Tag: cats

Caturday Felids

November 19, 2011 • 6:18 am

by Greg Mayer

Alert reader Dominic has sent me a link to EarthSky, which features camera trap photos of five species of cats from the island of Sumatra. The  photos, taken by WWF-Indonesia, are further discussed at the WWF site. Here’s one of my favorites, a marbled cat, who seems to have noticed the camera, and isn’t entirely pleased:

Sumatran marbled cat

This clouded leopard, doesn’t just look unpleased, it’s taking action:

Sumatran clouded leopard

The pictures were taken in an area threatened with deforestation, and WWF is urging that the area be protected. Interestingly, of 404 cat photos, 226 were of  tigers; the rarest, at 4, was the marbled cat. We’ve had occasion previously to note here at WEIT the great use being made of camera traps for the study of rare and hard-to-see cats. The other species photographed are the tiger, Asiatic golden cat, and leopard cat (species account links are from the IUCN Cat Specialist Group). Bravo to WWF-Indonesia!

Andrew Sullivan gets it right

October 12, 2011 • 2:12 pm

by Greg Mayer

Despite his blind spot when it comes to obscurantist theology, Andrew Sullivan is a good judge of other things, including cat videos.

The cat, Oskar, was born without eyesight; a similarly afflicted cat is the subject of Gwen Cooper’s Homer’s Odyssey (Homer is the cat). Blind cats can apparently get along well if properly cared for. I thought that Oskar might follow the air upwind, and get to the offending hairdryer, but (at least in this clip) he doesn’t manage to find it.

h/t: Andrew Sullivan

Caturday Felid: Lincoln and cats

July 30, 2011 • 5:25 am

by Greg Mayer

During this 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, it is edifying to recall that Abraham Lincoln was not only a great president, but a great cat-lover.  “Disunion”, the NY Times series on the 150th anniversary  (which is generally quite good), in a piece on regimental mascots and pets, notes that

Even President Lincoln wasn’t immune to the solace provided by animals during the war. When Mary Todd Lincoln was asked if her husband had a hobby, she replied, “cats.”

Lincoln on $5 bill and cat.
(From The PeraLion on tumblr)

The National Park Service elaborates on his aiulurophilia:

Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth President, loved cats and could play with them for hours. When asked if her husband had a hobby, Mary Todd Lincoln replied, “cats.” President Lincoln visited General Grant at City Point, Virginia in March of 1865. The civil war was drawing to a close and the enormous task of reuniting the country lay ahead, yet the President made time to care for three orphaned kittens. Abraham Lincoln noticed three stray kittens in the telegraph hut. Picking them up and placing them in his lap, he asked about their mother. When the President learned that the kittens’ mother was dead, he made sure the kittens would be fed and a good home found for them.

Darwin, who was born on the same day as Lincoln, preferred dogs.

Caturday Felid: A-Kat-Aten

June 18, 2011 • 6:30 am

by Greg Mayer

The ancient Egyptians would give anyone a run for their money when it comes to the care they lavished on their cats. Here’s a ca. 2000 year old cat mummy from the British Museum.

Egyptian cat mummy, ca. 50 BC, at the British Museum, by Mario Sanchez, Flickr.

Cats, miw or mau in Egyptian, were frequently mummified, along with other animals, and the cat Goddess was Bast. A traveling exhibit of mummies of all sorts, Mummies of the World, is touring the US; it is now in Philadelphia.

Update. Some readers wondered if the cats died natural deaths. From Reflections of Greatness, the catalogue of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Egyptian collection, by Diana Craig Patch:

These animals were attended by priests and lived out their lives in relative comfort.  After an animal’s death, the priests mummified it so that it too could have eternal existence alongside its protector. … At some point, the priests realized that they could increase a temple’s income by selling mummified sacred animals as votive offerings… Since large numbers of animals were required, priests did not allow them to die of old age; instead most were slaughtered when they reached adulthood.

Caturday felid: new cheetah and ocelot cubs

March 26, 2011 • 7:54 am

According to ZooBorns, there’s a new cheetah cub at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, transferred from Jacksonville and and a mother who wouldn’t rear him.  The cub, a male, is four weeks old:

He now has to be hand reared until he’s old enough to join the other cheetahs on “Cheetah Run”.  Hand rearing a wild cat is no easy job.  For one thing, they require frequent noms:

Here’s an appealing video of the little guy.  Note his call, which sounds like a bird chirping.  No other wild cat, to my knowledge, makes a sound like this.  One reader theorized that it’s to camouflage the cub’s presence by making him sound like a bird.  But then why don’t other savanna cats, like lions, also sound like that?

And, just for fun, a six-week ocelot cub trying to eschew a dental checkup.  Note the more cat-like call.  This female, named Evita, is at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo (video uploaded March 18).  Perhaps Ophelia can go see her and report back!

Among my readers there must be someone who can help me in my quest to hold a wild cat cub!

h/t: Michael

Caturday felid: lions

December 4, 2010 • 10:23 am

by Greg Mayer

The Milwaukee County Zoo has a magnificent pair of African lions. The male has the sort of large, flaring mane that most of us associate with lions (but which is, in fact, subject to much individual and geographic variation; Asiatic lions, for example, have smaller manes).

The female is lithe and muscular; when living together in mixed-sex prides, females do much of the hunting.

We’ve mentioned lions here before at WEIT, including the almost mythical spotted ones.

Best kitteh ever

November 26, 2010 • 12:27 am

by Greg Mayer

The best kitteh ever is, of course, Peyton, the philosophical cat, who has previously contributed to our discussions here at WEIT on morality, ethics, and epistemology. But, as a semi-regular contributor, she is ineligible for the Kitteh Contest, so readers should submit their nominees to Jerry by 5 PM December 1.  Here again is Jerry’s picture of her

Peyton, the philosophical cat.

and some new video.

If she had not, once again, been displaying some of Pinker’s rudimentary moral sentiments, my foot would have been a bloody mess.