POC E zine, Issue #006

Well, it’s been a long time since I put pen to paper for one of these. The reason is that I am too busy and too tired just keeping the website going.

Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

I don’t know if anyone wants to build a website but it is hard work if you want lots of hits. Pictures of Cats org (PoC) gets a lot (11,000 uniques daily) but that brings responsibilities.

So, what about the cat world? What feeling do I get about it in June 2010?

The first thing that comes to mind is declawing of cats. I hate it. Any decent person should hate it. I hope all who receive this hate it. But, the paradox is that 20 million cats are declawed in the USA and most of the visitors to PoC live in the USA. What do I do? I don’t want to alienate visitors but I don’t want to turn my back on the vulnerable domestic cat either.

As PoC is about cats and for cats I decided to argue my case against declawing come what may. There are about 100 pages on declawing on PoC. A decent number are written by visitors. It is a subject that fires up the passion, which I love. And there has been some progress in 8 cities in California banning declawing. But..this is not enough and may simply be a false beginning. I hope not. It is astonishing that cities have to ban the practice. It is legislators saying that veterinarians are doing bad things. But are the vets ashamed? Do they feel bad about this? You figure it out.

Here are some recent pages on declawing in case you missed them:

Complications of declawing – a cold look at it

If I get my kids a cat or two they will be declawed

The truth is that nothing really changes for the better in the cat world. You would think that the human race would try and improve the welfare of the domestic cat, our cat companion – but no, not really.

I am reading a very interesting book called Redemption by Nathan Winograd. It is about how animal shelters can do much more to be true no kill shelters. The author says that the old argument that there are too many abandoned or relinquished cats and not enough homes is incorrect. The problem is a careless attitude towards euthanasia. It is not actually euthanasia but cat killing for no good reason. See what you think:

Feral cats are killed not euthanised

New Jersey, USA want to shoot stray cats it seems

No Kill Animal Shelters – this discusses part of the Gary Winograd book.

How about the wildcats? What happened in the shrinking wildcat world over the 9 months since I last wrote an e-zine? More bad news I am afraid. It cannot be anything but bad news really as long as human population growth continues unabated and remains a taboo subject.

We are not supposed to talk about human population growth as it smacks of social engineering and so on. But we will have to talk about it sometime in the future. In the meantime top human pushes wild cat off the planet. The most pressing casualty is probably the fabulous tiger, the icon for all wild cats and a cat that we admire and fear. We are simply unable to live with it on this planet unless it is locked up in a small cage. There are real worries about the Bengal tiger. Population sizes decline to the point where they become unsustainable. Some tiger reserves in India have no tigers – shot or poisoned for the trade in tiger body parts. Desperate eleventh hour steps are being taken by the authorities in India to try and save the tiger:

Indian tiger reserves

OK, that is the black cloud stuff..now for some more black storm clouds of a different sort.

I recently visited A1 Savannahs in Oklahoma. A1 Savannahs are probably the best cat breeders in the world. I played with f1 and f2 kittens worth tens of thousands of dollars and these cats were adorable – truly scrumptious.

F1 Savannah kitten FOCUS is one example.

And in between playing with these golden cats, I glimpsed a bit of paradise on this broken world and it was in a meadow on the farm at A1 Savannahs. More dark clouds but this was a..

God given day in Oklahoma…

where true harmony can be found..

Cat lover and dreamer

Til next time…