An update to the heart-warming story of James and his cat Bob, who have become publishing sensations after starting out as a homeless recovering heroin addict (James) and an injured and homeless cat (Bob).

James began selling The Big Issue two years ago. It is a weekly newspaper in London which, similar to others in various cities, allows street people to make a modest income by selling newspapers they must first purchase from the publisher. His companion was a cat he had rescued, whom he named Bob. Read more here.

Here is an interview with James, excerpted below.

Only a few years ago James Bowen was sleeping rough on the streets of London. Now he can’t walk down them without being mobbed by fans.

The former Big Issue vendor turned bestselling author has just released his sixth book, For the Love of Bob, and is preparing A Gift From Bob, which will be ready in time for Christmas. In the space of two years he has sold more than one million copies in the UK. James and his scarf-wearing, high-fiving, streetwise cat Bob are in high demand.

“All the attention is a bit scary but so is sleeping rough on the streets of London for the first time. You just adapt. This is an amazing opportunity to show the world how life is on the streets.”

Little over two years later James’ life has been transformed. Back then he could have had no idea about the global celebrities he and Bob would become.

A Street Cat Named Bob has been translated into more than 35 languages and topped charts in the US, Brazil, Portugal and Turkey, while in Germany, Bob, der Streuner held the number one spot for 27 consecutive weeks. He has more than 50,000 followers on Twitter and 200,000 fans on Facebook.

Issue no.1111 of the street newspaper featured this cover:

Within days of its publication the paper was getting hundreds, then thousands of requests for copies. There are still a few available to be mailed out (as of late July 2014). (See also: http://shop.bigissue.com/collections/the-big-issue-collector-s-editions/products/the-bob-edition-delivery-to-usa) I wrote the office manager Robert White and founder and editor John Bird to suggest they make the cover available as a limited edition print:

Hello, John. I have a website called Mein Kat, and in it, some months ago, I wrote an article about James and Bob. I’d like to augment that article, and update it, with information about this sellout issue of your paper, and about James’ successes with his books and so on.

To that end, would you send me a high-res digital file of the front cover of  The Big Issue 1111? Also, in terms of added value to the paper, I would suggest making a framable poster print of the cover available for sale. I believe it would sell quite well especially if it is printed in a limited edition of, say, 1,000.

The interview with James continues:

“I did not realise how big this was going to go,” he tells me. “How can such a thing as me rescuing a cat from the street turn out this way? Don’t ask me. But it has brought millions of people to know about homelessness. And that can’t be a bad thing.”

Robert White wrote back (literally within minutes of my email being sent to him):

Had a look at your website, fantastic.  Great to see such great stuff being written about James and Bob.

As requested, please find attached magazine cover.

The magazine is still available to purchase via http://shop.bigissue.com/collections/the-big-issue-collector-s-editions, however there are only a limited number of magazines available as we are verging on completely selling out.  We have sent out hundreds, if not thousands of this particular magazine across the globe!

Thanks also for your advice on posters for added value, that’s a great idea.

Correspondent Françoise Eggermont sent me this story about a sailor who began a circumnavigation of the world after his cat Gaëlle died, whom he’d lived with in Nice.

For a while Gwendal couldn’t imagine replacing Gaëlle,  but in a port a Canadian girl with the delightful name of Océane was determined to find him a kitten. He named her Touline, and she became his first mate.

Gwendal with the kitten who would become his new first mate, Touline.

Françoise sent the story as a Word document with the images embedded, and I, no whiz at this, couldn’t figure out how to extract it all into a web page, so instead, here it is as a downloadable pdf file: Touline_Sailing cat

A “Touline”, or rather a “Touline ball”, is almost similar to a monkey’s fist knot, used to throw a mooring line from a ship to another, or from a ship to a quay.

Although she has her sea legs, the little cat has fallen overboard several times, including a harrowing swim at night in the mid-Atlantic.

See Touline on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/touline.la.boiteuse and an interview, in French, from Chats et Chatons, by Eric Fournet (n°4, juin 2013), reprinted in La Boiteuse:  http://laboiteuse.blogspot.be/2013/05/touline-superstar.html

Pumpkin, age 5, July 2014

Today, I took Miss Pumpkin to my dear vet, Dr. Nicky Joosting, who along with her partner Thomas run Vancouver Feline Hospital. I think this was only the second time that this cat, five years old, has seen a vet–the first, with her original owners, when she was a kitten and was spayed, in 2009. Mewed in the cat carrier, but only when I was carrying her in our “no pets” building. Once in the co-op car, which I’d picked up earlier, she was silent. Of course I used the seatbelt in the rear seat to strap in the carrier, even though the vet’s isn’t very far away.
And so well behaved at the veterinary clinic! I’d expected bloodshed, or at the very least, three strong people (and me) to hold her down. But no, while she certainly wasn’t amused to be there, she put up with getting a vaccine boost, a light examination (3.8kg, some tartar buildup, but mainly a good strong cat) and a microchip injected into the fold between her shoulder blades.
Dr. Nicky recommends the Indoor Pet Initiative (Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine) for information on creating a safe, comfortable, and stimulating environment for our indoor cats:

http://indoorpet.osu.edu/

I hadn’t been able to clip Pumpkin’s nails. Tried, failed. Called a house-visiting former veterinary assistant, who came a week ago, tried, got fangs buried in her hand, bandaged her up and said good-bye, no nails clipped. Today, Dr. Nicky explained that this cat probably had not been acculturated to handling, and would require months of patient and gentle holding. “Put one paw in your open hand. Don’t close your hand around her paw, don’t stroke it, just let it rest there. That’s all you do for a month. Then, very gently, using a finger, you pull back the hair over one of the nails, and SNIP off the tip with a pair of human-style nail clippers. Do not press on the paw to extend the nail–it hurts the cat.” Dr. Nicky only got two nails clipped before Pumpkin became restless, but she said not to worry, the nails were in no danger of curving around to meet the pads on her paws. One or two nails a week, rather than trying to get even one paw done at one time. Slow and easy.

What I think is interesting is that I chose to adopt a “difficult” cat long after I chose the title Mein Kat for this project, the title of course referring to Mein Kampf, which is translated as “my struggle.” As Dr. Nicky said, Pumpkin hasn’t learned how to signal her gradual annoyance: rather, she switches from contented purr while being handled to eviscerate and kill defense mode instantly, making human detection of her change in reaction difficult to discern. Still, it is rewarding to see incremental advances in her trust: she’ll let me hold her a bit longer; she’s now coming up onto the bed in the morning, where she wouldn’t before; she has accepted my coming and going without having to hide when the door opens and I enter. This gradual trust-building has to done in baby steps–and initially I had tried to get her to accept me too quickly, and it backfired. Each little step is a big deal for both of us, as we learn to live together.

After all, we’ve got years to go on this journey of love and companionship.

 From http://indoorpet.osu.edu/cats/basicneeds/, some advice on using the cat carrier as a safe place for the cat (I have it open, a towel over it to provide privacy):

FACT (Free Access Crate Training)

This is the full text of an essay written for the NMAS (National Museum of Animals and Society) Exhibit “Light in Dark Places: Anti-Vivisection From the Victorian Era to Modern Day“

Gary Steiner

John Howard Harris Professor of Philosophy

Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

gsteiner@bucknell.edu

Please note: Mein Kat was given express permission by Gary Steiner to reproduce his essay. Text © copyright Gary Steiner 2014, all rights are reserved. The images and hyperlinks have been added by Mein Kat’s editor. [Gary will be giving a talk at NMAS July 26)

Although the practice of vivisection has a history that long predates him, the early modern philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) serves as a powerful focal point for a reflection on the motivations and often unexpressed assumptions underlying the use of animals as objects of experimentation. ‘Vivisection‘ literally means “live cutting,” but the practice of experimentation on live animals takes a variety of other forms as well. Moreover, notwithstanding the increasing sensitivity of our society to the fact that nonhuman animals are conscious, feeling creatures who strive for a meaningful life in ways that make them very much like if not identical to human beings, the practice of animal experimentation has persisted into our own time. The persistence of this practice confirms the fact that we are at best ambivalent about our moral relationship to nonhuman animals: On the one hand, we tend to decry unnecessary violence against animals, and we go to great lengths to protect and pamper our companion animals; but on the other hand, many of us tacitly endorse a variety of forms of animal experimentation, just as we tacitly endorse a variety of uses of animals that involve their confinement, their suffering, and ultimately their death.

A relatively recent instance of animal experimentation that reflects the dark side of this ambivalence is the baboon head trauma experiments that were conducted at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1980s. We know the specifics of the experimental conditions because the experiments were videotaped and the tapes were subsequently stolen and released to the media. In an effort to study the nature and consequences of “acceleration injuries” such as whiplash and the sorts of injuries that occur in football and boxing, the researchers performed the following experiment: they would strap a baboon to a table, cement the baboon’s head securely in a helmet, and “subject it to a sudden jerking movement delivered by a specially designed device” that caused a hydraulic piston to hit the baboon’s head.[1] When confronted with the question of the justifiability of the experiments, the researchers asserted that the animals were anesthetized during the experiments and felt no pain. But when the National Institutes of Health conducted its review of the experiments, it concluded that the animals did indeed feel pain, and the NIH was able to ascertain why: the baboons had been given not any kind of painkiller but rather PCP or “angel dust,” a substance used simply to facilitate the restraint of the baboons. Moreover, it was discovered that the experiments had not proceeded on the basis of any testable hypothesis, and that in this respect, at the very least, the experiments constituted bad science. Nonetheless, the NIH review team voted to renew the grant for the research for an additional five years after its review. The Society of Neuroscience conducted its own investigation and concluded not only “that there is nothing morally wrong with causing severe head injury to baboons,” but that, in the Society’s words, the researcher had made “a convincing case that the procedures represent an ethical and humane way to produce an animal model of human head trauma.”[2] Nonetheless, Penn subsequently abandoned this and all other head injury research on primates at the clinic where these experiments had been conducted.

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Los Angeles architect Peter Sehorsch, inspired by his cat Franklin, created a unique cat tree using an available suspension system from IKEA (Stolmen). The result is an adaptable series of platforms for cats to climb and rest on.

This is how it looks on the promotional pages of his website:

There are three sizes of platform available, in different finishes (or you can buy them unfinished, with the custom-cut carpet included but not glued onto the shelves–which is how I ordered mine).

It took me quite a while to paint each platform (I opted for white paint rather than staining them as I have a small space and wanted it to blend in more; you can judge for yourself if this was a good idea or not). I ordered the single STOLMEN pole and clamps from IKEA, making sure I had sufficient clamps for the 9 small (3 x “Kit 1″) and 2 medium (“Kit 2″) platforms: the clamps come in boxes of four, so I got 12 in total and used 11 of them.

Pumpkin ignored it. I mean, I didn’t try to place her on the structure, but after a week of her not climbing on it, and me getting some comments from friends like “Well, you could always use it for plants,” I decided to move her dry food (which is NOT her primary diet, but I like to give her a little bit of dry in addition to the wet) onto the tower. Nothing. Except…when I got home from work, the dry food was gone. I moved it higher the next day. That night, I heard crunching.

So day by day I moved the bowl up a level, and she now climbs on it not only to get a snack but to hang out. When it’s raining out, she’ll go up there to look out the window.

I’m not suggesting this is for everyone: it is definitely an imposing piece of industrial architecture, with the clamps and bolts visible. I think I should have ordered another three of the small platforms because when I initially built it, I ignored Peter’s suggested spacing of 5 to 5 1/2 inches per platform, in order to spread them out higher…but then after that week of Pumpkin ignoring it, I thought….hmmm…maybe he’s right, and so loosened the clamps (which is easy to do, loosening just one side of a clamp will allow it to slide along the pole) and decreased the distance. Which meant there was a lot of empty pole at the top.

Here’s the PRICELIST for the bits (not including the IKEA components).

Oh, and you know how it goes with IKEA: it looks simple, but then there’s always something that really annoys you! In this case, the pole, which has a narrower gauge section which fits into the lower one, will slide into itself when you’re following the directions on how to attach the foot to the lower section, thus necessitating undoing things to get that section out. It tightens by means of rotating the narrower, upper pole which works a cam-like thingamajig inside that locks it in place. But typical to IKEA, the product description didn’t say that it probably would not be stable with just the pressure fit between floor and ceiling, so I had to use the included braces and thus it looks a little less elegant. But it is secure.