Lost a cat

[Jarlaxle]

Not a surprise, two of my three were elderly...but this really sucks.

[Gob]

Sad to hear that mate, commiserations.

[PMS Princess]

So sorry Jarlaxle. Always tough to lose a long time companion.

[BoSoxGal]

[Guinevere]

Sorry Jarl, it's never easy to lose the furry family members.

[Lord Jim]

Sorry Jarl, it's never easy to lose the furry family members.

X2

[MajGenl.Meade]

X3

[Long Run]

Best wishes, sorry to hear.

[oldr_n_wsr]

I am not a cat person but I understand the sentiments for a pet.
Hope it shows up, but if not, I'm sorry for your loss.

[Lord Jim]

Oldr, I believe that by "lost" Jarl meant that the cat passed away...

[Jarlaxle]

Yep.

[Big RR]

My condolences Jarl; we had a scare with my dog a couple of weeks ago and it made me realize how short and fragile their lives are. Hang in there.

[oldr_n_wsr]

My misunderstanding. I thought maybe it went for a walk and didn't come back.
Sorry for your loss.

[Joe Guy]

Me too. Despite their reputation for being aloof and manipulating little fur balls, cats are affectionate and fun to live with.

[rubato]

I lost a sneeze once. Really good one too. It was building and building and building and just when I was all ready for it someone knocked at the door. Talk about a letdown! But with sneezes, like cats, another one will be along soon enough. And cats are about as different as sneezes when you get right down to it.

And then there is the science. And it is pretty down on cats.

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/16/6982177/t ... wning-cats

What research says about cats: they're selfish, unfeeling, environmentally harmful creatures

Compared to dogs, scientists have found, cats don't seem to have the same sort of emotional attachment to their owners, and show genuine affection far less often than you might think. Further, they're an environmental disaster, killing literally billions of birds in the US every year — many of them from endangered species.

Most alarmingly (and as explained in this 2012 Atlantic article), there's compelling evidence that a parasite often found in cat feces can subtly change people's personalities over time, increasing rates of neuroticism, schizophrenia, and perhaps even suicide.

In other words, research is telling us that cats are selfish, unfeeling, environmentally devastating creatures. If you need to convince someone not to get a cat, here's the research you need to show them.
Your cat probably doesn't love you

...

Daniel Mills, a veterinary researcher at the UK's University of Lincoln, is a cat lover. You can see his cat in the photo on his faculty page on the university's website. But experiments he and colleagues have conducted at the university's Animal Behaviour Clinic suggest that cats, as a whole, do not love their owners back — at least not in the same way that dogs do.

The researchers adapted a classic child psychology experiment called "the strange situation," in which a parent slips out of a room while a baby or young child is playing and then later returns. The child's behavior upon being abandoned and reunited with the parent is observed and analyzed. This sort of thing has been also done with dogs several times (including by Mills), and the experiments have found that dogs demonstrate an attachment with their owner — compared to a stranger, the dogs become more disturbed when their owners leave, and interact with them more when they return.

By contrast, Mills' cat experiments — which are still ongoing and haven't yet been published, but were featured in a BBC special last year — haven't come to the same conclusion. On the whole, the cats seem uninterested both when their owners depart and return. "Owners invest a lot emotionally in the cat relationship," Mills told the BBC. "That doesn’t mean that the cat’s investing in the same sort of emotional relationship." At the time, he said the results were inconclusive, but at the very least, it's safe to say that they haven't yielded the same obvious results that the dog studies have. ..."

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]