Cheetah meow is part of their rich vocal repertoire

Cheetahs have a rich vocal repertoire. And before I go any further, I'm going to stress the fact that it includes a meow which is very like that of the domestic cat. It's a bit louder and a little bit wilder but unmistakably a genuine meow, which doesn't surprise me one bit because this large wild cat species really does have some domestic cat traits. 

Captive cheetah meowing. Screenshot.

I've just seen a picture of a cheetah cosying up to a photographer. In the photo the cheetah has a GPS collar around their neck and it's in the wild but they decided that they would like to have a bit of human company. They can be like that sometimes. 

It is why, hundreds of years ago, they were tamed to hunt with rich humans in India and other Asian countries for sport. They are therefore tameable and somewhat domesticatable but don't think that they make good pets because they do not.

My thanks to the TikToker 'renn' for the video below.

The cheetah also has a yelp which is a brief, high-pitched yow sounding vocalisation which can travel some distance. A scientist, Mr R McLaughlin, said that he heard the yelp 2 km away.

When the cheetah utters this sound, they open and close their mouth rapidly while their abdomen and head jerk with the effort.

It is a contact call normally made by the mother who has been separated from her cubs or by young cheetahs who have lost their mother or siblings. That information is according to Mr J Kingdon (1977).

Another contact call would be the churr. This sound is used by mothers to call or encourage their offspring and by male cheetahs to relocate their siblings or coalition partners and also in a variety of other circumstances according to Mr TM Caro (1994).

The churr is also called a "stutter". It can indicate that the female is in heat (oestrus) and when males use the stutter, they do so to indicate an interest in a female according to Mr TM Caro (1993).

The cheetah also gurgles. This is a friendly close-range vocalisation. That information, by the way, come from Mr G Peters (1984).

Further, cheetahs occasionally growl when involved in agonistic encounters at a kill. They also moan when they are attacked or threatened by other cheetahs, leopards or lions. That information comes from a variety of researchers/scientists including TM Caro mentioned above.

And finally, the cheetah purrs like a domestic cat during friend encounters and after a meal or when resting. Of course, the cheetah purr is much louder than that of the domestic cat.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Outdoor cats are 'free cats' which you can take (according to Twitter X user)

A Twitter X user, Sophiane (see below), says that outdoor cats are free cats and you can just take them, which is complete baloney. It is complete BS. I have never heard anything more ridiculous it all my life. Is she kidding?

What this woman is saying is absurd. She follows up by saying that it is not legal advice. You could say that! Outdoor cats are often indoor/outdoor cats and in which case they will be owned cats. As they have an owner, they cannot be taken by anybody because that would be theft and a crime.

Sophiane who said on Twitter X that outdoor cats are free cats that can be taken. Wrong!

A lot of outdoor cats are owned cats. You have to check whether they are owned by scanning for a microchip. If the cat has a microchip containing current details, then you can reunite the cat with their owner if they are lost. But see the last paragraph!

Often, they won't be lost and they will find their way home in any case.

Also, regarding feral cats which are invariably outdoors, you won't just take one back home because that wouldn't work either. Feral cats are unsocialised and therefore they do not fit into a home because they are fearful of humans.

Obviously, there are complexities because some feral cats are semi-feral and they might fit in to a family home and further, you might be able to take that cat as your own if there is no microchip as mentioned.

The point really is that just because a cat is outdoors you cannot assume that it does not have an owner and therefore can 'take it' Sophiane is implying that you can do entirely as you please with respect to an outdoor cat. I am not even sure if she is being serious.

Perhaps she might be joking. That seems possible because what she has said is so outrageous and so obviously incorrect.

There are many types of cat that are outdoors at any one time. Some might be indoor/outdoor cats as mentioned. Some might be 'barn cats' (farm cats) which are outdoors nearly all the time but they are still domesticated and usually owned by the farmer. 

Some might be semi-feral cats which are socialised to a certain extent to humans. Some might be true feral cats which you can't go near because they are entirely fearful of people because they are entirely unsocialised to people. 

RELATED: Residential Park management get away with poisoning community cats.

And there are community cats which are domestic cats that live outside within a community and which are fed by the community usually shopkeepers et cetera. 

This last kind of arrangement is normally found in Asia such as countries like India and Pakistan where you will see lots of outdoor cats which are actually looked after within the community except, they normally do not take these cats to a veterinary clinic when they need veterinary medical help. 

That's the great weakness of community cats. But no single person usually owns a community cat. They are owned loosely by the community.

So, these various types of outdoor cat create complexities in terms of ownership.

Lastly, a microchip with correct details is not absolute, irrefutable evidence that the person as set out on those details owns the cat. It is good evidence but not complete evidence because things might have happened since the registration of the microchip. The person may have given away the cat to somebody else who did not register their name on the microchip for instance.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

77-year-old Florida man arrested for feeding stray cats

NEWS AND COMMENT: The headline from an American online news media outlet, 21WFMJ, attracted my attention. Whenever I read about anybody, never mind an elderly bloke, being arrested for doing something apparently decent and sensitive, it makes me sit up and think a little bit.

We are told that the elderly bloke had empty tuna cans and cups of dry food together with food bowls; all evidence of feeding stray cats. The elderly man's name is Walter Comanitz and he was arrested on Thursday for committing a nuisance. Yes, he was arrested and charged with a nuisance violation under an ordinance which applies to Sebring, Florida, a city in south-central Florida. 

Clearly, they have a local law which states that people cannot feed stray cats. That's pretty clear and it can be a crime for doing so. That, to me, seems like employing a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

We are further told that a couple of local business owners had complained about the stray cat feeder and written statements against him and his cat feeding on their properties.

The business owners' complaints concern their belief that the stray cats cause a nuisance and in feeding them you attract the nuisance to their properties. I completely get that. I understand it. This sort of problem between people who are sensitive to stray cats and who want to help them versus other people, often businesses, who are insensitive to the cats and see them as a pest of vermin is not uncommon. That's because businesses are concerned about profit and they don't want anything to get in the way of making profit. Also, entirely understandable.

RELATED: 79-year-old Ohio woman ordered to spend 10 days in the county jail for feeding stray cats.

The root cause of the problem is careless cat ownership which puts the cats there in the first place. That is what needs to be tackled. The fallout is an argument between these groups of people: the cat lovers and the cat haters. The way to deal with this is in taking proactive measures in improving cat ownership through education. It sounds easy but it is incredibly difficult because you will always have a tiny minority of cat owners who are irresponsible and it doesn't just apply to America but everywhere else.

In fact, America is one of the best countries in terms of cat ownership. Places in Asia can be horrendous in this respect.

These business owners say that the cats are defecating and urinating on their business properties and lounging around on their vehicles.

Once arrested Walter became agitated according to the arresting officer. He claims to be an attorney and that he was going to get rich because of he's been arrested. I suspect that he was hinting at claiming compensation of some sort but that won't happen because there is an ordinance in this city. It appears to be a black and white law without wriggle room.

Walter was handcuffed and taken into custody. He was released on his own recognizance and will return to court on Friday morning.

As you might expect, this isn't the first time that Walter has been arrested for feeding cats. This is another phenomenon with respect to people who feed stray cats and those you don't like it. Some people are compelled to feed starving stray and feral cats which is part of the reason why they become a nuisance to some residents and most business owners.

We are told that Walter was arrested in February on a littering charge for leaving the feeding bowls on the ground. He was fined $20 and he had to pay court costs of $71.

Comment: I am highly sympathetic towards people like Walter but understand the issues. There have been some terrible incidents in respect of people like him been confronted by those that strongly dislike people who feed stray cats. On one occasion a stray cat feeder was shot dead by a resident after an argument. There can be a lot of background animosity between these two groups of people which boils over into violence on occasions.

RELATED: Man who fed feral cats lost his temper and shot a police officer several times.

It's quite unusual for a city to enact a local ordinance making it a crime to feed stray and feral cats. It happens in the US but never in the UK for instance. This, too, is an area of contention by residents in a municipality. The problem is that some people see feeding stray cats as kind and decent while at a more commercial level and on an amenity level it can come a nuisance.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Woman who does TNR wrestles with a smart feral cat and it looks horrible

Woman who does TNR wrestles with a smart feral cat and it looks horrible. Screenshot.

This woman must be kind as she is a TNR volunteer. She feeds, traps and neuters feral cats where she lives - not sure where she lives! No matter. The video is a bit shocking as she takes a risk in trying to pick up a smart feral cat and place her in what appears to be a sack of some sort to take her to a vet to get her spayed. 

Me deciding to take a chance to grab the extremely smart feral cat I've been feeding so I can get her fixed. No cats were harmed! Only me!"

She makes a fool of herself looking stupid as she fights with the cat getting scratched. We don't see the injuries she suffered but she must have been harmed perhaps quite seriously. As I say, it looks horrible.

To be honest, she is brave in allowing the video to be uploaded to social media as she is not shown at her best of you know what I am getting at.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Is human-grade wet cat food healthier for your cat than standard cat food?

I am sceptical about an article in the Express newspaper which claims that human grade cat food completely changed the health and vitality of this woman's two cats. She claimed that her cats completely changed when they were fed on a human-grade meat diet. She did this deliberately to see if it made any difference to her cats. She said that she tried her favourite high quality, human-grade cat food: Untamed.

Image: MikeB

And here is the problem for me: the whole article in this online newspaper promotes and praises Untamed human-grade wet cat food. It seems to me like this is a promotional, paid piece and therefore I have difficulty in believing it. Although logically high-quality cat food at a human-grade level should be better for a cat than cheap cat food.

But is it better than standard high quality wet cat food? I would doubt it. The author of the article, Sophie Harris, said that "feeding both of them 2 to 3 times a day can be expensive but I believe investing in their food is the least I can do as an answer [to whether this food improved health]".

She said that the "food is quite pricey, with my two cats costing £100 a month ($121) to feed, not including the dry food they eat throughout the day." That means £50 per cat per month which is expensive. Not many people could justify that kind of expenditure.

Perhaps this is the weakness in this argument. You could argue all day long that human-grade wet cat food should be bought and provided by the cat owner, every time, all the time if the sole objective is to max out the health and welfare of your cat. But, 95% of cat owners can't afford that kind of expense so the discussion is academic.

And Sophie found that after a few days of feeding on the super high quality cat food her cats would not eat anything else but she says that she had the "satisfaction that it was providing him with all the nutrients he needed." How will she get them off it and go back to the standard stuff?

Untamed say that cats should have more energy because they will have been eating high-protein whole meats.

RELATED: Are plant proteins as good as animal proteins for cats?

Not long ago, I did some research on vegan dry cat food which I bought for my cat but he does not like it! My research using Google Scholar indicated to me that plant proteins are as good as animal proteins. So, the statement above that high-protein whole meats are better seems to be incorrect to me. Protein is protein. And cat food is artificial in any case. The manufacturers simply add all the nutrients needed to make it balanced.

Perhaps one factor with buying human-grade wet cat food is that it is probably prepared to a higher standard which may make it healthier. And there will be less additives I suspect. Of course, the basic ingredients are higher quality and they probably meet stricter standards. There will be less fillers and artificial ingredients. This would indicate that it provides better nutrition which may in turn lead to improved energy levels, a stronger immune system and healthier coat.

RELATED: No wet cat food waste (infographic).

Of course, that must be the common-sense conclusion but you might not see it actually in your cat. Also, not all human-grade cat foods are of equal quality. And also, cats may have specific dietary requirements and sensitivities. I don't think we can say with 100% certainty that providing your cat with human-grade cat food will improve their health and welfare over providing a good quality wet cat food. Notice I have referred to good wet food. Poor quality dry foods are liable, I believe to cause health issues if it is the sole source of nutrition.

You might like to consult with a veterinarian on this if you are considering it. Also, transitioning to a new diet should be done gradually as a sudden change can cause gastrointestinal issues.

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P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.