A Michael Broad Blog
It’s nice to recognise the useful hunting skills of the domestic cat and Towser (1963-1987) holds the record for the champion mouser of all time. She was a tortoiseshell cat owned by Glenturret Distillery, near Crieff, Tayside, Scotland. She is reported to have killed an average of three mice a day, every day of …
The normal number of toes on domestic cats is 10 at the front and 8 at the rear making 18 in all. Three kittens should have a total of 54 toes. In this instance, a polydactyl mother, Martha, gave birth to 4 kittens, three of which were polydactyl with 66 toes in all. They …
Here is a mini-catio and I like it. It is a compromise. It is not great as structures go but it will be effective in giving full-time indoor cats some outdoor time to smell the air and be involved with nature. It will do the cats some emotional good. And it is easy to …
Jon Lys Turner was a friend of Richard Chopping, an artist who illustrated the covers of eight James Bond 007 books by Ian Fleming, the creator of the character. Chopping was a rival of Lucian Freud. They knew each other through Fleming’s wife Ann and they went to the same art school. Chopping hated …
This is another one of those extraordinary interspecies relationship and in this instance a mother hen is incubating three kittens just as if they were her eggs. It’s quite remarkable to see. The hen is completely unfazed by it. As the female of one species so often raises the offspring of another species, it …
REDWOOD CITY, CALIFORNIA, USA — NEWS AND COMMENT: Olaf, a male tabby kitten barely a month-old, living in a cage at a shelter, Whis-Purr Rescue Inc., with his mother and sister was stolen by an unknown person sometime on May 14. The Redwood City shelter was closed at the time but there was access …
I have just seen a tweet from Ellen Cottingham of the University of Melbourne, Australia. The tweet is below. It seemed to be saying to me that in Australia’s drive to eradicate feral cats from their continent they have tried everything and are now looking at feline immunocontraceptives as a potential population management tool. …
It is said that Australia’s out-of-control mouse plague could last for up to 2 years unless the government takes urgent action in giving farmers free poison which is an anticoagulant. The mice die of internal bleeding. The trouble is that the poison is dangerous to other wildlife. Trying to kill a specific animal with …
