Woman stole her neighbour's cat but it's not a crime

Can this possible? A woman steals her neighbour's cat but it is not a crime? It can happen. Let me paint the picture. But first let me say that sometimes it is simply not possible to say that cats can be owned by anyone. It is up to the cat sometimes. And they make a choice.

An amusing a slightly bizarre illustration for the article by Bing's Copilot. 

Scenario

A person is a terrible cat owner. Poor food and he shouts at his cat (Bertie) all the time. He's too stressed to be good at cat caregiving and he has the wrong mentality.

Three houses down is a single, lonely woman who loves animals and cats in particular. Bertie likes to visit her for a bit of peace and quiet and better cat food.

She is NOT trying to entice Bertie away from his owner, just feed him as he looked underfeed and his coat was in poor condition. He looked sick so she took him to the vet and paid for treatment out of her own pocket.

Bertie had worms and was infested with fleas. Bertie continues to visit the lady and eventually stays. 

The horrible man finds out and storms around to accuse the lady of stealing his cat. She denies it and said that Bertie chose to live with her.

He threatens to call the police. He does call the police! The police aren't interested. They say there is no evidence that the cat was stolen.

To steal something the alleged thief needs to have the intention to permanently deprive the owner of their possession. This does not apply to the lady's action as Bertie is free to return to the horrible owner.

Bertie is free to come and go as he pleases. She doe not detain Bertie. She does not have the right 'mens rea' - a Latin term meaning the intent or correct mentality to prove theft.

No crime because cats are not inanimate objects as the criminal law states. The criminal law does fit well with this kind of scenario because cats are sentient beings with a mind of their own.

They have a degree of intelligence and they not infrequently find a new home if their existing one is inadequate or they are driven from it.

Bertie's owner gives up realising that he did not want to keep Bertie in any case.

Bertie has a new owner. No, he has a new human companion and caregiver. That's the point. People don't own cats. They care for them in a symbiotic relationship. One where both parties benefit.

I have made up this story but the Daily Mail had a headline along similar lines but they are now charging for access to their newspaper - the Daily Mail + version of it. So I could not read the article. I had to make it up but I guessed what it was about.

Their headline:

Yes, I stole my neighbour's cat - but don't you dare call me a criminal! So is Lynne caring or a crook... read her story and decide for yourself

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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.

Today, cats better reflect the human condition than dogs

In the UK and perhaps in the USA and indeed in other countries there appears to be a growing disrespect for politicians; our leaders. That's because they are screwing up over and over again. They are failing to curb global warming. American leaders (Republicans) are fudging the support that Ukraine desperately needs in terms of armaments in order to see off the illegal invasion of their country.

People admire individualism and the cat is an individual. We respect the cats independent attitude. We are less inclined to admire politicians, the old boy's club, who don't lead with integrity but spout the usual hollow slogans and mantras. - MikeB

People admire individualism and the cat is an individual. We respect the cats independent attitude. We are less inclined to admire politicians, the old boy's club, who don't lead with integrity but spout the usual hollow slogans and mantras. Image: Bing.

In the UK, the leadership here is failing and the country is in a malaise. It feels like it is a broken country with so much that is wrong. The list is too long to discuss here but you could almost say that if you can name it it's broken. The NHS comes to mind and infrastructure also comes to mind. The roads are full of potholes. The schools are overcrowded. Dentistry is almost all privately paid for now and therefore can't be afforded by millions of people.

I can go on and on but the point is this British people no longer respect politicians. There is a growing respect for individualism, for people who protest against our leaders. One of the great modern protesters against leaders is Greta Thunberg. She constantly criticises the leaders for their failure to tackle global warming properly. She is greatly admired. She is an individualist. She stands out.

RELATED: Victory for Greta Thunberg and defeat for the British police in recent freedom of speech case.

In Russia, Alexei Navalny, was until his murder the country's greatest protester. He protested against the state's corruption; the corruption and megalomania of Putin and his cronies. Navalny was greatly admired. Many thousands attended his funeral despite a genuine fear that they would be arrested and sent to prison for no reason.

He was an individual. He was courageous. His courage was enormous and extraordinary. Not many could have done that. In fact, only one person in Russia could have done it and that was him.

Back to the point of the article, this growing respect for individualism and a decline in mindless loyalties to our major institutions and leaders; our gradual disrespect for authority should lead us to a greater respect for the domestic cat!

Our cat companions are individualist, independent-minded and they do as they please within the environment that we create for them. They still love us but in their own way. We admire that attitude or at least those of us who love domestic cats do 😉.

Dogs are loyal slaves, cats are independent and individualistic. They tolerate our leadership but don't necessarily respect it. But we respect them in return.

It is said that this is the era of the domestic cat but my research indicates that the popularity of dogs is increasing at the same pace as the popularity of domestic cats. It would seem, though, that it is the small dogs which receive this admiration.

Perhaps the increasing adoptions of dogs is a reflection of people who need to control their environment because the world is becoming more febrile and uncontrollable.  This, perhaps, is the other side of the coin to admiring the independent cat. 

Those who need to control their environment more might prefer the dog while those who are able to accept a lack of control might favour the 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.

What do domestic cats dream about? My thoughts.

What do domestic cats dream about? 

Past experiences and emotions reprocessed in the rarefied and distorted environment of a dream in order to mentally process them to help make them emotionally acceptable. - My thoughts.

You can tackle the question in the title in two ways: you can rely on your personal experience in observing your cat and how they behave when they are dreaming or you can rely on research which in the USA would suggest that cats may dream about things that have happened during the day or in the distant or recent past which is similar to the way dogs and humans dream.

We are going to have to guess and that's exactly what Dr Desmond Morris has suggested. It's a question that he can't answer and neither can anybody else with certainty but I think we can rely on our personal, human experiences and the dreams that we can recollect and what they mean.

I have suggested that a lot of the dreams we have are a means to divest ourselves of anxieties. A lot of my dreams are about becoming anxious in trying to do something that can't be done such as catch a train at a station which is impossible to get at or hitting a golf ball which is impossible to hit or take an exam which I am bound to fail. These are expressions of frustration in trying to get things done and the anxiety that they produce.

Indoor/outdoor cat

In dreaming about them I believe that we can divest ourselves of these anxieties and renew the brain for the next day's fight.

I know that my cat dreams and has nightmares sometimes or a feline's version of nightmares. He might suddenly wake up with a start and he might vocalise his difficult experiences during his nightmare. I can only guess that he has encountered a fox or had some other very bad experience in his dream which has woken him up.

But his dream will be based on his day-to-day experiences, possibly a particular bad one that occurred outside in which he now dreams about. It may have happened a long time ago or recently.

Indoor cat

I don't think you can expect a full-time indoor cat to have the same kind of dreams experienced by an indoor/outdoor cat.

In fact, I would suggest that a full-time indoor cat is rarely if ever going to have nightmares unless they are being bullied in a multi-cat home. And I would suggest that their dreams are going to be less difficult and painful or distressing particularly if they are well looked after in a pleasant home by a nice and considerate caregiver.

If it's true that a person or cat processes their anxieties in their dreams, I would expect very few dreams to be recalled by domestic cats that live a cosseted and pleasant indoor lifestyle. 

They have nothing nasty to process. They should have no anxieties because all their needs are met. They have security, warmth and food and a loving caregiver. There is no room therefore for anxiety. Perhaps they just dream about nice things. Every dream is a pleasant experience.

Dreaming experiences

But the bottom line is that either people or cats dream the things they've experienced but in a dreamlike way which is distorted but ultimately, in my case, these negative dreams boil down to a feeling of anxiety and my brain's desire to process them to make them more acceptable. 

The image is by Bing Co-pilot using DALL E 3.

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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.

Facebook removed 690 million fake accounts between October and December 2023

By their own admission, Meta, the owners of Facebook say they 'actioned' (believed to mean removed) 690 million fake accounts that were started between October and December 2023. Ninety-nine percent of them were discovered before they had been reported.

Note: Always be cautious when using Facebook and Instagram. Think the worst and proceed from that starting point. Too many scammers. Never send money upfront. Never.

Their response with this information was to the revelation that Meta is failing to do enough for 'romance fraud' victims. The Times report that there has been a 29% rise in the number of scams against victims who believed that they were communicating with an attractive man (or the other way around but less likely) when in fact they were communicating with a scammer who was using the image of a man who had no idea that his image was being used in this way.

Dr Christian Boving is used by love scammers to extract money from unsuspecting women looking for love. He is gay. He knows about the problem and has reported it to Meta, Facebook's owner but nothing happened. Image: The Times newspaper.

As an example, The Times reports on the picture of a Danish hunk of a doctor (who by the way is gay), Dr. Christian Boving, that has been used multiple times by scammers to develop relationships online through Facebook with unsuspecting women with the intention of, when the time is right, scamming the women out of thousands of pounds.

One such woman is Lauren McEwan, living in Missouri, USA. She was attracted to Dr. Christian Boving's face. But she was communicating with somebody else. These scams are called "authorised push payment frauds". The customers are tricked into paying money to an account controlled by a criminal. And Meta is facilitating these crimes it is alleged.

McEwan said that her experience hurt. She said that: "It did hurt. It was a real let down. It took me a couple of weeks to come to terms with it."

The report says that she is one of several new victims to have chosen to speak out about their experiences with Boving impersonators.

The accusation against Meta is that they have failed to clamp down on fake accounts using this doctor's appearance.

His face has appeared on various social media websites as part of scams and dating apps but the problem is particularly bad for Facebook. The doctor has accused Meta of continuously failing to delete the fakes. He wants more stringent verification to prevent the scam accounts being created.

Fraudsters began to use his picture 10 years ago. But the number of fake accounts have surged in recent years. He is speaking out against the problem to try and stop it. Victims have been alerted but many of these fake profiles remain online. He has lost hope and thinks that it will never stop.

He emailed Meta with a long list of fake profiles. He said that they weren't removed after he reported them. The Times newspaper also sent the list to Meta and some of the profiles have remained active. They had a partial success I guess because of their increased clout. But it is remarkable that Meta are still slow and reluctant to deal with these problems.

These are romance scam operations. Sometimes the women (it is usually women I guess) realise that there's something strange going on but they enjoy the admiration and the kind words. Sometimes when it's been proved unequivocally to the victim that they are being scammed they still refuse to accept it remarkably.

Meta says that accounts impersonating someone else are against their rules. They said that they have removed a number of accounts reported to them and continue to investigate. They don't allow fraudulent activity and they work with law enforcement to prevent the scammers using their platforms.

And, they admit that between October and December last year they took action on more than 690 million fake accounts on Facebook. Amazing. It gives the impression that Facebook is plagued, swamped, drowning in fake accounts.

Meta encourage people to report what they believe to be scamming accounts by using its in-app tools.

Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg was a British politician until he joined Facebook on a $15 million a year salary a few years ago! Also in The Times there's an article about him, describing him as the Machiavelli of Meta. They ask whether he is curbing big tech excesses or enabling them.

The journalist who wrote that article, Tom McTague, writes that, "with [Meta's] platforms a hub for crime, from fraud to child grooming, any claims he is making it more responsible ring hollow." 

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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.

Cosmic Cat on the Celestial Sill - an AI fantasy story

Once upon a starry night, in a distant galaxy far, far away, there existed a peculiar windowsill. This wasn't your ordinary windowsill; it was a portal to the cosmos itself. And on this cosmic sill sat our feline friend, Luna.

Astrophotography photo of a small black and white cat sitting on a windowsill. Image: DALL E (an AI image-maker)

## **Luna's Journey Beyond Earth** 

 ### **1. The Nebula Perch** Luna's fur, a blend of midnight black and stardust white, shimmered under the distant constellations. Her eyes, twin galaxies, reflected the mysteries of the universe. She balanced delicately on the edge, her tiny paws gripping the edge of infinity. 

 ### **2. The Milky Way Stare** Luna gazed out into the cosmic expanse. The Milky Way stretched before her—a river of stardust, swirling with celestial hues. She wondered if other cats in distant galaxies chased cosmic mice or batted at shooting stars. 

 ### **3. Zero-Gravity Purr** As Luna floated, weightless, she emitted a soft purr that resonated through the vacuum of space. The planets listened, swaying in their elliptical orbits. Saturn's rings hummed in harmony, and Mars blushed a deeper shade of red. 

 ### **4. Comet Whiskers** Luna's whiskers twitched as a comet streaked by. She extended a paw, attempting to catch its luminous tail. Alas, comets are elusive creatures, slipping through dimensions like playful phantoms. 

 ### **5. Starlight Nap** The cosmic chill didn't bother Luna; she curled her tail around her body and closed her eyes. She dreamed of interstellar yarn balls and meteor showers. Her cosmic nap was interrupted only by the occasional shooting star zipping past. 

 ## **Conclusion** And so, our celestial cat sat on the windowsill, a tiny astronaut exploring the great unknown. She pondered the meaning of existence, the infinity of space, and whether tuna existed on distant exoplanets. 

 Remember, dear reader, that even in the vastness of the cosmos, a cat's curiosity knows no bounds. So next time you gaze at the night sky, imagine Luna perched there, whiskers catching stardust, and know that somewhere out there, she's still exploring. May your days be as cosmic as Luna's adventures! 🌠🐱✨