Qattari Cat Goes Wild
It was like the ninth circle in Hell. We had been told this was the best clinic in town, so when we thought the Qatteri Cat was having a problem, we made an appointment, and braved the Doha drive-time traffic to get there, only to discover that there were like 25 people milling around the waiting room, most holding animals loose in their arms, and a feeling of desperation in the air.
The customer service was shocking. I watched one man, big guy, football-player type, sway and his knees nearly buckle as the curt woman behind the desk said in her loud voice “Oh! Your cat didn’t make it! Your’s was the little grey cat, right?” He was devastated. I was horrified that the news could be delivered so callously, and so loudly.
Many of the people without appointments had kittens bought at the Souq al Waqif. You know I love the Souk al Waqif, but if you buy an animal there, you are buying an animal who already has strikes against it, and people who breed them just for sale, with no regard for ethical treatment of another living creature. You are buying trouble, and big veterinarian bills. It’s gotten so bad for me, I can’t even walk through the bird/animal area anymore. I can’t bear to see the way the animals are treated.
We got to see the vet over an hour later. He was nice, very professional, very knowledgeable, and I cannot imagine what it is like having to run a veterinary service under these hellish conditions.
One of his handlers walked in, looked at me coldly and said “Is this your cat?” I said yes, and she continued on “this is the worst cat I have ever handled. He is EVIL! He is VICIOUS! He is the cat from hell. Is he like this at home?”
Imagine saying something like that to a customer!
I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. The Qatteri Cat had a rough beginning in life. I met his first owners, and the women in the family didn’t like him. When he came to live with us, he loved – and trusted – AdventureMan from the beginning, but it took me a long while to win his trust. He was skinny and always watching my feet and hands; he would flinch if I moved too quickly. He had been mistreated.
He has bitten me twice, in his seven years living with us, both times when other cats were around and he was scared. When he is scared, or when he is in pain, all his natural instincts kick in. I give him a short time-out in a confined environment (the bathroom!), and everything is fine. He’s a cat. No, he is not vicious at home. He is a SWEET cat!
He has never misbehaved at a vet clinic, never. At the clinic in Kuwait, he couldn’t wait to get out of the cage; the female Italian vet told him what a handsome big boy he was and he was putty in her hands. I have to admit it, I felt a twinge of jealousy. He had eyes only for her!
The Qattari Cat is a cat who wants to co-operate. It doesn’t matter how good the vet is, if the staff is unprofessional, discourteous to the point of rudeness, and ignorant about handling animals, we won’t go back. We won’t risk him being handled cruelly. I cannot imagine why they keep this woman on their staff.
But I couldn’t resist taking a flash photo of QC to illustrate this post, with demonic, gleaming eyes, LLOOOLLLL!
Cats Purr Purr-posefully
This study cracks me up. When a cat is catting around you in the morning, it is usually because they are hungry, and they want you to feed them. If you get up and feed them, you have just encouraged them to bother you. YOU train the cat to bother you! The Qatteri Cat knows I won’t get up and feed him until I am ready. With me, he will purr, but he settles down and waits for me to get up – and feed him. LOL, I guess he has me trained, too.
From today’s BBC News:
Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.
Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a “soliciting purr” to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.
Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a “cry”, with a similar frequency to a human baby’s.
The team said cats have “tapped into” a human bias – producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.
Dr Karen McComb, the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Current Biology, said the research was inspired by her own cat, Pepo.
“He would wake me up in the morning with this insistent purr that was really rather annoying,” Dr McComb told BBC News.
“After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that there are other cat owners who are similarly bombarded early in the morning.”
While miaowing might get a cat expelled from the bedroom, Dr McComb said that this pestering purr often convinced beleaguered pet lovers to get up and fill their cat’s bowl.
To find out why, her team had to train cat owners to make recordings of their own cats’ vocal tactics – recording both their “soliciting purrs” and regular, “non-soliciting” purrs.
“When we played the recordings to human volunteers, even those people with no experience of cats found the soliciting purrs more urgent and less pleasant,” said Dr McComb.
How annoying?
She and her team also asked the volunteers to rate the different purrs – giving them a score based on how urgent and pleasant they perceived them to be.
“We could then relate the scores back to the specific purrs,” explained Dr McComb. “The key thing (that made the purrs more unpleasant and difficult to ignore) was the relative level of this embedded high-frequency sound.”
“When an animal vocalises, the vocal folds (or cords) held across the stream of air snap shut at a particular frequency,” explained Dr McComb. The perceived pitch of that sound depends on the size, length and tension of the vocal folds.
“But cats are able to produce a low frequency purr by activating the muscles of their vocal folds – stimulating them to vibrate,” explained Dr McComb.
Since each of these sounds is produced by a different mechanism, cats are able to embed a high-pitched cry in an otherwise relaxing purr.
“How urgent and unpleasant the purr is seems to depend on how much energy the cat puts into producing that cry,” said Dr McComb.
Previous studies have found similarities between a domestic cat’s cry and the cry of a human baby – a sound that humans are highly sensitive to.
Dr McComb said that the cry occurs at a low level in cats’ normal purring. “But we think that (they) learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans.”
She added that the trait seemed to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners.
“Obviously we don’t know what’s going on inside their minds,” said Dr McComb. “But they learn how to do this, and then they do it quite deliberately.”
So how does Dr McComb feel about Pepo now she knows he has been manipulating her all these years?
“He’s been the inspiration for this whole study, so I’ll forgive him – credit where credit’s due.”
Barbaric. Animals Left to Starve to Death
It’s hard to believe that this could be happening. This article is from Kuwait’s Al Watan and I learned about it from Mark, at 248am.com. Unbelievable. Unthinkable.
KUWAIT: It only happens in Kuwait. No other country would demand money from people already paying rent.
Initially, those renting stalls at the animal market in AlـRai thought it was a mistake, but when their shops were shut down “because of rent arrears,” business owners went berserk. In addition, the animals displayed in the stalls were left inside the locked stalls, with the proprietors unable to tend to or remove then, thereby what was a municipal disagreement has ballooned into an animal rights fiasco.
It remains unfathomable to many where the decision to charge a second “Municipality rent” arose from, when the proprietors were already paying rent to the owners of the commercial space, the Ministry of Finance. With the Municipality shutting down the stalls, and the Ministry of Finance staying silent ـ only to say: “this is not our issue” ـ the business owners are helpless as the animals howl and cry for food, with every passing day the stench of death growing ever stronger.
Al Watan Daily went to the animal market in Al Rai area and witnessed the disaster first hand.
Shopkeepers told Al Watan Daily that the Municipality had closed all the stalls over two weeks ago, “and they haven”t opened the doors even once till now. All the animals are inside the stalls, and most of them have died due to lack of water, food and air. These animals have been in cages within the stalls for 15 days and they have not seen any light, nor eaten anything.”
Ridha Ashkanani told Al Watan Daily: “We signed contracts with the State Properties Department; we pay them 300 Kuwaiti dinars per year, and we also have been paying KD 60 per year to the Municipality as for the cleaning of the area. We were forced to pay this sum although the Municipality is not taking care of the area and the place is not clean at all. The problem now is that the Municipality is asking us to pay another rent for the stalls themselves. They want KD 3 per every square meter within the shop per month. They also want the money to be paid in arrears from 1995. We can”t afford to pay all this, and there isn”t any law that requires us to pay a second rent to the Municipality.”
The situation is this: according to the traders, they have been paying a normal rental fee since 1997, which continued when the Ministry of Finance relocated their businesses to the current location, but in 2004, a Municipal inspector came and asked them to pay a “Municipality rent.”
The proprietors explained to the inspector that they were not aware of any second “Municipality rent,” and that according to the contract with the Ministry of Finance, the rent was to be paid to the ministry, and the ministry only.
After receipts were shown to the inspector that payments were being made to the ministry, he quietly withdrew and disappeared.
However, in 2006, another inspector came demanding “Municipality rent.” The traders explained, once again, to the new inspector the same story, to which he accepted their argument but demanded a KD five monthly surcharge for cleaning.
The traders saw no qualms with the demand and agreed to the nominal fee, but then some months later, the inspector returned, requiring that the cleaning fees be paid in lump sum six months in advance. After some grumbling, they acquiesced.
Oddly, some weeks later, traders were informed that instead of 6 months, it would have to be 12 months in advance. Again, they reluctantly agreed.
Now you have the current situation, where the Municipality has shut all the stalls with the animals locked inside, and is demanding the “Municipality rent,” in arrears as far back as 1995.
“Our major issue is that the animals are trapped inside the stalls, and most of them died. We are losing our business and losing the animals we have in the shops, and we are not allowed to open the shops at least to feed the animals, which have not eaten any food for 15 days,” explained Ashkanani
Ahmed, another proprietor, said: “I lost all the gold fish I had in the shop, worth KD 5,000. We want the animal rights societies to help us in our problem. We went to the State Properties Department and they didn”t help us, and stated that it”s not their responsibility. We then went to the Cabinet and they told us to go to the minister, and he also refused to help us. We finally went to the Municipality, (which refused to open the doors until they are paid), and now we are filing a case at the court and we are waiting to see what will happen.”
ـ
Last updated on Monday 2/11/2009
Halloween Post Mortem
Hallowe’en is really more a cultural tradition these days than a religious event. We no longer worry about spirits walking around on Hallowe’en, and wear costumes to try to scare them away from us. In fact, many of the trick-or-treaters who came by our house last night were pretty! There were fairies, and little mermaids, and some very alluring witches.
In fact, there were so many trick-or-treaters that we ran out! How embarrassing! I thought I had a LOT, but there were more trick-or-treaters than we had treats.
It was a great evening, altogether, and next year I will know better.
Here is our not-scary pumpkin. I wish you could see the ears – it is an orange cat pumpkin, in honor of the Qatteri Cat.
All the visitors made the Qatteri Cat jumpy. He was happy to stay inside and hide with all the action in the streets last night.
Halloween and Your Pet
I got these reminders today from Pet Food Direct who sends the Qatteri Cat’s special diet food every month or so. These are great things to keep in mind, especially shutting your pet away when a thousand strangely dressed creatures are coming to the door!
Keep your pet in a safe, secure, and quiet area of your home during trick-or-treating. Many pets can be scared of kids dressed in costume, the constant ringing of the doorbell, or traffic in and out of the house. Keeping your pet in a secure area away from all of the action will help keep your pet relaxed and will help prevent escape. Be sure all pets are wearing collars and ID tags just in case!
Keep your pets indoors during Halloween eve and leading up to Halloween. Cats – black ones in particular – often fall victim to pranksters. Keep cats safely indoors. Visit humanesociety.org/safecats for more information.
Try to avoid taking your dog trick-or-treating because this can be very stressful to your pet. If you do decide to take your pet out on Halloween eve, make sure they are properly restrained with a reflective collar and leash and make sure they are well supervised.
When decorating your home for Halloween, keep loose wires, open flames, decorations, and Jack-o-lanterns out of your pets’ reach. Pets are curious creatures by nature so these materials can attract their attention and potentially cause harm to them.
Keeping candy out of reach from your pet is very important, too. Chocolate can be poisonous to a dog or cat and candy wrappers can cause choking or intestinal obstruction if ingested. If you think your pet has ingested candy, call your veterinarian immediately and/or contact ASPCA poison control. Poison control charges a $60 fee, but it is well spent should your pet get into trouble. Instead of chocolate, have your pets’ favorite treats handy for them to enjoy!!!
I hope all your family members – including your pets — have a fun, safe, and happy Halloween!
LOL Cats Really Made Me Laugh
I was such a bad mother. Here’s the problem. Life doesn’t come with instructions. You get faced with new situations, you just have to do the best you can. You might think your parents know a lot, but we are just like you – sometimes we are over our heads.
The first time we moved to Florida, our cats got fleas. The whole house got fleas! We had to give the cats flea-shampoos and we had to flea-proof the house.
Here’s where I was a bad mother. I made our son shampoo the cats. We did it as a team, but he was the one who had to stand in the shower and do the actual shampooing. I was the one who caught the second cat and held her while he shampooed the first cat (it was a walk-in shower with a door that shut, so once inside, the cat couldn’t get out) and then I towel-dried the totally-freaked-out cat while my son shampooed the second cat, etc.
My son – my hero. There is a part of me that still feels guilty for making him to the shampooing. It’s because we didn’t have the chain mail:
see more Lolcats and funny pictures
“Follow Me Everywhere and Watch Me Have Fun!”
Today, as AdventureMan and I were talking about the Qatteri Cat, AdventureMan said that the Qatteri Cat’s idea of fun is “follow me everywhere and watch me have fun!” Like “Dad, throw the Applebee apple, or the ping-pong balls”, or “Dad, chase me around the house!” I knew what AM was talking about – QC’s a cat. Cats are infinitely self-absorbed. I know he has some “feelings” for me, but they are pretty simple, like “I feel cold – hey! there’s the warm one!” “I feel hungry, and that one has a strong history of feeding me when I meow a certain way” or “You never know, that one might let me out if I meow long enough” (it never does). Mostly his feelings for me are need based.
But when AdventureMan said that about the Qatteri Cat, I just had to laugh. AdventureMan looked at me oddly, maybe it was something in the laugh. “I’m married to the Qatteri Cat!” I laughed. “What has our life been, but me following you around the world, watching you have fun?”
He laughed too.
The Outdoor Cat Channel
This morning I was startled out of a sound sleep by the piteous crying of the Qatteri Cat. Adreneline pumping, I jumped out of bed, calling out “QC! QC! Are you OK?” even though it was only 0430 and AdventureMan was still sleeping.
He didn’t come, just continued crying, a different cry, I was afraid maybe he was hurt.
I ran downstairs, and found him in the small living room, looking out through the curtains at the outdoor cat.
We haven’t seen the outdoor cat for a while. She is looking pretty thin, and very tired, very worn out. I am guessing she is maybe eight or nine months old – and, hmmmm, she looks pregnant, skinny and pregnant and exhausted.
I keep cat food and water on hand for the passing-by outdoor cat, they never stay around long, but I am always good for a handout. I fix her a bowl of food and water, and take it out the door that Qatteri Cat doesn’t know about. The outdoor cat eats ravenously, and then sacks out.
Meanwhile, Qatteri Cat continues to cry, hoping I will let him be an outside cat, too. He watches the outdoor cat, every move she makes. He doesn’t understand the price these poor little kitties pay for living their outdoor life.
Kitty and the Camera
These are from youTube and ICanHas Cheezburgers . . . it’s not the cats that are so funny, but the noises of the people holding the cameras!
Thick
Pete, also known as The Qatteri Cat, loves living back in Qatar except for one tiny little detail. Suddenly Mom, as he thinks of me, has become particularly thick.
He, on the other hand, is making things very clear.
“Miao! Mioaw! Miaow!” he hollars, winding his way through my legs, guiding me to the nearest door the the heaven he can see – OUTSIDE!
I ignore him. He is not going outside. There are some very mean street cats out there, and also some very mean people who put out poisoned fish to kill the mean street cats. Either or both would be very bad to a cream puff who has lived indoors all his life.
“Not all my life!” he assures me, remembering his origins as a street cat – well, a street kitten, abandoned on the Corniche in Doha. And, from time to time, he would break free and spend a happy half hour roaming, and then another less happy couple hours trying to figure out 1) how to get down the very tall tree or 2)how to get out of the yard he jumped into that has a high, unscalable wall or 3) where home is. We spare him those problems and keep him inside. There is lots to keep his attention, but none of it matters, he yearns to be OUTSIDE!
Poor Pete!
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