I have heard of some large ‘flocks’ of freely roaming cats that were fed by old ladies, mostly widows. They set daily food and milk outside the house and cats learned to come daily to the house. Some cats spent much of their day inside the house, others around their houses. The freely roaming cats also reproduced, so the flocks kept growing until someone had to interfere. I guess the cats gave comfort to persons that felt otherwise lonely.
All of these persons were not ladies. My uncle had earlier a mink farm. There were plenty of cats around because of the mink food and the milk he gave to the cats daily. When the number of cats grew to impossible numbers, it became evident that something had to be done. My uncle asked a hunter to do the job and avoided the farm during those days. Although he had a mink farm and had to end and skin a large number of minks and fox yearly, he could not kill or watch the killing of the cats.
Cat ladies are common enough. My mother came close for a while – and I had to clean up the mess afterwards when she moved out and I moved in. As for crazy, people use that word for anything they don’t understand. And then there is the tendency of people to exaggerate. How many cats does it take? Cats multiply fast enough given the chance.
Most vegans are females. I’m not sure how that breaks up over people who remain with it 10, 15, and 20 years versus something faddish and short term. But the percentage of men versus women being this or that is not something I necessarily use for masculinity or femininity. Almost anything can be split down into this or that. Race, religion, ethnicity and gender.
Tigers are the baddest animals ever and the most beautiful cats in my book.
I’d prefer owning an elephant though. You could wrestle with an elephant all day long and never hurt the guy. I mean you could do full-nelsons, atomic-skull-crushers, nuclear-knee-drop attacks, you name it and they aren’t going to go crying about it to anybody.
Someone made a joke to it at some point. I think almost everyone is aware of it though. But there is no basis for it as far as why do humans care about cats. We are not affected in that way.
With mice what it does is make them not afraid, so they can be eaten and the next stage of the disease begins. As far as I know there is not record of it relating to big cats and humans in prehistoric times either.
When we get it we tend to get sick. Most people don’t have behavioral changes, and there is a debate about cannot cause schizophrenia or are schizophrenic people more likely to get it. But in general we are not prey and we don’t catch it, die, then get eaten by the cat so the virus can continue.
There is a pretty good podcast by the “ Erins”. They are disease ecologists and epidemiologists and references good materials from books to journals to check out. They have a funny but dark sense of humor. They have a bunch of episodes out too. I’ve been listening to them for probably a year ever since they did a crossover with Matt from “In Defense of Plants” about plant pathogens that can affect humans.
The horror movie, Block Island Sound , is focused on this a bit. It was a really good one too. They followed a fairly lovecraftian mood playing with disorders and the unknown. Some neat twists.
I just read that the reason why the black footed cat is so dangerous is because of its high metabolism leaving it on average killing 10 small birds or rodents a night to eat.
I would have to see the mr exact thing you were reading. But yes if you look at small cat species , it makes them the most dangerous small cat species because they pose the largest threat to small birds and rodents when compared to other cats.
Then secondly, what I am mostly seeing is that there is a big black market for them. We can see how invasive and dangerous our domesticated cats are to places like Australia and even USA. If black footed cats end up as a invasive species around the world, in a month or two they will have killed on a individual level what our species is already killing as individuals in a year. That would be very bad for our ecology.
It’s obviously not saying the cat is a threat to your life because it’s super vicious and will attack you.
Estimates are domestic/feral cats kill close to 2 billion native animals per year in Australia.
Big numbers shock. It’s important to have proper context. Killing is actually essential to ecosystems. But in this case, it’s probably the single biggest threat to species conservation on this continent.
At the same time it bugs me as a hunter that I am targeted for hatred for my participation in the carefully regulated sustainable take of a small number of fecund native species, while cat “owners” are normalised.
The proper context is understanding localized endangerment and extinction is not the same as a sustainable and natural food web system. Too very different things. It’s like confusing mass shootings for well everyone dies. Ecological studies lay this issue out very well.
Agreed. I run into it often. People never wanting to keep their cats indoor. Worse are the ones that don’t keep them indoors, don’t keep their shots up to date, and refuses to fix them so that they at least can’t continue to give birth.
There are so many options to safely have pet cats. First get them up to date on shots and fix them. You can make them happy inside by simply spending time with them, using food balls and food puzzles to entertain them along with other games. You can built cat trees and walkways inside your house and you can even built cat doors leading to an enclosure on the outside with walkways and so on so the cat can be outside, but not able to get out.
These pics are from google but shows some of the ideas. There is tons of interior ideas as well.
Recently saw a TV ad about a service where you could clone your cat. My thought was, how could you tell if the clone is of your old cat, since they are all pretty much the same. Except Siamese. They are crazy.
It’s definitely something that I find interesting as well. Though I won’t do it, probably mostly due to the costs I see associated with it. But it’s interesting because it brings up os that your cat? Is your cat the biological creature or your cat the emotional bond and experiences y’all have developed together creating the way you interact. My cat , Uhyre, has a very different personality than my cat shine. Yaya, my cat that recently passed away was very different from them both. I care about her a lot.
If I had her cloned before she died I would love the cat but I would probably not think of it as her. I would be curious if the cloned acted the same way or if s different and new history of memories create a completely different cat.
Likewise, imagine a fantasy where I was able to take my cats spirit , her entire understanding and personality, and place it into a doll. That animated doll by her ghost would be more of my cat than a biological clone of her with their memory erased.
