Category Archives: Pets

Shiny but deadly – don’t throw goldfish in rivers, pet owners told

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Unwanted lockdown goldfish pose a triple threat to native species in UK waterways, study reveals

If that lockdown goldfish is starting to lose its lustre, think twice before throwing it in the river or canal – the creatures may look innocent but their voracious appetite, tolerance for cold and have-a-go habits compared with native species can be catastrophic for local wildlife.

New research shows that goldfish consume much more than comparable fish in UK waters, eat more than other invasive fish and are also much more willing to aggressively take on other competing species.

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Shelf shock: soaring supermarket prices shoppers find hard to swallow

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From dog food to coffee, readers are reporting some basic goods’ prices are rising by far more than inflation

Inflation is rampant, and supermarket prices are no exception. Shoppers are returning to stores to find old favourites have leapt in price from one week to the next. The cost of consumer goods is spiralling at such a rate that retail analysts have coined a new term, shelf shock.

Nestlé, the owner of KitKat, Häagen-Dazs and Felix cat food, became the latest consumer goods group to warn of more pain to come on Thursday, saying it had raised prices by 5.2% in the first three months of this year and that rising production costs would force another increase soon.

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Endangered sharks found in cat and dog food, DNA study shows

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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.

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French rightwing candidate mocked after dog joins her party

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Valérie Pécresse hounded over allegations that dog named Douglas signed up for Les Républicains presidential primary

French politicians have long embraced domestic animals – from Emmanuel Macron’s rescue dog, Nemo, who once peed on a fireplace during an Elysée meeting, to the far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s hobby of breeding Bengal cats.

But a dog called Douglas from the south of France is causing ridicule for the rightwing presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse.

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‘Relentless calls and constant abuse’: why Britain’s vets are in crisis

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Vets are no strangers to pressure, but Covid and the huge boom in pets means they have never been busier – or experienced so much stress

By the summer of 2020, veterinary practices were beginning to feel the effects of the pandemic pet boom. That was the time that Melanie, a small-animal vet from the southeast of England, realised she no longer wanted to be in the profession. The feeling left her at a loss. All she’d ever done was eat, breathe and sleep veterinary medicine. Like many vets she had been inspired since she was a child: religiously watching TV shows such as Animal Hospital and Vets in Practice, mucking out stables to embellish her university application and completing a five-year degree before finding work at a busy practice. It was a vocation, not a job: she simply loved animals. “Ever since I knew what a vet was, I wanted to be one,” she says. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to do that – until now.”

But for Melanie, the pressure of lockdown was just the start. During the initial mayhem, practices were forced to work within strict Covid restrictions. Many team members were off sick, isolating or furloughed. Melanie worked three shifts on, three shifts off with a skeleton staff, clocking two hours’ overtime every evening out of a sense of duty. The busiest day in the practice calendar was usually Boxing Day. But between March and July 2020, says Melanie, every day felt as if it was Boxing Day “if the toilet was flooded and the lab was on fire”. Staff bounced from the reception to operations, from remote appointments to emergencies, shepherding animals in for treatment from the street while brushing off abuse from stressed-out owners who were unhappy about wearing masks, didn’t want to wait outside or refused to accept that they couldn’t receive a home visit to have their cat’s claws clipped.

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Maine family’s lost cat turns up after six years – in Florida

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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.

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Deluge of dog pee and poo harming nature reserves, study suggests

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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.

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Stranded dog saved from rising tide after rescuers attach sausage to drone

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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.

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Hong Kong to cull thousands of hamsters after Covid found on 11

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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.

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‘Insensitive’: pet owners react to pope’s remarks on animals and children

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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”.

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Choosing pets over babies is ‘selfish and diminishes us’, says pope

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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”.

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What’s new, pussycat? How feline film stars are trained to perform

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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.”

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The dog who got me through 2021: Leo the Peke made my blood pressure drop and my heart swell

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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.

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Tim Dowling: I’m on my hands and knees, teaching our new cat old tricks

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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.

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From hippos to hamsters: how Covid is affecting creatures great and small

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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.

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The inner lives of dogs: what our canine friends really think about love, lust and laughter

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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?

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The inner lives of cats: what our feline friends really think about hugs, happiness and humans

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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.

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Pen Farthing: ‘Animals in a cargo hold never got in the way of people getting on a flight’

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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.

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Catch them if you can? Meet the exotic pet detectives

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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.

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