news – Page 66 – Pain In The Bud

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Woman Breastfeeds Cat On Flight

“Emotional support snakes,” passengers breastfeeding cats, people being violent jerks to flight attendants: This is why airlines take away privileges.

As more airlines scoff at the idea of emotional support animals and banish pets to cargo compartments, selfish air travelers remind us why.

Like a woman on a Delta flight en route to Atlanta last week, who grossed out fellow passengers by breastfeeding her cat. Flight attendants asked the woman to stop and place her cat back inside its carrier, as per FAA rules, but she refused.

That prompted the pilot to send a message ahead to the destination airport via ACARS, short for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System:

acarscat — An ACARS message sent from Delta Air flight DL1360 to ATL, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The pilot asked for a ground team to meet the passenger aircraft upon landing. It’s not clear if the woman was prohibited from traveling on the airline in the future.

Regardless, as press reports note, Delta has been dealing with an 84 percent uptick in emotional support animal-related incidents, which comes amid a dramatic spike in general incidents aboard passenger jets. As of September, there were already three times as many incidents compared to the whole of 2019, and the FAA had handed out more than $1 million in fines, a CNN report noted. (Data for 2020 isn’t particularly useful as a point of comparison because air travel remained restricted for months due to the pandemic.)

It’s gotten so bad that flight attendants are quitting and airlines are worried about being unable to staff flights, as most don’t have enough attendants to provide a full crew complement as it is. And who can blame these flight attendants, who are already overworked and perform an often thankless job that should not include acting as law enforcement at 40,000 feet?

One flight attendant told the New York Times she feels like her and her colleagues are “like punching bags for the public,” while others say the job has become dehumanizing.

“What really hurts are the people who won’t even look at you in the eye,” she said. “I don’t even feel like a human anymore.”

Emotional support animals are supposed to be fairly rare and reserved for people with extreme anxiety. Instead, we’ve had a parade of assholes in the past few years demanding they be allowed to travel with “emotional support snakes” among other ridiculous companion animals. A Delta spokesperson said the airline had fielded demands from people with “comfort turkeys, gliding possums known as sugar gliders, snakes, spiders, and more.”

Then there’s “Flirty the Emotional Service Horse,” whose owner also maintains an Instagram page for the animal which informs visitors that Flirty prefers the gendered pronouns “she/her.”

What. An. Asshole.

An "emotional service horse" — Above: A selfish person.

Speaking not only as a cat caretaker, but one who is very attached to my little dude, did I like the idea of leaving him back in New York for almost a month when I went to Japan before the pandemic? No. Of course not. I missed him terribly.

Did I enjoy the 14-plus hours it took to fly to Haneda Airport? Of course not. On top of existing anxiety issues I can’t vape on a plane and I don’t like confined spaces.

But boo fucking hoo.

The rest of us just get on with it. We’re already pampered and accommodated beyond what we deserve in most circumstances. We should all have empathy, and we should all have respect for people who suffer from anxiety, but your right to comfort yourself ends at the point where I have to smell a horse’s ass for the six hours it takes to cross from New York to LA. Are passengers just supposed to endure it when the horse defecates? Is a single person’s comfort more important than the discomfort of entire rows of passengers surrounding her?

There are animal welfare issues here as well. No one should be allowed to take a wild animal on a passenger flight, and there’s a strong argument to be made that bringing a damn horse — or even a duck, for that matter — onto a flight is tantamount to animal abuse. Given the choice, those animals would not be there.

We live in an era of living indictments of the American education system who think the Constitution grants them the right to shit all over everyone else as long as it makes them feel good. There is no such right.

And the more that people abuse the privilege of taking an emotional support animal on a flight, the greater the chance that the people who genuinely need them will no longer be allowed the option.

Shelter Has Received ‘Zero Applications’ For Kaya The Kitten, Who Needs A Home

A shelter in California has turned to the internet for help after adopters passed over a kitten who looks a little different.

Kaya is a 5-month-old kitten with a congenital facial abnormality, which is almost certainly the reason why adopters have passed her over.

Now To Rescue, the shelter in California that’s been taking care of Kaya, has turned to the internet for help.

“She has been through a lot in her short life but that hasn’t stopped her from being super affectionate and playful,” the group’s Facebook page says. “She gets along great with her foster families other cats and dogs. She is so deserving of a wonderful forever home. Kaya has received zero applications, we are hoping that her story will continue to be shared so she can find her forever home.”

Kaya recently had surgery to “relieve her discomfort in her eyes,” but the shelter’s staff say it’s a “one time procedure” and she won’t require any more surgery or special care beyond routine veterinary needs. She’s already spayed, vaccinated, dewormed and chipped, and now she’s living with a foster family, where she gets along with the resident cats and dogs.

To Rescue is located in Montclair, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles. If any of our California readers are interested in Kaya, or know someone looking to adopt a kitten, you can download an adoption application on To Rescue’s site.

Not that this should be the reason anyone adopts Kaya, but given how popular unusual cats are on Instagram and TikTok, an adopter with a solid eye for photos and videos could probably turn her into a social media star. I wouldn’t be surprised if little Kaya has her own considerable fan club before long.

Kaya the kitten. Credit: To Rescue (Montclair, California)

‘Wonder Cat’ Survives 6 Weeks Trapped In Box Spring

She’s now called Sadie the Wonder Cat after enduring 46 days trapped without food or water.

An Illinois family has been reunited with their cat after the resilient feline survived six weeks trapped in a box spring that was wrapped in heavy-duty plastic for shipping.

The Gaines family was moving from Fresno, Calif. to Charleston, Ill. and was packing up, with movers picking up their furniture and belongings on Sept. 22. The family’s cat, Sadie, went missing and the family thought the worst.

“She’s outside a lot during the day. She always comes in the house at night, but she didn’t show up, and it’s common for the coyotes to get the pets,” Mike Gaines told WCIA, a local CBS affiliate. “So, we figured she got taken by a coyote because she always comes home.”

Instead, Sadie was likely spooked by the commotion, the strange people in her home and the stress of seeing her familiar life upended, and found a way to burrow inside the box spring to hide.

In normal times Sadie’s ordeal would have lasted a few days, maybe a week tops, but because transportation companies are hurting for truck drivers, the Gaines’ furniture was put in a storage unit in Sacramento until it could be moved cross country.

“So, it sat there from September 22nd to November 3rd. So, several weeks with Sadie, the wonder cat locked in the box springs,” Mike Gaines said. “No food, no water, no sunlight, no nothing.”

On Nov. 7 the Gaines’ furniture arrived, and after more than 46 days Sadie was freed when Gaines’ daughter found her.

“She hollered dad, there’s something dead in the box springs it stinks,” Gaines said. “So, I came down here, and on my way down the stairs she said there’s a rat in there. She just saw her little ears and thought it was rat, but it wasn’t. I came down and looked in there and it was Sadie. She was sitting there looking up at me.”

The little survivor lost a whopping seven pounds, which is a huge deal for a cat. Most domestic house cats weigh about 10 pounds. Gaines said she went limp in his hands when he lifted her out of the box spring, and endured a vet visit. The veterinarian said the silver tabby was lucky to be alive, and didn’t suffer any injuries or ailments aside from obvious malnutrition and dehydration. It’s not clear if there were any perforations in the plastic around the box spring. Perhaps little Sadie caught herself a mouse or two to tide her over.

I think I’ll show this to Bud the next time he puts on a Shakespearean performance while trying to convince me he’s starving after two hours without a meal, although with the way he shrieks for food and yaps constantly, it’s difficult to imagine he’d get trapped in a piece of furniture without the entire block knowing about it.

Reason #22 To Keep Your Cats Indoors: Bubonic Plague!

A cat in rural Colorado has tested positive for the Bubonic Plague. Health authorities say it was probably the result of an encounter with an infected rat.

A cat in Colorado has tested positive for the Bubonic Plague.

You read that right. The same bacterial infection that was called the Plague of Justinian back in the 6th century BC, killed one out of every four people living in the Mediterranean, then flared up occasionally every century or two before returning with a vengeance in 14th century Europe, where it was called the Black Death and killed a third of the population on the continent.

That plague.

The kitty ranges near a public park and likely caught the infection from a rat, local health authorities told KUSA, an NBC news affiliate.

Like many infections, it was never completely eradicated, and WHO statistics show about 100 people die annually of plague.

“While plague is a serious disease, and cases of animal-borne disease in household pets is never something we like to see, it is normal and expected for some animals to contract plague in Jefferson County each year,” said Jim Rada, director of Environmental Health Services for the county. “The good news is that modern antibiotics are effective against plague, and as long as it is treated promptly, severe complications, illness or death can be avoided.”

When we think of outdoor dangers to cats, we tend to think of abusive humans, vehicle traffic or poisons, but this is a reminder that nature can be lethal as well.

Guy Kicks Girlfriend Out After She Admits To Tossing Cat Outside

A man ended his relationship with his girlfriend after she tried to get rid of his cat.

Reddit’s “Am I The Asshole?” is described as a “catharsis for the frustrated moral philosopher in all of us, and a place to finally find out if you were wrong in an argument that’s been bothering you.” It’s also a goldmine for people who wish they could read an advice columnist’s slush pile.

On Tuesday, a user asked the community if he’s “the asshole” for kicking his girlfriend out of his home after she tried to get rid of the kitty by “pick[ing] him up and put[ting] him outside to wander off.” Here’s the full post:

AITA for kicking out my girlfriend
byu/Astonished_Hound inAmItheAsshole

According to the OP, his cat didn’t do anything to prompt his girlfriend from booting the little guy.

“She knows he can’t survive outside… She didn’t seem to have any regrets about her actions and no, she never lived with cats before,” the poster added in response to follow-up questions from the community. “She said she couldn’t stand cats and that she couldn’t live with one.”

A few users pointed out that kicking a house cat with no survival skills out of a home is not only dangerous, but kicking a black cat out on or near Halloween could have tragic consequences. As for the original poster, he says he’s placed Raven in the temporary care of a friend until his girlfriend moves out, as he’s worried she might try to hurt the cat — or throw him out again — out of spite.

Others said he was doing the right thing even if Raven wasn’t in danger.

“If she thinks it’s acceptable to do that with something as important as a pet, then she thinks she can do that with any aspect of your life she doesn’t like,” one user wrote. “The cat is important, but almost irrelevant in the scope of red flags she’s throwing out.”

For whatever reason, even though women are more likely to be cat caretakers than men — and men are statistically more likely to take their relationship frustration out on pets, especially cats — the last few viral stories about relationship conflicts over cats have implicated women. Obviously if the situation had been reversed, the boyfriend should have been thrown out, or the girlfriend should have left with her cat. Gender isn’t the issue here: The issue is jerks who take their frustrations out on innocent animals.