New Zealand’s junior school kids love to shoot cats for prize money

New Zealand kids shooting feral cats for prize money

NEWS AND COMMENT (Opinion): Will you be as disgusted as I am having read this article? I hope so as it is a failure in child care and inherently cruel. It is about asking kids to engage in potentially criminal activity. It is that bad. The North Canterbury Hunting Competition of New Zealand has …

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Kids’ exposure to cats reduces risk of allergies to egg, wheat, and soybean

Exposure to dogs or cats during fetal development or early infancy was estimated to reduce the incidence risk of food allergies until the age of 3 years

A child’s exposure to cats either during fetal development (before being born via their mother) or early infancy (0-1 year describes an infant) reduces the risk of an allergy to egg, wheat and soybean according to a Japanese study published on the Plos One website March 29, 2023 (link: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282725). Exposure to dogs in …

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Do domestic cats help children with developmental problems such as autism and ADHD?

Autism in kids and development problems and cats

I am sure that many parents have discussed whether adopting a cat or dog can help their child who has been diagnosed with autism or ADHD. There is quite a lot of information on the internet about the benefits of children with developmental problems interacting with animals. There are even programs run by charities …

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Infographic on ‘Compatibility of Cats with Children in the Family’

Child and ginger tabby cat

As the Infographic is based upon a scientific study, it has, on the face of it, validity. Nonetheless, I would like to add some thoughts of my own. Firstly, they assessed the interactions of children between the ages of 3-12 years of age. And there were 665 participants. And as you can see, they …

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Tammy Hembrow’s infant daughter, Posy, clambers all over the family’s Ragdoll cat Bubbles

Posy clambers all over Bubbles

This makes slightly uncomfortable viewing if you are genuinely concerned about animal AND infant welfare. Tammy Hembrow has received a lot of negative publicity through mainstream online news media such as the Daily Mail because she allowed her nine-month-old daughter Posy to crawl over, in an uncomfortable way, the family’s Ragdoll cat, Bubbles.   …

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5 tips on bringing a new cat into a child’s home (infographic)

Infographic on 5 tips about introducing a new cat to a kid's home

I realise that a lot of this is common sense. I also realise that to many experienced cat caregivers these tips won’t be that useful. However, there are many young mums with young kids who decide to adopt a cat companion to make their family complete and add that little bit of extra soul …

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Some notes on the child-domestic cat relationship

Which gender of domestic cat is better with kids?

An interesting study published in 2018 titled Compatibility of Cats with Children in the Family and published on Frontiers in Veterinary Science helps us understand the child-cat relationship. It is an important relationship because it can affect how a child relates to cats and going forward how they relate to domestic cats when they …

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Are domestic cats smarter than toddlers?

Tabby cat is protective of toddler

I am afraid that the question is unworkable. It is not practical or possible to compare the intelligence of a domestic adult cat to the intelligence of a toddler in the age bracket 1-3. There are two variables: animal versus human and toddler versus adult. It just becomes chaotic and ridiculous. I can’t think …

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