Description of ingredient as ‘ocean fish’ means owners are unwittingly giving their pets vulnerable species for dinner
Pet food containing endangered sharks is being fed to cats and dogs by unwitting owners, a study has revealed.
Scientists found that several brands contained endangered species but listed only vague ingredients such as “ocean fish”, meaning that consumers are often oblivious.
Continue reading...Denis Cilley had given up her pet, Ashes, for dead but a microchip confirmed she had somehow made her way 1,500 miles away
A Maine family that long ago gave up on a lost family cat is being reunited – more than six years and 1,500 miles later.
Denise Cilley, of Chesterville, said she was shocked to get a voicemail last week announcing her cat, Ashes, had been located in Florida.
Continue reading...From Stuart Little and Pet Sematary to new movie The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, cats can be scene-stealers. But how do you get such fickle and independent creatures to behave on camera?
Cats have been effortlessly stealing scenes from their human co-stars for decades. Who could forget Audrey Hepburn’s adorable marmalade tabby in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Or Jinx, the toilet-flushing Himalayan in Meet the Parents? Behind every famous film cat, there is a dedicated trainer patiently teaching them to obey a command, making sure they’re happy on set, and grooming them fastidiously to maintain their fluffy good looks.
The film-makers behind The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a British period biopic about the Edwardian artist and illustrator who became famous for his surreal portraits of cats, were adamant they didn’t want to use CGI for the shoot, so animal trainer Charlotte Wilde was brought in with 40 feisty felines. “It was organised chaos,” she says. “They had their own green room and were treated like royalty.”
Continue reading...They do what they want, all the time – and can teach us a lot about how to live in the present, be content and learn from our experience
I wanted to know the exact amount of time I spend ruminating on the inner lives of my cats, so I did what most people do in times of doubt, and consulted Google. According to my search history, in the two years since I became a cat owner I have Googled variations of “cat love me – how do I tell?” and “is my cat happy 17 times. I have also inadvertently subscribed to cat-related updates from the knowledge website Quora, which emails me a daily digest. (Sample: Can Cats Be Angry or Disappointed With Their Owner?)
How do I love my cats? Let me count the ways. The clean snap of three-year-old Larry’s jaw as he contemplates me with detached curiosity is my favourite sound in the world. I love the tenor and cadence of my six-month-old kitten Kedi’s miaows as he follows me around the house. (High-pitched indignant squeaks means he wants food; lower-pitched chirrups suggest he would like to play.) I love the weight of Larry on my feet at night and the scratchy caress of Kedi’s tongue on my eyelid in the morning.
Continue reading...Continuing our series looking behind the headlines of 2021, the former Royal Marine on his perilous evacuation of hundreds of dogs and cats during the fall of Kabul – and how he answers the sceptics
From his home in Exeter, Paul “Pen” Farthing reruns the events of late summer through his mind. The former Royal Marine, who 15 years ago established the Nowzad charity in Kabul to care for animals suffering the fallout of war, still cannot believe that America “would just throw Afghanistan to the wolves”. When the retreat began in August, he realised “things were going south very, very quickly. We’d got young female staff who had trained as vets, who feared they would be married off to Taliban fighters. Their faces were just horrible to see…”
At the time, the Nowzad animal refuge employed 24 Afghan staff. Since Farthing first adopted his own street dog in 2006 while stationed in Helmand, Nowzad had reunited 1,600 soldiers back home with animals they cared for on active service, while establishing a pioneering veterinarian practice and neutering programme. Farthing had been living at the compound since the beginning of the pandemic. Given the charity’s symbolic and practical mission, with Kabul about to fall, it was clear that he had to get both his team and the animals out of harm’s way.
Continue reading...We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict
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Lakshmi spends her entire salary on the cats, then says she can’t afford to go on holiday with me
Continue reading...The cats and dogs that helped us through the pandemic are increasingly being dumped in the street or handed over to charities – and shelters are dealing with the fallout
On a cold, steely grey day in a farmyard in Essex I meet Spike. Thick-set, broad-chested, narrow-eyed, he has a look that says “don’t mess with me”, and he has tiny, pointed ears that have been cut to make him look more intimidating.
Spike is an XL bully; bully stands for American bulldog, XL means bred to be bigger. They are fashionable among a certain type of dog owner, says Ira Moss, founder of the rehoming charity All Dogs Matter. We’re at its kennels near Waltham Abbey in Essex. XL bullies – along with cuter, “more designery”, says Moss, French bulldogs, dachshunds, cockapoos and cavapoos – “were the top five lockdown dogs”. And they are being abandoned like never before. Sadly, it’s not just dogs. Animal charities and vets have reported everything from cats to cockerels being left. And they are braced for Christmas to be even busier.
Continue reading...Number of products in UK containing MSC-certified sustainable seafood has grown by 57% in last five years
Eco-friendly pet food is on the rise as dog and cat owners become more aware of the impact of their beloved pet’s diet.
New figures released exclusively to the Guardian show that the number of pet food products containing Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified sustainable seafood has grown by 57% in the UK during the last five years, from 49 to 77. In the last year alone consumers bought more than 7m tins, pouches and packs of MSC-certified pet food.
Continue reading...Composer says one good thing that came out of the big screen version of his stage musical was ‘my little Havanese puppy’
Andrew Lloyd Webber has admitted he hated the 2019 film adaptation of his smash-hit musical Cats so much he bought a dog.
The composer has never shied away from expressing his distaste with Tom Hooper’s star-studded and much-maligned big screen version of the stage musical.
Continue reading...The pet-mad population reacted with fury after the animals were put down due to biosecurity concerns
A decision by Taiwan authorities to euthanise 154 cats found in an attempted smuggling operation has sparked outcry and calls to change laws and increase penalties.
Coast guards intercepted a fishing vessel from China on Thursday about 40 nautical miles off the coast of Kaohsiung, on Taiwan’s southern tip. After Covid screening, officials boarded the fishing boat the following day and discovered 62 cages containing the cats, including Russian Blue, Ragdoll, Persian American Shorthair, and British Shorthair breeds.
Continue reading...As cases of blood condition pancytopenia persist, investigators suggest food fungi could be to blame
Cats are still dying in significant numbers from a mystery illness that investigators believe may be linked to widely sold cat food brands, prompting concern that not enough is being done to warn owners about a nationwide product recall.
Vets around the UK are understood to have been swamped by cases of pancytopenia, a condition in which the number of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets decreases rapidly, causing serious illness.
Continue reading...In Britain, most pet cats are free to roam, but where do they go and what do they get up to? We fitted six cats with GPS trackers and found out
As I prepared to write this piece, my three-year-old cat, Larry, had been missing for 24 hours. I had checked under the bins, posted in a community Facebook group and Googled variations of “Lost cat how long normal before come home?” all day.
Larry was a house cat when we took him in, but my boyfriend and I had recently moved to a house with a garden so had started letting him out. Just like that, our adorable, loving, docile cat turned into the neighbourhood bruiser. He stopped snuggling with us in the morning, instead impatiently pawing at the door even before we had put down his breakfast.
Continue reading...During the pandemic, every pet became an emotional support animal – and many people decided they wanted to commemorate them indelibly and incredibly
Alice was a double rex rat we adopted from the local RSPCA. She was such a special girl and we had a great bond, so she was the natural choice for my first tattoo. Sadly, Alice died earlier this year, so I’m getting a second tattoo in tribute in a couple of weeks, on the spot where she loved to sit.
Sarah, student, Greater Manchester
Dogs can carry bacteria and parasites, while cats smuggle in gory ‘presents’. So is it best to lock them out of the bedroom?
Vomiting on the bed. Snoring. The shedding of hair. The stealing of sheets. The passing of wind. Night-time face-licking. A higher-than-average chance of catching sarcoptic mange …
If I could sit my dog down and quietly explain the risks associated with him sharing the bed with us, this is the list I would read to him. But I know he wouldn’t listen. Oz, our young lurcher, would only warmly reimagine that scene he recently saw. When, on my birthday, the family let him come upstairs and on to the bed to wake me up. When he saw, for the first time, Upstairs Land. And then widdled with joy.
Continue reading...Researchers in Glasgow find two cases where cats were infected by owners with coronavirus symptoms
Two cases of human-to-cat transmission of Covid-19 have been identified by researchers. Scientists from the University of Glasgow found the cases of Sars-CoV-2 transmission as part of a screening programme of the feline population in the UK.
The cats, of different breeds, were living in separate households and displayed mild to severe respiratory signs. Researchers believe both pets were infected by their owners, who had Covid-19 symptoms before the cats became unwell.
Continue reading...The realities of ownership are dawning as the UK’s lockdown eases and the dogs left at home need to be looked after
Pet cameras and activity trackers are flying off the shelves. Demand for anti-chew sprays, automatic feeders and water fountains for pets has rocketed, and dog walkers and sitters are being inundated with inquiries.
As lockdown restrictions ease, dog owners are snapping up products and services that will enable them to monitor and care for their pets while they are out at work.
Continue reading...‘Your English is poor,’ I tell him. ‘Your accent is atrocious’
My phone says it’s 7.50am, but the sky outside looks more like 4.15. Rain is striking the window in handfuls, like flung gravel. It has been raining all night, and it promises to rain all day, possibly for the rest of the month. I dress by the light of a reading lamp and close the bedroom door behind me.
“Hello?” says the cat from somewhere in the darkness below.
Continue reading...Over the last few years, the internet has thrilled to pictures of chubby pets. But now experts are calling for a new era of cat shaming and determined dieting
Name: Fat cats.
Age: Probably no older than 10, given their propensity to die young.
Appearance: Fat.
South Australian eight-year-old has lived in four homes already, but RSPCA says it’s about knowing how to handle him
Returned to the RSPCA by four different families in the past seven years, “demonic” Chester may be the least-loved cat in Australia, but workers at the shelter are still determined to find him a home for Christmas.
The grumpy eight-year-old moggie was described by his last owner as “anti-social” and “a real Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. On his surrender form, the former owner wrote that while Chester was “great with chickens” and “tolerates the dogs”, he also “attacks our old cat and the neighbours”. She told the RSPCA that she had visitors who would not enter the house unless the cat was locked away.
Continue reading...We all know someone who looks like their dog, but what about our feline friends? Photographer Gerrard Gethings set out to match moggies with their lookalikes – with uncanny results. By Kathryn Bromwich
If you’ve spent much time on the internet over the past decade, chances are you’ve seen some cats on there. Cats chasing their own tails. Cats attempting ill-judged jumps from one piece of furniture to another. Or, in the case of Gerrard Gethings, a cat who looked exactly like the actor David Schwimmer. “There’s something about the shape of Schwimmer’s face that’s quite interesting,” says the London-based photographer, “and the cat had exactly the same face. That pushed me over the edge, into thinking there was something in it.”
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