The hand-painted favourite waistcoat of Freddie Mercury is under the hammer at the moment. The waistcoat contains images of his cats, one of which is Delilah, his favourite cat. Freddie was a great cat lover. I think he preferred them to people. The waistcoat is estimated to fetch between £5000 and £7000 at the Sotheby's auction. I would expect the price to be much, much higher than that. I will try and update this page if and when I hear the result of the auction but I do know that the gate outside his home covered in graffiti achieved as I recall something in the order of £400,000 which was massively higher than the auctioneer's estimate.  Update: it sold for £139,700!! RELATED:  Freddie Mercury’s favorite cat DELILAH . Freddie Mercury was much loved. His possessions are very desirable. His cat waistcoat was one of Freddie's favorite possessions therefore my estimate for the price would be something well over £100,000 at a very rough guess. 93% of the lots were sold above

Like other developed countries, Taiwan is suffering from a low birthrate. In fact, the country has one of the world's lowest birth rates. In order to encourage the Taiwanese to have a kid a billionaire who wants to become the president of Taiwan has proposed offering couples free companion animals if they have a baby as a kind of reward. And the idea comes from the fact that while human birth rates have plummeted pet ownership rates have skyrocketed. People want pets. Pets are popular in Taiwan but having kids is not. Image: Getty (Sam Yeh). People want to live with a companion animal rather than a child, which brings to mind the current Pope's concern about this trend which is also taking place in Italy. He doesn't like the thought that people prefer to have pets. He sees it as children being substituted by pets and he is right. The reason for the plummeting birth rates in Taiwan have been put down to the high cost of living and difficulties accessing childcare together wi

If you know a bit about cat food ingredients, you'll know that emulsifiers and stabilisers are sometimes used in wet pet food. An example would be lecithin, an emulsifier that can be used in wet pet food. They act as a glue to the processed foods to hold them together. To that information I can add, today, a report in The Times, on a study in which scientists examined the health implications of emulsifiers, a group of E-number additives added to industrially produced foods such as bread and chocolate for the human market! Does this list of ingredients in cat food mean anything to you? Me neither. And it has been found that people who consumed many emulsifiers were more likely to suffer heart disease and stroke even when adjustments have been made for factors such as weight and overall diet. The study which has been published in the British Medical Journal, monitored the diets of 95,000 French adults over seven years. They examined the average daily intake of eight groups of emulsif

For me, this is a welcome development. And also for me, the rising bills are due to one primary factor: the buying up of independent veterinary clinics by big business managed by gray men in gray suits who focus on financial profit over animal welfare.  Vet checks cat. Image: Pixabay. They saw an opportunity in the marketplace which was veterinary clinics owned by the veterinarians themselves who were not, in their view, sufficiently focused on making money. They've dived in and bought them up and altered the pricing structure and the methodology of operating these clinics. And now, the competition regulator has begun a review of veterinary services because there are concerns among cat owners and others that their costs are rising faster than inflation. I suspect that the government's concern is more to do with the inflationary aspect of the services than animal welfare. The UK government is desperate to get inflation down. The Competition and Markets Authority is going to look

A defecting Russian helicopter pilot, Kuzminov, told the Ukrainians that when he was fighting for the Russians, his commander "needed to transport a cat, which had some impressive pedigree. To do this, two Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopter crews were assigned. So, two helicopters transported this wonderful animal, so to speak, from Rostov to Yeysk [at which there is a Russian airbase]. The Mi-8 was flying the cat in, while the Mi-24 was circling to provide cover. We burned a lot of fuel, resources. Furthermore, the crews aren't always allowed to rest." Russian chopper. Image: Getty. The story is clear. His commander was abusing his position to fly his expensive pedigree cat around Russia. Although it's quite nice to know that his commander loved cats and owned a pedigree cat. But you can imagine the expense of it and you might imagine what his commander is now saying to him after this story was revealed by the defecting pilot. It seems that this Russian pilot is yet another e