Well, this is from HuffPost, but we’ll ignore the source. It’s an article called “60 of the Funnest Tweets About Cats and Dogs this Year“, the year being 2020. I’ll show only the cat tweets, of course, and only a half dozen.
egg thief!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/X3ySQ3zhWp
— kat (@bbykaat) August 16, 2020
What kind of surgery would require shaving the distal front legs? I hope it’s not DECLAWING!
please look at this picture of my friend’s cat who had to get shaved for surgery pic.twitter.com/RZNPUyXJZX
— Ash♀️ (@trashlyn_) September 15, 2020
Fridge sign of the day. pic.twitter.com/cTMdwgUrgq
— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) April 26, 2020
My husband set up a motion sensor sign that lights up when my cat poops….please hire him, he has too much time on his hands pic.twitter.com/gS9VH0Nz6T
— Hannah Solow (@hamstertalk) November 12, 2020
“how’s self quarantine going?” pic.twitter.com/6dzU8UjoeZ
— iqra (@iqraanabi) March 15, 2020
When you work from home and your manager wants a word with you pic.twitter.com/XyapLRa5S7
— Nikkipedia 🏳️🌈 (@Hughes87n) March 25, 2020
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This BBC story is about a woman who started letting in and feeding a British shorthair who actually belonged to someone else (click on the screenshot).
The cat was a cheater, and the author, Anisa Subedar, even mentions one of my favorite children’s books about another cheating cat. You should get it for your kids (I own a copy).
Much later, I discovered there is a book about this.
Originally published in 1990, Six Dinner Sid is a children’s book that tells the story of a cat called Sid, who lives at number one Aristotle Street. But Sid also lives at all the other houses on the street and eats at all the homes, whose owners all believe Sid belongs to them.
Unlike the real cats described by Celia Haddon, Sid knows very well what he is doing. But his manipulative plans unravel when he gets sick and the neighbours discover they’re all being played.
Author Inga Moore tells me it was based on a black cat she knew when she lived in north London.
“I heard someone call him by a name which sounded like Sid,” she says. (In fact his name was Ziggy.) “Sid used to come in through the cat flap and make himself at home at number four where I was living. I think his home was number six. Sid in the book was very much Sid in real life and he was the inspiration for the story, which is of course made up.
The cheating cat eventually moved away, and Anisa was heartbroken when the real owner, David, told her this and advised her to get her own cat. So she did the only thing she could:
As the days got shorter and this year started drawing to a close, David’s words about getting a cat resonated hard. I hadn’t realised how much I needed the comfort of something purry and furry on my lap to soothe me during a time of such uncertainty.
So, in anticipation of a winter of discontent, a few weeks ago I picked up a 12-week-old British Shorthair. He’s the colour of a latte and goes by the name of Horace.
I really don’t plan to share Horace with anyone but as I’ve learned, that might not be entirely my decision so if you see him around, you know what to do.
This is a sweet (and true) story, and you can follow Horace, as he has his own Instagram page. Here he is; isn’t he a beaut?
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From the Torygraph via yahoo! news, we have the story of ailurophilic Muscovites who rescue cats beleaguered by the Russian winter (click on screenshot):
An excerpt:
Ramil, who asked his last name to be withdrawn for security reasons, is not a builder but a volunteer making rounds to rescue cats trapped in the basements of Soviet-era blocks of flats which often serve as the only shelter for stray cats in winter’s cold.
Russia is a world beater when it comes to cat ownership. A GfK poll in 2016 showed that 57 per cent of households have at least one cat, the world’s highest.
Russians have only recently been waking up to the reality of stray cats, estimated at hundreds of thousands in Moscow alone, who badly need shelter as temperatures in the capital typically stay below zero for the most part of winter.
In a major victory for cat lovers, Moscow’s parliament this autumn secured a decree by a deputy mayor, ordering all apartment buildings to provide an unfettered access to basement vents for “small pets” and threatening with sanctions for non-compliance.
But not every suburb has this provision, ergo the activists:
On a recent afternoon The Sunday Telegraph joined Ramil on a secret visit to the satellite town of Zheleznodorozhy where utilities companies persist in putting bars on the vents, robbing strays of the only reliable winter shelter.
Guided by local women who appear to know every stray cat in town by name, the activists went around several addresses in the sleepy, snowcovered neighbourhood to inspect the vents.
As pincers failed to snap the bars on one window, Ramil, lying on the concrete walkway around the basement, took out his circular saw and went at it, sparkles flying around.
The activists quickly retreated, anxious to avoid unwanted attention from the police.
There’s a lot more, to read, but here’s are two photos (both by Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr for The Telegraph):
Ramil at work:
A cat opening:
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Lagniappe: Besieged on Japan’s Cat Island!
h/t: Greg, Ginger K., Nicole
When I was a kid in Portland OR, we had a big orange cat named Mr. McSnooper (Snoopy, for short). He was half wild-cat (puma?) so was large. We lived on a large block of mostly single family dwellings, and back yards were fenced, so there was a very long fence running down the middle of the block. After dinner, Snoopy would go out to check out the neighborhood. He gained wait. Mom put him on a diet. He didn’t care. He never really begged for food. Less food equates to less weight, right? He got bigger. Summer came and Mom, Snoopy, and I were outside in front when a little old lady came by and started talking to “Fluffy.” Turns out he was visiting several of our neighbors, mostly on the back of the block, and getting fed by all of them. And they all had different names for ‘their’ cat.
I would love to visit “cat island,” but I think my respiratory passages would close up instantly.
I have fond memories of one of my kids borrowing Six Dinner Sid from the library at preschool.
The library had cats for borrowing?
Well, I’ve heard stranger things. Sounds like a really good gig for the juvenile cat looking for a career. Where do they recruit?
Well, this seems like as good a place as any to ask some questions about my cats. As many of you know, I rescued a kitten from a heat wave last summer after she had been abandoned by her mother. I already had another cat for nine years at the time. My older cat has not exactly welcomed his adoptive sister with open arms, though it’s not as if he regularly attacks her, and he will let her sit near him on occasion.
When I rescued my kitten, I put an enormous cat condo in my bedroom for her to play, scratch, and feel safe on. Over the last few days, my older cat has started climbing onto the condo for the first time, and he growls and yowls at my kitten when she tries to come up. He’s not up there for the vast majority of the day, but he tries to stop her from coming up if he is, and my kitten is clearly too afraid to challenge him when he does this.
I want to intervene when I see my older cat bullying my kitten, but (1) I don’t know about cat power dynamics and whether I’d be hurting instead of helping the situation, and (2) it’s not as if my older cat hurts my kitten. Is this just part of their relationship slowly developing? Are they still feeling things out? Is my older cat just going to be the alpha in the relationship? Should I intervene when my older cat is bullying my kitten?
Answers to those and similar questions would be appreciated. Thanks!
That’s … tolerance. It’ll get better as ResidentCat gets more used to NewcomerCat.
Dominance games. They’re going to happen. Cats like to be in a “high place” (not in the biblical sense), and these two are settling their relative positions in hierarchy of two. If your’re worried about the playing out of power games … put a comfy cushion on another “high place”, or something to make it attractive and … well, it’s a helluva a cat that really can be in two places at the same time. If the two are similar altitudes and on opposite sides of the room, the worst that could happen is cats hurtling around the room at superluminal velocities. You didn’t want that collection of priceless porcelain anyway, did you?
You’re not going to be there all the time, forever, so at some point, they are going to have to come to an accommodation. You intervening is just going to prolong the process. Hurling a rolled up ball of tissue or something light and bouncy to distract the fight would be as far as I’d go. Caveat porcelain.
Unless the kitten is harmed or cowering excessively I’d leave it to them to sort out.
Agreed. Suggest giving “special time” older cat who may be feeling usurped. It may take awhile but kitten will come into her own in the relationship. As long as there’s no serious damage and they both know you won’t allow that, they’ll figure it out.
Cheating cats – I used to live in a 5th floor walk up on the Upper East Side. One summer the cat from next door would shimmy along the windowsill from the neighbor’s place into mine at night, unbeknownst to me for awhile. That’s until a houseguest reported a cat in the apartment – I though he was bonkers but no – we did have a regular visitor.
Pretty soon thereafter I went out and adopted my own cat (named “Chicken”) from the ASPCA who was my beloved and constant companion for over a dozen years.
Now I have a d*g, which is different, but still agreeable. He gives me an excuse to go downstairs or I wouldn’t have left the apartment in a year!
D.A
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Surely a de-clawing operation would require the actual paws to be shaved?
Cat-paw-l tunnel syndrome? (Which, if it existed, would not be a fun thing for a cat to have. Even more disabling for a cat for a hoominz, I suspect.