Letting John out these days has become hazardous.  This time he caught the train at a different station and…you guessed it…found another miserable thin cat.

We cannot take on any more but would and could offer to assist anyone else who wanted to get involved.

So if you are in the western suburbs between Granville and Fairfield and want to do something let us know.

If you reply to this post I will get back to you.

Story sent in from Sillypucci.

It’s horrible and just why would anybody want to do it?

Scandal of tattoos on cats

Still dazed after being anaesthetised for three hours, a pedigree pet is hauled upright to show off its new tattoo.

The controversial “body enhancement” was carried out on Mickey – a rare Canadian Hairless breed also known as a Sphynx cat.

His female owner was said to be delighted with the Tutankhamun design inked on to his chest at a tattoo parlour.

She said: “I wanted something new and different for the times we live in.”

But horrified animal rights campaigners last night slammed the sick fad in Moscow as barbaric – and fear it could catch on among wealthy pet owners in the West.

An RSPCA spokesman said: “We are totally against using animals for purely cosmetic reasons just on the owner’s whim. Clearly the animal has no say in the matter.

“We do not believe in using pets as fashion accessories. It shows no respect for the animal whatsoever. So far we have only heard about this practice happening overseas – and we hope it doesn’t spread.”

Back in November 2008 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed includes a sales tax on all veterinary services.

Now he wants to kill pets faster.

See this story taken from http://www.dogmagazine.net/archives/2847/arnold-schwarzeneggers-shelter-kill-policy-condemned/

Although this story relates to dogs, the same policy will also relate to cats.

Animal Protection Groups Condemn Schwarzenegger Plans To Reduce Animal Home Hold Requirements: The Los Angeles Times has reported that California’s animal rescue system is to be the victim of government funding cutbacks during the recession. If a recent proposal is approved, California’s strays could be euthanised in as little as 3 days, down from the minimum 6 days they have to serve now.

A piece of legislation called The Hayden Bill that was made in the late 90’s states that dogs must serve this 6 day period before they can be euthanised. This legislation aims to increase animal adoption and reduce the amount of dogs put to sleep. A Legislative Analyst’s Office Report has said that there is little evidence to say that the legislation is worthwhile. The report claims the reported $24.6 Million annual figures could be better spent elsewhere.

Animal protection groups are understandably disagreeing with the assessment and are showing their opposition to suspending the 6 day mandate. These groups include: Humane Society of the United States, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, State Humane Association of California and the Californian Animal Control Directors.

Animal protection groups are saying that cats and dogs will be the victims of recession if the plan goes ahead to cut funds. Jennifer Fearing of the Humane Society has said; ”If shelters are no longer reimbursed by the state for animal holding, they will be forced to cut services. The savings generated by suspending this 6 day mandate is a paltry 0.1% of the $24 – Billion deficit. These funds are the only state dollars that presently go to assisting local governments with the costly problem of pet overpopulation.”

Jill Buckley of the ASPCA has said: ”Animal redemption and adoption rates have been steadily rising in California until the tidal wave of home foreclosures dramatically increased the number of surrendered animals.”

The groups are calling for an alternative to the 3-day holding – a year long programme to help shelters survive budget cuts in the short-term. This includes promoting animal adoption over buying a pet.

What elephants can teach us about family love

Lawrence Anthony with a member of the Thula Thula herd.

Railcorp/Snappy Tom/Gorgeous Boy

Our latest rescue, Railcorp a.k.a. Snappy Tom or Gorgeous Boy, depending on who is doing the talking, has settled down to a life of comfort, food, sunshine, petting, food, warmth, food, petting and our bed for the night.

An extemely affectionate cat, he is a cat who will need a stay at home Mum or Dad who likes to sit still enough for him to settle on their lap and who doesn’t have any cat competition for him to worry about.  He loves beds and food but not necessarily in that order.  He likes to do what he wants and is determined to do it and if you stop him you are likely to wear a scratch for a week or so, depending on the level of your immune system and repair status.  Mine is a bit slow and by that time is likely to have been added to by Larrikin because I insisted that his collar had to go back on.

Larrikin has strolled past Railcorp while he was in the holding cage without so much as a sideways glance because he was looking for where I had hidden ‘the girls’.  Larrikin is often  out looking for them so that he can play chasings but we usually monitor that situation. He tends to get a bit rough, mostly with Josephine who he likes to wrestle, but we can’t let that happen since he may give her a bite during play and he is FIV positive.

The neck wound is showing good progress at present (as I touch wood.)

Around February I think it was,   things were going  at a spectacular rate and we were getting ready to have it looked at in regard to being sewn up.  Larrikin around that time found a good way of getting his collar off and somehow did some damage to the wound which went backwards again, but we fixed it up and got it to go forwards once more!  Presently he has been getting in to a lot of mischief which is usually a good sign as to how he feels.

This fellow asserts his presence upon John more often now since he is more available than I am.  He asks for a scratch behind the ears and then leans a bit closer until he is sitting half on his lap.  If I enter the room to sit down he runs across to me.  We had a good laugh one night when Larrikin sat down next to me and then ran across to John and gave him a look as if to tell him something and then came back to me.  The ‘look’ was meant to say he still liked him and didn’t want to hurt his feelings but he had to give me a turn.  There is a little soft blanket next to me which our neighbor Judy crocheted (thanks Judy), who makes lovely cat blankets…. and Larrikin sits on this and treads it down whilst purring with shut eyes before curling up for a sleep.  Whilst he treads it down, every fifth or sixth tread reaches out and ‘treads’ me!

Larrikin and Melinda

Melinda is his roommate and if he tries to get too familiar with her she is pretty adept at running away.  Of late she has been screwing up enough courage to get up on the lounge but Larrikin thought this was overstepping a boundary and has been caught pushing her off with his paw.  He tries to get around John to get her off but John protects her so that she sits quietly confident and all Larrikin can do is to glare at her which he does.  Melinda is the quietest best behaved little cat a person could ask for.

Since we bought ourselves a new gas heater after the old one gave up the ghost I suggested that the girls might be allowed in of an evening and they might choose to sit by the warmth and not misbehave.

We have done that and on their entry Melinda’s eyes open wide in a sort of affronted expression and she high tails it back to her dishes to drink her water and have some food before they can try to steal it.
Then she will saunter back to John’s side on the lounge with a look of extreme disapproval at what the ‘riff raff’ are getting up to.  Getting up to is right.  Josephine climbs the cabinet and sits on top , then when she jumps off Ginger Megg is likely to find a more treacherous path to same and has to be stopped.  Angel goes disappearing behind a pile of books or dvd’s, then Larrikin gets down to wrestle Josephine and Melinda looks outraged at the antics and then we, weary of the whole thing, turf them out again to get some peace and quiet.

Josephine looking appealing and innocent

Ginger Megg and Angel

A story published in today’s Sydney Morning Herald for animal lovers:

Paws and effect

SINCE ancient times, people have flocked to animal-related shows to watch beasts perform tricks. Today, there’s a lot more concern about how animals are treated and performing-animal circuses are off-putting for some. But that hasn’t stopped our desire to see creatures on stage only now audiences flock to see a man show us how to stop a dog barking at the postman.

While circus owners struggle to get permission to stage their animal acts, on Sunday night at Acer Arena in Homebush, the “dog whisperer”, Cesar Millan, will play to a packed arena of pet owners eager to iron out naughty canine traits and to see their idol in the flesh.

“Ever since I was 13, I wanted to be the best dog trainer in the world,” says Millan, who originally arrived in the US as a Mexican illegal immigrant and scored his first job as an assistant in a dog-grooming salon in San Diego.

“Watching a TV show such as Lassie,

I knew I had to get to America to realise my dream.”

Moving north, Millan began working with pets for Hollywood big-hitters such as Will Smith, and in a place as obsessed with celebrity as Los Angeles, it wasn’t long before he had his own TV show, The Dog Whisperer.

Along the way, Millan says his “journey changed and I realised I had to train people”. Using some local errant pets, The Dog Whisperer’s success relies on Millan shifting the blame from nuisance dogs to what are usually over-indulgent owners unable to assert themselves as the alpha member of the pack.

“People either can’t or won’t do it,” he says. “Often it’s only when they hit rock bottom and are told they have to put the animal down that they take action.”

While Millan will enthral thousands with his behavioural training, the role of animals in showbusiness has changed significantly. Traditional circuses, for example, find it harder to perform at all, with many councils and the entire ACT prohibiting them from performing in their jurisdictions.

An animal-themed show is now more likely to feature a person in a dog costume, such as in the recent Scooby-Doo Live On Stage, than an animal from the wild veldts of Africa to jump through a flaming ring.

Damien Syred, who owns Geelong’s Circus Royale, says most Sydney councils refuse to let his act set up, even though he no longer uses “exotic animals”.

“Years ago we had exotic animals but we decided to switch to domestic acts,” Syred says, referring to his show’s cast of camels, cows and horses.

“But when councils hear we have any animal acts at all, they refuse to let us set up. The only places in Sydney we’ve been able to perform are St Marys, Earlwood, Bass Hill, Narrabeen and Castle Hill. And at each of those places, we had so many people show up we had to turn customers away.”

CESAR MILLAN
Sunday, 3pm, Acer Arena, 132 849, $80-$200.

“Scat!!!!”… that is what I thought people called my kind….

I learnt another name much later…. but my story starts here…..

I know not what season I was born, but I was born to the life of a street cat. My mother raised me, she made me wary of every threat there was in our world.

She taught me:
Keep in the shadows!
Hide from all eyes!
Be silent!
Melt away into well known bolt holes and any cover should you ever be disturbed and…… trust no-one but your own siblings and me, your mother…

I heeded her teachings and found that my life was one of fear and hunger, the only real comfort known to me was curling up with my mother and giving and recieving some grooming….. never sure of the chance of true shelter for the night - or food for our bellies -we did the best we could.

My mother was with me long enough to raise me, but soon enough, in my first 6 months of life, still a small malnourished kitten myself, I had my own little kittens to raise.

They were small, and starving and in need of a lot of attention, I was tiny and foragged for food wherever I could, food from bags or bins, food that the noisy, scary schoolchildren had discarded at the local schoolgrounds, bugs, whatever I could find to try and keep my milk coming. I did what I could, my mother helping me even though she had a new brood in her belly too - and indeed some of my first litter survived.

My story may be much the same as the others who came before me and who come well after I am gone….

My story will continue soon….

shell from Petrescue has sent me this link on the No Kill Conference in the United States.

I am nearly finished reading Nathan Winograd’s book ‘Redemption’.

The truth is beginning to emerge from several sources that we the public have been duped for a long time.  Things are not always the way they seem.  They are certainly not as simplistic as we have been led to believe.

http://www.petrescue.org.au/information_library/rescue_interest_articles/resources/679

This came in today from Paula.  I have emailed to ask her what area as it sounds as if she is doing a stupendous job but definitely needs some help.

If you haven’t read my email and see this Paula can you get in contact or reply onsite?

The whole story is on as a comment on Conversations but I feel it needs to be up front so that anyone who is available to help her can.

Hi, I cant find where to put a fresh topic on this site.  I’ve just been searching for people who know cats. Sorry to jump into your conversation but I’m “out of my depth!”.

I own a garage. For the last 6 months we’ve been finding cat prints near our tea area but we never saw the cat. Last Sunday we found 5 kittens in a box in an upstairs room. We figured, through searching the net, that they were 2 days old. Mum was nowhere to be seen at that time. I started leaving food and was thrilled to bits that it started disappearing so I continued to feed her. After a couple of days she figured that the food situation was OK but she didn’t like the fact that we could look in the box at the kittens so she moved them. Unfortunately she choose the highest cupboard in the room where we’d stored all manner of rubbish. It’s cold and draughty up there, right near the roof.

On Saturday I went in to feed her and she came down from her cupboard muttering what sounded like obscenities and threats. She was all puffed up, growling and hissing and marching toward me with purpose.  I kept my cool in the face of the advancing ball of teeth and claws and, talking calmly, I put the food down on the floor.

The next day I did the same only this time she let me stroke her. Today she was my best friend and she’s lovely - her growl seems to be her way of talking. She even let me stroke the kittens and pick some up.

On top of the cupboard is horrible, I was watching her tonight struggling with the now 6 day old kittens, there was just no room. She looked so uncomfortable and so tired that she closed her eyes and half nodded off with her head on my hand while the kittens fed.

There are dangers on the cupboard, I tried to work out what I could move without upsetting all the other rubbish up there; bits of metal, polythene bags, wood and lots of black dust. Mum was cramped, laying on the kittens and looking pained. I think she’s sore too.

So I came home and got some soft pet bedding and a big box, went back and set up a den for her that’s well hidden.  I put her food down and she extricated herself from the kittens and went to eat.  I got another box and put all five kittens in it - she watched while she ate. I put all the kittens in the new bed.  When she’d finised eating she looked a bit upset but went to the box and went in through the hole I’d put in the side. She was only in there long enough to count them then came out again. She ate some more and we spent half an hour being friends again. Then I turned off the lights, came home and I’ve been sitting here worried sick ever since.

The kittens were a lot more mobile today than they have been previously, eyes opened too, and the chances of them falling off the cupboard were quite high, that worried me. It absolutely threw it down with rain today and I know the back wall, which the cupboard is built against, is wet through when it rains. There was no room and no way I could get blankets of any size in there to keep them warm.

Did I do the right thing? If they’d been puppies I would have been fine but cats are something else. Their body language and their actions seem so contradictory!  They are absolutely beautiful and I’m bonding way too well with Mum (My GSD would think so anyway).

The RSPCA have said that they’ll come and take them all when they’re 4 weeks old, Mum too. They’re going to spay Mum and see whether they can rehome her. If they cant she can live at the garage and I’ll continue to look after her.

There is one kitten much smaller than the rest, this is another worry (can you tell this is my first litter of kittens?!).  This little one cries more than the others. At least I can see her now, if Mum keeps them where they are now. On the cupboard I could barely see them at all.

What I’m really worried about is whether she’ll reject them!  Common sense tells me that she shouldn’t because she was willing to allow me to handle them on top of the cupboard. She took them back and cleaned them afterward.

I know very little about cats you see. And I feel hugely responsible for all of them.

I get the impression that Mum has been a house cat, probably abandoned by some heartless ****, as she’s so keen on company now. She really is loveable and it goes beyond feeding time.  I was with her for ages tonight.

Any advice re moving them again, if she shifts them back to the cupboard, and what to do with the little one if she doesn’t appear to be feeding would be appreciated.

I don’t think I’m going to sleep much tonight. Wish they were here at home with me but my GSD isn’t very tolerant of cats and it would likely upset Mum even more.

This three-year-old tabby is Lucky by name and nature, after miraculously surviving a 26-storey fall from his Manhattan apartment.

Owner Keri Hostetler had opened the window just a few centimetres to air the place out before she noticed Lucky was missing.

Meanwhile, two workmen on scaffolding on 30th floor of the opposite building saw the cat plunge from the ledge.

Lucky landed on a sixth floor balcony where one of the workmen, John Hayes, found him with only a broken toe and a broken lower jaw.

Where he started from and where he landed are marked

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glance/821175/cat-survives-26-storey-plunge

Has anyone else been reading Nathan Winograd’s book ‘Redemption’?

Any thoughts or opinions on it?

Does anybody know what the ear tattoo is which is in the ear of this cat?

Email received this week.

This is a posting to thank our subscribers for staying aboard (and is part of a major mailout that is underway today . . for the bloggers in here currently scratching thier heads)

Admin

Just imagine your pets giving the dirt on you!  Imagine the complaints they could make…justifiable or otherwise…to a stranger!  This would be like the proverbial servant gossip about the family who employs them!

We know someone who told us that the cleaners at a certain organisation they work for know more about the machinations of the company and who does what, or who doesn’t do what they are supposed to do, all from being silent witnesses to the gossip around them.  Cleaning, cleaning, listening, listening.  As well as this, some of them are like Joe in the Frank Sinatra song ‘Set Em Up Joe’…(and I’ll tell you a little story’)..they become confidantes and witnesses to the politics involved.

So if you suddenly see one of the cleaners where you work wearing suit and tie and coming out of the office you should not be surprised.  A lot of cleaning could have made that promotion  possible!

So be warned! be careful how you treat your pets and be very careful in what you say about them!  It could all come back to haunt you….literally!

Don’t think you can swindle them into eating a cheaper brand of dog or cat food or put worming tablets crushed up in their food.  They will tell all!

From the horse’s mouth

Larrikin explaining to Melinda how he came to be here.

Melinda thinks he’s cute but

then Melinda thinks all the boys are cute.

With great trepidation we came home from work to look in the cage, expecting something awful.  Four older kittens looked at us wide eyed and the two little new recruits were alive and well.  Perhaps the level of their squealing (extremely high decibels) when being accosted helped the standoff to be accomplished.

Yoda was pure white and half the size of Stormy.  I didn’t have a name for Stormy but I began to call Yoda…Lilly.  The assumption was that Yoda was a girl and Stormy was a male.  Assumptions can cause a lot of trouble.

Yoda (formerly Lilly!)

Socks was such a good mother, displaying much patience being confined like this with six kittens, two of them not even her own.  We used to let the four oldest ones out to give her a break and out would come Abigail, the dominant kitten, walking like a spider sideways, back arched and fur fluffed out to confront the others in some kind of contrived argument.  We had many an entertaining evening with them, also an exhausting one in which we had to rescue them from curtains and books, or should I say vice versa?

Socks would sigh and stretch out with her back to us .  Then out of the hutch would appear a wobbly white head on wobbly white legs, looking first right then left as if to ask ‘did you see which way she went?’  Being black at the back made Socks slightly invisible.  Then the long un co-ordinated walk would begin and the climb to access  the nipples and feed.  If Yoda had had his way he would have stayed attached permanently.

We had been desperate for somewhere to put this family in which they could spread out and have room to move.  The Catnip enclosure was brought back and put together, not without some problems, since it was not made for us but rather for a different setup altogether.  Because they were kittens we could not attach the extension in any case.

One of the attractions though was that Socks could jump up to a high bed and therefor this allowed her to gain some respite.

After fussing about all day we took them out and emptied Socks in there (since we could not touch her) and then put the kittens in.

After watching with much relief and pleasure how they could run about and play we came back inside.  John was despondent over certain aspects of it but I was so happy to have them out there.

‘ I don’t care about any problems like that now, I am just so so happy to have them out of the loungeroom.’

Five hours later they were all back in there.

Socks

With the television on and prancing about in my newfound  freedom I was not to know that a storm was brewing.  It had been a warm Summer’s day and the evening was pleasantly mild when thunder was heard in the distance and the dogs began barking.

‘Is that thunder?’

‘Yes’

They had shelter.  Some.

The rain came down in rivers, thunder cracked and lightening flashed, wind, noise and…is that squealing?

It was dark and we, being so organised,  did not have a torch (that worked).

I opened the front door and we were driven back by wind and furious ra