A Michael Broad Blog
This is a slightly disturbing story about a substance called an enyme that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics. In other words it is a sort of superbug maker. I feel that this piece of news picked up by Google News is unfair on the domestic cat. This mysterious substance is believed to originate in …
This story won’t go away and I believe it is a serious threat to the welfare of the domestic cat in the USA and Europe. It may have long lasting repercussions on the level of cat relinquishments. It may also result in the people who are best placed to be cat caretakers doing without …
It is a subtle matter, almost imperceptible but it is there. Headlines to online new articles can be biased against the cat. That is unfair on the domestic cat. The domestic cat gets a rough deal from the press actually. Not all stories are bad for the image of the domestic cat, obviously, but …
This is a background problem for the domestic and feral cat. I don’t like overt or over zealous political correctness but sometimes we have to watch how we say things. We can gradually erode the status of something by constantly referring to it in terms that are slightly derogatory. The feral cat and to …
The title is a bit of a joke because I think the story behind it is a bit of a joke too. Perhaps it is meant to be a sort of spoof but that does not seem to be the case. Jaroslav Flegr is said to be ‘no kook’ meaning he is not mad, …
by Michael On the internet there is quite a lot of ignorant re-cycling of anti-cat propaganda based on distorted scientific ideas. There are two diseases that constantly reappear and which are used against the cat: toxoplasmosis and cat scratch fever. The latter is often used as an argument to declaw cats or simply to …
It is these things that extremely rarely cause cat scratch fever photograph © fofurasfelinas Cause This condition is also known as cat scratch syndrome or cat scratch disease (CSD). In technical terms it is called “benign lymphoreticulosis”. It can also be called “Bartonellosis” after the bacteria causing the condition (see below). This is not …
