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...Urine and faeces creating nitrogen and phosphorus levels that would be illegal on farms, scientists calculate
Dog faeces and urine are being deposited in nature reserves in such quantities that it is likely to be damaging wildlife, according to a new study.
The analysis found that the resulting overfertilisation of the ground with nitrogen and phosphorus by footpaths could reach levels that would be illegal on farmland.
Continue reading...Team in Hampshire ties sausage to drone as ‘last resort’ to rescue Millie the jack russell from mudflats
As the tide rose, it began to look perilous for Millie the jack russell-whippet cross, who had defied the efforts of police, firefighters and coastguards to pluck her from treacherous mudflats.
So the rescuers had to think imaginatively, and came up with the idea of attaching a sausage to a drone and hoping the scent of the treat would tempt Millie to safety. It worked gloriously and Millie has been reunited with her grateful owner after following the dangling sausage to higher, safer ground.
Continue reading...Authorities call for animals to be surrendered for ‘disposal’ after traces of virus detected at pet shop
Hong Kong has ordered thousands of hamsters be surrendered for “disposal” after traces of Covid-19 were found on 11 animals in a pet shop.
The order includes pets that were bought days before Christmas be handed over, with a warning not to “kiss or abandon them on the street” as Hong Kong and mainland China attempt to sustain a zero Covid strategy, attempting to suppress all outbreaks internally while maintaining tight border controls with the outside world.
Continue reading...Comments made during a recent general audience at the Vatican criticised
Whether millennials prefer to raise plants and pets over children for financial and environmental reasons or because they’re lazy and entitled has been hotly discussed in recent years. Now Pope Francis has waded in, saying that not having children is “selfish and diminishes us” and that people are replacing them with cats and dogs.
Pet owners have reacted angrily to the comments, made during a general audience at the Vatican. They argue that animals have a lower environmental footprint than children, enable them to lead a life that is different but equally rewarding, and compensate for financial or biological difficulties in having children, rather than directly replacing them.
On social media, people pointed out that the pope himself chose not to have children and said there was hypocrisy in such comments, coming from an institution which has grappled with a legacy of child sexual abuse.
Guardian readers who responded to a call-out asking for their views were similarly critical of the pope’s comments, which were branded “out of touch” and “sexist”.
Sophie Lusby, a 48-year old NHS manager in Belfast, said they were “really naive and insensitive” and failed to reflect that not everybody can or should have children. As a Catholic, she has struggled with feelings of shame about her inability to have children for medical reasons, given her religion’s emphasis on motherhood. “That’s what’s quite triggering about the pope’s words.”
She added that although she has two pets, which are “great company when you live on your own”, she doesn’t see them as substitutes for children, and instead has found meaning in her relationships with her nephews, nieces, siblings and parents. “If Catholicism is about family, I’ve been very successful at being a great family member and I don’t need to be told off.”
Estee Nagy, a 27-year-old jeweller from London, said that “having a child in today’s world is a luxury” because of lower earning power and a more challenging labour market. “It’s easier for those who were simply lucky and are rich or have more money than an average salary, but it gets harder when there isn’t enough.”
Stef, who works in education, said that in her home town of Brighton “loads of people have dogs and treat them like kids”. She has taken her rescue dog, Boss, on holiday to 11 countries, including the Vatican, and feels that he is “part of the family”.
Pontiff laments ‘denied parenthood’ and people who ‘substitute cats and dogs for children’
In a move likely to raise the hackles of millions of cats, dogs and their human cohabitees, Pope Francis has suggested that couples who prefer pets to children are selfish.
Wading into a debate noted for its toxic tone on social media, the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics said substituting pets for children “takes away our humanity”.
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...He is not a big name among dogfluencers, but whenever I felt stressed, something about this pekingese Instagram pup calmed me
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, went the New Yorker cartoon. Nearly 30 years later, it says so in your profile.
My Instagram feed is full of dogs, or people posting as their dogs from their own accounts. Some I know well, like my sister’s sweet but vacant pug Margot.
Continue reading...Instructing our kitten to use the cat flap was hard enough … even before it was terrified by two foxes having very loud sex
It is a frosty morning and I am standing in the kitchen in bare feet, holding the door open for the cat. The cat dips its head low, studying the world across the threshold.
“Faster, pussycat,” I say. The cat sniffs at the cold air swirling in from the garden, but does not move. I begin to close the door very slowly, in a bid to create a shrinking decision window. In the space of two months the kitten has grown into a tall-eared, spooky-looking thing that I sometimes find standing on my chest staring down at me in the dead of night, its nose a millimetre from mine. It doesn’t fear the dog or the tortoise, but it’s still pretty wary of outside.
Continue reading...Scientists are racing to assess the spread of the virus in wild and domestic animals, and the threat it could pose to us
A year ago humanity embarked on a project to vaccinate every person against Covid-19. But in recent months a shadow vaccination campaign has also been taking place. From giraffes to snow leopards, gorillas to sea lions, zoos around the world have been inoculating their animals with an experimental Covid vaccine as an insurance policy against what they fear could be a similarly fatal illness for certain mammals.
Meanwhile, veterinary scientists have been scrambling to understand the scale of Covid-19 infection in our furry household companions, and what the consequences could be for their health – and our own.
Continue reading...They make brilliant companions, but do dogs really feel empathy for humans - and what is going through their minds when they play, panic or attack?
Read more: the inner lives of cats: what our feline friends really think
It is humanity’s great frustration, to gaze into the eyes of a dog, feel so very close to the creature, and yet have no clue what it’s thinking. It’s like the first question you ask of a recently born baby, with all that aching, loving urgency: is that a first smile? Or yet more wind? Except that it’s like that for ever.
I can never know what my staffie is thinking. Does Romeo realise that what he just did was funny, and did he do it on purpose? Is he laughing on the inside? Can he smile? Can he feel anxious about the future? Can he remember life as a puppy? Does he still get the horn, even though I had his knackers off some years ago? And, greater than all these things: does he love me? I mean, really love me, the way I love him?
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...Skunks, iguanas, terrapins, big cats… Britain has more invasive and exotic animals than you imagine. Meet the search and rescue enthusiasts dedicated to capturing them and keeping them safe
Sometime in 2016, Chris Mullins received a message about a missing skunk. Mullins, 70, who lives in Leicestershire, had founded a Facebook group, Beastwatch UK, in 2001 as a place to document exotic animal sightings in the British countryside, so it was natural for news of this sort to trickle his way. In that time there had been a piranha in the Thames and a chinchilla in a post box, so a skunk on the loose in a local village seemed a relatively manageable misadventure. He loaded up some traps and headed to Barrow upon Soar to see if he could help locate the wayward creature.
Mullins, who has a white beard, smiling eyes and maintains a steady, gentle rhythm when he speaks, had always nurtured a passion for wildlife – chasing it down, catching it. The interest took hold amid a challenging childhood. Aged five, Mullins was victim of a hit and run that left him with amnesia and he spent two years in hospital before his parents sent him to a special school to catch up with his education.
Continue reading...We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict
• Have a disagreement you’d like settled? Or want to be part of our jury? Click here
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...Hector, dog of dogs, is the most glorious companion. Simon Tiffin reveals how he came to commission a piece of music that would evoke his spirit when he finally departs this world
One of the earliest signs of spring in my garden is a ring of snowdrops and winter acconites that encircles the trunk of a medlar tree outside the greenhouse. This yellow-and-white display was planted to complement a collection of elegantly engraved, moss-covered mini-headstones that mark the resting places of the previous owner’s dogs. Each of these markers has a simple but evocative dedication: “Medlar, beloved Border Terrier”; “Otter, a little treasure. Sister of Medlar”; “Skip, grandson of Genghis. Sweet eccentric.” Every time I see this pet cemetery I am reminded that, despite a complex denial structure that involves a sneaking suspicion that he is immortal, there will come a time when I have to face the death of Hector, dog of dogs.
Hector is a cockapoo and not ashamed to admit it. He sneers at terms such as “designer dog” and “hybrid” and is rightly proud of his spaniel/poodle heritage. Although many people have an origin myth of how their pet chose them, in Hector’s case it is true. When I went with my wife Alexa to see a friend whose working cocker had recently given birth, a blind, chocolate-brown caterpillar of a pup freed himself from the wriggling furry mass of his siblings and crawled his way towards us. Bonding was instant and, on our side, unconditional.
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...When dog moves ball containing device it sends a signal to a laptop and launches a video call
Whether it is a silent stare or simply a rousing bark, dogs have found myriad ways to communicate with humans. Now researchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone.
The device – nicknamed the DogPhone – is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone.
Continue reading...With more retailers welcoming pets, our reporter ventures out with her puppy Calisto to see if we really are a nation of animal lovers
It’s a Saturday morning and I’m crammed into a small changing room, attempting to try on a new pair of trousers. It’s always a struggle with the multiple layers of autumnal clothing, and I’m even more flustered than usual. Because also crammed into the tiny space is a large dog, giving me a quizzical look and clearly wondering if this is the start of a new game. She quickly decides, yes, yes it is.
Dog ownership is booming. According to the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association, there are 12.5m dogs in the UK this year, with 33% of households having a canine companion, while the Kennel Club is among the charities and organisations that have reported a surge in puppy ownership during the Covid pandemic.
Continue reading...