Jan 19, 2008
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NICKNAMES

If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah.

If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fatso, Punkhead and Four-eyes.

EATING OUT

When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it's only for £32.50.

None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.

When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY

A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.

A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.

BATHROOMS

A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from M&S.

The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337.

A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items.

ARGUMENTS

A woman has the last word in any argument.

Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

CATS

Women love cats.

Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.

FUTURE

A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.

A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.

A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE

A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.

A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP

A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the bins, answer the phone, read a book, and get the post.

A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL

Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.

Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING

Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children.

She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

A married man should forget his mistakes.

There's no use in two people remembering the same thing.
 
Mar 26, 2008
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We have eight cats and my husband adores them. When he's at home they are on the bed with him and he has them sat on him and around him in the house and garden. God help anyone who kicked his cats
 
Jan 28, 2008
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We have eight cats and my husband adores them. When he's at home they are on the bed with him and he has them sat on him and around him in the house and garden. God help anyone who kicked his cats
I bet he kicks 'em when you're not looking, I would !!!
 
Jan 19, 2008
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Your hubby about or not Sadie I can guarantee one thing. The cat who ran in front of me with a male blackbird in it's mouth one hour ago would have had more than a kick if I could have got at it :O(

Manky moggies :O)

I've nothing against domestic house cats like Persians but those who roam the streets, crapping in peoples gardens and killing wildlife indiscriminately should be culled.

Imagine the hue and cry if while out walking my dog and it dumped in a cat owners garden .... heaven forbid. Not only that we are expected to clean it up.
 
Jan 19, 2008
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Natures way??? Somehow I don't think a domesticated moggy can be counted as a part of our natural history Sadie.

As a lover of nature I do agree that their are predators that need to kill to feed themselves and young and moggies don't come into that equation :O)

Because I love nature so much and I like to protect it my natural reaction and instinct, if it hadn't been so fast, would have been to boot the cat hoping it would release the blackbird. If I had done so the cat wouldn't have needed a collar because it would have been wearing it's a*$e around its neck :O)

P.S. My dogs also know when I'm coming home and wait for me ;O)

Least I think that's what they are doing then again they might be waiting to catch that moggy that keeps dumping by our front door. I'll give cats their due, they are clever enough to know not to come into our back garden.
 
Mar 26, 2008
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Lord B. I think your dogs may be domesticated but I am not sure that cats have ever been domesticated. They may take food and shelter from us and thrive from good diets and vetinary help, but I doubt that the are really domesticated. Cats are still indepndent free spirits.

My husband works away from home for a lot of the year, and there is no pattern to when he comes home or to the time of day. Be it three or nine am or four or eleven pm three of them will wander off down drive way and the others will be around the garage and front porch rain snow or shine. They set up station around an hour and a half to two hours before he arrives home. If he flies in to Heathrow or Gatwick that means they are waiting for him before the plane has enter UK air space.

Fox's kill for the hell of it and the nature lovers love them, I adore cats as well but they all love my old man. Dogs are OK but just not to bright without a owner to guide them.
 
Dec 9, 2007
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Sorry,Sadie. But it is a well acknowledged fact (by no less a body than the RSPB and the RSPCA)that cats kill for the sake of it.

House cats that are well fed at home by their owners (benefactors) will catch, tease and eventually kill out of instinct not because they are hungry.

The biggest predator of song birds is the domestic cat.

Dave
 
Mar 26, 2008
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So what. You seemed to leave a clue yourself Dave -"out of instinct" That is animal nature at work.

All our eight cats wear bells and the lawns are kept mowed so they don't have much chance of hiding. It is a long time since I've known them catch a bird. Cats have been around for years, if there is a demise of the song birds I expect that is mainly due to other modern factors not the humble moggy.

Rats try and take my chickens eggs and the fox's are always on the prowl but are also seen off by two of our cats.
 
Dec 9, 2007
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Sadie.

Yhe nations population of 'domestic' cats has shot up over the last few years. Consequently, 'undomesticated' creatures like wild birds,mice,shrews,etc suffer out of proportion through 'instinctive behahiour'.

You seem to doubt my word.

These are facts as reported by the two previously mentioned organisation.

There are simply too many cats.

Dave
 
Mar 26, 2008
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You posted "But it is a well acknowledged fact (by no less a body than the RSPB and the RSPCA)that cats kill for the sake of it". That mentions nothing about the demise of song birds being due to cats and who needs the RSPCA and RSPB to tell them about the nature of cats.

Rather than jump on the anti cat band wagon you should get your facts correct.

The demise of UK song birds is widely due to the increase in Grey Squirrel numbers and the increase in growth of the urban Magpie population. Modern farming practices and the increase in Sparrowhawks etc and changes in migrating bird trends are another fator.

Cats and feral cats do contribute to the problem, but the feral cat population will only worsen with the UK financial crisis, well cared for cats are not a major problem.

Rhododendron ponticum is another problem with songbird and small mamal dwindling numbers.

Even in North America the reduced song bird population is blamed on changes to natural habitat rather than cats.

I also don't see that the RSPCA have stopped homing cats!
 
Dec 9, 2007
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Sadie, I wouldn't expect anyone with ten cats to say anything other than what you are saying.

I wouldn't expect anyone with ten dogs to do other than defend all dogs to the end.

But affection can blind people to facts.

We can all make excuses for our pets but you simply cannot argue with the experts, who state that cats are the biggest killer of song birds IN THIS COUNTRY - forget anywhere else.

Dave
 
Jan 19, 2008
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I think Dave said "out of proportion" and how I read that is that cats, despite there being other problems for birds, are the biggest contributing factor to their deaths. And he is right. Nobody has said there aren't others. A big one that isn't mentioned are slug pellets which contain methhaldehyde. Thrushes, blackbirds etc. eat these slugs/snails which have already got this poison in their bodies.

The fact of the matter is that birds have problems hitting them from all angles and eventually commonsense says that they cannot keep losing populations at the rate that they do so they don't need the help of millions of manky moggies to make them extinct, mankind are quite capable of doing it alone. Then again I suppose it was mankind who domesticated the cat so the fault lies there. Maybe if all those years ago they weren't domesticated they would live their lives like other cats, hunt to kill and feed then sleep the rest of the time :O)

As I said above, I have no problems with house cats that are strictly house cats or those that wear a bell, at least the owner is partially trying to act responsibly. My problem lies with those who are kicked out each night, making their wild banshee noises and killing at the most productive time of the day, dawn, when they do most of their damage.
 
Mar 26, 2008
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I'm not sure where you get your detail from Dave, but you have got only part of a tale and the **** end of it. What you are saying actually differs from the RSPB and experts on songbirds.

I'm a bit of a LordB fan, calling other people beloved pets "manky moggies" is a bad as me suggesting that LadyB is an uppercrust slapper or dogs are mange ridden flea bags.

I also like dogs but prefer cats as pets, but I don't fell their is a need to insult dogs.

"Crop changes cut number of larks by 75pc

By Charles Clover Environment Editor

SKYLARKS declined by three-quarters on farmland between the Seventies and the Nineties because of the change from spring-sown to autumn-sown cereals, according to a study published yesterday.

Spring-sown cereals allow the stubble of the previous crop to be left unploughed over the winter, providing food and cover for the birds. This change, rather than the use of pesticides, is the main reason for the bird's decline, according to the research funded by Tesco, the skylark's corporate sponsor under the Government's Biodiversity Action Plan. Researchers found twice the density of skylarks in spring cereals compared to autumn crops in the three-year study in East Anglia, Oxfordshire and Dorset.

Spring-sown crops also provide safer nesting sites and allow skylarks to make more breeding attempts as the growing crop remains shorter for longer, according to the study co-authored by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds" (Smart cats could ave started farming I guess)

"Sparrowhawks

According to Dr Ian Newton in his book The Sparrowhawk, the UK has a population of 100,000 sparrowhawks. They will slaughter in excess of 100 million songbirds in a year. This is 1,000 "kills" per hawk per year. (that is far more than cats are blamed for)

by close contact, food and water such as salmonella, aspergillosis and avian pox"

"Daily Mail 9 September 2007 - "Deadly new virus is silencing songbirds" - songbirds are being ravaged by a highly contagious disease spread via bird baths and tables. RSPB have had 17 times more reports of cases of avian TRICHOMONIASIS. The virus has been spotted in chaffinches, goldfinches, bullfinches, house sparrows, blackbirds, yellowhammers and siskins. There are other diseases that are transferred by close contact, food and water such as salmonella, aspergillosis and avian pox."

"How Much of an Impact Do Cats Make on Wildlife?

It is an undeniable fact that cats are carnivores; their physiology demands this. However, the debate on cat predation focuses on the impact on the other species in their ecosystem. While it is clear that cats can and do have a large impact in exceptional situations (isolated ecosystems being the primary example), it is much more apparent that in our normal, everyday environments the actions of humans have a much greater effect on vulnerable and threatened species. Urban sprawl, fragmentation of forested ecosystems, the increase in motor vehicles and the related increase in roads, and the use of pesticides, fertilizers and poisons do much more damage to bird and small vertebrate species than do domestic and/or feral cats. However, feral cat predation, and its' supposed effect on vulnerable species, is frequently used as an argument against trap/neuter/return (TNR) programs. As cats are opportunistic feeders, providing them with a readily available food source as a part of a TNR program will reduce any effect they have on their traditional prey species. All cats, and feral cats in particular, have become convenient scapegoats for the loss of many species, especially songbirds. However, we can no longer ignore the role that we humans have played in this process. Before we can sentence cats to death for being carnivores, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and what we have done to our ecosystem.

~excerpt from Feral Cat Predation and It's Effect on Wildlife - Searching for the Truth "

"Ambelopoulia - and the killing of migratory songbirds in Cyprus is still said to account for the loss of 12.6 million plus birds a year, Malta and Italy are also guilty to some degree" (maybe Cypriot cats re so smart they set the mist nets)
 
Mar 16, 2005
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Thanks for the joke (it's that post at the top of this thread!) Lord B, but how on earth did it end up as a debate on the relative merits and habits of various domestic pets?

Ah well, as long as it stays good natured...
 
Mar 26, 2008
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My post re my old mans love of cats was just light hearted your Lordship.

I did not expect an attack on cats and them being blamed for a MAN MADE problem that I am aware of! ;0)
 
Jan 19, 2008
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It is a man made problem Sadie, I agreed with you, it was man who domesticated them. It's not man made dumps by my front door though, definitely cats, only cats stink that way :O)

Besides, it's a different consistency.
 
Mar 26, 2008
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Lord B, we have eight cats and we have have both had cats since we were children. Our gardens size allows our cats to stay on home turf. And I can't ever remenber seeing anything left by our cats they dig and cover unlike dogs who do it where they feel fit to dump. No doubt you like some others scoop the poop!

I have never ever known cats who do not dig and cover their toilet.

Our cats go off to the hedges mainly and dig in under them, marking their territory and the boundary I assume.
 

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