Category: animal welfare

‘Petfluencers’ Make Their Cats Wear Clothes, Plus: Why A New Coat Color Has Emerged

The quest for clicks and attention is a race to the bottom, and “petfluencers” are willing to dive deep to differentiate themselves from the thousands of others trying to build an audience.

Clothes, sneakers and hats. Vitamin supplements, energy drinks and probiotics. Backpacks and costumes.

What do all those things have in common? People are buying them for their pets, not themselves, and they’re part of the reason people in the UK spent more on pets in 2024 than childcare, hobbies or dating, according to Nationwide UK.

The problem is, they’re not doing it for their pets. Experts, including veterinarians and animal behaviorists, tell The Guardian that most cats, aside from hairless varieties like Sphynx cats, don’t like wearing clothing, nor do they like wearing costumes, or taking baths with heavy perfumes and essential oils.

Portrait of Hipster White Cat wearing sunglasses and shirt

Influencers — or petfluencers — stage elaborate “pampering” scenes, and make their pets wear different clothes to show off their shopping “hauls.” Some pose their animals like dolls and find ways to coerce them to remain still. Audiences think it’s cute. It’s not.

As for me, I’ve got a handy chart when I’m unsure if Bud will be cool with something:

  • Make him wear clothes. Result: Get clawed to death
  • Give him baths with essential oils. Result: Get clawed to death
  • Make him wear sneakers. Result: Death by bite to the jugular
  • Force him to eat supplements or guzzle energy drinks. Result: Shredded skin and lots of blood, perhaps some light homicide.

While the animals themselves aren’t thrilled with these new trends, they probably won’t go away any time soon. There’s just too much money involved.

The average pet owner in the UK spent the equivalent of $163 per month on their companions, and only half of UK households have pets compared to 66 percent in the US. Although there’s not an apples to apples comparison of total expenses on pets per month by household in the US, Americans spend $68 a month on cats on average, according to research by ValuePenguin. For dogs, it’s about $110 a month.

‘Salty liquorice’ cats owe their unique coats to a missing snip of DNA

It’s always an interesting occasion when nature gives us something new, and the salmiak cat is definitely unprecedented in the world of feline aesthetics.

The unique cats, named after a popular liquorice candy from Finland, have a coat pattern that results from a gradient on individual strands of fur, starting out black and getting lighter toward the tip. It gives their coats a singular peppered look, and in photographs the unusual felines almost look as if they’re rendered in monochrome stippling.

Credit: Ari Kankainen
The Finnish candy the cats are named for.

The salmiak cat wasn’t the product of any breeding program, and reports in Finnish media say strays with the new coat pattern/color first emerged in 2007.

To find out how the salmiak emerged, a team of Finnish, British and American scientists sequenced the genomes of two salmiak cats. They found a mutation in genes that express coat color that resulted in a missing sequence of DNA, and they confirmed the mutation is recessive. That means to get salmiak kittens, both parents have to have the mutation.

RSPCA Wants Cat Cafes ‘Phased Out,’ Says Cats’ Needs Not Met

Cat cafes offer a unique way for adoptable kitties to find homes, as well as a stress-reducing experience for customers, but two groups in the UK say cafes are not appropriate living spaces for cats.

Two major feline advocacy groups in the UK are urging the government to stop issuing new licenses for cat cafes, arguing they’re not good living situations for the felines who are their main attraction.

Many people see the cafe model as a win-win for cats and people. The latter get to unwind and spend time with cute animals who have a knack for lowering blood pressure, helping the stressed to relax. The cats, who are adoptable, get to run, play and live in an environment much better than a shelter cage while they wait for their forever homes.

But the RSPCA and Cats Protection, the most prominent feline welfare organization in the UK, say its “almost impossible” to meet the needs of the animals, who may be stressed by living with other cats and, they argue, are used as “entertainment” for customers.

“We don’t believe these environments can consistently provide cats with a good quality of life and are hugely concerned that many cats will be unhappy as a result,” said Alice Potter, a cat welfare specialist with the RSPCA.

“Generally cats are not sociable, and many felines often prefer to live without other cats, or prefer to form social groups with their relations.”

A cat cafe in Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I’m not sure how I feel about this, and I’m not particularly familiar with how most cat cafes are run. The only ones I’ve been to were in Japan, and they were miraculously clean spaces with lots of things to climb, as well as nooks and private areas where cats could hide. The cats were well cared-for, staff were friendly, and the environments were relaxed.

Cat cafes also offer a unique opportunity for finding homes for the little ones. They’re much more likely to meow their way into the hearts of would-be adopters when they’re given space to run around, play and enjoy themselves as opposed to the often sullen, frightened state they’re in at shelters.

Are the UK cats groups right, or are they making perfect the enemy of good?

Wordy Wednesday: Critically Endangered Orangutan Babies

The palm oil and logging industries have killed so many orangutan mothers, there are now more than a dozen major orangutan orphanages in Borneo and Sumatra. The pressure on orangutans, with whom we share 97% of our DNA, shows no signs of abating.

Orangutans are critically endangered, and the biggest threat to their continued existence comes from the agricultural sector, which has razed 55 percent of the species’ habitat in recent decades.

Jarang, a baby orangutan born in 2023. Credit: Blackpool Zoo

Logging companies clearing irreplaceable, old-growth jungle to claim more land for palm oil plantations have no compunction when it comes to flattening jungles despite the presence of orangutans hiding in the trees. The loggers often shoot the large apes on sight, leaving terrified, traumatized babies still clinging to their dead mothers, or taking them to sell as pets.

Of those left to die, the lucky babies are rescued before they starve and are brought to one of the many orangutan orphanages in Borneo and Sumatra, where they attend “school” to learn how to do everything from climb to forage. It takes at least eight years to teach them how to survive on their own, which is about the time it takes orangutan mothers to do the same job in the wild.

The unlucky babies end up as local pets, sold off to entertainment troupes or shipped off to places like Dubai, where wealthy clients will pay a premium for them.

Caretakers must start by teaching rescued orphans the most basic things, like how to climb and move through the jungle Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
Logos, an orphaned baby orangutan who was rescued in 2023 by the Jakarta Animal Aid Network (JAAN) Credit: International Animal Welfare Fund (IAWF)
Baby Galaksi (Indonesian for galaxy), was found wandering the jungle without his mother in 2021 by a villager in Borneo. He’s now in a “school” that teaches orphaned orangutans how to do everything from evading predators to discerning edible fruit from harmful and poisonous varieties. Credit: Samboja Lestari Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre

So what is palm oil, and why are countries in Asia bulldozing ancient jungles and forests to clear room and make more plantations?

Per the WWF:

“Palm oil has been and continues to be a major driver of deforestation of some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, destroying the habitat of already endangered species like the Orangutan, pygmy elephant and Sumatran rhino. This forest loss coupled with conversion of carbon rich peat soils are throwing out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. There also remains some exploitation of workers and child labour. These are serious issues that the whole palm oil sector needs to step up to address because it doesn’t have to be this way.

…

Palm oil is in nearly everything – it’s in close to 50% of the packaged products we find in supermarkets, everything from pizza, doughnuts and chocolate, to deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste and lipstick.”

Palm oil is in constant demand, and it’s an easy to grow, incredibly efficient crop. Indonesia and Malaysia, the only two countries in the world where orangutans exist, produce 85 percent of the world’s palm oil.

Images of orangutan babies in wheelbarrows are common on social media, but usually stripped of context. Orphanages use the wheelbarrows to bring infants and toddlers to and from “school” every day. Credit: International Animal Rescue
Asoka was found crying in the jungle by a fisherman in Borneo. He was brought to an orphanage in Borneo. Credit: International Animal Rescue’s rehabilitation Centre in Ketapang, West Kalimantan

We share 97 percent of our DNA with orangutans, making the species our second-closest cousins from a genetic standpoint. Some studies claim orangutans are our closest relatives based on our phenotypical similarities.

Orphaned orangutans attending “school” to learn how to survive in the wild. Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
A baby at an orangutan orphanage is fed by a caretaker. Credit: Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation

Want to read more and learn how to help?

Here are some links to get you started. PITB is a big fan of the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, which successfully pushed Jakarta’s municipal government to ban the incredibly cruel “topeng monyet” monkey street shows:

World Wildlife Fund: Orangutans
Jakarta Animal Aid Network
Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation
The Orangutan Project
Rainforest Trust

Feeding Your Cat Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Is Not Funny

A woman taunts her cat with ultra-processed snacks, then laughs at his disgusted reaction when he gets a taste. The “cute” video has gone viral.

From the bowels of TikTok comes the latest “cute” video of an attention monger abusing her cat, this time by feeding him Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.

The user opened the bag in front of Butters the cat, waved the Cheetos in his face, held them up to his nose, then feebly protested “These are my snacks! It’s spicy!” after getting the little dude interested.

She allowed Butters to eat Cheetos from her hand and lick her fingers, and his reaction is about what you’d expect from an obligate carnivore who just ate ultra-processed food made from cheap corn filler, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and cancer-causing artificial food dyes. He’s disgusted and uncomfortable.

“You can’t have these! Let me wave them in your face and taunt you, so you know you can’t have them! Haha, isn’t that clever?”

The difference is, Butters can’t guzzle milk or water to wash the taste away, so he settles for angrily swatting at his human while she laughs at him.

The woman thought her video was so clever, she’s shared it online and is enjoying the cheap dopamine hit that comes with accumulating internet points, aka likes.

Here’s a question for people who make social media “content” at the expense of their pets: how many likes are worth destroying the trust between you and your cat(s)?

I’m sure some people think I’m a scold, but all it takes is one clown to start a viral trend, and then all of a sudden you have thousands of people, all of them desperate for validation from strangers on the internet, foisting Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Takis on their unsuspecting cats. As a general rule, the dumbest and most abusive trends go viral.

Petition Aims To Make NYC Bodega Cats Official, Help Pay For Their Vet Care

The plan would allow bodega owners to certify their cats, eliminate city fines for keeping them, and help find homes for working felines if their stores shut down

Cats have been a fixture in New York City’s bodegas for decades, but technically they’re illegal.

The fact that they’re so widespread, and owners of the small groceries/delis don’t try to hide them, underscores the absurdity of the situation. The fine for keeping a cat in a bodega in New York is $200 for the first offense, capping out at $300, but the fine for a rodent infestation starts at $300 and can rise to as much as $2,000 for repeat offenses. That’s in addition to the cost of bringing in pest control to get rid of the rats, which can easily add hundreds or more to an expensive problem.

So given the option between a maximum $300 fine with a clean, rodent-free shop, and potentially crippling fines — plus infestation — for rodents, thousands of bodega owners opt for the former. It’s a no-brainer.

Kota, a bodega cat from Brooklyn. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The cats are also favorites of customers, and bodega owners don’t hesitate to talk to media when their cats go missing, nor do they turn down Dan Rimada, who runs the extremely popular @bodegacatsofnewyork Instagram page.

Now Rimada is the man behind a petition that seeks to eliminate fines for the store-dwelling felines, establish a voluntary shop cat certification, and help bodega owners get veterinary care for their little helpers.

Rimada proposes soliciting seed money from city government as well as deep-pocketed donors in the pet food industry — “think Purina, Chewy, PetCo” — to establish a veterinary care fund for the city’s working cats.

“Through years of hands-on experience, I’ve witnessed both the charm of well-cared-for bodega cats and the harsh reality of neglect when standards aren’t met,” Rimada wrote in the petition, which has almost 5,000 signatures as of Feb. 28. “In conversations with rescue organizations and experts in public policy, business, and technology, we’ve designed a realistic, community-driven solution.”

Credit: @bodegacats_/Twitter

The fund would help cover the costs of care, with additional “micro-loans” available for emergencies.

Rimada envisions it as a triple win for the shop owners, rescuers who will be compensated for their time, and most importantly, the cats. If city leaders are willing to engage, Rimada says he hopes to conduct a year-long pilot program to see what works and what would need tweaks, with input from rescuers, veterinarians and the people who care for the cats.

The petition and resulting plan was inspired by cases like that of Kobe, a Hell’s Kitchen bodega cat who almost died of a urinary infection when the owners of the bodega balked at paying veterinary bills.