Napping is what I need now…

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PETA: Animals’ best friends? Hmmm

I was wandering around in the house when I saw this article on my human’s laptop’s screen:

Documents published online this month show that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an organization known for its uncompromising animal-rights positions, killed more than 95 percent of the pets in its care in 2011.

How is this possible? Why? Can someone tell me why?

Fifteen years’ worth of similar records show that since 1998 PETA has killed more than 27,000 animals at its headquarters in Norfolk, VA.

In a February 16 statement, the Center said PETA killed 1,911 cats and dogs last year, finding homes for only 24 pets.

“PETA hasn’t slowed down its slaughterhouse operation,” said Rick Berman, CCF’s executive director. “It appears PETA is more concerned with funding its media and advertising antics than finding suitable homes for these dogs and cats.”

But, but… I thought they were supposed to be helping us animals…

“[PETA’s] primary purpose,” [Dr.] Kovich wrote, “is not to find permanent adoptive homes for animals.”

PETA media liaison Jane Dollinger told The Daily Caller in an email that “most of the animals we take in are society’s rejects; aggressive, on death’s door, or somehow unadoptable.”

Dollinger did not dispute her organization’s sky-high euthanasia rate, but insisted PETA only kills dogs and cats because of “injury, illness, age, aggression, or because no good homes exist for them.”

PETA’s own history, however, shows that this has not always been the case.

In 2005, two PETA employees described as “adorable” and “perfect” some of the dogs and cats they killed in the back of a PETA-owned van. The two were arrested after police witnessed them tossing the animals’ dead bodies into a North Carolina dumpster.

PETA had no comment when the Daily Caller asked what sort of effort it routinely makes to find adoptive homes for animals in its care.

I am shocked.

I think I need to eat some croquettes and have a nap. And give a purr to my human.

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Milou and I: brothers like cats and dogs

For some reason that I don’t understand, it has always been difficult to get along with Milou, one of my half-brothers. When I was first introduced to Milou and Grouik, Milou immediately hissed (after 4+ years he still does, but less often). Then he refused to play with my human’s then boyfriend for about 2 weeks (and he likes to play!).

Later, I tried to play with him, since we both loved to play. Of course, I was young and thin, and he was… less young and thin. But sometimes I have the impression he never really accepted me, although we had good moments together. My human found these old pics. I thought I would share them :-)

I particularly love this one:

I hope you enjoyed these pics as much as I liked remembering these memories!

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A Cat in Paris? Are they talking about me? But I’m in New York now!

A couple of days ago my human and I were very excited to learn that a French animated film had been nominated for the Oscars. Not because it was French, but because it appeared to be about a cat. A Cat in Paris! (For those that don’t know me very well yet, I used to be “A Cat in Paris” until I moved to NY with my human, human’s husband and two half-brothers, to become “A Cat in New York”. My Facebook page is still called “A Cat in Paris” because I can’t change its name)

The animated feature film is called “Une vie de Chat” in French which means “A cat’s life,” although they gave it the English title “A Cat in Paris.”

My human managed to get a copy and we watched it.

Spoiler: The story is about a little girl whose father was killed by a famous gangster. Her cat leaves her at night to spend time with a theft and accompany him during his burglaries. When the little girl gets into trouble, the cat and the theft come to the rescue.

I won’t tell you more, except that my human and I were disappointed that with such a title, the film wasn’t that much about the cat, much more about the little girl and the theft, which is okay, only we were expecting more about, well, the cat’s life.

Anyway, we wish them luck for tonight!

Here is an article in French about the film : “Une vie de chat : la surprise française des Oscars”

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Bed sharing

Ah-ha! See what it is Grouik when someone’s sleeping in your bed? You have to sleep in the humans’ dirty laundry!

I hope you learnt your lesson, Grouik.

Next: Milou ;-)

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Bed(time) story

That’s it. I won’t stay idle without retaliating. Since Grouik and Milou have decided to use my bed, I will use theirs! Starting with Grouik’s…

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Kipling’s The Cat that Walked by Himself

Here is a little treat for our furiends and human friends alike. Kipling was probably a dog person. I’m glad my human is a cat person ;-)

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My bed and my half brothers

Not again!

Pffft!

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Cat litter and massages… Ah, humans

My human and her husband just watched the last episode of My Cat from Hell (more on this later) and now my human is all crazy about this ad:

Well well, let’s test this litter first (come on, I remember this all natural, organic, woody-something, I-don’t-know-what-else-it-was-or-wasn’t litter that just didn’t feel like litter, even my half brothers didn’t want to use it! And no, I still don’t care that you had a free trial, thankyouverymuch!), then we’ll see about massages.

Ah, humans! They’d do anything to have us please them. They just don’t get it the world is going the other way around.

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Need to relax or take a break?

You’re going to love this! Well, especially if you’re a human.

Here is my human’s favorite. Well, so far ;-)

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President’s Day and presidential cats

Sparkle has a very interesting post about presidential kitties.

She also shares a very smart idea concerning public officials’ training and cats
;-)

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Cats and boxes

Boxes… boxes… I love boxes!

Do you?

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Cats and humans: a mutually beneficial exchange, by any other name

We’ve been loved and worshiped at times, as well as feared and hated at others.

Humans are strange creatures. Despite their supposed superiority to us due, in part, to their capacity to think rationally (although there might be another reason), they sometimes are quite irrational.

Take this recent article for example. What If All the Cats in the World Suddenly Died?

Why would humans ask the question in the first place? Aren’t we cute little furiends to them, bringing gifts home whenever possible, and making sure their beds and bodies are kept warm?

But most of all, I think it is profoundly unfair from them to think that we are simply sleeping all day (18 hours doesn’t make a whole day!). Playing, with or without our humans, is important to us. And for us outdoor cats, we don’t get only to eat what our humans are kind enough to offer us:

“They are a significant predator of small animals, and can survive as almost solitary animals when the prey is scarce, while thriving in high density when the prey is abundant,” [Alan] Beck [professor of veterinary medicine and director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University] told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

And that’s just why we’d miss them. By killing mice and rats in barns and grain storage areas, cats are vital for keeping those pests in check. In India, Beck said, cats are believed to play a significant role in lessening the amount of grain loss caused by consumption or contamination by rodents. In other words, it may be true that humans feed cats, but without cats, humans would have less food in the first place.

And we are also useful to humans, thankyouverymuch!

As mentioned in a previous post, my human is independent and so am I. We both are very conscious that we live our lives independently. Yet living together is beneficial to both of us and we both agree it is so: my human by adopting me, feeding me and taking care of me and not giving up on me when she moved all the way from France to the United States, spending money and accepting the problems to have me fly with her, in the cabin, of her Paris-NY flight. In exchange, I’m her faithful furiend, which means purring, cuddling, playing and not attacking my half brothers too often.

Of course we are a part of nature and we have a role to play, but more than that, I believe humans and cats have both to gain in a mutually agreed relationship, if only for the friendship.

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Disgusting news of the day: “Man Arrested for Eating Cats”

According to this article:

A California man has been arrested for allegedly killing and eating cats. Eye witness accounts tell of strange behavior such as a woman who said she saw him cutting up a deceased cat, and a neighbor who said the man was burning things in his backyard for several days in a row. One of the neighbors said the man would stare at his dog in a manner that made him uncomfortable. If the charges are true, it is very fortunate the dog is still alive.

How disgusting is this?!

Unfortunately, the worst part of the story is that:

The charges are misdemeanors, which might not keep the accused in jail for long, nor prevent further incidents.

Thanks to Janina for the link.

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It’s caturday! Let’s call some furiends!

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The oldest cat video of all time?

More here and here.

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Catch Your cat, Etc. — this is for our human friends

My human just ran into this snippet about this article.

Jordana Serebrenik may be New York City’s only for-hire pet-cat catcher. Her service, Catch Your Cat, Etc., does what it suggests: Ms. Serebrenik will come to your home and corral your cat in situations when you cannot do so or prefer not to.

Her clients range from the old or physically impaired to those distraught at the idea of having to force their cat to go somewhere they do not want to go: the vet, for example.

I remember a time when my human had to work on a Saturday and had asked her husband to bring me to my annual vet visit. My human’s husband couldn’t get me in, I sure showed him I wouldn’t enter the carrier. Of course, at the time, I viewed my human’s husband as kind of a competitor for time spent with my human. All this to say that Ms. Serebrenik might have been helpful!

Read the article, watch the video, visit this lady’s Facebook page, and think about it, dear human friends, when you need to put us in a carrier. She is a professional. You may not be, if you know what I mean. No offense meant ;-)

To quote the lady:

If you know cats, what you know is you know nothing about cats.

Well said.

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Time for a well-deserved nap

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Cat quote of the day – I

I’m starting a series of quotes linked to cats. If you have some you would like to share with us, feel free to email them to me at texas.cat.in.ny-at-gmail.com.

I’ll start with a quote related to my previous post:

“If animals could speak the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow, but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.”
— Mark Twain

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Are dogs smarter than cats? Reflexions…

The Vet Blog posted an interesting and, I dare to say, smart article about research on Dog Vs. Cat intelligence and who’s smarter.

But if you are going to claim decisively that one species is smarter than the other, you had better use a definitition of intelligence that is universally accepted. In my opinion, the debate over the intelligence of cats and dogs is far from resolved.

While most cats will tell you that cats are smarter – by far – than dogs, they will also agree that smart dogs and stupid cats are everywhere, unfortunately.

Just because some humans like their furiends to do whatever they want them to do does not make the furiends that submit smarter. That cats are less social than dogs doesn’t make them more stupid either. My human is independent and so am I. Yet we usually spend quality time together. She might even think that refusing to be cuddled by her when I don’t want to makes me a more sincere furiend.

Again, quoting Dr. Eric Barchas:

Finally, let us not confound pleasing humans with intelligence. If I hold up a baby carrot and tell Buster to sit, he will do it. If I hold up that same carrot and tell a cat and a Nobel laureate in physics to sit, they probably will not. Does this make Buster the smartest creature in the room?

Thank you, Dr. Barchas, for this post. I too think that the issue is far more complicated than social = smart, and independent = not that smart. My human will agree ;-)

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

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