Brindis&Paolo

This appeared today in the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2937420.stm

Gardeners' pet hate for cats
The average cat kills 35 times a year
Britain's gardeners have revealed one of their greatest pet hates - other people's cats.
A new survey indicates that cats come second only to rats as the least favourite mammal to visit our gardens.
The Mammal Society asked more than 4,000 people to give a dozen mammals a score according to how much they liked seeing them.
Not surprisingly the rat came bottom of the list, but cats did not score much better and were less popular than grey squirrels, rabbits and even moles.
Hedgehogs were most popular, with badgers close behind.

Popular garden visitors - viewers vote
Hedgehog (average score 9.4)
Badger (8.8)
Deer (8.5)
Fox (8.0)
Bat (7.4)
Grey squirrel (6.3)
Mouse (6.1)
Vole (5.8)
Rabbit (4.6)
Mole (4.5)
Cat (3.7)
Rat (2.9)


The question of whether they should be kept indoors at night is being debated on the BBC Two television series Wild in your Garden on Monday evening.
Wildlife experts say keeping cats locked up from dusk to dawn will prevent much of the carnage they create, and will also mean they are less likely to be run over.
Mammal expert Professor Steve Harris, from Bristol University, said: "The message is clear, most people are heartily sick of having their neighbours' cats in their garden".

Killer cats

Those questioned for the survey were asked to rate each animal on a scale of one to 10, according to how much they liked to see them in their gardens.
Cats only managed to notch up an average score of 3.7, while the most popular animal - the hedgehog - managed 9.4.

Professor Harris said: "Cat owners need to recognise just how unpopular cats are and do something about it.
"Please keep them indoors, at least during the night, and try not to let them out early in the morning."
He said people derived a great deal of enjoyment from their gardens, but "this pleasure is being reduced by some cat owners".
Professor Harris called on cat owners to control their animals, adding: "I want to enjoy wildlife in my garden, not watch it being killed by their cats."

In addition to the millions of domestic cats, Britain is also home to an estimated one million feral cats.
In one Bristol study area, the density of cats was 226 per square kilometre - 500 times greater than population densities for the wild cat.
The Mammal Society has estimated that each cats kill about 35 animals every year, or one every 10 days.
The Wild in your Garden programme, which will run twice daily during the week, will feature a debate and viewer vote on the issue of cats in gardens and whether they should be kept in at night.
It will be launched in the first of Monday's shows at 2000 BST, and the result will be given in the second show to be screened at 2300 BST.

The Feline Observer Editor

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (or in bed when possible)

By Brindis

My human Silvia and I have not been feeling very well in the last few days. As I said in my previous article Inmortality I have been having some deep thinking about my ideas about Life and Death after my 9 lives are finished.

Silvia's husband Alastair has taken care of us in our ailment. He has been very sweet and dedicated to us. He had cooked delicious breakfast (bacon) to be served in bed, with the reglamentary English breakfast tea and toast with butter. And as add-on to the breakfast, there has been lunch with fresh cooked fish as the “rigour” during this magnificent weekend.

As we were feeling a bit down, the care he has provided us has been great. Silvia makes lots of jokes with me about Alastair being a dog (being herself a Monkey) according with the Chinese Horoscope. And I think he is. He is the only dog friend I have. He cares for the house like a loyal dog. The human child Marlene is a cow, and when she cries, well, there is no doubt that the cow is a very descriptive name for herself. It has been long time since I have stopped worrying about the fact that there is no cat in the Chinese Horoscope, that is for me a confirmation of our unique status and position in the World.

Even if I have used for this article the title of a book from Truman Capote, I hope I am not misunderstood: I am not a fan of Truman Capote, he and Andy Wharhol trouble me: I find their behavior towards fame sort of low and unbearable. However, I do like the Polly character in TC’s book as she bears the mark of being a cat at heart.

Being ill has the advantage of lots of reading time. After completing a very interesting reading cycle of Russian authors, Silvia and I are going back to read more classic stuff. And our current reading material is The Waves, author Virginia Woolf. I will explain sometime the fascination we share for Orlando another book from this author.

Other authors Silvia cannot bear are Salman Rushdie and Milan Kundera. Alastair reads them anyway, so I am in advantageous position as I can get both views of the literature world.

My doctor’s appointment is soon, so I must dash off.

Until next time

Brindis

Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi

By Paolo

The title of this article of mine comes from a great book written by Hermann Hesse (Das Glasperlenspiel) in 1943. It is not of my knowledge very much about the writer’s life. This title choice however has impressed Master Brindis.

When I told him my choice he was very surprised I took so quickly the book in, but I have not explained to him that I can relate in a deep cat-only manner to the Glass Bead Game, as I am an expert in the game.

It is a very pompous assumption to believe that to understand a game of such type you need deep knowledge of science or philosophy. It is a pity that Master Cats such as Master Brindis overlooks the ideas from Herr Hesse. Modern World seems to be too busy with its own spins to realize that sometimes doing something simple, but with enough concentration can give as much intellectual freedom, than the most serious studies in philosophy.

Catvirna can also be gained through the concentrated practice of ball game. Football is a high expression for philosophical concepts that otherwise will be very difficult - or will take too long – to explain with the written word.

Hess’s proposal comes more under the lines of Mr. Rodenberry – the creator of Star Trek -, where in a world of material emptiness the real challenge is to test our inner self and to explore the inner self, being this the last real Frontier.

The Catrix – the world I like to live the most – with its pre-conditioned spaces, allows me to be good at something that I said earlier is a direct path to Catvirna. My conclusion is then that I am at the same search level than Master Brindis for the Supreme Cat Perfection status.

Long life to all,

Paolo

Inmortality

By Brindis

Finally the end of that incredible book The Master and Margarita was reached by my human Silvia and I. Thus, I have been completely trapped by the book and the story in it. And has make me think about my own mortality and what is expected to happen to a cat after our 9 lives runs out.

Because I am old. Even if well kept – doctors are always amazed of my good physical state – my age is 21 running to 22 human years. That is a lot of years for a cat. My humans and I have noticed in the last few months a change on me: I am slow, and was I used to be quiet and secretive, now my steps stand out noisy. Sometimes I seem to forget things that I do or places I want to go. Is there is Alzeihmer for cats?

I have seen the egotistical 80’s, the absurd 90’s and now in the XXI century I am more rested and spends more time in the Catrix, where I can still be young forever. It bothers me to see the young lads – Paolo for example – wasting their lives in menial stuff (football) and not trying to rise themselves from the limitations of their background or environment, to achieve the Supreme Cat perfection.

Catvirna – Nirvana is called by humans – has been experienced by myself in multiple forms: when young with the guidance of the Karma Sutra for Cats, in adulthood using Yoga for Cats and Sufi relaxation. I reckon that I owe in part my long life to those practices.

However it is still – as the agnostic I am – unclear to me what will be expecting me, if there was anything to expect, the day I leave finally my body. Will I reincarnate? This idea does attract me, as I could come back with all my knowledge in a young body. Or will I just float in space, observing the lives of cats as Paolo?

I regret at this time somehow, the fact I didn’t spend enough time with my natural kittens when they were small, neither that I keep contact with any of them in adulthood. I can understand why some cats are proud of their pedigree, and give a lot of value to family. The sense of continuity is an important one, and having a son or daughter, and grandchildren, must be a great consolation to the idea of Death.

On the other side, my life has been lived to the full and interesting. Most of the pedigree cats live anodyne lives – there is a price to pay for race purity – and I never managed to stand for very long kittens bad manners. It takes a lot of effort to bring up kittens properly.

I think I am ready – I always was – to step over to whatever comes next. My tail and Whiskas are signalling for a Catrix hotspot just reached, so I must leave this article and join in.

Until next time.

Self-Cat Development Plan

Master Brindis is running a very complex self-development program. It would be OK if he was applying it to himself, instead the one to try-it-on for the first time is me, Paolo.

My “plan” was presented to me yesterday afternoon and includes:

1.Cat bio-degradable diet ( I am too fat)
2. Table Manners course (I must learn to eat my own plate and not Brindis's)
3. Loo Manners course (I must learn to do my business in the loo not outside it, Master Brindis gets sick to the look of it)
4. Basic Reading (but I can read!)*
5. Basic Writing (but I can write!). **
6. Search skill development course (for football balls search and find)
7. Nail treatment (Master Brindis seems to think I have too long nails)
8. Psychoanalysis (for Electra complex, don’t know what it means, but Master Brindis knows)
9. Language skills course (apparently even if I can understand human Italian, English and Dutch I must learn cats language properly).
10. Human Domination – Introduction to Human Weaknesses

According to Master Brindis, I have somehow - by his example - managed to learn some of those skills, however, he told me that he is fed-up of having to remind me all the time of what good Cat behaviour is. He is very concerned that I tend to act more like a faithful dog than a cat when relating to my humans. He has promised to correct these actions.

Note of editor:
*Paolo never has been seen going close enough to a book to be able to read it.
**Paolo’s column is edited and verbs and nouns are added at the Editor’s discretion.

The Catrix and the Real World

After a short absence due to my work in the field of cryptography, I am able to spend some time writing about the serious issues I worry about.
I must confess that I am an agnostic, but sometimes, doubt overwhelms me. Over the last few nights I have been reading (with my human Silvia): The Master and Margarita – author: Mikhail Bulgakov – and I found its content very much mind disturbing.
Now well into page 265, the idea of the devil coming to Earth (Moscow) to visit and make fun of the non-believers in such an odd way, is quite scary and challenging.
There is however a more disturbing fact: one of his companions is a Black Cat that can talk to humans. Besides the fact that I do not envy this quality – I think humans should learn cat language, as this is the C++ of languages –, I am deeply concerned at the imagery of we cats being symbols of the Evil spirits of the world. That this idea is reinforced by a Russian writer of the Communist Era (the book was published in the 1930’s), and as the author was a non believer, it is such an stereotype, that is a serious shock to an educated mind as mine.
Now, if I look around in the XXI century, I could probably believe that the Devil is around, the world is in such a state! We cats are now, in great part of the world (China and around), not being considered with respect and being used for odd purposes (see previous articles at F.O).
Perhaps we cats should use our power and try to get humans in the Catrix. The Catrix is an invention from the 1960’s, when some great grandparents of Computing Science worked in the idea of virtual worlds. Of course, most of those human scientists had the advice and support from their Master Cats. The Master Cats created the Catrix, and all ordinary cats are connected to it. Paolo, my disadvantaged companion is always connected to it. He doesn’t even know that there is something else more than the Catrix.
However, as any computer program, the Catrix is sensible to the human world and the forces of Evil, expressed as bugs, crashes, and upgrades.
I will review these ideas in a later column when I finish to read the book I mentioned earlier. As I think the Catrix can save humanity from insanity. For the time being, I find it reassuring to have the Catrix as a backup of my own self-doubts.

-Brindis.

Loving Cat

I have developed a strong attachment to my humans Silvia and Marlene, Alastair is a different story. They seem to like me a lot. Each time I go close to them, I am rewarded with strokes, kisses, and sometimes by excessive love from the child Marlene.
Both of us are the younger members of the C's household. As such, we are also the less literate and
well behaved. I love playing with Marlene's toys, and we sleep together in her sliding bed. Of course
I couldn’t be happier without my soft toy: a huge Polar Bear, as this toy is white and huge, and when I lay my head on it, it calls to my memory the warm memory of my cat mother. The child of course has also a soft toy, purple and with an odd shape, I am aware that her father is worried about this. Humans seem to think that the chosen soft toy of a child is an indicator of the type of partner the child will choose later in life! It is so simple to be a cat.
Today was a lovely day, I woke up so happy, so warm, so loving. My humans were around, I was fed on time, and I went to sleep after breakfast without major problems, and I have even manage to write these lines in a short break I have taken to go to the loo.
Rain might come later, but I am not bothered, as I can still play indoor football.
Peace with all

Paolo

Cat injured in mousetrap accident

R. Katz


A cat has been injured attempting to operate a mousetrap. The cat's paw was trapped under a strong spring, causing a fracture to his leg. The cat has been treated by a vet. The cat, who refused to be named, was apparently working, and is now being detained in a secure asylum.

The Cat Without Qualities

by Brindis


No novel has made a greater impression on me than The Man Without Qualities. It is the story of a man who lives in Vienna on the eve of the First World War, entirely without aim or purpose except to observe - indeed he expends much effort on the pursuit of this ideal. My human companion Alastair once read it over several months, for it is a long book almost as large as I. I believe it is the closest a human (albeit an imaginary one) comes to the Renaissance Cat to whom educated cats owe many of their ideals such as eschewing work, the art of self-sculpture and the private cat looh. Yet towards the end of the story the protagonist does end up adopting some of society's values, simply because he is unable to avoid the spinning world around him.


So it is with the world many cats inhabit. Whilst some of us may still seek to avoid work at all costs, we often end up doing little favours for the humans with whom we live. I often help my humans finish their meals, especially fish, which they cannot easily eat because of the bones. Paolo cleans the floor with his hanging stomach, perhaps not intentionally, and tidies up marbles on the floor, although not in the most efficient way I have to add. But these little tasks do not of themselves constitute the reason for our existence. We are at our most purposeful when we sit, still as a sculpture, watch attentively and, when any work is required, persuade humans to work for us, who in turn often persuade horses to do the work for them, and so on down the natural hierarchy. The great archaeologist Chatout discovered traces of ancient cat civilisation in the Nile Valley. Even then, cats had trained humans to leave sacrificial animals at seven strategic points, which formed a line stretching across the desert over a great distance. These ancient cats had also avoided being sacrificed themselves - one of the major developments in the Rise of Cat.


I write the foregoing because I am most alarmed by the trend amongst young cats to boast that they are busy with something, however menial. In previous times this was frowned upon in polite society. I call these cats Bonzos, since they are as pathetic as dogs. Their 'work ethic', as it is known, is spreading with a disastrous effect on cat society, since there are fewer and fewer cats with time to acquire a detailed knowledge of what is going on in the world. It is a sad irony that whilst cats in some parts of the world have to contend with wild humans who 'farm' them for their skins, others have ceased to observe and are quite oblivious to this barbarism. These selfish cats must be made to stop their work and rediscover the traditional values of doing nothing, sitting still and sleeping.

Today's news at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3009537.stm

Cats 'farmed for skins in EU'
BBC News has seen evidence which suggests that cats are being farmed for their skins in the European Union.

It is thought that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of cat and dog skins are traded in Europe each year.
Campaigners say that now is the time for national governments or the European Commission to act.
Europe, it seems, is a magnet for cat and dog fur.
Cat blankets, so the aficionados say, are good for rheumatism and dog pelts are, according to campaigners, often labelled misleadingly and sold as the fur of some exotic, even mythical beast.

Since the US has banned the trade of cat and dog skins, the European market has expanded.
A video seen by BBC News shows one Belgian furrier displaying a blanket he says was made from cats farmed in Belgium.
What's more, he says that stray cats and dogs are rounded up and skinned.
That would seem to contradict the assertion from the officials who help run the EU at the European Commission that there is no cat or dog farming inside the union.
The Commission says that a ban on the trade is not really in their power - it would be better left to national governments.
So far, though, only Italy has brought in such a ban.
Campaigners say there is a lot of evidence that cat and dog fur products are being imported from inhumane fur farms in the Far East.
Earlier this year, DNA tests on winter jackets with fur trim on sale in Italy proved that they were made with dog fur.
Italian shops stocking the jackets said suppliers had told them the coats were made with the fur of raccoons or raccoon dogs - a wild canid originally from eastern Siberia, China and Japan.
Members of the European Parliament campaigning for the trade in such goods to be banned have accused the European Commission of lacking the political will to take up the fight.
They say the trade is not only morally repugnant, but also a case of consumer fraud.

Facts about the trade
Campaigners claim 2 million cats and dogs slaughtered every year
Main exporter: China
12 to 15 adult dogs needed to make a dog fur coat
Up to 24 cats needed for cat fur coat
Cat and dog fur also used in hats, gloves, shoes, blankets, stuffed animals and toys
Dog fur sometimes labelled as: Gae-wolf, sobaki, Asian jackal, goupee, loup d'Asie, Corsac fox, dogues du Chine, or simply fake or exotic fur
Cat fur sometimes labelled as: house cat, wild cat, katzenfelle, rabbit, goyangi, mountain cat

All readers of the Feline Observer are urged to write to their Euro-MPs to express their indignation at this trade!

--Hugo du Chat Noir
Editor

Recent news:

London stray cat inherits fortune
LONDON (Reuters) - Black stray cat Tinker got all the cream when an elderly widow left him his own detached house in London and a trust fund to keep him comfortable. Margaret Layne, 89, left the 350,000-pound house and the 100,000-pound fund to Tinker after he befriended her, the Times reported on Tuesday. The childless widow made it clear in her will that Tinker, who has lifelong residency at the house, should not stray again. "If Tinker abandons the property permanently the trustees shall at their discretion be entitled to bring the trust to an end," the will said, according to the Times. Since Mrs Layne's death Tinker, aged about eight, has acquired two housemates at the three-bedroom property in Harrow, north London -- two other cats, Lucy and Stardust. When Tinker dies the estate will pass to the trustees, Mrs Layne's former neighbours, the Times said.

Cat Etiquette

by Brindis


I have never found anything more despicable than a dirty cat. Even in my youth, covered in the dust of archaeological excavations, I always spent at least an hour cleaning my coat until it was once again pristine. I am horrified by the tabloids' praise of dirty cats. Dirty Diddles' little organ, not to mention The Scum, do nothing but parade unwashed cats on their pages as though it were a matter of honour! I feel strongly about the issue because I once had a great battle for the custody of my humans with a cousin of mine, who was not fit to keep a mouse, never mind a human. He would not have kept them clean and I doubt if he would even have shared his food with them!


I have taught Paolo the importance of hygiene and although he sometimes fails to hit his target in the litter box, I have to say that he is a great improvement on the cat who arrived from a farmhouse not knowing the meaning of cleanliness. He has even begun to have regular showers, which, like me, he quite enjoys. I found it very touching that he licked my coat after my last shower and although he did so for longer than I might have wished, and refused to stop until I miaowed at him, it is the thought that counts and considering his origins, his standards are quite high.