NICE COCKEREL

this is my animal side blog. icon is my bun roommate Jeannie (she's large). NO BIGOTS ok? AND NO OUTDOOR CATS HEEHEE im just chillin 💙💗🤍💗💙 🍉🏳️‍🌈

[internetdruid]

Palestine Sunbird (Cinnyris osea) © Steven Mlodinow

Arab.org

Children's Relief Fund

Care For Gaza

[grumpit]

EVIL MONSTER ATTACK AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[catsindoors]

[Image Source]

A Deadly Fungus That Can Infect Cats and People is Spreading

Shared from Science News.

Microbiologists are used to looking at gross pictures and hearing scary statistics. So when a moderator of a session on emerging fungal infections at the ASM Microbe meeting uttered the words “somewhat terrifying,” it caught my attention. He was referring to a sexually transmitted skin infection that is becoming increasingly drug resistant. But what came next was even more horrifying to me.

Medical mycologist Shawn Lockhart stepped to the podium and began describing a fungal disease that attacks cats, causing oozing skin ulcers and worse, and spreads to humans. It isn’t yet in the United States … that officials know of. But the disease, caused by Sporothrix brasiliensis, has sickened and killed thousands of cats and infected more than 11,000 people and at least 200 dogs in South America since its emergence in Brazil in the 1990s.

“What we have right now is this ginormous ongoing outbreak of Sporothrix brasiliensis in Brazil,” Lockhart, a senior adviser at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said June 7. The fungus has spread beyond Brazil to cats, dogs and people in Paraguay, Chile, Argentina and most recently Uruguay.

“It’s just a matter of time” until the fungus reaches the United States, Lockhart told me after the session. “We’re waiting.”

Here’s why he’s so concerned.

He worries about the fungus spreading in big cities such as Istanbul and Bangkok where “cats are just everywhere,” and in rural areas in the United States where large populations of farm cats roam freely. “All it takes is one traveler [from South America] bringing their cat with them, and it can emerge anywhere,” Lockhart said during the presentation. “This is something we are very, very worried about.”

Infected cats develop skin ulcers and nodules and swollen lymph glands. If the infection isn’t treated with antifungal drugs, it can become a respiratory disease and spread throughout the body. “Without treatment, it’s 100 percent fatal, and even with treatment, it has a pretty high fatality rate,” Lockhart said. In people, it causes painful skin ulcers. If untreated, the disease can also be severe and may kill those who have weakened immune systems.

Risk of contagion is complicated because symptoms don’t always show up right away. Two members of a family who moved from Brazil to the United Kingdom developed the disease three years after the move, health authorities reported in 2022. One of the family’s two cats turns out to have been infected with Sporothrix brasiliensis. A vet who treated the cat was also infected.

The fungi’s unusual properties may help it conquer new territory.

The cat-infecting fungus is a relative of Sporothrix schenckii fungi that cause skin infections, called sporotrichosis or rose growers’ disease. Like many other soil-dwelling fungi, Sporothrix fungi are dimorphic, meaning they have two forms. “It is a mold in the cold and a yeast in the beast,” Lockhart said. That means it grows as long, stringy filaments known as hyphae in soil but then changes to single-celled yeast when its spores infect people or animals.

Most fungal infections happen when people inhale spores or, in the case of rose growers’ disease, when spores enter skin through scratches and puncture wounds from rose thorns. But S. brasiliensis can spread in its yeast form, Lockhart said. “That doesn’t happen with any of the other dimorphic fungi.”

Cat behavior may be why felines seem more susceptible to catching S. brasiliensis, Lockhart said. “Those of you who have cats, you know they do two things: They’re loving all over each other, grooming each other, licking, or they’re fighting, biting and scratching. Those are their two most frequent activities, both of which allow the transfer of Sporothrix brasiliensis from one to another.”

Cat scratches and bites may inject the yeast directly into other cats, people, dogs and other animals. “I’m convinced that half of the human cases that come from cats are people who are trying to stuff pills down their cat’s throats to treat the sporotrichosis,” getting scratched and bitten in the process. Grooming may also spread the fungus around the cat’s body or to other cats, he said.

The fungus has another unusual means of spread: Cats can sneeze out infectious yeast, researchers reported in Medical Mycology in 2022. “When the cat’s sneezing, it’s going on the surface, it’s going on the lab coats, it’s going into the air, it’s going everywhere,” Lockhart says.

The firehose of fungus-laden snot from a cat’s nose might also pose a danger to humans and felines after the infected cat has left the room. That’s because the fungi may live a long time on surfaces, Lockhart said. Up to 10 weeks, according to one lab experiment testing how long the fungi could grow on stainless steel discs that mimic the examination tables in veterinary offices. By contrast, Candida albicans, fungi that people naturally carry and that sometimes cause yeast infections, lasted 48 hours. Candida auris, a fungus that can cause infections in those with weakened immune systems, died after about a month, he said.

S. brasiliensis’ persistence means that if veterinarians miss a spot while cleaning, the lingering fungus could infect other patients. The good news is that the fungi is easily killed with bleach and ethanol, Lockhart said.

There’s no commercially available test for S. brasiliensis and cats coming into the United States just need a certificate from a vet saying that they appear healthy. That makes the disease easy to miss.

Because veterinarians may be the first to notice when the fungus arrives in a new country, Lockhart urged pet health professionals to notify local public health labs or the CDC if they start seeing cases of sporotrichosis. “There is an opportunity for it to spread quite easily,” he said. “We need veterinarians working with infection prevention and public health to make sure that this doesn’t get here and happen in the U.S.”

[dogtoks]

[higglety]

you're laughing. Those dogs were stuck on that large pile of snow until it melted into a tiny pile of snow and you're laughing

[theoneofwhomisblue]

Thirsty wunk

[blossposs]

[chicken-n-biscuits]

Oh my God girl

[bedupolker]

Re: macro photos, I love this account. Something about the way the account Tiny Sanctuary holder captures "mundane" moments with his bugs just really highlights the way they appear to think and make decisions and interact with each other that, to me, doesn't look that different than any small mammal.

I didn't know slugs had any impulse to fight. It looks like aggressive smooching.

I love these newborn isopods just ramming into each other like tiny calves or something.

[chicken-n-biscuits]

The napperrrrr

Pardon ambient 'my cat from hell' noises

[kavohh707]

The first steps in life are not easy, not for humans and not for rooks. This rook probably just left the nest that day and walking on uneven ground the first time is not easy. They also cannot really fly at this stage, they manage a few flaps, but gaining height and landing is really difficult, so they rather walk.

[despazito]

Declawing, debarking, and ear cropping procedures to be banned in Ontario starting January 2027.

[mellifexfarm]

eat my ugly

[spindle-and-nima]

You are....not the brightest.

[mousegirlheart]

um actually there's nothing wrong with letting cats be outdoor pets. your cat is depressed locked inside forever. it's animal abuse. let it outside. more cats should be let outside more often. especially overnight.

[thegenderal]

even before i lived in a place with a massive population of feral cats decimating the wildlife i had read the studies and knew the data said that TNR did not work and we need to be trapping and euthanizing feral cats but now that i’ve lived in a place where there are an enormous number of feral cats it’s like, inconceivable to me that anyone supports TNR, not just for the health of the world but for the sake of the fucking cats

[thegenderal]

nobody will even acknowledge it not even in most conservation circles. We have a solution to a massive, massive problem that is more humane, cheaper, easier, takes less time, prevents animal suffering, and saves valuable members of our disappearing ecosystem. And nobody is even willing to theoretically acknowledge that it exists outside of a few very small circles.

[thegenderal]

it works. It works. It is better for the cats. It’s better for the cats. Living in a place where you cannot drive 10 minutes without seeing a new roadkill cat almost every single day really makes you think about how much suffering could have been prevented if we just dealt with the problem we have created. It’s not a pleasant way to go, being hit by a car. Or being ripped apart by a predator, or eating a poison, or starving to death, of dying of an infection, or an illness, or any of the hundred thousand ways an animal in the wild passes without human intervention. Euthanasia is simply falling asleep. It is fucking wild to me that saying you think we should take responsibility for our mistakes and ensure that cats fall asleep peacefully instead of capturing them and then hurling them back out into the world SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to die in agony makes people treat you like a fucking serial killer.

[thegenderal]

And if you don’t care about cats dying in agony do you care about the world around you? There’s a species of bird we only know ever existed because someone’s cat brought home our only example. That’s horrific. We’ve lost so much biodiversity because we simply won’t listen to the research, which again, has proven that TNR is not effective.

[thegenderal]

a peaceful death is not the worst thing that could happen to an animal.

[thegenderal]

@cathartidae sources for ya!

Sources:

https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW468 “How Effective and Humane Is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) for Feral Cats?” 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6523511/ “A Case of Letting the Cat out of The Bag—Why Trap-Neuter-Return Is Not an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat (Felis catus) Management” (also has a thousand references attached that are handy)

Not a reference so much as the human society actively admitting that TNR does nothing to decrease population, actively contributes to harming wildlife, and doesn’t actually help the cats in any way, just reduces some of the nuisance behavior that people complain about: https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/real-impacts-trap-neuter-return

Unscientific from here on out as i don’t feel like trying to find the studies i read in like January of last year:

https://hahf.org/awake/the-trouble-with-trap-vaccinate-neuter-return/ “The Trouble With Trap-Neuter-Re (Abandon!) from the hillsborough animal health foundation, articles also link to studies

https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Evidence-Against-TNR.pdf from the american bird conservancy, has scientific articles quoted. 

[thegenderal]

Even More Sources on TNR being non-viable and ways that cats are impacting the world from birds to *hawai’i’s monk seals*

Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. (2022, October 26). Indoor cats vs. outdoor cats. Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota. https://aercmn.com/indoor-cats-vs-outdoor-cats/

Campbell, V. (2017, January 25). The Obituary of the Stephens Island Wren. All About Birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-obituary-of-the-stephens-island-wren/

Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/neuter/release methods ineffective in controlling domestic cat “colonies” on public lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23(3).

Coe, S. T., Elmore, J. A., Elizondo, E. C., & Loss, S. R. (2021). Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program. Wildlife Biology, 2021(1). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00799

del Hoyo, J., Collar, N., Kirwan, G. M., & Sharpe, C. J. (2022, October 25). Guadalupe storm-petrel (Hydrobates Macrodactylus), version 1.2. Birds of the World. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/guspet/cur/introduction

Dickman, C. R., & Newsome, T. M. (2015). Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 173, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.021

Edge. (2019, June 19). Guadalupe storm-petrel. EDGE of Existence. https://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/guadalupe-storm-petrel/

Galbreath, R., & Brown, D. (2004). The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis, 51(4).

Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. (2025). Feral cats. Feral Cats. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/#:~:text=Feral%20cats%20on%20islands%20have,kill%20approximately%202.4%20billion%20birds.

Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380

McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLOS ONE, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133915

Medina, F. M., Bonnaud, E., Vidal, E., Tershy, B. R., Zavaleta, E. S., Josh Donlan, C., Keitt, B. S., Corre, M., Horwath, S. V., & Nogales, M. (2011). A global review of the impacts of invasive cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates. Global Change Biology, 17(11), 3503–3510. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x

National Research Council. (1992, January 1). Scientific Bases for the Preservation of the Hawaiian Crow. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235935/

NOAA. (2024, August 29). Toxoplasmosis and its effects on Hawaiʻi Marine Wildlife. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacific-islands/endangered-species-conservation/toxoplasmosis-and-its-effects-hawaii-marine

Read, J. L., Dickman, C. R., Boardman, W. S., & Lepczyk, C. A. (2020). Reply to Wolf et al.: Why trap-neuter-return (TNR) is not an ethical solution for Stray Cat Management. Animals, 10(9), 1525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091525

Reed, L. (2022). The effects of free-roaming cats on native wildlife populations. Wildlife Rehabilitation Bulletin, 40(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.53607/wrb.v40.250

Salano, E. (2024, October 5). Eliciting the effect free roaming cats have on Native Hawaiian wildlife using stable isotope analysis. UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_etds/103/ 

Steele, J. H., Thorpe, S. A., & Turekian, K. K. (2009). Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Academic Press. 

science says it’s long past time to stop prolonging the suffering of feral cats, for the sake of the people, the native wildlife, and the goddamn cats themselves.

[spindle-and-nima]

Do you have any tips for cleaning bunny butts? One of my critters produces too many cecos and she’s kind of gross as a result (we think it’s due to her gut flora beings a bit off after some antibiotics and we’re modifying her diet to hopefully eliminate the issue)

If she is not eating her cecos, offer them to her to eat. Make sure she's on mostly hay though you can offer fresh grass

For cleaning special needs buns i have 2 methods:

Routine butt baths for special needs:

in this case use a solution of warm water and chlorhexidine in a big syringe (no needle ofc) or a peri bottle. You can buy bottles of chlorhex in concentrate and add a tiny bit to warm water until its sky blue. Like just enough that the water turns bluish. Have one person hold her in the C position on a thick folded towel. Use the syringe to target stream the solution onto her soiled fur and with your fingers, break up the chunks or rub the dried feces and urine away. I like to put a towel under the area im rinsing to keep everything else dry. As SOON as you are done, use a soft absorbent cloth (i love the moonqueen brand washcloths) and blot dry. Then use a pediatric hairdryer (pediatric ones are quieter) and dry the fur using a comb at the same time to break apart the fur as it clumps when wet. Ideally I trim their bums first and do a sanitary shave so it dries fast and is less stressful.

For super soiled nasty im talking poop smeared everywhere:

I use the shampoo "pure fur" by girl with the dogs. Its a hypoallergenic shampoo i use for kittens, puppies, and bun butts. Pre-prep a slightly soapy mixture (literally a drop in a cup of water). I use a peri bottle and shake it up to get a warm mix. In another bowl i have warm water and a syringe.

Have a person hold the bunny in a C hold on a layer of thick towel. Use the peri bottle to cover the soiled area in the shampoo mix. You are NOT getting the whole rabbit wet. You are only getting the soiled bits. Use your fingers to rub away the feces and urine and be quick. Let the shampoo solution sit for a min while rubbing the fur then using a syringe with warm water, rinse it off well.

The towel below them prevents the bunny from getting wet anywhere else by soaking the runoff. Plunking a bunny in water even if its just an inch is going to get them to freak out so this is the safest way. Once the bunny is clean, quickly blot dry with a soft absorbent cloth and get a pediatric hair dryer and dry while brushing with a comb. Again, ideally id cut away as much fur as I can first and have it trimmed so short that no brushing is needed.

Don't try to do this without assistance. Don't use water unless necessary. If you can get it off with a damp chlorhexidine soaked cloth, thats better. Rabbits freak out when getting wet anywhere and if they panic thrash they can break their own spines. Get someone to safely restrain then quickly get it done.

Good luck!

[sylvaniancritter]

cronch cronch

[stinkybrowndogs]

Its a little chilly this morning so Porch Time included a blanket