Just a few days ago, the FDA issues an alert about Vetsulin®, a type of insulin created for cats (and dogs). We have quite a few diabetics at Tabby’s Place. Most of them use glargine, but two of them were on Vetsulin.
I suspect some of you have diabetic cats, so I wanted to make sure you knew of this, in case any of your cats are using Vetsulin.
Cats & rats go together like, well, soup and salad (rats playing the role of both courses :-). Cats have been prized as rat-catchers on farms for many centuries. And, it is widely believed that the persecution of cats that began in the Dark Ages allowed the rat population in Europe to grow uncontrolled and led to the Bubonic Plague, which killed 25,000,000 Europeans in just three years.
So, how effective are cats at reducing rat populations in urban envrionments? Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Florida recently studied this question, coming to some surprising conclusions.
I am fascinated by evolution and the way various life forms are categorized and compared. I have spent countless hours at home leafing through my copy of The Tree of Life (a Phylogenetic Classification) studying the branches in the tree and looking for interesting patterns (”Where did the four-chambered heart appear?”)
You won’t be surprised to hear that I am particularly interested in the evolution of felis catus (house cat). It is a tricky area and good information was hard to come by, especially for an amateur like me. I was, therefore, thrilled to find this wonderful article in the June 2009 Scientific American. Continue reading » » »
Cats are subject to many of the same diseases as humans, but there are a number of diseases that are unique (or almost so) to cats. At Tabby’s Place we have seen just about every cat disease imaginable (and, frankly, some that are unimaginable). I am going to use this blog to discuss some of these “weird cat diseases.”
Weird Cat Disease #1 is feline vestibular syndrome, a disease whose symptoms can be particularly frightening.
Why are mice afraid of cats? Silly question you’re thinking. It’s because cats will eat them (with great joy, I might add). But is that fear genetic or learned? The answer is not at all obvious, since many mothers teach their young to hunt. And this is not simply an academic question, since we often have fears that hold us back needlessly. What if we could learn to control fear.
Researchers at the The Sakano Laboratory at the Universoity of Tokyo have made some amazing strides in understanding the biological origins of fear, using mice and cats.
I was web surfing on one of my days off (Wed) & stumbled on this blurb (from Glencoe, MN):
Samantha Johnson, seventh grade, purple ribbon and state science fair trip for her project “Can Cats See Color?” She also won the Thin Film Technology Corp. independent research award of $50.
I have always been fascinated by evolutionary biology, so I immediately sought out the item, only to be disappointed by finding only this same blurb.
Continue reading » » »
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