Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
We’ll continue with Caturday Felids and see how many people read them. First, from the BBC, a somewhat misleading headline (my beloved Teddy died of lymphoma)
Click on the screenshot, but if it’s paywalled you can find the article archived here.
Here’s what they did:
The first detailed genetic map of cancer in pet cats reveals striking similarities with human versions of the disease, possibly helping find new ways to treat cancers in both.
Scientists analysed tumour DNA from almost 500 domestic cats, uncovering key genetic mutations linked with the condition.
Cancer is one of the main causes of illness and death in cats, however, very little is known about how it develops.
“Cat cancer genetics has totally been a black box up until now,” said lead researcher, Dr Louise Van der Wayden. “The more we can understand about cancer in any species has got to be beneficial for everybody.”
They found many of the genes driving cat cancers are mirrored in humans, suggesting the two species share key biological processes that allow tumours to grow and spread.x
The scientists say the household cat could hold the key to understanding certain types of breast cancer, such as triple negative breast cancer. Around 15 out of 100 breast cancers are of this type.
Cats develop this subtype more often than humans, giving scientists access to samples, and offering clues to new medicines that might help in treatment.
Almost a quarter of UK households own at least one cat, making the animal almost as popular as dogs as a trusted companion.
But while cancer studies have been carried out extensively in dogs, cats have remained unexplored.
Here’s the Science paper (click to read it) with the abstract, but I have to say I haven’t read it:
As you see, the contribution of cats is that we have a lot of them to provide tumor tissue, and they get some “humanlike’ cancers more often than do humans. So identifying oncogenes in cats, some of which may have the same pathology in humans, might be useful.
“Oncogenes” are genes in humans that, when they mutate, cause a cell to grow uncontrollably, producing cancer. Identifying oncogenes might lead to the creation of cancer therapies tailored to people’s specific mutations. The most famous of these genes are BRCA2 and BRCA2, involved in DNA repair and cell death, which have a tendency to mutate in women, causing breast and ovarian cancers.
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“If that cat could talk, what tales he’d tell About Della and the dealer, and the dog as well, But the cat was cool, and he never said a mumblin’ word.”
Here’s a song written and recorded by country singer Hoyt Axton (1938-199), “Della and the Dealer,” which features a cat named Kalamazoo. (You can see the lyrics here.)
It also features the narrator, a woman named Della, her lover, and a dog named Jake. It’s got a pickup truck (first verse), coke snorting through a $100 bill (Axton was a coke addict), booze, jealousy, and a murder. What more could you want? The cat witnessed all the action but kept his gob shut.
I know of no other country song featuring a cat, but I’m not that knowledgeable about country music. Readers might let me know of other country songs with cats.
Here’s alive version, introduced by Axton saying, “I’m what’s left of Hoyt Axton”.
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I’ve never seen “2001: A Space Odyssey”, but know enough about it from popular culture. Here’s a very short cat video that parodies the movie, and I can see the parallels. I love the fish being tossed into the air becoming a cat-shaped spaceship! The claws on the ship are also cool.
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Lagniappe: A football player helps a thirsty cat. I first saw the meme from the site Cats Doing Cat Stuff, and then found a video of the incident. I wish that Omar had adopted the cat!
Today’s Caturday report is a bit sad in that two of the items involve moggies who died. But we all do, and sometimes we need to read about people’s reactions to moggies who have crossed the Rainbow Bridge.
The first piece comes from the NYT, and you can read it by clicking the headline or reading the free version archived here. This involved a beloved local cat called Kit Kat, who suffered a needless death from a driverless car.
A recent poster from the supervisor’s Instagram post:
An excerpt:
At Delirium, a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, the décor is dark, the drinks are strong, and the emotions are raw. The punk rockers and old-school city natives here look tough, but they are in mourning.
Kit Kat used to bar-hop along the block, slinking into Delirium for company and chin rubs. Everybody knew the bodega cat, affectionately calling him the Mayor of 16th Street. Kit Kat was their “dawg,” the guys hanging out on the corner said.
But shortly before midnight on Oct. 27, the tabby was run over just outside the bar and left for dead. The culprit?
A robot taxi.
Hundreds of animals are killed by human drivers in San Francisco each year. But the death of a single cat, crushed by the back tire of a Waymo self-driving taxi, has infuriated some residents in the Mission who loved Kit Kat — and led to consternation among those who resent how automation has encroached on so many parts of society.
. . .Kit Kat’s death has sparked outrage and debate for the past three weeks in San Francisco. A feline shrine quickly emerged. Tempers flared on social media, with some bemoaning the way robot taxis had taken over the city and others wondering why there hadn’t been the same level of concern over the San Francisco pedestrians and pets killed by human drivers over the years.
You can see a picture of the shrine below, taken from Facebook;
More:
A city supervisor called for state leaders to give residents local control over self-driving taxis. And, this being San Francisco, there are now rival Kit Kat meme coins inspired by the cat’s demise.
. . . . But all of that is noise at Delirium. Kit Kat was loved there. And now he is gone.
“Kit Kat had star quality,” said Lee Ellsworth, wearing a San Francisco 49ers hat and drinking a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
. . .Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
Jackie Fielder, a progressive San Francisco supervisor who represents the Mission District, has been among the most vocal critics. She introduced a city resolution after Kit Kat’s death that calls for the state Legislature to let voters decide if driverless cars can operate where they live. (Currently, the state regulates autonomous vehicles in California.)
“A human driver can be held accountable, can hop out, say sorry, can be tracked down by police if it’s a hit-and-run,” Ms. Fielder said in an interview. “Here, there is no one to hold accountable.”
. . .Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him,” Waymo said in a statement.
I think Waymo also made a donation to a cat charity, but that’s not enough. One cat is too much!
A short CNN video showing Kit Kat as well as Jackie Fielder demanding the right of community regulation of self-driving vehicles. I agree!
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Willamette Week reports on yet another semi-feral cat who is a mayor (alive this time): Nutmeg, the mayor of a part of Portland called Sellwood, Click to read:
I love how Nutmeg gets carried home every evening! An excerpt:
It’s not clear what drew Nutmeg to the Sellwood CVS. He’s a 14-year-old cat who, for most of his life, has preferred to spend as much time outside as possible. But in October or November of last year, the long-haired ginger started hanging out in the store’s parking lot. Then he figured out how the store’s automatic doors worked and wandered in.
One clue: CVS does carry some pet supplies, and John Burgon, an Executive Security guard, tells WW that Nutmeg once tore into a bag of cat treats and helped himself. He also once broke into the store’s pharmacy, though it’s unclear whether he was attempting a Drugstore Cowboy-style heist or simply exploring a potential career as a pharmacy technician, as his owner, Joe Moore, suggests.
Moore and his wife, Gabi, adopted Nutmeg a year ago after a friend had to rehome him. The cat was born under a trailer in Boone County, West Virginia, and has spent the bulk of his life in Centralia, Wash., as a mostly outdoor cat. The Moores set him up with a heated dog house in the backyard, put a collar and tag on him (along with an AirTag), and let him continue his wandering ways, though they do bring him in at night.
Store manager Mike Rogers says Nutmeg usually comes in early in the evening and hangs out until the store closes at 10. At that point, Joe Moore comes in—the store is about half a block from the Moores’ house—and carries him home.
. . .customers love him, the Moores love knowing he’s somewhere safe, and staff is delighted to have Nutmeg around, providing him with a fleece blanket and on-the-job snacks. Sometimes, Rogers says, he perches on the counter and quietly demands petting from customers.
“He’s basically become our Norm from Cheers.”
Click below go to the Facebook post:
And a video in an Instagram post; if you can’t see it, click “View this post” link to see Nutmeg in the fur:
From The Dispatch, a man says farewell to a beloved cat (article archived here):
You can see Gracie above. Here’s an excerpt, but you can read the whole elegy at the free link above:
We got Gracie almost 18 years ago from the shelter. Our daughter, then 5, wanted a kitten. We wanted a kitten. But there was a lady volunteer at the shelter who had a tip for us. People throw around the term “cat lady” a lot, but she was the real thing. I remember her sweater seemed to be on backward, and she gave the distinct impression that the shelter cats were just the surplus from the much larger supply at her house. But she was very kind. More importantly, she knew her cats. In movies, and a few TV shows, one of my favorite bit characters is the racing tout. You know, the shoeshine guy or omnipresent loiterer with a toothpick or cigarillo in his mouth and racing form in his hand who seems to know everything about every horse (“His muddah was a mudder”). That was this lady, but for cats.
She took a shine to us and said something like, “Take a look at that one. I see something special.”
She pointed to a thin gray cat, a few months out of little-kittenhood. She was regal but friendly. Lucy, my daughter, decided she was the one when another family seemed to want her, and Lucy’s jealousy told her we needed to act. We put our names down for her.
But the high-stakes world of cat adoption in the nation’s capital being what it is, we couldn’t just take the yet-to-be-named Gracie home. Because we had a dog, the people at the shelter had to be sure that, Bill Murray’s insinuations about “cats and dogs living together” aside, they would get along. They required an introduction, on the premises. So, we made an appointment and came back a few days later with Cosmo the Wonderdog. We waited in a canine-feline interaction room. They brought in Gracie. Gracie saw Cosmo, and her tail inflated tenfold. Imagine one of those shawarma cones at the gyro joint, but made of fluffy gray fur.
. . .Gracie was the friendliest cat I’ve ever known. After a brief interrogation, she would let anybody rub her belly. She insisted upon sitting on every visitor’s lap—or at least trying. Every cat sitter we’ve ever had fell in love with her, because she was so lovable.
But I know a lot of people don’t want to hear a lot of stories about a cat. Talking about your pets can be a bit like describing your dreams: It’s got to be pretty unusual to be interesting at all. And I know from experience that there are a lot of people who will say, “It’s just a cat.”
No, it’s not.
I feel a strange obligation to explain this to people who don’t get it. And there are a lot of them.
When people say, “It’s just a cat,” or “It’s only a dog,” I hear a confession that they have never loved a cat or dog, not really. Such admissions of emotional ignorance clank off my ear and pinch my heart the same way as hearing that someone’s grandmother was “just an old lady.” No, I am not saying that there’s moral equivalence between people and animals. I’m saying that the love people feel for their animals is a real form of love. The people who leap at the opportunity to take offense, or simply argue, at such comparisons miss the point entirely. They want to drag reason into a realm where reason isn’t all that useful and even less welcome. I’m fine if people think loving animals is irrational in the exact same way I’m fine with people saying loving anything or anyone is irrational. I think they’re wrong. I can give you a rational explanation, a just-so story about evolution and whatnot. The materialists will tell you that love is an evolutionary mechanism necessary for ensuring your genes pass on. Okay, fine, maybe, probably, whatever; but who cares? The only relevant fact is that we love. And so do animals.
. . . and the sad farewell. Pay attention to the Jewish expression, one that I love, and is really the only thing you can say as condolence if you don’t believe in God (and many who do believe say it anyway):
This has been a horrible week in a pretty horrible year. My daughter loved her girl more than anything. I love Lucy more than anything. The pain she went through as we ran out of medical options for Gracie and had not only to say goodbye to Gracie but to be the facilitator of her passing and the end of her suffering was indescribable. Lucy’s pain multiplied my sorrow at losing this wonderful creature who served as a center of gravity in my family. They say you’re only as happy as your least happy child. Well, Lucy’s the only child I have, and so her misery is my own. As a dad, I take some solace in the fact that Lucy will learn important things from all of this, but those lessons are learned over time. This has been some terrible quality time, but it will improve as it melts into quantity time.
One of the best expressions the Jews have given the world is “May their memory be a blessing.” Having lost so many people, and so many animals, I’ve come to have a deep appreciation for this simple condolence. It’s partly why I unapologetically talk about my parents and brother so often. It honors them and my debts to them. But more than that, it brings joy. It keeps them alive in the only way possible in this life. It demonstrates that even when family members depart, the family endures and carries their indelible imprint. Amid all the crying these last few days, we’ve already started telling stories about Gracie and sharing pictures of her. Because her memory is a blessing, not just because we loved this silly creature, but because our family formed in so many ways around her. And family is a blessing, one of the only real ones in life.
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Lagniappe: A moggyt photobomb
The man wanted to record the romantic moments he was dancing with his wife, but an uninvited guest joined in. pic.twitter.com/bSjHXygRxs
Okay, so as this website slowly circles the drain, we’re still going to have cats on Caturday, and three items to boot.
First on deck is Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office at 10 Downing Street; he just turned 19, and served 15 of those years in the service of the Prime Minister. He’s in remarkably good shape for such an old cat, and here’s a two-minute video, in his own words, recounting how a careless photographer nearly tripped over him. Fortunately, Larry skittered away, perhaps losing half a life or so:
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From Bored Panda we have another large selection of cat memes. I’ll choose a few for your delectation. Click the screenshot to read; the intro says this:
Last year, the estimated expenses of owning a cat were between $830 and $3,000. Clearly, no expense is spared for cat owners when it comes to their beloved fluffballs.
Bored Panda loves cats too. That’s why we are blessing you with a collection of wholesome and cute cat memes, courtesy of the “happycat318” Instagram page. Check out the times kitties cracked up their owners with some diabolical shenanigans!
More info: Instagram [the happycat 218 Instagram Page], the source of all the memes:
. . . And this is a true cat lover:
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A persistent moggy described by the UPI; click on screenshot to read:
The tail:
A cat escaped from his owners’ camper during a stop at a gas station in Spain and reappeared months later less than a mile from their home in France.
Patrick and Evelyne Sire, who live in Olonzac, in the Hérault region of France, said their cat, Filou apparently jumped out of an open window in their camper during an Aug. 9, 2025, stop at a gas station in Maçanet de la Selva, Spain, located near the French border about 155 miles from home.
Patrick Sire said Filou’s absence wasn’t noticed until the next morning.
Sire said he returned to the gas station twice in the ensuing days and weeks, but no one in the area had seen any signs of the missing feline.
The couple said they started to give up hope as the months passed, but they received a call Jan. 9 from a resident in Homps, less than a mile from their home, reporting Filou had been found.
The woman said she had been feeding the cat outdoors since December, and noticed he was very thin and appeared to be coughing. She took the feline to a local veterinarian, where a microchip scan identified him as Filou.
“Filou traveled all that way to get to us. But how did he do it? Did he follow the highway? Did he go through towns? Did he follow the rivers?” Patrick Sire told France3 News. “We’ll never know.”
Here’s a video in French, which shows the GPS cat and his staff. If you know a bit of French you can probably understand it, but if not you can still see how happy the staff is!:
We’re back with the Caturday felids: three items and several more for lagniappe.
First, an 18-minute video from Meowtopia about how cats see humans. It’s designed to prove that cats aren’t just using us, but that we are “their secure base.” It’s a mixture of true facts mixed with some dry humor, somewhat like a toned-down ZeFrank video. The them is cat psychology: “What are cats thinking?”
It turns out that we are actually “Super Providers” whose purpose is to provide food; in other words, we are vending machines made of meat. But we also mean one thing to them: “Safety.”
The video invokes a lot of scientific research on cats, is full of interesting results, and is well worth watching.
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Click below to see an article from the Washington Post showing that “pet-friendly” hotels are actually biased against cats. (The article is archived here.) What gives?
An excerpt; the article begins with cat staff checking into a “pet friendl” hotel in Amsterdam.
“Hotels will say they’re pet-friendly, but they really mean dogs,” said Erin Geldermans, who adopted “Liebs” in Colorado. “So we’ll show up with our cat, and they’re like, ‘Oh, sorry, cats aren’t allowed.’”
Cast into the night without a room, Geldermans and [their tabby cat Liebchen] landed on their feet, finding more inclusive accommodations at the Jan Luyken Amsterdam next door. The hotel didn’t even charge them a pet fee. However, the experience was a stark reminder that, for jet-setting cats, it’s a dog’s world.
Travelers who vacation with their feline companions say they have encountered an anti-cat bias around the world. They come across it in airports and on planes, at hotels and vacation rentals. The owners say they must often overcome hurdles to earn the same trust and acceptance granted to dogs.
“This is discrimination,” said Anna Karsten, a France-based travel blogger who has faced a double standard when traveling with her Ragdoll, Poofy. “It’s a higher risk, apparently, which, if you think about it, is outrageous. The cat is literally going to sleep, but the dog might destroy the entire room if it’s stressed.”
During check-in at a rental in the Dutch city of Leiden, Karsten had to provide references that Poofy was a model guest. Stung by a previous incident involving cat pee, the apartment’s owner said the family would have to keep Poofy in a “cage.”
After several minutes of negotiations, the two sides agreed to sequester the cat in the bathroom whenever the family was out. Karsten abided by the rule the first day but eventually left the door ajar. By the end of the week-long stay, the host had experienced a change of heart.
“She loved the cat,” Karsten said triumphantly.
REFERENCES?? The lesson is that if you travel with your cat, be sure that any “pet friendly” accommodations your reserve consider cats as adequate “pets.” Actually, cats are not pets but owners, and we are their staff.
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We all know of Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office . He was rescued from the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, and has lived at 10 Downing Street for 15 years. Larry is now 19: technically an old cat, but still quite spry, running about outside the Prime Minister’s home and the object of many photographs. He’s gone through five Prime Ministers!
Here’s a 15-minute BBC News video showing seven times that Larry caused mischief. He’s not a very good mouser; he’s said to have caught only 3 in his 15-year tenure. Don’t miss Obama’s meeting Larry at 5:40. There are many comments about Larry from Prime Ministers, journalists, and so on.
This too is an excellent video. If you want more Larry, his Twitter feed is here. Don’t miss the BBC journalist Helen Catt (that’s right!), who comments throughout.
Lagniappe: Larry turned 19 a few weeks ago. Here is what he wants to tell us on his birthday, including how old he’d be in human years.
Extra lagniappe: Japanese road signs. Slow down for cats!
Still more lagniappe from the Facebook group Cats that Have Had Enough of Your Shit: A new and excellent Swedish law. If we have any Swedish readers, please confirm this.
We’re back with Caturday felids again, but I ask readers to help me out by sending me good cat-related news items when you see them. I may not use some, but I will look at all of them. Thanks.
Today we have three short items. The first, from History.com, describes a 1960 attempt by the CIA to turn cats into spies. In principle it was a good idea, but not so much in practice. Click the screenshot to read:
Here’s a description of “Operation Acoustic Kitty”:
The Acoustic Kitty was a sort of feline-android hybrid—a cyborg cat. A surgeon implanted a microphone in its ear and a radio transmitter at the base of its skull. The surgeon also wove an antenna into the cat’s fur, writes science journalist Emily Anthes in Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts.
CIA operatives hoped they could train the cat to sit near foreign officials. That way, the cat could secretly transmit their private conversations to CIA operatives.
“For its first official test, CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench,” Anthes writes. “Instead, the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi”—not the outcome they were expecting.
Oy! I bet the microphone contributed to its death.
“The problem was that cats are not especially trainable,” she writes. In a heavily redacted memo, the CIA concluded: “Our final examination of trained cats…convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.”
Here’s the conclusion, with credit given to the CIA:
There’s more: they tried to create spy insects:
With DARPA’s support, researchers at the University of California Berkeley successfully created a cyborg beetle whose movements they could remotely control. They reported their results in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience in October 2009.
“Berkeley scientists appear to have demonstrated an impressive degree of control over their insect’s flight; they report being able to use an implant for neural stimulation of the beetle’s brain to start, stop, and control the insect in flight,” reported Wired the month these findings came out. “They could even command turns by stimulating the basalar muscles.”
Well, to use the radio-controlled bugs as spies, they’d also have to equip them with microphones, which they didn’t, but they could be used for another purpose. The Wired article quotes the Berkeley researchers:
Eventually, the mind-controlled insects could be used to “serve as couriers to locations not easily accessible to humans or terrestrial robots,”
What about pigeons, for crying out loud? They were used in WW1? Anyway, this is your tax dollars at work.
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Here’s a post from Facebook (see also here) that I tried to check. It seems accurate in that it’s replicated elsewhere, including a newspaper (below), but information is scant. In this case, however, the cats detected spying, probably because cats have a broader hearing range than humans, especially at high frequencies, and their hearing is more sensitive than ours.
The article, titled “Cats Finger ‘Bugs'”, reports on the discovery of 30 hidden microphones in the Dutch Embassy in Moscow. The listening devices were reportedly found after two Siamese cats reacted to the imperceptible sound of a microphone being switched on.
The article:
And an AI response to my question about the incident:
Discovery: Two Siamese cats alerted the ambassador to the hidden microphones by scratching a wall.
Technology: The microphones were wireless, activated by electronic beams, and produced a sound inaudible to humans.
Diplomatic Response: Instead of protesting, embassy staff used the bugs to their advantage, staging dialogues that resulted in the Soviet authorities unknowingly fixing an embassy sewer issue.
Current Status: The newspaper reported that the microphones remained in place, and the diplomats had grown accustomed to their presence.
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Finally, in a 5-minute video, actor Jeremy Irons describes artistic depiction of lions, from ancient Egypt through ancient China, Greece, and Rome up to Rembrandt and beyond. Six drawings of lions by Rembrandt survive, and below you can see that one of them is up for auction.
On February 4, one of the most significant drawings by Rembrandt ever to reach auction will be sold at Sotheby’s, with 100% of proceeds protecting wild cats worldwide — art giving back to the animals that inspired it. While lions dominate culture, their real-world populations have declined by nearly 90%, and this historic auction directly supports Panthera’s work to reverse that trend.
Here’s Rembrandt’s drawing, of “Young Lion Resting” created between 1638 and 1642, and I hope it brings a lot of money for Panthera:
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Lagniappe: A short video of three bobcats having fun in someone’s swimming pool:
And riceball cats from Facebook: cats made out of rice:
Here, from the Express Tribunein Pakistan, is an article about the world’s oldest cat, who just turned 30 years old. (Also see the story at the New York Post.)
An excerpt (Flossie has had a checkered career):
Flossie, a British domestic short-haired tortoiseshell cat, has turned 30 years old, extending her Guinness World Record as the world’s oldest living cat.
Born on December 29, 1995, Flossie reached the milestone birthday in 2025, further cementing her place in record books. Her age was officially verified by Guinness World Records in November 2022, when she was confirmed to be 26 years and 316 days old. At the time, her age was estimated to be equivalent to around 120 human years.
Flossie’s early life began in a feral colony near St Helens Hospital in Merseyside, England, where she was rescued as a kitten. Over the years, she lived with several owners before eventually coming under the care of the UK animal welfare charity Cats Protection.
In 2022, Cats Protection arranged for Flossie to be adopted by Victoria Green, who lives in Orpington, England. The charity worked closely with veterinarians to verify Flossie’s date of birth using historical records, enabling Guinness World Records to formally certify her age.
At the time of her record confirmation, Guinness World Records noted that Flossie was deaf and had limited eyesight. Despite these age-related conditions, she was otherwise considered to be in good health. The organisation said she maintained a stable daily routine that included regular meals, extended periods of sleep and gentle play.
Flossie is currently recognised as the oldest living cat in the world and ranks among the seven oldest verified cats in recorded history. While other cats, including Creme Puff, are documented to have lived longer in the past, Flossie remains the oldest confirmed feline alive today.
Here’s another tweet:
Flossie, the world’s oldest living cat, will celebrate her 30th birthday on December 29, 2025. pic.twitter.com/NoZ42sBby2
Of course Flossie is a long way from the offical World’s Oldest Cat Ever, the famous Creme Puff, who lived to an astonishing 38 years and 3 days. This was verified by Guinness, and what amazes me is this:
Creme Puff’s owner, Jake Perry, said her diet consisted of dry cat food and claimed he supplemented it with broccoli, eggs, turkey bacon, coffee with cream, and every two days “an eyedropper full of red wine.” Perry claimed that this diet was key to her longevity, and that the wine “circulated the arteries.
Coffee and wine!
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James Fell’s website says he’s a historian, and he gives some (yes, sweary) history about a heroic moggy. Click the screenshots to read:
Some excerpts:
Plenty of hero dog stories, but what about hero cats? Some say if a house cat was as large as a big dog, no one would want them because they’d death murder the shit you. Not Masha though. She used her body to keep an abandoned baby warm against the Russian winter cold.
. . . .on January 10, 2015, Masha rescued an infant.
It happened in the city of Obninsk, about 50 miles southwest of Moscow. Russia in January is not terribly hospitable. Just ask Napoleon. Or the fucking Nazis. Oh, wait. You can’t. Because most of them froze to death. Anyway, Masha was a “stray” that was beloved by residents of an apartment building where she made her home. They fed Masha well; this was one fat ass cat. Good thing too. The extra padding probably kept the baby alive.
. . . . Late that Saturday, building resident Nadezhda Makhovikova knew something was amiss. Masha was normally a quiet cat, but she sounded like she was being murdered. Nadezhda went to investigate and found Masha lying in a box in the entranceway to the building. The big fluffy cat was lying atop a crying baby to keep it warm and howling S O Fucking S.
The baby boy was dressed in warm clothes and had a pacifier, bottle, and spare diapers. But this was the Russian winter, and it was already late. The child would not have survived the night. So, yeah. Shitty thing to leave a baby out like that. I just googled “abandoned baby freeze to death” and there are plenty of horrific stories. Sometimes I hate my job.
But this story has a happy ending. Masha was a good girl, and she saved the day. An ambulance was called, and Masha tried to jump in the back to continue her vigil. Vera Ivanina, one of the attending paramedics, explained that Masha even chased them. “She was so worried about where we were taking the baby,” Vera said. “She ran right behind us, meowing.”
The boy was about two months old, clean and well fed, with no signs of abuse. Other than being abandoned in the Russian winter, that is. The hospital asserted the little boy was in good health, suffering no ill effects from the cold thanks to Masha keeping him warm. The story made international news and there were many offers to adopt the young boy, as well as to adopt Masha. Masha was all fuck that I like my freedom.
Here’s a video showing Masha, who seems quite fluffy and insulated:
All’s well that ends well!
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This story comes from LifeWise Insights (click headline to read). I’m not sure that cats are capable of gratitude but of course do prefer some situations more than others. If a rescuer gets purred at and sat on, well, that could simply be the actions of a well-cared-for cat and not what we think of as “gratitude.” But let’s see what the article has to say:
I can’t embed the text but I do append two screenshots from a longer article:
The problem is that a change in patterns and a reduction in alertness when a cat learns that food, warmth, and safety is now constant does no mean it’s grateful. In fact, we have no way of knowing whether a cat feels the same things as a grateful human. This is equivalent to the vexing and unanswerable question, “What is it like to be a bat?” Now we can guess, based on some behaviors, that cats do feel emotions similar to humans, like fear, but “gratitude”? I don’t know.
And a Google translation from the Spanish for the video below. But why did they let the cat inside in the first place? Wasn’t this result predictable? Was it staged?
He entered as a customer… he left as a professional thief 😂 They couldn’t catch him 😅 #cat #cats #catpranks #funny moment #supermarket #viral #animals
The meme below, from Cats Doing Cat Stuff: implies that Thaland has declared all cats as official national symbols. Well, as the articles below say, that’s not exactly true. Some cats have become national symbols, but only breeds from Thailand. Read on:
Here are two articles, the first from the Singapore-based cna news organization and the second from the Bangkok Post. Click on either to read, though the first is more informative:
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From cna:
Five cat breeds native to Thailand were approved as national pet symbols by the government on Nov 18, joining the Thai elephant, fighting fish and Naga among other nationally recognised emblems.
The pure Thai breeds – Suphalak, Korat, Siamese, Konja and Khao Manee – possess distinctive physical and behavioral traits that clearly differentiate them from other breeds, according to Thailand’s National Identity Committee, which had proposed their designations as national pets.
“Their uniqueness has gained international recognition, with some foreign breeders attempting to register purebred Thai cat lines and establish global breed standards,” the Thai government’s public relations department said in a report on Nov 20.
A drawing of the five lucky breeds from cna graphics:
More from cna:
Preecha Vadhana, a cat breeder who operates Bangrak Cat Farm in Bangkok, said that each of the five breeds has very distinct features, making them easily distinguishable from one another.
“But they also share similarities, particularly their structure and short coat.”
The Suphalak has a distinct copper coat and is considered a symbol of prestige and fortune. The Korat is a bluish-grey cat with large, vivid green eyes, while the Khao Manee – a rare, white species – often has eyes with two strikingly different colours such as gold and blue.
The Konja is known as a lucky black cat, unlike its foreign counterparts which are often infamous for the opposite.
Finally, the “king of cats”, the Siamese or Wichienmas, is marked by its distinct dark spots and treasured for its intelligence. It is typically the most expensive of the breeds and can cost 15,000-20,000 baht (US$465-US$620) from a local breeder, while others cost 7,000-15,000 baht.
. . . . The decision to elevate these species is not just symbolic: It is meant to help conserve rare native breeds, standardise them and protect Thailand’s ownership of them. The species will also be used more in creative-economy and tourism branding, according to the government.
Then there’s some grousing about how this recognition won’t help the hundreds of thousands of feral Thai street cats. That’s probably true, but this is just symbolic. I think the USA needs a National Cat too, and give the genetic admixture that is America, it should be a regular moggy, like a tabby.
Here’s a 4½-minute video about the recognition of National Cats:
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This article from artnet (click to read) describes a new exhibition of medieval manuscripts with cat drawings at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. The title of the exhibit is cute: “Paws on Parchment”. Click to read, and go to the site to see some of those medieval cat drawings, none of which look like real cats!
Note that if you live near Baltimore, the exhibit runs only through February 22, so get your tuches there soon. If I lived nearby, I’d sure go.
An excerpt:
In the 1470s, a Flemish scribe left some meticulously drafted pages of an illuminated manuscript out to dry, only to find out the next day that his cat had trod over them, leaving inky paw prints on the parchment. (Contemporary writers will know the similar pain of typos and elisions wrought by a feline friend’s frenzied scamper across a keyboard.)
Now, more than 500 years later, those pattered pages are the “cat”-alyst for an exhibition at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. Aptly titled “Paws on Parchment,” the show explores how medieval illustrators in Europe, Asia, and the Islamic world celebrated cats in the marginalia of their manuscripts and beyond. On view through February 22, 2026, it’s the first of three exhibitions over the next two years dedicated to the depiction of animals in art.
Here is that page with the cat print on it, a cat that lived over 550 years ago!
(from artnet): A 15th-century manuscript bearing the tell-tale marks of a frisky feline. Photo: courtesy of the Walters Art Museum.
Herbert researched the works from a lot of different angles to better understand how people felt about cats. This included primary sources like medieval poetry, moral and cautionary tales, recorded pet names, and discussions of cats in encyclopedic works like Isidore of Seville’s Etymology, from the 7th century, and in medieval bestiaries.
Pets with Purpose
She was surprised by what she found. “Many medieval people loved their cats just as much as we do,” she said. However, the reason people kept them in homes, churches, and libraries was less for company and more for the practical reason of rodent control. Their skills at hunting mice and rats were critical to protecting food stores, valuable books, and textiles—and of course, preserving their owners from the plague and other diseases carried by vermin. “Because this was their key purpose in people’s lives, they are most often shown hunting mice,” Herbert said. “While this is still something a house cat might do today, our lives and livelihoods generally don’t depend on their success.”
A manuscript cat that was on display. Does this look like a cat? Go to the artnet page or the Walters Museum page to see other illustrations and photos. This exhibit has been running since last August, and you have about six weeks to see it.
Here’s a FB video of cats that didn’t make the cut for the exhibit.
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We all know about Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, who roams around in and around 10 Downing Street, but did you know that there’s an equivalent cat in Belgium. He belongs to the Prime Minister, and has the lovely name of “Maximus”, short for his full name, “Maximus Textoris Pulcher”. Click below to read the Guardian article about him:
An excerpt:
For nearly 15 years, Britain’s Larry the Cat has charmed visitors to 10 Downing Street. Now another prime ministerial pet is proving a social media hit in Belgium.
Maximus Textoris Pulcher was announced in August as an official resident at the Belgian prime minister’s office, Rue de la Loi 16 in central Brussels.
The grey rescue cat is now thought to have the second most popular political account on Belgian social media, with more than 142,000 followers on Instagram – second only to his master, Bart De Wever, who became Belgium’s prime minister in February.
The cat’s full name is a mock-grandiose title rooted in the prime minister’s love of Latin and Roman history, conveying the meaning “De Wever’s beautiful Maximus” (textoris being “of the weaver”, or De Wever).
De Wever adopted the cat, an abandoned Scottish fold, from a refuge. “I have a cat in my office, it is grey and it does not catch … mice, but I love it anyway,” he told journalists during a recent press conference.
Maximus’s posts on Instagram have lit up the Belgian internet, whether he is stretching for a toy, lolling on a windowsill or being tickled on his chest to an electropopsoundtrack.
. . . Unlike Larry, officially an apolitical cat, Maximus offers subtle observations on his country’s political life. “Another strike,” reads one Maximus thought bubble on the day Belgium began a three-day national action in November against proposed spending cuts, hinting at the exasperation of his master. In another post when De Wever’s eclectic five-party coalition was locked in budget talks, a grumpy-looking Maximus lies on the floor with a thought bubble reading: “Even on Sunday, these nuisances [cabinet ministers] are here.”
A source close to De Wever – described as “a cat person all his life” – said the account was a low-effort part of his team’s work and offered the public a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Rue de la Loi 16.
My friend Maarten Boudry, a Belgian philosopher, tells me that everybody in Belgium knows who Maximus is, and many people follow him.
Here are a couple of Instagram entries showing Maximus making pronouncements. I’ll put a translation for each:
