Progressive Pets

[merh]

Someone suggested he's late for work

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[abbey1227]

Jan 22, 2022 2:52:37 GMT merh said:

it's almost crazy how much those dogs love the cold stuff

[merh]

[abbey1227]

Jan 22, 2022 19:54:39 GMT merh said:

I believe some of the oldest humanoid remains ever found........ had feline tooth marks in the skull.  That may be a reason  

[merh]

Could it be, that the purpose of humanity, is to make cats happy?

[merh]

Jan 23, 2022 1:28:22 GMT abbey1227 said:

Jan 22, 2022 19:54:39 GMT merh said:

I believe some of the oldest humanoid remains ever found........ had feline tooth marks in the skull.  That may be a reason  

After a Canadian couple died in their rural Saskatchewan home, their seven dogs subsisted for more than a week by eating their remains. So, is the folk wisdom that a cat will gladly eat its dead owner, but a dog would sooner starve, just bunk?

Yes. Dogs are perfectly willing to eat human corpses, and there’s no evidence that they treat their masters differently than any other dead body. Many cultures consider dogs unclean precisely because of their tendency to scavenge our remains. In The Iliad, Homer makes nine references to dogs eating dead bodies. Dogs consumed the body of Jezebel, a princess in the Old Testament, after her defenestration. There is evidence that ancient Romans considered the low-hanging cross a crueler form of crucifixion than the high version, because it enabled dogs to rip the body apart. There are even a few secular historians who believe that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs, and that his acolytes fabricated the story of a reverential entombment as a sort of coping mechanism. Some Muslim communities in East Africa revile dogs because they believe that canines ate the body of the Prophet Muhammad. Modern dogs exhibit the same behavior, and many have eaten their fallen masters. There have been several news stories of dogs scavenging family members, and other cases go unreported in the press. (Don’t get smug, cat lovers. Your feline friends are no better.)

Dogs that eat their master’s corpses are just fulfilling their evolutionary duty. Proto-dogs scavenged around the outskirts of human settlements about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, removing food scraps, feces, and other human waste. Humans, the story goes, realized this was rather useful, and let the least aggressive pups hang around. It’s likely that these canine garbage-compactors treated corpses like any other waste product. Their descendants are no different.

Some dogs don’t even wait until their masters die to dig in. There are many reports of dogs eating the wounded toes of family members. The victims are often afflicted with diabetes, which causes numbness in the feet, and they can’t feel the dog gnawing at them. Epidemiology studies also undermine the desire to believe that Fido would never turn on us. More than 900 people visit U.S. emergency rooms for dog bites every day, and more than half of those attacks occur at home.

Finally, it’s noteworthy that there were seven man-eating dogs in the Saskatchewan home, rather than a single pet. Behaviorists point out that dogs are more aggressive in packs (PDF), with more timid individuals joining in after their peers launch attacks on humans

2011/07/are-dogs-willing-to-eat-the-remains-of-their-masters.html.

[merh]

And it’s not just cats and dogs—there are reported cases of hamsters scavenging human bodies postmortem. Carolyn Rando, a forensic anthropologist at London’s UCL Institute of Archaeology, says that when an animal becomes distressed, it can attempt to rouse its owner by nudging the body and can begin to nibble if there’s no response. If blood is drawn, it’s very possible that “instinct” takes over and causes the animal to begin eating.

“Yes, your pets will eat you when you die, and perhaps a bit sooner than is comfortable,” Rando told BuzzFeed News in 2015, referring to the case where a dog began to eat its owner who was not dead, but merely passed out drunk. The woman ultimately died.

www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a30552650/pets-eat-owners/

[merh]

[merh]

We have a White House Cat!

[merh]

TIL that while catnip stimulates and energizes cats, it also has the opposite effect on dogs - often making them sleepy and relaxed.

Solution for Major?

THe other day our cat and dog worked together to get into the catnip. It was on top of the fridge. THe cat jumped up there and knoced it down. The dog then chewed open the large plastic container.

We came home to the dog asleep in the pile and the cat rolling around in it.

[merh]

Cat looks offended

[merh]

[abbey1227]

Jan 28, 2022 21:48:15 GMT merh said:

we're trying to convince the new 'baby' in our house that she needs to stop surfing all the counters.

Too bad her greatest thrill seems to be everything she can't have........and being chased to get it away from her. 

[merh]

The sights you wake up to when you own cats

[merh]

[merh]

Abraham Lincoln’s cats included Tabby and Dixie. The president also brought a few strays into the White House.
President Abraham Lincoln “possessed extraordinary kindness of heart when his feelings could be reached,” wrote Treasury official Mansell B. Field in his memoirs. “He was fond of dumb animals, especially cats. I have seen him fondle one for an hour. Helplessness and suffering touched him when they appealed directly to his senses, or when you could penetrate through his intelligence to them.”

Lincoln, who decided to leave his dog Fido home in Springfield, Ill., when he was elected president, was given an unexpected gift of two kittens from Secretary of State William Seward.

The president doted on the cats, which he named Tabby and Dixie, so much that he once fed Tabby from the table during a formal dinner at the White House.

When Lincoln’s embarrassed wife later observed that the action was “shameful in front of their guests,” the president replied, “If the gold fork was good enough for former President James Buchanan, I think it is good enough for Tabby.”

“Dixie Is Smarter Than My Whole Cabinet”
Lincoln’s friend Caleb Carman recalled how the president would pick up one of the cats and “talk to it for half an hour at a time.” The cats apparently won the president over with their quiet adoration.

At one point during his first term, Lincoln was said to have observed in frustration, “Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet! And furthermore she doesn’t talk back!”

Lincoln Loved Stray Cats
Lincoln had a special affinity for stray cats and was known to bring them home on occasion. Mrs. Lincoln even referred to cats as her husband’s “hobby.”

When she was visiting her father and stepmother in Kentucky, for example, Mary wrote in a letter to her husband that their son Eddy had taken up “your hobby” by adopting a stray kitten.

At General Ulysses S. Grant‘s headquarters in City Point, Va., during the siege of Petersburg in March 1865, just weeks before his assassination, Lincoln found his attention distracted by the sound of mewing kittens.

Admiral David Porter wrote later that he was struck by the sight of the president “tenderly caressing three stray kittens. It well illustrated the kindness of the man’s disposition, and showed the childlike simplicity which was mingled with the grandeur of his nature.”

Porter recalled that Lincoln stroked the cats’ fur and quietly told them, “Kitties, thank God you are cats, and can’t understand this terrible strife that is going on.”

Before leaving a meeting in the officers’ tent that day, Lincoln turned to a colonel and said, “I hope you will see that these poor little motherless waifs are given plenty of milk and treated kindly.”

www.presidentialpetmuseum.com/pets/abraham-lincoln-cats/

[merh]

[merh]

Godzilla's next foe?

[merh]

It is kinda sad what we've done to animals using selective breeding