cats

Dementia in cats is similar to humans

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Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and California, UK Dementia Research Institute and Scottish Brain Sciences studied the brains of 25 cats who showed signs of dementia after they had passed away. They found that there was a build-up of the toxic protein amyloid-beta in the brains of cats with the condition, which is one of the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

This finding will help scientists determine if the treatments for humans with dementia may help cats, dogs and other pets who suffer from dementia. Unlike rodents, cats naturally develop the brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The research may lead to treatments for pets.

Journal Reference:

Robert I. McGeachan, Lucy Ewbank, Meg Watt, Lorena Sordo, Alexandra Malbon, Muhammad Khalid F. Salamat, Makis Tzioras, Joao Miguel De Frias, Jane Tulloch, Fiona Houston, Danièlle Gunn‐Moore, Tara L. Spires‐Jones. Amyloid‐Beta Pathology Increases Synaptic Engulfment by Glia in Feline Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome: A Naturally Occurring Model of Alzheimer\’s Disease. European Journal of Neuroscience, 2025; 62 (3) DOI: 10.1111/ejn.70180

Cite This Page:

University of Edinburgh. “How cats with dementia could help crack the Alzheimer’s puzzle.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 August 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250813083611.htm>.

Breeding Dogs Part 8

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Understanding the breeding process will help you identify the quality of the puppy or dog that you wish to purchase. The following is the last (eighth) part in a series of eight articles about breeding dogs. Although it applies to a dog, it also applies to cats. People do not realize that there are cat mills which are like puppy mills. Note that these articles are based on my years of experience, my opinion and that I do not intend to refer to any individual. Please read the entire eight articles to glean a full understanding of breeding.

Part Eight

The Stud

As the owner of a male dog that you wish to stud, you have responsibilities as well. As stated in Part One, only the best bitches and males should be bred. The only reason to breed is to better the breed.

The male should be evaluated by an ethical breeder to determine that he is the quality to breed. This should also be reflected by wins in either the conformation show ring or as a working dog in working competitions.

The male dog must have all the medical testing that the bitch has, to include all genetic issues that the breed may have. A temperament test is also necessary.

As the owner of the stud, you may be required to board the bitch for breeding. Often when two dogs are kept for breeding, they both will cry, howl and bark day and night.

Do you know how to handle the problem bitch who does not want to be bred or the male who has not been bred before and needs help?

Are you qualified to judge a five-generation pedigree to determine if the bitch is a good match with your stud dog?

If the owner of the bitch is not experienced, are you qualified to advise the owner about whelping, raising puppies and selling them?

Do you know at what point in the bitch’s season is the correct time to breed them and how often?

What kind of guarantee will you give to the owner of the bitch? If the breeding doesn’t take, will you provide your stud in six months for a re-breeding?

Are you prepared, if the owner of the bitch cannot cope with the litter, to take the litter and be responsible for caring for and selling the puppies? It has happened where the owner of the litter dumps the entire litter on the owner of the stud.

In conclusion for both male and female dog owners. Keep in mind that there are only so many people willing to own a dog. The shelters are loaded with dogs and cats that people have given up for many reasons. Often because they got tired of caring for the pet, or an elderly family member passed away, and no one wants the pet. Some dogs and cats are put up for adoption because the owners could not deal with the level of energy or could or would not train the pet to be a well-behaved companion. Every breeder or stud dog owner who produces a puppy or kitten, potentially condemns one to death. Therefore, make sure that you have a good reason for breeding. I am not saying that you should not breed, we need different breeds to perform the many jobs that they do for us but be sure that the puppies you produce are the best and worth it.

Breeding Dogs Part Seven

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Understanding the breeding process will help you identify the quality of the puppy or dog that you wish to purchase. The following is the seventh part in a series of eight articles about breeding dogs. Although it applies to a dog, it also applies to cats. People do not realize that there are cat mills which are like puppy mills. Note that these articles are based on my years of experience, my opinion and that I do not intend to refer to any individual. Please read the entire eight articles to glean a full understanding of breeding.

Part Seven

Now that your puppies are ready to sell, are priced according to their quality you are ready to advertise your puppies. If you are lucky and have worked with an ethical breeder, they may be able to refer potential buyers to you. Keep in mind that you are the breeder, the expert in the eyes of your potential clients. This means that as an ethical breeder you must give some sort of guarantee with your puppies. You are the go-to person if your puppy buyers have questions about grooming, training, feeding, housebreaking, and whatever comes up throughout the puppy’s life. Do you have all the paperwork for the puppies in order? This means that you registered the litter at the time of birth so that you have the papers to give with your puppies.

Are you going to have a puppy buyers’ contract that requires that non-breeding quality puppies must be spayed or neutered? How will you enforce this? Will you have nonbreeding stock neutered or spayed before they are sold? Are you willing to take a puppy back at any time in the puppy’s life if the owner cannot keep it? This should be part of the puppy buyer’s contract that you offer.

A Curious Kind of Love

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A Curious Kind of Love by J.K. Findle, $9.99, 40 pgs, 8/12 x 11, available on Amazon.

One day a beautiful cross-eyed lynx point Siamese cat showed up on J.K. Findle’s driveway. The author saw the cat, but when the author went out to see the cat, he ran away. Over the next few weeks the cat came to trust Findle, who left food outside for him. One day the cat, whom the author named Phantom, walked into the trap to eat food.

Once caught J.K. Findle took the cat to the veterinarian where he was examined and given a clean bill of health. It turns out that lynx point Siamese cats often have crossed eyes, so it was not a medical issue.

This delightful book is suitable for children, tells the heartwarming story about Phantom, which Findle adopted. With many photos and a detailed account of Phantom’s life, the author shows us how a very special bond developed between them.

I purchased this book for my grandson’s, 8 and 10, who have three cats of their own. I can’t wait to give it to them. The size of the book makes it easy for children to hold and allowed the author to include larger photos. It is written so that a youngster who is at reading age can read the book on their own.

I highly recommend this book for both adults and children. It illustrates how an adopted cat can be a very special companion. It also illustrates how cats can be very special pets.

Breeding dogs, an eight part series

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Understanding the breeding process will help you identify the quality of the puppy or dog that you wish to purchase.The following is the first part in a series of eight articles about breeding dogs. Although it applies to a dog, it also applies to cats. People do not realize that there are cat mills which are like puppy mills. Note that these articles are based on my years of experience, my opinion and that I do not intend to refer to any individual. Please read the entire eight articles to glean a full understanding of breeding.

Part One: The Bitch

First, it must be said that only the best bitches and males should be bred. The only reason to breed is to better the breed.

Often in my career I have had clients tell me that they wanted to breed their pet dog. In most cases, they have no idea what is involved. It is much more than simply introducing a male and female.

Here are some of the reasons why they feel they want to breed their dog.

  1. To make a lot of money. Often people will pay a substantial amount of money for a puppy. They feel that if they breed their bitch, they will earn eight to ten times that money.
  • It will be good for the children to watch. Whelping puppies is pretty gory, and most children cannot handle what is involved. In some cases, it can traumatize a child and if the child is a girl, make her afraid to have children of her own.

If you still want a child to see this, it is better to find a breeder who will let your child get up in the middle of the night to watch the birthing of a litter.

  • We love our dog so much we want another like him/her.  The chances of reproducing your dog are slim to nothing. Genetics is not an exact science and if breeders could control how a dog turns out there would be many more champions and exceptional dogs.
  • Everyone who meets my dog wants a puppy like him/her.  As soon as the litter is born most people find that all those friends and acquaintances who said they wanted a puppy have excuses as to why they cannot get one now. Breeders who have dogs that are breeding quality have waiting lists for a reason. A home bred or backyard bred dog has no special qualities to warrant the cost.
  • We really love puppies. Many people do not realize that raising a litter of puppies is a lot of work and if done right, is very costly.

Animals are developing the same chronic diseases as humans

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The health problem does not just affect pets, but all animals worldwide including marine animals. These diseases are noncommunicable and include such problems as cancer, obesity, diabetes, and degenerative joint disease.

Animal scientist Antonia Mataragka of the Agricultural University of Athens conducted the study. While the causes are inconclusive, Mataragka did find that genetics play a part in selectively bred animals such as dogs, cats and livestock which show higher rates of conditions such as diabetes and mitral valve disease.

Environmental influences, including poor diet, limited physical activity, and long-term stress, also shape how and when these diseases appear across species. Other examples are pigs who develop osteoarthritis, beluga whales have documented gastrointestinal cancers and farmed Atlantic salmon experience cardiomyopathy syndrome. Wildlife living in polluted estuaries contaminated with industrial chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) show liver tumor rates as high as 15-25%. More research needs to be conducted to fully understand what is happening.

Cite This Page:

Society for Risk Analysis. “Animals are developing the same chronic diseases as humans.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 November 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251116105735.htm>.

Journal Reference: Antonia Mataragka. Beyond Infections: The Growing Crisis of Chronic Disease in Animals. Risk Analysis, 2025; DOI: 10.1111/risa.70130

Most cats sleep on their left side

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A team of scientists from the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy), Ruhr University Bochum, Medical School Hamburg and other partners in Germany, Canada, Switzerland and Turkey conducted a study to see which side most cats sleep on and why.

They concluded that cats sleep on their left side because they can perceive their surrounding when they wake up with their left visual field. This is processed in the right hemisphere of the brain which specializes in spatial awareness. This allows the cat to quickly process information about predators. Therefore it is a survival strategy.

Journal Reference:

Sevim Isparta, Sebastian Ocklenburg, Marcello Siniscalchi, Charlotte Goursot, Catherine L. Ryan, Tracy A. Doucette, Patrick R. Reinhardt, Reghan Gosse, Özge Şebnem Çıldır, Serenella d’Ingeo, Nadja Freund, Onur Güntürkün, Yasemin Salgirli Demirbas. Lateralized sleeping positions in domestic cats. Current Biology, 2025; 35 (12): R597 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.043

Cite This Page:

Ruhr-University Bochum. “Why cats prefer sleeping on their left side—and how it might help them survive.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 26 June 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250626081533.htm>.

Why I wrote my books

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Many people ask what inspired me to write the books that I did, therefore I am going to post a series of blogs explaining why I wrote each book. Also, if you, my loyal readers have a suggestion for a book or an article, please feel free to let me know. I cannot promise that I will write it, but you never know.

I will not comment on my books in the order that they were written but I will cover them all.

The first book that I get the most inquiries about is Faithful Friends: Holocaust Survivors’ Stories of the Pets Who Gave Them Comfort, Suffered Alongside Them, and Waited for Their Return.

This book has won several national awards. They are:

2012: First Place, Dog Writers Association of America.

2012: Second Place Winner, National League of American Pen

                   Women

2012: Finalist, Alliance of Purebred Dog Writers Arthur Award

2012: Certificate of Excellence, Cat Writers Association of America.

The inspiration for this book came from the Diary of Anne Frank. That may be a surprise, but in that account the family risked their lives to hide their cat with them. Had the cat made noise, they could have been discovered. Keep in mind that there was only a wooden floor separating them in the upper room from the people who worked downstairs. There was no insulation to deaden sound.

This made me wonder if there were other stories about pets. I had hoped to get stories about all kinds of animals but only those people who owned dogs and cats responded to my request.

What was amazing to me is that when I interviewed survivors, all of them thanked me for asking and giving them closure. Closure? Then I realized that all the people who responded where children in WWII. They loved their pets just as much as people today, but with all the fear and trauma that they were in the middle of, no one wanted to hear about the fate of pets when so many people were being taken and killed.

The book is broken down by country and in the beginning of each chapter I give a brief outline of what was happening at that time. When younger people read this book, they may not fully understand that there was no television, no computers, and in many cases, no telephone. The only news was through newspapers which were controlled by the Nazi’s and full of propaganda. Many people did not get the newspaper. In many cases the only way people learned about what was happening was by the most unreliable means, word of mouth.

If you are interested in purchasing a copy you can get an autographed copy from my website, www.sbulanda.com  It is also available (not autographed) on Amazon or from the publisher. Please go to my publisher’s website, www.cladach.com to see all their wonderful books.

Genetic and Environmental Drivers of Disease

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Lead animal scientist Antonia Mataragka of the Agricultural University of Athens has conducted a study that explores the increase in chronic diseases in the animal kingdom. These same diseases are found in both animals and humans.

For example, obesity is widespread in dogs and cats. Being overweight leads to a greater number of cats who develop diabetes. About 20% of pigs develop osteoarthritis, beluga whales have an increase of gastrointestinal cancers and farmed Atlantic salmon suffer from cardiomyopathy. It doesn’t end there, up to 25% of wildlife living in polluted estuaries are developing liver tumors. Even

Marine turtles and fish are developing more tumors.

Mataragka hopes that her research will encourage more coordinated monitoring of both animals, people and ecosystems to identify early warning signs by recognizing shared causes of chronic illnesses and reduce disease risks for both animals and people.

Antonia Mataragka. Beyond Infections: The Growing Crisis of Chronic Disease in Animals. Risk Analysis, 2025; DOI: 10.1111/risa.70130

Society for Risk Analysis. “Animals are developing the same chronic diseases as humans.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 November 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251116105735.htm>.

Dogs can tell how toys work without training

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What this means is that dogs can group objects by how they are used, not by how they look. The importance of this discovery shows that dogs understand words and in a more flexible manner than previously thought.

A team of animal behavior researchers worked with dog owners and had them play with their dogs with objects in two categories, pull and fetch. The owners used these words with specific toys that did not look similar.

“Next, the dogs were tested to see if they had learned to connect the functional labels to the correct group of toys before playing with more novel toys in the two distinct categories. However, this time, their owners didn’t use the “pull” and “fetch” labels for the dogs.

The team found that the dogs were able to extend the functional labels they’d learned previously to the new toys based on their experience playing with them. In the final test, the dogs showed that they could successfully apply the verbal labels to the toys by either pulling or fetching accordingly, even when their owners hadn’t named them.”

This impacts the way we train our dogs and the importance of the words that we use, especially associating the words with actions. If dogs are capable of understanding words to this level, it is reasonable to assume that other animals and birds can do the same thing.

Journal Reference:

  1. Claudia Fugazza, Andrea Sommese, Ádám Miklósi. Dogs extend verbal labels for functional classification of objects. Current Biology, 2025; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2025.08.013

Cite This Page:

Cell Press. “Dogs can tell how toys work without any training.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 23 September 2025. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/09/250923021212.htm>.