Cats In General

Right, after weighting up the responsibilities you are taking on you have decided that the rewards you get from being part of a cat’s life, is well worth that effort.

Now you have chosen to take home a kitten!

You really have to consider things from the kitten’s point of view. Why? Because it will make the move for you, you’re family and the kitten a lot happier! For the kitten, moving into a new environment is a stressful event. It will take time for it to get used to its surroundings and the people or other animals it will meet.

You will need to give it time and reassurance to adjust to the new surroundings. If you have children they will naturally want to rush up and pick up the new kitten. If you have a dog or another cat please give the new kitten a chance to settle in before being introduced to them and let the kitten make the first move. The introduction should be done slowly and quietly. The children will need to be told that the new kitten is not a plaything and that they will have to take care with it. They should sit on the floor quietly and wait until the kitten chooses to come and investigate them. If the kitten decides to play with them the play must stop when the kitten chooses.

To this end you will need to have made provision for a safe refuge for the kitten to escape to where it will not be disturbed. The kitten will need its own bed and this will be its safe place to go when it wants to retreat from the fuss. Its bed needs to be warm, dry, comfortable and draught-free. You could buy a bed from a pet shop, or use a strong, dry, cardboard box with a hole cut in the side. The bed should contain soft bedding, and be placed in a warm, safe place. On the first few nights a warm water bottle (not hot) under a blanket may help compensate for the absence of the kitten’s mother or littermates. If you have very young children or a lively dog or cat then placing the kitten’s bed in a large secure pen would be ideal. The kitten could then get used to the other members of the family from the security of its pen and could retreat into its bed if it needed.

Will it? won't it?

No! we are not talking here about a cat, rather a particular news item which bears the same name as on of our domestic bread of cats.

Apophis, also known as 2004 MN4, stirred up a flurry of concern last December when the risk of collision was raised temporarily to as high as 1 out of 40 for the year 2029. With an estimated diameter of 1,300 feet (400 meters), the asteroid could destroy a city if it hit the wrong place on land, or raise a deadly tsunami if it plunged into the ocean.

Fortunately, more precise plotting ruled out a collision in 2029. However, Apophis will still make an extremely close pass missing Earth by mere tens of thousands of miles. At that distance, Earth's gravitational pull could perturb Apophis' orbit enough to put it on a track to hit during another pass in 2036. Experts say that could happen if, during the 2029 close encounter, the asteroid passes through an outer-space "keyhole" that measures about 2,000 feet (600 meters) across.

Cats Indoors!

Your cat and the American Bird Conservancy.

The American Bird Conservancy initiated an Internet based campaign in 1997 with the objective of protecting birds from predation by cats by insisting that all domestic cats should be kept safely enclosed.

Called ‘Cats Indoors’ this campaign had by 2003 demonstrated significant results by successfully influencing federal, state and local governments too their way of thinking.

However, there is no mention in this report of the number of birds and other small wildlife killed by rats and it was mainly for the control of rats and grain eating vermin that the ancient Egyptians are believed to have given the ‘cat’ top social status. (Killing a cat was punishable by death!)

And how long have the human race and the free roaming cat co-existed?

A grave that is estimated to be 9,500 years old was excavated in Cyprus in 2004. In that grave lay side by side two skeletons, one of a human, the other that of a cat. This finding pushes back the earliest known feline-human association significantly. It is believed that for humans who had adopted a farming economy the benefit of removing rats and mice from humans' food stores outweighed the trouble of awarding the protection of a human settlement to a formerly wild animal.