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Caged animals
Nov. 23rd, 2014 05:37 pm
I accompanied Alexis at one of her pet-sitting visits. I was charmed by this fresh water shrimp.
Another tank hosted a bevy of fancy guppies.
I accompanied Alexis at one of her pet-sitting visits. I was charmed by this fresh water shrimp.
Another tank hosted a bevy of fancy guppies.
A house divided?
Jan. 15th, 2012 08:57 amAnimal lovers and Environmentalists are usually thought to be the same people. Realizing that certain animals, through the acts of humans, have themselves become environmental problems, complicates the matter.
Perhaps no issue polarizes animal lovers and environmentalists like free-roaming and feral cats. While I was on vacation, I read this magazine article about the subject. It's a relatively long piece that deserves to be read, but I'll boil it down: Free-roaming cats in present an environmental problem through the killing of native species and the spreading of disease; trap-neuter-release programs are spreading and growing through the perception that they help solve the problem, when the evidence is that they do not. In other words, animal lovers who oppose lethally controlling feral cats, are coming into conflict with environmentalists. The animal lovers are currently winning this conflict, with more and more municipalities accepting and promoting TNR programs.
The article provides some helpful resources, including some information from the American Bird Conservancy. Also included is a link to this product, a bib that your cat can wear to protect bird species--it has the added benefit of making the cat more visible to drivers.
Perhaps no issue polarizes animal lovers and environmentalists like free-roaming and feral cats. While I was on vacation, I read this magazine article about the subject. It's a relatively long piece that deserves to be read, but I'll boil it down: Free-roaming cats in present an environmental problem through the killing of native species and the spreading of disease; trap-neuter-release programs are spreading and growing through the perception that they help solve the problem, when the evidence is that they do not. In other words, animal lovers who oppose lethally controlling feral cats, are coming into conflict with environmentalists. The animal lovers are currently winning this conflict, with more and more municipalities accepting and promoting TNR programs.
The article provides some helpful resources, including some information from the American Bird Conservancy. Also included is a link to this product, a bib that your cat can wear to protect bird species--it has the added benefit of making the cat more visible to drivers.
100 Species #30: Domestic cat
Apr. 26th, 2011 07:27 pm
This domestic cat (Felis catus), an unneutered tom, is a familiar character in our neighborhood. Here he skirts along a neighbor's retaining wall at the edge of my yard. He is one of six or seven cats that I've seen in my yard so far.
Domestic cats are derived from one or more species of small wild cats from the old world. It seems likely that some wild cats were attracted to the large number of small rodents that occurred near grain stores in the earliest days of agriculture. Ancient people quickly appreciated these animals for their pest control function, and a strong bond between humans and cats has been in place since. Cats are the most popular companion animals worldwide, and as the human population becomes more urban, this will probably continue.
Domestic cats are found on every continent, including some Antarctic islands. On islands and in other sensitive ecosystems, cats are considered to be very harmful invasive species. Even in cities and suburbs there are those who actively try to curtail loose and feral cats as pests, often at odds with those who believe that cats deserve protection. Most often these two groups are participating in two completely different arguments, for which there is a common solution: All pet cats should be spayed or neutered, and kept indoors or in controlled runs.
Noticing the year: 04/24/08; plus random
Apr. 24th, 2008 05:18 pmAnother fantabulous Boston spring day out there, and I finally hoisted my beer-belly laden carcass onto my bike to commute like I used to: in pain. I have two matching bruises where my body contacts the saddle, that I would never notice except they make it impossible to sit on the bike properly. Bike shorts, a gel seat, and maybe a nice soft set of Depends for the next ride.
Nonetheless, bicycling remains the best way to move around the city. On a nice day like today I like to keep aware for urban nature in a way that's simply impossible in the cocoon/cage of a car. I took some shots of flowering trees and whatnot, but the best is just feeling the air all around me. Now that the air doesn't feel like a snowcone pressed against my neck.
Jim was neutered last night and seems none the worse for wear. He looks kind of sleepy but not injured or traumatized. I'm against a lot of dog-related legislation, but I wholeheartedly support mandatory spay/neuter for all pets. Well, it would have been be difficult to do for my Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
I'm looking forward to a planned Soylent Screen column. I'm going to compare and contrast Cronenberg's The Fly--NO I'VE NEVER SEEN IT--with a documentary called 'Housefly--An Everyday Monster.' Depending on when they both arrive (not from Netflix for reasons I'll explain in a minute) I'll write it this time or in the next fortnight.
Currently our Netflixes at home are 'Elling' a foreign movie about a friendship between two mentally challenged adults, and 'After the Thin Man' the second and supposedly best of the Thin Man series where Myrna Loy and William Powell play a witty and alcohol-obsessed married couple that solve mysteries between drinks. Both movies will require some mood-getting-into as well as the time, so I'm expecting we'll have these until June.
We just finished (well, I did, Alexis fell asleep during the last 5 minutes) a documentary called, and about HELVETICA. Yes, the typeface. It's actually a great documentary; if I taught a documentary filmmaking course, I'd definitely use it as an example. And yet I feel like I have to rate it three stars, not four, because if I rate it four Netflix will dig up a documentary about Times New Roman or something.
Nonetheless, bicycling remains the best way to move around the city. On a nice day like today I like to keep aware for urban nature in a way that's simply impossible in the cocoon/cage of a car. I took some shots of flowering trees and whatnot, but the best is just feeling the air all around me. Now that the air doesn't feel like a snowcone pressed against my neck.
Jim was neutered last night and seems none the worse for wear. He looks kind of sleepy but not injured or traumatized. I'm against a lot of dog-related legislation, but I wholeheartedly support mandatory spay/neuter for all pets. Well, it would have been be difficult to do for my Madagascar hissing cockroaches.
I'm looking forward to a planned Soylent Screen column. I'm going to compare and contrast Cronenberg's The Fly--NO I'VE NEVER SEEN IT--with a documentary called 'Housefly--An Everyday Monster.' Depending on when they both arrive (not from Netflix for reasons I'll explain in a minute) I'll write it this time or in the next fortnight.
Currently our Netflixes at home are 'Elling' a foreign movie about a friendship between two mentally challenged adults, and 'After the Thin Man' the second and supposedly best of the Thin Man series where Myrna Loy and William Powell play a witty and alcohol-obsessed married couple that solve mysteries between drinks. Both movies will require some mood-getting-into as well as the time, so I'm expecting we'll have these until June.
We just finished (well, I did, Alexis fell asleep during the last 5 minutes) a documentary called, and about HELVETICA. Yes, the typeface. It's actually a great documentary; if I taught a documentary filmmaking course, I'd definitely use it as an example. And yet I feel like I have to rate it three stars, not four, because if I rate it four Netflix will dig up a documentary about Times New Roman or something.
Make of this what you will
Sep. 18th, 2007 06:14 amBaboon adopts chicken at zoo
VILNIUS (Reuters) - A lonely baboon in a private Lithuanian zoo has adopted a chicken he saved from certain death last month and the two have formed a fast friendship, the zoo's director said Friday.
The chicken was intended as food for other animals in the zoo, but escaped and was sheltered by Mitis, a six-year-old Hamadryas Baboon, Edvardas Legeckas, who runs the zoo near the port city Klaipeda in western Lithuania, told Reuters.
Mitis has been fed chicken meat before, but this time he fell in love with his food, Legeckas said.
"He plays with the chicken, cleans its feathers, sleeps with it, and takes care as if it was his own baby child," the zoo director said.
"But I am not sure how long this affair would last, because baboon may finally realize this is food."
Baboons, with their distinctive long dog-like muzzles and heavy powerful jaws, are omnivorous, but usually prefer fruit. In the wild, they live in close-knit social groups.
"Obviously this baboon needed someone to communicate with," the director said.
VILNIUS (Reuters) - A lonely baboon in a private Lithuanian zoo has adopted a chicken he saved from certain death last month and the two have formed a fast friendship, the zoo's director said Friday.
The chicken was intended as food for other animals in the zoo, but escaped and was sheltered by Mitis, a six-year-old Hamadryas Baboon, Edvardas Legeckas, who runs the zoo near the port city Klaipeda in western Lithuania, told Reuters.
Mitis has been fed chicken meat before, but this time he fell in love with his food, Legeckas said.
"He plays with the chicken, cleans its feathers, sleeps with it, and takes care as if it was his own baby child," the zoo director said.
"But I am not sure how long this affair would last, because baboon may finally realize this is food."
Baboons, with their distinctive long dog-like muzzles and heavy powerful jaws, are omnivorous, but usually prefer fruit. In the wild, they live in close-knit social groups.
"Obviously this baboon needed someone to communicate with," the director said.
Curse of the Cat People
Sep. 3rd, 2007 03:56 pmReading through the comments to my last post, I'm detecting a certain recurring misapprehension about me, which is that I'm a "dog person" which, owing to rules of binary personality constructions, necessarily makes me hostile to cats and "cat persons." While it is true that I own dogs (and spend probably far too much time photographing them and writing about them) my affection for them does not preclude affection for other animals.
To be fair, my last post implied that I supported killing and stewing house cats, so I am guilty of putting forth a certain impression. But I share my house with a cat as well as my dogs, and I have owned cats for more years than I have owned dogs. My first wife's cat was a great companion whom I loved dearly; my current wife's cat and I get along quite well, especially if I oblige to put a trickle of water on the bathroom sink after she barges in on me.
( and it goes ON like this )
To be fair, my last post implied that I supported killing and stewing house cats, so I am guilty of putting forth a certain impression. But I share my house with a cat as well as my dogs, and I have owned cats for more years than I have owned dogs. My first wife's cat was a great companion whom I loved dearly; my current wife's cat and I get along quite well, especially if I oblige to put a trickle of water on the bathroom sink after she barges in on me.
( and it goes ON like this )
Catseroles and kitten mittens.
Sep. 3rd, 2007 09:13 amDomestic cats are some of the worst invasive species when allowed to roam free and breed. They kill native prey species and compete with native predators. (They also spread diseases like rabies and toxoplasmosis.) In Australia, a place free of placental mammalian predators for millions of years, they are especially bad. That's why they can get away with a feral cat recipe contest while in America we couldn't get a simple hunting season going, on the grounds that it was "cruel and inhumane" (As if somehow hunting feral cats is more cruel than hunting feral pigs, or for that matter, any animal.) Unfortunately for those who would eat cats to extinction in Australia, it turns out they aren't especially good eatin'. Their fur could be a good product to motivate a cat hunt, but you couldn't import it into Europe. Fur, useful as it may be, has fallen out of favor in recent decades, anyway.
What do you think? Any good way to control feral cats that you can think of? Capture/Sterilize/Release is one solution, but still puts cats out in the wild, to kill birds and spread disease. Part of my new job is dealing with feral cats, and not all of them are saved. It seems like a waste to toss a carcass in the trash, or incinerate it, when it's made of useful meat and fur. Or is pragmatism uncalled for with the sensitive issues surrounding beloved species? Do all cats (and horses) deserve decent burials? What to do with the glut of unwanted and pest animals?
What do you think? Any good way to control feral cats that you can think of? Capture/Sterilize/Release is one solution, but still puts cats out in the wild, to kill birds and spread disease. Part of my new job is dealing with feral cats, and not all of them are saved. It seems like a waste to toss a carcass in the trash, or incinerate it, when it's made of useful meat and fur. Or is pragmatism uncalled for with the sensitive issues surrounding beloved species? Do all cats (and horses) deserve decent burials? What to do with the glut of unwanted and pest animals?
