Here’s a device, “Little Cat”, that purports to help your tubby moggie lose weight; it apparently comes from Korea, and I can’t find out how much it costs. You can operate it from your phone with an app, and the speeds are up to 72 rpm, which may be a bit fast for even a fit cat! Also, since the cat never catches the laser dot, it’s bound to get frustrated. And if your cat is going to chase a laser dot, why not just get a laser pointer instead of this wheel?
No, I don’t think this is a good buy, but who knows?
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From both ScienceAlert and news.com.au, we have the chilling but ultimately happy story of a rescued cat. The moggie in question, one Fluffy from Montana, was an indoor/outdoor cat whose owners, having gone away for a bit, found it frozen and covered with ice balls:
Fluffy’s owners, who did not want to be identified [JAC: no surprise!], found her covered in thick chunks of ice and snow near their home last week. They scooped her up and immediately drove her to the vet, which is probably what saved her life.
“She was frozen,” said Andrea Dutter, executive director of the Animal Clinic of Kalispell.
A photo!
It wasn’t a rock-solid kind of frozen. But her body temperature was below what the clinic’s thermometers could read — 90 degrees. A cat’s normal internal body temperature is 101 degrees.
“We immediately began to warm her up,” Dutter said. “Warm water, heating pads, hot towels . . . within an hour she started grumbling at us.”
Staff warmed the cat using towels, cage warmers and intravenous fluids. Fluffy is normally a little crabby, so when she began growling after about an hour, Clark knew she would be fine, he said.
“These crabby cats are survivors,” Clark said.
And now Fluffy is okay. I hope the owners learned a lesson. More photos from the AP:
Fluffly thawing out:
Lazarus revived!
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From Designboom we have the story of a developing project in Ecuador in which street cats are provided with spiffy designer shelters to protect them from dogs and other outdoor dangers. Architects have put up this shelter in Babahoyo, Ecuador, and it seems to work.
A translation from the Spanish:
The refuge of 60 square centimeters is built of wood, protected against water and rain by small eaves, that help to have cross ventilation. a tray for food is placed next to the water. in the end, the shelters bring the idea of consciousness, a responsible city that welcomes and learns to live next to animals while they achieved in finding their home.
The locals even provide food and water, as you can see in the video below. This is a prototype, but let’s hope that these will spread across the country (or other countries):
h/t: Michael, Tom, Stephen
Another frozen animal:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47330924
Another heartwarming story. We can only imagine what the wolf thought of all the humans dealing with him.
Heartwarming is the operative term, in mammals (including us humans, of course) where the core temperature has dropped, the greatest danger is arrythmias.
Just went away for a bit and left the cat to fend for itself? wtf? Who does that? Poor little moggie.
In our villages, cats are expected to fend for themselves. But we have better weather!
Our family has a cottage where we often go for the weekend. Several neighborhood cats somehow sense when we arrive and within 20 minutes come to beg for food. When we feed them, they want to be our cats and push themselves into the house. We don’t let them and in fact before departing check carefully whether any have sneaked in. I shudder at the thought that one could some day remain locked in and die.
Note that feral cats are a great danger to bird and reptile -and small mammal- life. I dunno, in Australia there is a guy whose mission is to kill feral cats (and other imported predators such as ferrets). He wears a cat-skin on his head. The idea is to protect the indigenous fauna from them.
Is it a good or a bad idea to feed feral cats? I tend to think the latter.
They are not quite feral, that is, they have a home where they receive most food and stay when it is cold, plus several homes which they frequent for more food.
They are kept to control the small mammals (the rodent-y part of them). I agree that I should leave them do their job. But I cannot resist when they look into my eyes and say “Meow”.
I like the cat cottages. The interior of one looks like it has a cubbyhole for the cat to retreat into; but to me, they don’t seem high enough off the ground to be protected from dogs, which, even if they couldn’t breach the cat cottage could terrorize a cat nearly to death; and what if a mother cat had babies there? Nonetheless, I think it’s a good idea and hope it works out.
I’d have put a cardboard box inside.. 🙂
I suppose you could just leave that laser treadmill running, with the laser dot position set to ‘random’, and let the cat optionally exercise without the need for you to be present.
(Equally, I suppose, you could set up a laser pointer with a couple of servo actuators programmed to move it in random patterns).
cr
An interesting “experiment in living” down in Ecuador. (A good side to having lots of people around!)