Sand cats are among the smallest felines in the world and live in harsh environments.
It’s baby season at the North Carolina Zoo.
The 500-acre facility in Asheboro announced the birth of three healthy sand cat kittens. The species, felis margarita, is among the tiniest of all felids and is elusive in the wild, able to survive in desert biomes far from water in the African Sahara, as well as the Middle East and parts of Asia.
The kittens were born to first-time mom Sahara, 3, and Cosmo, 9, and remain unnamed for now. The zoo said it will allow the public to vote on their names, with details to be revealed in the near future.
The fortuitous birth of the tiny felines follows the arrival of a giraffe calf and a chimpanzee baby, both male, all within a two-week period in mid-May, the zoo said.
“The mom and triplets are doing well,” zoo staff wrote in an announcement. “The trio are beginning to explore their surroundings in the Desert Habitat. Lucky guests may be able to catch a glimpse of them in the coming days.”
Although sand cats aren’t listed as endangered, scientists don’t have a good handle on their numbers and caution that they may be less populous than estimated. The parents were arranged as a breeding pair for maximum genetic diversity through the Sand Cat Species Survival Plan and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the zoo said.
Ever year, 3.2 million little buddies enter shelters across the US, hoping for forever homes and humans to love them.
A message from Buddy, Purrsident of the Americats:
June is national Adopt A Cat Month here in our great country, and it’s no coincidence that it coincides with kitten season when hundreds of thousands of little buddies are born.
Those babies will need forever homes and attentive human servants to see to their needs, but don’t forget the adult buddies in your local shelter! They need homes too, and if you like to keep things low key, they’re the buddies for you. Bonus: They come pre-installed with purrsonalities, so there’s less guesswork involved if you’re adding a new living room lion to your existing pride.
Just remember, June is ADOPT a cat month, not “buy a cat from a breeder” month! When you adopt a cat, you’re making a friend for life who will be forever grateful to you…although kitty will still expect you to be a good servant, because that is the natural order of things!
Do you patriotic duty and adopt an Americat!
Purrsident Buddy
A patriotic message from Purrsident Buddy! Feel free to share it or print it out. Credit: PITBA patriotic message from Purrsident Buddy! Feel free to share it or print it out. Credit: PITB
The days of tiny backyard enclosures for big cats are over.
The passage of the Big Cat Public Safety Act has been a massive win, resulting in the end of the wild cat trade in the US and the cruel practice of taking cubs from their mothers for use in roadside zoo petting attractions.
But there’s another, often-overlooked component of the new law that’s about to result in big changes for captive tigers, jaguars, pumas and other wild cats.
While current “owners” of big cats were grandfathered in under the BCPSA, they have until June 18 to register with the federal government, and with registration comes requirements, inspections and minimum standards of living for the wild felids.
In other words, most of the people who “own” the estimated 20,000 privately held big cats are about to get a rude awakening. The days of tiny makeshift enclosures in backyards are over, as is the practice of keeping big cats in the home as if they’re domestic felines. (With apologies to Tippi Hedren, who once owned as many as 60 lions and tigers, and at 93 years old still has “13 or 14” big cats, according to her granddaughter, actress Dakota Johnson.)
Tippi Hedren with one of her lions in a vintage LIFE magazine photo. Hedren kept the lion and other big cats as pets in her home.
If people who have possession of big cats don’t register with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, they’ll have their animals taken away. Likewise for people who don’t provide adequate enclosures that not only provide enough space, but are built to contain the apex predators.
As a result, sanctuaries are bracing for an influx of tigers, lions, jaguars, leopards, cheetahs, snow leopards, clouded leopards and pumas, all of whom are protected under the Big Cat Public Safety Act.
Experts anticipate a significant number of big cat “owners” could try to part with their animals if they can’t or won’t provide adequate enclosures, and the government is already cracking down on people who are trying to sell their “pets.”
A tiger cub named Indy is one of the first to be taken out of private hands and placed in an accredited sanctuary. Indy was recently sold by her original “owner” and the man who purchased her for $25,000 tried to flip her, advertising the cub online.
Authorities moved in and found Indy in a dog kennel in a closet inside the man’s Arizona home. Police, who said they could hear Indy “moaning” from inside the closet, also seized an alligator and a dozen snapping turtles.
Tammy Thies, founder of the Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minn. — Indy’s new home — said the cub is lucky she wasn’t confined to the small space for long.
“Many of the cubs we get are suffering from metabolic bone disease, malnutrition, sometimes they have such long confinement that they don’t have use of their back end, so Indy’s a lucky one,” Thies told WKQDS, the local Fox affiliate.
Indy was found in a tiny cage in a man’s closet. Now she’s enjoying sunshine in an accredited sanctuary. Credit: Wild Cat Sanctuary
Indy arrived in May and has adjusted well to her new home in less than a month, according to the sanctuary. A page dedicated to tracking her progress has photographs of her meeting another tiger cub for the first time and playing in the grass.
As the deadline fast approaches, we hope Indy’s story is just one of many, and big cats who have suffered for years in tiny enclosures, under the “care” of people who aren’t qualified to keep them, find their way to accredited sanctuaries so they can live out the rest of their lives in sunshine, feeling grass and earth underneath their paws, with enrichment programs created by professionals who care about their well-being.
Buddy losing his normally meowscular and ripped physique is my fault.
Ruh roh! It’s diet time again.
The meowing protests have begun.
Buddy has noticed his dry food tastes a little bit different, and he’s not happy. And while he may not be good with numbers, he strongly suspects his snack allocations are a little light.
He’s right.
Good boy has become fat boy, and that’s my fault and my responsibility.
When you love your cat, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that giving in all the time is an expression of love.
Cats are pros at insistence, especially when it comes to food. When Buddy stands in front of the treat cabinet and meows mournfully, or when he gives me his sad-eyed stare as if he’s Julius Caesar — “Et tu, Big Bud?” — I’m weak and I fold. Snacks are dispensed.
Chonky cats suffer health problems, reduced mobility and ill-fitting suits. Image: PITB
Yet there’s no denying Bud is plump.
He’s got a belly, and it’s not just his pronounced primordial pouch. His cheeks are starting to fill out. When he loafs, he looks like a gray blob.
He’s also incapable of doing his old door-opening trick, which requires him to jump and momentarily hang from the handle while his feet find purchase on the frame. Shoving off on his hind legs, he would push the handle down while leaning into the door, easing it open.
He’s just too chunky, unable to balance his weight properly to pull it off nowadays.
Most importantly, a chubby Buddy is not a healthy Buddy. That’s my fault.
So it’s back to the diet, and hopefully the little guy can be motivated to move more during play time. If not, well, we’ll have to resort to drastic measures to get him moving. An angry vacuum ought to do it.
Police say foxes are responsible for killing cats in London, but animal welfare activists insist there is indisputable evidence of human cruelty.
It’s difficult to know what to make of the Croydon cat killer story.
Initially, people from London-area cat rescues said they were looking for a person who had mutilated dozens of cats in the South London area. As the number increased to more than 100 and public outrage became palpable, police opened an investigation.
The story was wild. Newspapers bandied about disturbing figures, claiming hundreds of cats mutilated at the hands of a sick individual or several people. There were reports of feline remains artfully arranged in the driveways and on the front steps of victims’ homes to inflict maximum trauma on the people who discovered them, with allegedly clean cuts indicating a human with a blade was responsible.
Then in 2021, the Metropolitan Police announced they were closing their case after three years and almost $200,000 spent.
Foxes, not cruel humans, were responsible for the cat killings, they said. A study in the journal Veterinary Pathology found fox DNA on the corpses of 32 cats and said puncture wounds on the feline bodies were consistent with fox bites.
London-area animal rescues disputed the findings, saying the study couldn’t account for the mutilation of so many animals. The study’s authors blamed “badly behaved foxes” who were scavenging on the remains of strays and pets killed in traffic or by ingesting antifreeze.
Credit: Fajer u015eehirli/Pexels
Lots of other people refused to accept the Metropolitan Police conclusion, including people whose cats had been victimized. In some of those cases, veterinarians concluded the cats were killed by humans, not animals.
Which brings us to now.
The Mirror has teamed up with the South London Animal Rights Network (SLAIN) to create an interactive map showing the locations where more than 1,000 dead cats were found over the past several years.
“This map shows where incidents have occurred but also and perhaps just as important, where incidents have never happened,” SLAIN’s Boudicca Rising told the paper. “If you know of someone who made journeys to these locations on these dates please do get in touch with us. All information will be treated in the strictest of confidence.”
Documents obtained by journalists in London indicate there was internal tension at the Metropolitan Police over the resources that had been allocated to the cat case, and spokesperson for the force admitted that was a consideration. But the department stands by its assessment and says there’s no evidence a serial cat killer is on the loose.
It’s difficult to believe someone or a group of people could evade capture while allegedly killing more than 1,000 cats since 2015, especially in a city like London where CCTV cameras blanket most neighborhoods.
There are an estimated one million CCTV cameras covering 607 square miles of London, and the commonly-cited statistic claims Londoners are caught on CCTV cameras an average of 300 times per day. Other estimates claim that number is too high, and the average UK citizen is spotted on a municipal surveillance camera 70 times a day.
Notably, those figures do not include private cameras like Ring systems and surveillance operated by private businesses. The point is, it’s very difficult to avoid cameras in London, and if there are human feline killers out there, they must know an awful lot about where the cameras are.
If the phantom cat-killers are real, not only have they been able to avoid appearing on surveillance, they’ve evaded the watchful eyes of neighbors as the story circulated widely in the press. The theory that the killings were the work of animals, mostly under the cover of night and beneath the notice of people, sounded more plausible to many people.
Still, the theory doesn’t neatly fit the evidence.
Not all veterinarians agree that foxes are the culprit. While the veterinary pathologists who authored the study looked at photographs of the mutilated felines, some veterinarians who directly examined the bodies of slain cats concluded they were killed with blades. When experts are at odds over evidence, what can you do but gather more information and hope for the best?
London may have to do what Washington, D.C. did and deploy low-to-the-ground trail cameras and regular surveillance cameras around the city. In Washington, the goal was to get an accurate census on the number of strays and ferals living within city limits. In London, a census could be a bonus as they finally get an answer to the question of who’s been killing all those cats.
Pain In The Bud 