Posts Tagged ‘cats’

11-year old Oscar Bowring from London has declared himself and his cats responsible for Jenson Button’s Formula One championship win in Brazil! According to the young man, he named his two kittens Jenson and Button in honour of the driver during the F1 off-season last year and he’s sure the cats helped in the victory.

“Jenson and Button sleep with me” Oscar went on to tell Geoff Cowart from H&F News, “sometimes they stop the cars on my Scalextric set”. I, for one, didn’t even know they still made Scalextric racing sets and I’m not sure whether pet insurance companies cover cat crashes of such a miniscule proportion!

Either way, I feel we should keep this fun little claim away from Jenson, who recently told The Times’ Matthew Syed, “It’s all about winning, all about me…nobody can take it away from me… I always knew I had it in me to win, which makes it very tough to read so often about my supposed defects and flaws”. Clearly nobody has told Mr. Button that he owes it all to his two furry lucky charms!

There are two main kinds of arthritis that affects cats; traumatic arthritis and osteoarthritis. The first is arthritis brought on by an injury that weakens the joints or bones, causing inflammation. Although it doesn’t always last very long, traumatic arthritis can be exceptionally painful and may even require surgery if it is brought on by a break, fracture or dislocation. Because it is impossible to predict when an accident it going to happen, or when your cat might get into a fight, it is highly advisable to invest in pet insurance, just in case.

Osteoarthritis normally occurs with old age or repeated injuries to the same area; as the joints get old and stop working as well as they used to, they become inflamed while new bone continues to grow around the joints. Osteoarthritis tends to get worse over time and can be severely painful, especially for overweight cats. Pain relief is absolutely necessary to allow cats with osteoarthritis to live a comfortable life, so please speak to your vet if you have concerns. Although the constant medication can be expensive, some comprehensive pet insurance policies will pay for it.

A digital infrared camera set up in the jungles of Uganda has caught three photographs of the African Golden Cat; one of the most elusive of all wild cats in the world. The cat is so rare that few researchers have ever seen it and it is though that only one other picture of the species exists – taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even Dr. Aronsen of Yale University (who set up the camera that took these pictures) saw his first and only wild African golden cat this summer.

Golden cats are medium-sized, compact and muscular felids, but the photographs have revealed that the individual in question actually has a dark coat! Dr. Aronsen explained that, despite its name, the cat’s coat varies over its lifetime; changing colour and even pattern (it can be spotted or not!) depending on age and location across the continent. Having set the camera up to take pictures of primates living the park, Dr. Aronsen is delighted to have caught the cat on film, but admits to being “disappointed that the cameras could not give me more data on [the cat's] colour”

I can’t even imagine the price of the cat insurance you’d have to take out on a cat you’d only see once in a lifetime!