Cat's hind leg has a mind of its own forcing the cat to fight back

This video is scarcely believable because what we see is a cat losing control of his right hind leg to the point where the hind leg in question has a mind of its own and starts to attack the cat. The cat then fights back. That's what it looks like and it is incredibly odd.

My brief thoughts about this strange video is that the right hind leg was scratching the cat's neck which is very typical cat behaviour. And my theory is that this scratching process is an automated, instinctive process perhaps partially governed by the autonomic nervous system which is the nervous system which runs the beat of the heart and the breathing.

And therefore, the hind leg takes on a mentality of its own almost which in this instance annoyed the cat so he or she fought back.

That's just a thought but you have to try and understand what's going on and there does seem to be a fight between the hind leg and the cat who owns the hind leg! But it ends up in play-fighting. Cool. This cat does not need a caregiver or another cat to play with!

Sometimes cats do something similar with their tails.

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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.

Hind leg fights back! Screen grab from video above.

Jamie Lynn Spears blames Tesla cars for killing her cats!

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is hardly a story worth repeating but it is interesting in a way that Britney Spears's sister won't want to read about. Her name is Jamie Lynn Spears and she has accused Tesla EV cars in particular of killing her cats. Note that it is in the plural and therefore more than one cat of hers has been killed by a Tesla car.

Jamie Lynn Spears is a cat owner and she lets then go outside where more than one has been hit by EVs. Image credit: see base of page.

She is basically blaming Elon Musk who I am sure is totally disinterested in this.

Jamie Lynn, 32, claims that her beloved pets (note once again that it's in the plural) are being killed by Teslas because the cats can't hear the cars coming.

Tough but realistic comment: if you've lost one cat in a road traffic accident concerning a Tesla car, I don't think you should let your other cat outside or you should take some steps to protect your cat. It appears to me that she lives on a road which is not quiet and where there is a possibility that an outdoor cat can be hit by a car. You take measures to stop that happening which doesn't seem to be the case for Jamie Lynn.

I have read similar stories about cat owners complaining about road traffic killing their cats. The solution is in the hands of the owner. Don't blame cars or roads. Don't try and deflect the blame as it all comes back to the owner.

She wrote on social media:

"We have now lost — I don’t want to tell you how many cats — because they don’t hear the Tesla crank and unfortunate things happen and it’s really devastating and tragic for everyone involved. Elon Musk, let’s figure this out. You owe me a couple cats.”

I don't think the problem is with the quietness of EVs but with allowing cats to walk onto the road. Personally, I don't have a problem with the quietness of electric vehicles. They do in fact make a sound. And you have the sound of the tyres on the road which can be quite pronounced. There's no question that you can hear an electric vehicle coming.

Despite that, I'm told that as of 2020 regulations in America mean that electric vehicles have to emit sounds louder than a certain decibel level which is about the level of a washing machine. I don't know if that's true and if it is I think it's silly because one advantage of an EV is that it is quiet. Why take that away with some artificial sound box tucked underneath the dashboard? I just don't get that at all.

The bigger issue on electric vehicles is that the insurance on them is rising rapidly to unsustainable levels because, the insurance companies argue, that repair of electric vehicles is very expensive because the batteries are very expensive to replace. The cost of repairing electric vehicles is pushing up insurance policies across the board but particularly for EVs.

This will curtail the purchase of electric vehicles which, indirectly, will help Jamie Lynn because they'll be more diesels and petrol-engined cars on the road pretty soon if this electric vehicle crisis continues.

On the upside it is nice to know that Jamie Lynn likes cats. Shame she is an irresponsible cat owner.

Image credit: By NickRewind - Jamie Lynn Spears Talks NEW Zoey 102 Movie ☀️ #Shorts NickRewind, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=136214583

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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.

Pumba the pet caracal is anxious almost all the time living with humans

Pumba is anxious at best living in the human environment. Screen grab from video below.

I have written about this so-called 'pet caracal' called Pumba before (not a pet at all actually). You might like to read my latest article (see link below). I am somewhat fascinated with this cat not because I am interested in exotic cats as pets but because I'm concerned for the welfare of this cat who is overweight because he's bored and wants to escape. He lives in Latvia and was adopted as a kitten.

RELATED: Video tells you why ‘pet’ caracals are not pets at all.

But, having watched some of the videos on the owner's (Deniss Jegorovs) TikTok account, every one that I've seen shows Pumba hissing indicating extreme anxiety. He hisses when his owner approaches him. He hissed when his owner approached him to video him and he hissed when his owner fed him and also videoed him as you can see in the video on this page.

This is entirely not what should be the case for a so-called domesticated wild cat. This cat is not domesticated at all. The cat is tame to a certain extent but in my opinion this cat is terrified at worst and probably permanently anxious at best.

And the reason for that is this cat is not socialised to people. He is behaving like a feral domestic cat. He is living in a hostile environment permanently. He has one friend, a domestic cat who also lives with this man.

And of course, the hiss is quite strong as this is a medium-sized wild cat. It's a very intimidating hiss. I don't know how the owner can put up with this because this is a precursor to being attacked. The ears go back and the hiss is a message to the owner to back off and go away otherwise you will be attacked. That is the message which indicates a dysfunctional relationship between caracal and human.

This is entirely unsurprising because, as mentioned, this is a somewhat tame caracal but not a domesticated cat and this cat is unsocialised despite being adopted as a kitten.

This caracal will never be a good cat companion and never be domesticated and never be fully socialised to humans. He will only be relaxed and happy when around other cats he knows but humans to him are large and potentially dangerous. Although Pumba might easily attack a domestic cat if he escaped and met a neighbour's cat.

All of this, for me, points to the fact that one should never purchase a caracal as an exotic pet unless you fully understand what you are getting into but even then, it's wrong because you are doing something which has a negative impact on caracal conservation and wild cat conservation in general.

The videos of Pumba sends the incorrect message that small and medium wild cat species can be pets when the message should be that they should be left in their natural environment, in the wild, and people should leave them alone to live their lives as they should live them. Then they can be happy but not like this.

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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.

Retired lawyer and professor shoots dead two environmental campaigners on a highway in Panama in front of video cameras

NEWS AND COMMENT: This is an extraordinary story of a man who appears to have completely lost rational thought because he will surely live the rest of his days in prison. In front of cameras operated by the news media, he shot dead a couple of environmental protesters who were campaigning about the destruction of rainforest in Panama to make way for mining for the next 20-40 years. 

The contract had been organised by the government and clearly some citizens of Panama strongly objected to it for environmental reasons and in terms of climate change.

The exact moment when Darlington shot dead one of the protesters. You can see the smoke coming out of the barrel of the gun. He looks calm and in control of himself. His life as he knows it has ended because he will surely be convicted of the murder of two men. He shot them because they had barricaded the highway and he wanted to get through. The photograph comes from the Daily Mail newspaper

This man, Kenneth Darlington, 77, was blocked on the Pan-American highway in the Chame district about 50 miles from Panama City, by the protesters. He went to clear away the barriers, and approached two protesters one of whom challenged him to shoot as by this time Darlington had raised his handgun and pointed it at them.

Clearly, the campaigners thought that Darlington was simply trying to intimidate them and would not shoot as that would be the end of his life as he knew it. Remarkably, Darlington did shoot both of the men dead. Clearly planet Earth is becoming a very stressful place on which to live.

The first man, a teacher, dropped to the ground and died at the scene. His name is Abdiel Diaz. The other man, Ivan Rodriguez, died in hospital a little while later having been shot in the shoulder apparently.

The Times reports that last week another demonstrator had been run over and killed in a separate incident.

The protests have changed the Panamanian government's opinion about granting licences to mining companies causing the destruction of forests. They have suspended these contracts indefinitely.

The existing contract is said to be worth $375 million annually to Panama. Panama is the 14th largest copper-producing country in the world and copper is required in EVs - electric vehicles. 

As you can imagine, there is a big demand for precious metals and metal such as copper to make electric vehicles. There is a shortage of some of these precious metals and therefore the prices are going up rapidly. 

That apparently is the case with copper as well. It's obvious a very profitable mining operation but then again mass deforestation is today, a highly sensitive topic because of global warming which is becoming more and more pressing as governments refuse to curb carbon dioxide and methane emissions.

For example, in the UK, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, has decided to issue licences to extract oil and gas from the North Sea where once these areas had remained dormant because it was too expensive to extract. Now apparently it isn't and he's doing it against public opinion which is arguably in favour of vigorously dealing with climate change rather than going into reverse and ignoring what appears to be a catastrophic future for the youngsters of this world.

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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.

Israeli victims of Hamas terrorists immortalised in Star of David and Lion of Judah tattoos

A tattoo artist in Israel appears to be inundated with requests for the Star of David and sometimes with the added Lion of Judah tattoo. It may include a map of Israel as well.

Source: The Times.

In Israel, tattoos are popular with the young despite, apparently, a biblical prohibition against them because of their associations with the Holocaust survivors who were tattooed with a number by the Nazis.

Image assessed as being in the public domain.

A month after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks which killed 1,400 Israelis, there has been a clamour for these tattoos to memorialise the lives of the victims massacred by Hamas terrorists. 

The first to be killed where Jews living about a kilometer from the border between Israel and Gaza in Kibbutz as these were the first places that the Hamas terrorists encountered on their rampage.

The tattoos are an act of remembrance and defiance. An act of free will to tell the world that they are strong.

A tattoo artist in a city in the center of Israel thought that he wouldn't get any requests to do tattoos during wartime, "But in the end I see that, sadly, I am tattooing every day."

Many of Liav Forer's clients are survivors from that well-known party - a music festival - where a major massacre took place (at least 260 killed). 

Image assessed as being in the public domain.

There are different variations on the theme in these tattoos.  I find it very touching. And of course, I'm interested in the Lion of Judah as I'm interested in cats. See Lion of Judah Tattoo.

The Lion of Judah is a Jewish national and cultural symbol, traditionally regarded as the symbol of the tribe of Judah (according to Wikipedia).

As I recall, only one cat is mentioned in the Bible and guess what? It is the lion, the Lion of Judah.

RELATED: Cats in the Bible.

You'll see reference to this in the New Testament in Revelation 5:5:

"Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals."

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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.