Here are a couple of animal stories:
From last Saturday’s Guardian:
“A cat has died in Russia after being thrown off a train in freezing temperatures by a conductor who has faced calls to be sacked and potentially prosecuted.
The state-owned railway company RZhD has apologised to the owners of Twix, the ginger-and-white cat who was dumped into the snow in Kirov on 11 January.
“We sincerely regret that the cat Twix died,” it said, vowing to change its regulations.
The female train conductor reportedly mistook the male cat, which had escaped from its travel crate, for a stray.
Twix’s disappearance led hundreds of volunteers to search the railway station area in Kirov, where temperatures as low as -30C had been reported.
The cat was eventually found dead on Saturday, and later identified by its owners.
There have been calls to sack and potentially prosecute the conductor for her actions, with separate petitions demanding each.
Nearly 70,000 people have now signed the petition calling for a criminal investigation to be opened against her, after local authorities refused to do so.”
I’m rather surprised that Putin has not been blamed for that one.
And from today’s Guardian
“A Thai woman has been charged with illegal possession of a lion cub, police said on Friday, after a video of the animal cruising in a Bentley went viral online.
The police ordered an investigation after a video showing a lion cub riding around the raucous Thai resort town of Pattaya in a Bentley gained more than 2.6m views online.
Sawangjit Kosoognern was charged with breaking environmental and natural resources law by “possessing a protected wildlife without authorisation”, the central investigation bureau announced on its official Facebook page. “We have arrested her, using the Wild Animal Conservation and Protection Act 2019,” the police statement said.
Under Thai law, she could be fined up to 100,000 baht (£2,200) and face a year in jail.
Sawangjit told police she bought the lion from another woman for 250,000 baht but failed to acquire an official handover document owing to insufficient information regarding the lion’s sex.
She kept the cub in a house rented by a Sri Lankan man who was seen driving the Bentley in the video.
He has been deported to Sri Lanka, the national parks and wildlife department said.”
Well, well! When I was a child, the owner of Southport Zoo (no longer in existence but in its time apparently a renowned centre for rearing baby chimpanzees rejected by their mothers - our children used to communicate with the baby chimps with hand signals through their glass window) apparently used to walk along Lord Street with a lion on a lead! And in a series of books I have just read by Louis de Bernières two of the female characters have a white lion which spends some time in an outdoor enclosure (they have extensive grounds) and some time as an indoor pet, sprawling on the furniture, sitting on laps where possible and generally behaving like a domestic cat. I confess to being unaware that white lions exist. And it seems that male lions are the best to have as pets as they are lazy, apart from when they want to play, and do not have a hunting instinct. Tigers, I understand are a different kettle of fish altogether, less apt to be domesticated and more unpredictable aggressive. Not that I plan on acquiring a cat of any size.
On more serious matters, I have already expressed my admiration for the young Labour MP Zarah Sultana and wondered how she has managed to keep going in the Labour Party of today. Well, Owen Jones in a recent article had this to say:
“Some Blairites regret not purging the left while they could. A few Corbynites such as Beth Winter, Sam Tarry and Mick Whitley have already had the chop. Thankfully, a desperate attempt to deselect the young, leftwing Muslim MP Zarah Sultana failed – indeed, critics were humiliated when she was reselected with the support of every local party branch. But as for other surviving leftwingers, it would not be surprising if a dossier of old tweets and Facebook statuses were mysteriously discovered, leading Labour to issue suspensions, precluding them from standing.
I thought as much.
That’s all for now. It’s a fine, sunny afternoon, of rather blustery and cold. We are planning to walk up the hill and catch some vitamin D.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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