Can cats tell if someone is bad, good or in-between?

A user of quora.com asked the question whether cats can tell if someone is bad, good or neutral? The person cited the example of a person who came around to their home to adopt a kitten. The person thought that the man might be a bit dodgy and therefore told him that they would have to check out his references. The man went away. He thinks that his cat "gave me a very disgusted look and took the kitten [the kitten that was going to be adopted] and laid with her all night. Luckily the man and his kids never returned."

He thinks that his cat recognised the potential adopter as a bad person. Is he right? I think we have to take a commonsense, more scientific approach.

I don't think cats can read the minds of unknown people with whom they have had no previous experiences if the person is doing nothing. I don't think cats have a telepathic ability to pick up bad vibes from a person. So, I don't think, without more, a cat can tell if a person is good, bad or in between the two.

They can tell if a person is bad through their actions obviously. If a person abuses a cat that cat will then be fearful of that person if it happens more than once. My thought is that if a person inadvertently harms a cat but then is loving towards the cat afterwards, the cat will forget. But consistent abuse of any sort will clearly make the cat fearful of that person.

And there's no doubt that in good relationships between a cat owner and their cat, the cat warms to the person and a very close bond is created. So, cats recognise good people through their actions.

The big question, I admit, is that whether cats can sense if a person is bad. I don't think they can. A favourite author of mine and a renowned biologist, Dr. Desmond Morris, says that cats tend to go towards people who dislike cats if in a group of people there are those who dislike cats and those who like them.

He argues that cats do this because people who dislike cats don't look at them and when people look at cats, they can stare at them and staring can be off-putting to a domestic cat. That's his theory. I am not altogether onside with that theory.

But he is more or less saying that a person who dislikes cats and therefore is liable to be unpleasant around a cat can draw a cat in. This indicates to me that the cat is not picking up the fact that a person might be a cat hater and therefore to be avoided. Cats operate on simple physical, visual, olfactory and auditory signals to decide whether to go towards or move away from people and other animals.

Python has been eating cats at a trailer park in Oklahoma, USA

A most disturbing story indicating a less than optimal relationship between humans and domestic cats, to say the very least. The story is that a massive 13-foot python has been slithering around a trailer park in South Oklahoma City, US, killing and eating domestic cats at the park. The snake is also eating opossums and rats.

Python. Image: MikeB.

An expert was called in to get rid of the predator. Trevor Bounds of Red Beard Wildlife Control said: "The mouth on that thing is the size of your foot and when it opens up, you're going to be able to fit something pretty large in there."

He and other experts believe that the stake was a pet which escaped. Or it was released by the owner. Comment: I'm being cynical and speculative but I wonder whether the snake's owner deliberately allowed it to go outside and live outside in order to keep down the numbers of cats, rats and opossums which he didn't like. As I said speculative idea but quite possibly plausible.

Staff at the trailer park warned residents to be on the lookout for the snake. The python kills animals by constricting them, forcing all the life out of them and then swallowing them. They can kill small children so there was a real danger that a child was at risk.

We are told that the snake is a reticulated python. It is one of the largest species of snake. It lives under one of the trailers. It is still there according to this story because they are still looking for it.

Mr Bounds said: "We were using our thermal camera last week to find it but because it is cold-blooded, we had to just look for an outline of him. They can get up to 24 feet if you let them, maybe longer. The body of this snake is like Mike Tyson's biceps but 13 feet long."

The problem first came to light when neighbours reported that their cats were going missing. And then carcasses of large animals were found in the crawl space beneath one particular trailer.

There is a primary school nearby hence the worry about small kids. At this time the snake, as mentioned, hasn't been caught but traps have been set up and there is a 24-hour live feed watching the place.

As soon as the snake moves the cameras will be alerted and they will send a signal to Mr Bounds' phone. The park staff wants the snake out of the area asap for obvious reasons.

Comment: the story begs the question as to what they are doing about the owner of the snake. Is he being prosecuted? Have the police been called or should they be called? He has apparently been using his snake to kill people's domestic cats. Isn't that using a pet animal as a weapon to destroy the property of others?

Cat café has cats in cages in the restroom

Cats in cages in the restroom of a cat cafe. Screenshot.

This is a slightly amusing video but it was not mean to be like that. This a cat café somewhere, we don't know where. In the restroom there are four stacked cat cages some with cats inside. Is this deliberate to give the user an audience of cats?! A bit disconcerting perhaps although cats like to be with their owner when they go to the loo. So, it is okay for the cats.

I suspect the reason why the cats are in the restroom is because there is nowhere else to put them. As simple as that.

The video comes from the TikTok account of Hadeelo915. She is a Muslim and wears a headscarf which made me think that this was in the Middle East but I don't think it is. I think it is in the US (perhaps) as she calls the toilet a 'restroom'. Only Americans do that. In Britain we call them 'loos'. Very quaint.

Graham Miller shoots feral cats, deer, goats, camels, pigs, foxes, rabbits and kangaroos!

Graham Miller lives in Australia which might not surprise you seeing as he shoots at anything on four legs that bleeds! And he says that, "I don't give a s***what people think if I shoot cats".

Miller and family. Image as per embedded credit.

Of course, I didn't expect him to care what people think about him shooting as many animals as possible. He is a professional killer of animals in Australia and he was taught to shoot kangaroos at the age of 10. He clearly has zero sensitivity towards causing pain and probably thinks all animals are automaton-like robots and are not sentient beings.

There is a huge article on him on the Daily Mail website which is crushingly boring except for one or two points. And there's a video on the site with a warning which says that you might be upset when you see feral cats being shot. I find that a bit odd seeing as the whole article is about shooting animals; as many as possible. They use drones to track the animals down.

And after he shots feral cats he likes to hang them up on a makeshift frame (see above). Why did he do this? What's the point of it? Does he get kicks out of it? He probably does. The Daily Mail says that he is credited with saving a local population of black-footed rock wallabies which is South Australia's most endangered mammal.

His business is called Feral Solutions. It's all about killing non-native species which prey on native species. He's one of those guys who thinks that Australians have a duty to eradicate totally all invasive species no matter how long they've been in Australia.

He must have killed thousands of animals by now. He has a lot of guns including a Brno .22 Magnum lever-release rifle which reloads much like a semi-automatic and an Australian-made Taipan pump-action .223. As you can see, he uses a .22 rifle which is a small calibre firearm which is all you need to kill a cat or a goat or a fox or a pig; you name it.

There is one interesting piece of information in this Daily Mail article which is that he believes that feral cats have a range of 11 km. I believe you means 11 km² because when you speak of a range you speak of the home range and that is an area. This is far larger than for domestic cats in the UK allowed outside.

He also, interestingly, states that feral cats don't take the widely used 1080 bait which kills wild dogs and foxes. This is a nasty poison which takes a little while to kill the animal.

Other Australians have created a device which chucks 1080 poison onto cats when they pass by. The cat then licks off the poison and dies. The only problem with it is that if a domestic cat passes by then they die and the authorities have then committed a crime but hey ho no problems.

He says that the biggest cat that he has shot weighed 7.1 kg. That is 15.65 pounds by the way. That's not particularly huge. I say that because a little while ago there were people saying that the feral cats in Australia have become so big that they were monsters. They were claiming that the feral cats had evolved into a new wild cat species. I think not. There are just typical feral cats, most of them tabby cats by the way.

He attracts the cats with a decoy device that emits sounds which include a distressed kitten and squeaking mouse. The curious feral cats are attracted by the sounds leading them into the rifle sights of Mr Miller's .22 rifle.

I think I will leave it there because to be honest it is unpleasant writing about this unpleasant man and his family of shooters. I just don't like this kind of person because he has no conception of really what he's doing. He is just a good shot with a rifle who thinks animals don't feel pain. He needs an education.

There are no animal welfare laws in Egypt!

I have just completed a bit of research on whether there are animal welfare laws in Egypt. This is a major country where you would expect there to be animal welfare laws. But all the signs are - based upon my Internet research - that there isn't a single animal welfare law which generally protects the animals of Egypt. This brings to mind China which also shuns the idea of animal welfare laws.

Cat carrier smashed to bits by the Egyptian airline Egyptair. There was a rescue cat inside destined for America to be rehomed after rescue from the Egyptian streets. What a failure by Egypt. Image: Twitter.

It is a shock to me, to be honest, to understand that Egypt has no intention whatsoever of protecting their animals under the law.

The Wikipedia authors more or less confirm that there are "no strict laws against animal cruelty". That's rather vaguely worded but I think it means that there are no animal welfare laws.

And an article on an Egyptian website dated November 2017, is about Egyptian veterinarians trying to force the government of Egypt to create animal welfare laws. But the author of that article was extremely doubtful whether the government would entertain the veterinarians.

I can't find a follow-up article but it is highly likely that the Egyptian government dismissed the idea out of hand. It's about mentality and attitude and clearly the Egyptian government simply do not have the wherewithal and the attitude to think of animals are sentient beings to be protected from abuse by humans.

That is a very backward mentality it has to be said. And for me, interestingly, there was a case of gross animal cruelty in Egypt when in 2015 a dog was restrained and stabbed to death by butchers. It was a notorious incident and the perpetrators of that act of gross animal cruelty were brought to the criminal courts in Egypt, prosecuted and imprisoned for three years.

But we don't know under what law they were prosecuted. Nobody tells me that. If there are no animal welfare laws then why did these men do wrong? Perhaps they were prosecuted under laws appertaining to human property because perhaps the dog belonged to somebody. Perhaps there were prosecuted under what I would call "criminal damage" laws.

But when these criminals were prosecuted there was outrage outside the court room. They had to have armed militia outside the court room to protect the court from the masses. Clearly, the citizens of Egypt think that animal welfare laws are idiotic and they have no place in Egyptian society.

This points to a terrible lacuna to use a legal term. That means a hole in the fabric of the legal system in Egypt. And it is the reason why on Friday 29 September, 12 rescue cats from Egypt destined to be transported to America on Egyptair flight 985 were utterly failed through mishandling of their carriers to the point where the crates were damaged or broken open and five cats escaped. One was recovered and three of the five are still missing. One was fatally injured.

That is the handling of rescue cats by an Egyptian airline. Catastrophic. Everything about what they did was catastrophic and I can only presume that this complete failure by Egypt air staff to handle the crates properly comes down to a lack of animal welfare laws. That lack of a core piece of legislation which is present in most countries on the planet can only foster a desensitised attitude towards the sentience of animals in general. This is why the crates were thrown around and broken. Nobody cared a damn about the cats inside the crates.

Without wishing to sound racist in any way, it is probable that Egypt is similar to other countries on the African continent. They do seem to have an attitude towards animals which is similar to the attitude towards animals present in northern Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, it's incredibly backward and uncivilised.