Cat lover (40): Fourth reason to love cat: cat is independent.

To all cat lovers
Cat is so independent animal. Think about dog owner, you needs a lot of time taking him for a walk, playing with him, taking bath of him and so on. What a demanding animal! Cat can self play, sneak out for a walk and come back for a meal. You don't need to help him cleaning. Your cat can groom himself. Cat is easily adapted for any change. You might hear the story about dog that is jealous your first kid or becomes depress when his owner is away for a long time. It doesn't mean that your cat does not need any love. They just do not demand that love and display its explicitly like your very demanding dog. When you come back home, he will come to sit on your lap. He will rub his face with your and pur happily when you stroke his chin and pet him. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The sound frequency that he used to contact with his mother.

  http://youtu.be/52L4Na8yBj0

Cat lover (39):Third reason to love a cat: cat makes your day.

Dear all cat lovers.
When you are tired back home and your cat come to greet you, rub at your legs and meow asking as everything in the world is so easy. This will ease and relax all cat-owners and make a feeling of home. This is among the one of reasons to love cat especially for people living alone.
Actually, it is not a good reason to love a cat than other pets or obviously if you have children, your kids can also make your days and sometimes cat can even destroy your day by upset your kids. So it is the kind of personality: cat-people mind that make the people feel love cat or hate cats. You can easily distinguish that cat-people cannot resist looking and playing with any cats that they meet. It will take so long time to stroll pass a street that is crowded by many cats.It is a natural instinct and there is no any reason to love cat seems necessary here.
You can test your personality by looking at cat pictures, funny cat videos or seeing a cat playing with its toys, grooming his face, listening its meawing or purring.
If you feel happy, that means you might be a cat person!
For a cat-neutral person, he or she might think that's cute as same as other furry animal. But for a cat-hater, he or she will think that cat is so annoying. Crying meow, scratching, spraying might be his bad experience with cat or he just hate a cat without any reasons.
There is a medical condition that these people will have exaggerated frightened, fear and may be in panic when they confronted with cat or even hear or see cats or cat-related things: ailurophobia. This is a form of specific phobia. It can be treated by behavioral methods such as exposure technique or drug treatment. I hope that people who are reading my article are not that severe or they might be shocked as an adverse effect by my article. But if you know any people suffering from this condition, please advice them to see psychiatrist for appropriate treatment.

Cat lover (38): Second reasons to love a cat: cat fur is softer than dog!

Ciao. Cat lovers.

God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger – Fernand Mery from The life, History and Magic of the cat, published 1967.

Cat is famous about its fur softness. Actually, all mammals have fur in contrast to reptiles and amphibians that have dry and rough hairless skin and birds have feathers. Humans are mammals too but we have less hair than other animals except nude animals like sphinx breed cat and somewhere is longer than the others: scalps, armpits, eyelashes, eyebrows and pubes. About softness of fur, Chinchilla has been accepted for its softest fur in the world due to the fact that it has 50 hairs outgrowth from one hair follicle, so its hair is very dense and soft, in contrast to most animals including humans that only one hair outgrowth from a follicle.

It seems that softness is a subjective quality, but there are many ways to assess it quantitatively and that are used in fabrics and materials industry. Normally, it depends on flexibility and size of the fibre in our case, fur. We can sense the difference of softness or touch if we use different rate of touching it but this cannot be counted as its unique characters but this last factor make it subjective and so there is a need of standard methods or protocols for measuring or assessing its softness value.

Why softness is matter? Think about when we were children, we love to play soft toys. When we grow up, we still need soft surfaces to sit, and sleep on for comfortable. Soft clothes are needed for comforting the wearers. So softness is the pleasure sense that is rewarded and is preferred by every average people. Humans and animals also need softness physiologically. There is an experiment studying monkey babies rearing with warm wired with bottles of milk compared with rearing with wired wrapped with soft garments. The latter group monkeys are more playful, learnable, joyful and growing with better temperaments. This explained why humans need hugs and love cuddle from parents. This is some reasons that humans keep pets especially the furry one. So can you think about animal with appropriate size to hold and hug in our arms, with its tameable, adorable and soft quality? Yes, Cats! No animals defeat cats. Dogs have varying sizes and in general, their hairs are larger and rougher than cats. Rabbits are small but don’t love to be held and cuddled. They will kick you with their hind legs. Chinchilla is a small rodent from South America and that’s too small to make you feel warm when cuddle it.

But to hold a cat needs some skills. Don’t let your kids encounter the cat and hold it. You need to come in front of him when he is attentive. Petting and slowly hold him with one hand under his fore legs at his chest and the other hand hold his butts and hold him against your chest tightly but not restraining. You can then pet him to purr. Treat him with some bites. He will be OK for a while until he thinks that it’s time to go and your cat will tell you by his activity. Let’s them go or you get hurt. Use that quality time to give him your love and warm sense as his mother gave him when he was a kitten and feeling the love back from your beloved cat. Good luck.

Cat lover (37): First reason to love your cat: It makes your feet warm

Bonjour cat lover.
For cat owner, if you sleep with your cat, it will be well-known that your cat sometimes or many times, it likes to sleep on or beside you. Typical location is on your feet. That makes your feet warm although sometimes that is uncomfortable when you want to move or turn.

What are the reasons that your cat loves to sleep on your feet or on your body?
This is a difficult question as well as other animal behavioural question. You can not ask him to understand why he prefer you as his bed at night.

Animal psychology is a branch of science that make observation or experiment trying to explain the behaviour, normal or abnormal and variation. The success of understanding their behaviour will help predict what is going to be happenned and help in training or correction of misbehaviours.

We observe that cat usually sleep at the location that is warm and save. For domesticated cat and indoor, inroom cat, there is no place saver than  that. Therefore they look for the warm place normally, near the heater or the windows in a day time and you are the warm bed for your cat too. So it is not surprising that your cat learns to sleep on your body, one of the warmest place in the room. It is safe as you are his protector. Perfect niche, isn't it?

Someone said that your cat loves you, so it likes to sleep on  you or besides you. That's a very difficult answer to deduce from animal. What is animal affection? Parental bonding may be a form of animal affection. They love to be grooming, hug, play with their parents when they was kitten. When they grow up, the residula of this instinct might pass to you, their protectors. So they want your love, care, gentle hug, pets, feed and then they sleep besides you. How's sweet the story. ;D

Other theory about the cat and human connection is smelling. Cat uses and is very sensitive to smell. It make territories by rub and outdoor non neutered cats will spraying with their pee. When you go back home, they rub your legs and make you his territories. So when you go to bed, your feet are still his territories and he sleeps in this owned-place,make sense?

So the first reason to love your cat: It make your feet warm. :-)))))))))))))))))))))))))

Cat-coat colors and human skin and hair pigmentations



Pure white

 Sa wad dee krub. Khon Rak maew. Hello! Cat lover.

There are large variations of cat coat colors which make cat breeders, cat lovers and scientists intrigue about the nature of these different shades, colors and patterns of their skin and fur for centuries. Until recently, that the comparative molecular genetics and newly developed techniques can uncover the genetic basis of these interesting characteristics of cats. These article series will talk about cat coat, color characters, and patterns and their genetic mechanisms and linking to human skin pigmentation understanding.

Grey cat



There is constitutive production that is different among races and can be generally classified into three human races: Caucasian: white skin, Mongoloids: yellow skin and Negroids: dark skin. In cats, there is no such major groups. So we can see solid cats with color ranging from light brown, grey, to pure black. (Other characters and pattern will be discussed later)  The production will be increased in some situations such as light, friction and injuries, or chemical agents and some disease states that can be generalized or localized such as freckles, melanoma, or malignant melanoma. Some genetic syndromes has increase incidence of these pigment disorders such as neurofibromatosis, McKune-Albright syndrome, Noonan syndrome and its spectrums.

Black cat

In contrary, the rate of production can be reduced from various physical agents, chemical and disease conditions too. The disease with lowering production of melanin in human is called vitiligo that is usually localized but sometime can be generalized. A disease that has multiple small area of depigmentation causes only cosmetic problem. The disease as a fancie name: Hypomelanosis of Ito. The normal rate of production is primarily determined by racial difference in human and breed in cats and also the genetic mutation might switch off the production of melanin pigment at all which is so called albino. In the cat with complete no production of melanin pigments, the skin and fur are white, eyes will be in blue color. In human, all the hairs will be white and skin is also creamy white. Eyes are also blue like the cat eyes. This albino is called Oculocutaneous type 1a. Both cats and humans with this type of albino will have high incidence of skin cancers unravel the importance of melanin pigment for prevention of photodamage.

 





Siamese cat: pointed with temperature sensitive albino



If the process is incomplete disruption, there will be some melanin produced leading to various level of dark color range from very light skin and hair to somewhat near normal pigment production. Clinical recognition of this mild form of albino is called Oculocutaneous type 1b. Normally, there will be no pigment production from birth like type 1 but lately produce some amount of melanin pigments that make light-brown or hazel color iris and dark eyelashes with some tanning of the skins. Oculocutaneous type I is autosomal dominant inherited. That means that the patients usually have one parent that also has the same condition. There is about 50% chance for transmission of the disease to the offspring and both male and female can be equally affected.

Recently, we found some families with typical type I albinism but with autosomal recessive like inherited pattern. There is no parent with the diseases but siblings. The parents are both carriers of the disease and normally, there will be some degree of consanguineous marriage. Genetic mutation underlying of this type of autosomal recessive albino is unknown.

There is some interesting feature of the pigment producing that leads to cat fanciers interest. It is called temperature sensitive albino. Some mutations in the tyrosinase genes make them sensitive to temperature change. It stops producing melanin when the temperature is high. So the terminal parts of their body that is colder will be darker than the body that is the characteristics of Siamese pointed cat breed, mink Tonkinese and Sepia Burmese breed. It is more interesting that we also found many families with show the features like this temperature sensitive albino cat breeds. Some areas that are less warn: facial and pubic hairs develop slightly pigmentation and arms and leg hairs which is cold will be normally pigmented.

Skin and hairs or fur colors of mammalians including humans and cats are determined by many types of pigments. The most important one is called melanin. The cell produce melanin is called melanocytes. These cells are normally situated in the layer of skin cells or keratinocytes. Melanocytes will produce melanin by changing tyrosine, an amino acid, by the enzyme called tyrosinase through multiple steps.

Cat and rabies



street cats



hagia sophia

I went to Istanbul last year with my college friends. I love Istanbul because you can find cats everywhere. Some cats are sitting calmly near the seashore aside fishermen. They wait for some fish. There are also a lot of cats sunbathing on the streets. They survive with food that local people give them. The funniest place to find cats is in Hagia Sophia, a Christian church in nowadays Muslim country. Many cats wander around greeting with people. I saw a cat sit in front of no entry stairs seems like working as a door cat. Cats are also crowded among travelers at all attracting places and I wonder whether they are fed by those travelers. You cannot see these cat community like these in Other European and North American cities





 Although, I love to see many cats surrounding me, it is a bit problem in term of public health. These cats are carriers of a fatal viral disease: rabies. Turkey is one of the countries with high prevalence of rabies and it is a result of uncontrollable increase of street animals including dogs and cats. The same situation happens in other Asian countries like India and Thailand. Domestic animals are not the source of rabies in other well-developed countries. Most of the cases in these countries are imported cases. If you travelled to any one of rabies endemic countries, you should not play or tease stray cats and dogs. And if you are unlucky enough to be bitten by these animals, you should contact local doctors to consider about receiving vaccination and serum prophylaxis as soon as possible.























Door cat



seashore cat

Planking cat

Planking or the lying down game is an activity consisting of lying face down in an unusual or incongruous location. The hands must touch the sides of the body and having a photograph of the participant taken and posted on the internet is an integral part of the game. Players compete to find the most unusual and original location in which to play.

It seems that my cat like planking game too. Read about the cat flexibility in this blogs. http://factaboutthecat.blogspot.com/2011/07/yoga-like-posting-cat.html

August 2011: cat picture vote!

 

Let's vote for the picture of the month