UPDATE: 25/3/11 - This week on Tuesday & Wednesday, Freddie & Flo (respectively) were taken to their new homes & introduced to their new families. Freddie was introduced to his new family in Nottinghamshire and will be the new best friend to a great young boy called Joe, who has cystic fibrosis. Joe has had a tough few months and I hope Freddie brings a little much-deserved happiness and sunshine to him and the rest of his family. Flo was introduced to her lovely new family in Cardiff on Wednesday; she will be filling some big shoes, as the couple who adopted Flo lost their 19 year old cat only last week. Flo's new 'Dad' works from home, so she'll be getting the attention & affection she loves, and often craves. Thanks to Jo & Sean (in Cardiff) and Lorraine, Joe & family (in Nottinghamshire) for adopting my former-companions. I know they have great families now, and both cats will be very happy. I'm told both Freddie & Flo are settling in well. Thanks again - it means the world to me knowing that a happy outcome has been achieved after what has proved a difficult time. In the meantime, my oldest cat (Molly) seems to be adjusting well without Freddie & Flo harassing her for playtimes! Ryan

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A sad day has finally come. I have very little option but to find new homes for two of my cats - Freddie & Flo. Some of my readers will know that after living in England for 11 years, I moved back in my with parents in Wales just before Christmas, bringing my cats with me. The move was unplanned, due to unfortunate personal & family reasons. After 3 months of constant perseverance, it's now clear that two of my cats are unhappy in their new temporary home. More seriously, this is compounded by members of my family having a long-term respiratory condition and they have been finding that the cats are making this breathing condition worse. So now, I'm facing up to the stark reality that my two cats would be much happier in new, loving homes. It almost breaks my heart, but I must try and do what's best for the cats and the health of my family. Here's a little information on the two much-loved cats in need of a new home...

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Flo:

Flo was born on a farm in Peterborough in August 2006. She is 5 years old. She is a pretty silver/grey domestic shorthair with green eyes. She's quite small and slender, but perfectly healthy and vaccinated. She was sterilised as a young adult, so cannot have kittens. She has a loving personality but can sometimes be a bit fearful. On a one-to-one basis, she is very affectionate, loving and loyal but sometimes struggles with other animals. She is very clean and house trained, and uses a litter tray/dirt box. She used to go outside a lot, but since moving to Wales, she has lost confidence. Ideally, Flo would be more suited to being placed in a home with no existing pets, although with the right owner, she can be adaptable. She just needs love, and gives plenty of affection in return. Both cats live near Ebbw Vale, South Wales. They would be more suited to being homed separately. Contact details at the end...

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Freddie:

Freddie was adopted in Leicester as a young male cat when he was about a year old. He is currently about 2 years old; he's a handsome white/brown domestic shorthair. I don't know when he was born, but since adoption, his vaccinations are up-to-date and he has been sterilised, so he doesn't 'spray' or mark territory and cannot create pregnancies in female cats. Freddie is an incredibly affectionate, amazingly gentle little boy. He can be quite timid but loves people. He has cloudy eyes from an eye-infection before I adopted him, but his vision seems okay. Freddie needs a loving home, but he might struggle with boisterous children. He is house-trained, very quiet and clean. He's easy to fall in love with. Both cats live near Ebbw Vale, South Wales. They would be more suited to being homed separately. Contact details at the end...

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It's been a terribly tough decision to make but I feel like the more I delay the inevitable, the worse things will be on many levels. If you can help a friend out, please do. I would prefer my cats went to friends or family so I could 'stay in touch' with them, rather than handing them over to the custody of the RSPCA, which I might be forced to do if new homes can't be found, soon. If you can help, please email me on ryanjaprice@gmail.com, send me a message on Facebook or send a tweet on twitter to @uselessdesires. If you have my number, please call or text. Thank you,

Ryan

contra omnia discrimina

contra omnia discrimina

What is a cat? Every child knows. Yet cats, among the most familiar of animals, are ineffably mysterious. What are they for? What do they want? Cats spend 85 per cent of their day doing absolutely nothing. Eating, drinking, killing, crapping and mating take up just 4 per cent of their life. The other 10 per cent is used to get around. Otherwise they are asleep, or just sitting. They say cats were the last animals to be domesticated, by the ancient Egyptians around 3,500 years ago. But it is cats that have domesticated us, in their own time, for their own reasons. Today, only a quarter of cat ‘owners’ say they deliberately went out to acquire a cat; in 75 per cent of cases, it was the cat that acquired them. And studies have shown that many more people claim to own a cat than there are cats. When your cat disappears for a while it is not, in fact, off on a hunting expedition, it is next door but one having another free meal or asleep on the window-sill with one or another of its many doting ‘owners’. Cats need to eat the equivalent of five mice a day. A cat given unlimited access to food will only eat a mouse-sized portion at a single meal. Is your cat eating five meals a day? Of course not: it’s dining out elsewhere, later.

"Most cats carry a parasite thought to have long-term, irreversible effects on the human brain. Toxoplasma gondii may turn men into grumpy, badly dressed loners and women into promiscuous, fun-loving sex kittens. Half the British population are already infected..."

One of the big selling points of cats is that they are clean animals that carefully cover up their own faeces. Except they don’t always - they only do it about half the time. They leave piles of the stuff all round the edges of their territory as a kind of malodorous ‘Keep Out’ sign. The polite word for this is ‘scats’. Milk, cat food and central heating are all bad for cats. Milk gives them diarrhoea, cat food rots their gums and central heating causes them to moult all year round. Then they lick off and swallow their fur, which clogs up their digestive system.

There are about 75 million cats in the USA, which are responsible for the deaths of a billion birds and five billion rodents every year. Right up until the seventeeth century it amused people to stuff wicker effigies of the Pope with live cats and then burn the lot. This produced sound effects that pleased Puritans but not cats: they have exceptionally sensitive hearing and can even hear bats.

Research has proved what every cat owner knows: apart from human beings, cats have a wider range of personalities than any other creature on the planet. And yes, they are intelligent. Very. When they can be bothered. There are numerous well-documented stories of cats abandoned by their owners tracing them to locations hundreds of miles from home. Can cats map-read? Maybe. They can certainly tell the time, as recent experiments have shown. The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods: killing a cat, whether deliberately or not, was a capital offence. When a cat died, its owner was expected to shave off his eyebrows. Whose idea was that? A cat’s, of course. Cats don’t have eyebrows.

© 2010 Ryan Price

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