#saving wildcats

[dingoat]

It's been a little while since I've attempted any fundraising, but I've just become aware that the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland is preparing to release its first group of Scottish Wildcats from their breeding for release program back into the Cairngorms National Park! This is a project I've been interested in and given support to since I visited Scotland some years ago and was able to see some (non-releasable) cats myself, as well as drive through the wilderness that should be their home. Not only is this incredible milestone imminent, but they're currently running a fundraising drive to assist with this program, and Big Give's Green Match Fund is doubling any funds received until the 27th!

So, much as I did to help the bats affected by the Australian bushfires back in 2020, I'd love to offer some little sketchbook scribbles for anyone so inclined and in a position to give a little to this cause. If you donate any amount to Saving Wildcats through Big Give at any point over the next three days, let me know about it (pm, discord, email a screenshot of your donation, no need to have any real-world identifying details attached), and Ahuska will sketch something for you in thanks- whether it's a beloved character of yours, a favourite creature or cherished pet, you name it!

[becharm-27]

Stargirl: Summer School - Main Cast Members First Appearances

[jarvis-cockhead]

I need Americans to stop weighing in on the UKs indoor vs outdoor cat debate until they read up on our biodiversity crisis and learn exactly why our wildlife decline is so serious (spoiler: it's not the cats)

[daily-whistlepaw]

daily whistlepaw until hu becomes PoV day 996

Whis being picked up by a human

[hekateisconfused]

Wildcat Momotarou....... One day.... ONE DAY YOU'LL BE MINE!!!!!!

[itslookingback]

yes

YES

the wildcat is out

[sentient-rift]

"Hey, look! Carol's singing carols! Isn't it ama-SING?"

"Careful, Terry. You might rub Corazon the SONG way."

"Oh, come on! That pun was ONE-NOTE if you as me."

"Oh, really? I'll try better next RHYME."

[juicydangler]

Hi, I'm an Australian living in Ireland. I've never lived in a country that has rabies. Keep your cats indoors.

Even in countries that don't have rabies there's FIV, FeLV, panleukopaenia, dogs, and fucking cars. Even in countries that don't have rabies, outdoor cats kill wildlife at a devastating pace without you even knowing about it. Even in countries without rabies, cats displace native small carnivores. Even in countries without rabies, displacement by and/or interbreeding with domestic cats drives native wildcat species to extinction. Even in countries without rabies, other carnivores opportunistically prey on cats. Even in countries without rabies, so-called working cats kill more wildlife than they do mice and rats. Even in countries without rabies cats can get lost or severely injured or kidnapped or go feral. Even in countries without rabies the average lifespan of an outdoor cat is about 3 years vs about 15 indoors.

Hope this helps :)

I've been reading so much about rabies and cats and there are so few cat owners who keep their cats up to date on rabies vaccinations and buds please keep your kitty's jabs up-to-date and please please please keep your cats inside and please treat any cat with an unknown vaccination history as a wild animal and don't try to touch it or pet it or catch it.

The most recent survivor of the Milwaukee protocol is an 8 year old girl who contacted rabies through scratches from feral cats that lived in a colony at her school.

Don't touch strange cats even if they're friendly, and teach your kids not to touch strange cats either. (For that matter teach your kids not to touch strange dogs either, but decades of stray eradication and mandatory vaccines means that the US is one of the few places in the world where cats are more likely to be rabid than dogs)

Also did you know that there's one case of transplant-acquired rabies recorded in the US? The recipient got a kidney from a donor who died in an accident and nobody was aware the donor had rabies. The recipient died of rabies, which is a bit of an extreme flavor of graft failure if you ask me. Terrifying!

Anyway. If you, too, want to have nightmares about rabies you can search my website (www.ms-demeanor.com) for "keep your fucking cat indoors" and scroll to the section on rabies and read some nightmare fuel (like the case report on the family that moved across 3 states with their 13 barn cats, unaware that one was incubating rabies).

Did you know that in 1994, 665 people in New Hampshire had to be given post exposure prophylaxis for rabies because of one infected kitten that had contact with a racoon before being brought to a pet store?

The only way animals are tested for rabies is to examine their brain tissue. The animal is killed in order to do this. If your pet is exposed to rabies they stand a much, much, much better chance of being quarantined instead of being euthanized for testing if you have kept their vaccinations current.

Please keep your pets' vaccinations up to date, and please keep your cat indoors. There's a risk of exposure even for indoor cats, so make sure they've got their shots.

[cyarsk52-20]

When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door." From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else. When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career. Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have … not made it. What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner. A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne. She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end. Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame." In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life." He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm. Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

Credit: Will Stenberg

[typhlonectes]

The Scottish wildcat has been wiped out by breeding with domestic cats

After 2000 years of isolation, a few decades of interbreeding have rendered the animal “genomically extinct”

Though it lies in ruins on the northeast coast of England, Kilton Castle was once an imposing stone fortress, home to several noble families, and—it appears—at least eight cats. Archaeological excavations in the 1960s uncovered a well, at the bottom of which lay the bones of several felines dating back to the 14th century. The animals were an odd mix: Some were domestic cats, but other, larger specimens appeared to be European wildcats, a fierce, burly species that has inhabited the continent for hundreds of thousands of years. The two species’ closeness in death was deceptive. A study published today in Current Biology finds that even though European wildcats and domestic cats overlapped in Great Britain for more than 2000 years—including at sites such as Kilton—they appear to have almost never interbred. That changed suddenly about 70 years ago, when domestic cats began to mate with wildcats in Scotland. In the span of mere decades, the genome of the Scottish wildcat—the last remaining wildcat in Great Britain—has become so corrupted that the animal is now effectively extinct, a second study in the same issue finds. The findings could complicate ongoing efforts to save the most endangered mammalian carnivore in Great Britain...

Read more: https://www.science.org/content/article/scottish-wildcat-has-been-wiped-out-breeding-domestic-cats

[masseffectdoctor]

This is also not to mention the IMMENSE pressure the SAG-AFTRA strike happening right before SDCC and other massive summer events that build up to the hype for the fall television season will have.

This was an incredibly calculated move on the part of SAG-AFTRA and they purposely chose an excellent time to strike where the numbers were clear.

"this is the summer time. Right before the biggest uptick in the third quarter for your profits. You have seen what we bring, and now we are REMOVING IT ENTIRELY"

That was most likely incredibly well calculated action. Studios are gonna get REAL desperate. They're gonna get REAL nasty. And they're gonna get REAL fucked, and unfortunately this means we are also going to have a considerable downtick in television and other mediums.

So not only is it critical to support them right this moment and listen to the direction they give on these coordinated actions, it is also critical to keep this in mind. Your fave movies, tv shows, etc? They're likely ALL going to be delayed or divided into parts.

Supporting a strike also means supporting the follout of the strike. It is MEANT to disrupt. The wave from the strike WILL be felt after it is over. Especially if they call for a boycott.

So stay strong, stay together, and keep your eyes and ears ready for how we can help.

And if you're financially able support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike and union funds as it can help them hold out OR get legal aid and support when it is critically needed.

A reminder with the recent headlines connected to the wga strike

DO NOT BOYCOTT UNLESS THE WGA OFFICIALLY CALLS FOR ONE!

I understand you're mad. I understand you're frustrated. I get it! But starting an unofficial boycott will do absolutely nothing to help the WGA and indeed could very well harm efforts, both by cutting the (already limited) residuals the writers are being paid, by potentially creating another excuse for the executives to not negotiate, and if the WGA does call for an official boycott a bunch of people already boycotting will lower the numbers in the official boycott. If there's gonna be a boycott it needs to be very well organized to do any good.

If you wanna help, listen to what the WGA itself says you can do to help. A big one is if you have the money, a big one is donating to the Entertainment Community Fund, to help ensure the striking writers don't go broke. This is gonna be especially big since it's seriously looking like SAG-AFTRA is gonna strike after all.

As I said, if the WGA believes a boycott is necessary and will help their goals they will announce it through official channels. Until the WGA calls for a boycott, DO NOT BOYCOTT. Thank you have a good day.

[becharm-27]

Happy birthday, Brian Stapf!

And to his character, Ted Grant 🥊 Our original Wildcat 🐈‍⬛

[jazzcathaven]

When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door." From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else. When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career.

Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have ... not made it.

What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner. A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne. She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end. Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame.

"In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life." He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm.

Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

Credit: Will Stenberg

[kenandeliza]

Small shazam Idea: Training With Wildcat!

One day Captain Marvel asked the former worldwide champion boxer Wildcat to train one of his close friends.

"Why don't you train him yourself?" He asked

"I am not a good teacher, besides, you're the best man I could think of for the job" Captain Marvel smiled

And so, on the next day, Wildcat encounters a young boy in front of his Boxing Place.

"This is the friend Cap's been talking about!? A scrawny kid? He definitely needs more protein to build muscles"

Wildcat would then Train Billy how to box, but he questions why a civillian child would learn how to defend themselves, this is not like back in his day after all where Crooks and mobs are everywhere

"I know what you're thinking Mister, but I am a reporter working closely with Captain Marvel, there will be a time where he can't save me, so I figure, why not start here?" The young boy chuckled.

"Even his smile is similar to Captain Marvel.." Wildcat thought to himself, a bit saddened that a young boy like this had to take up a job, and learn how to fight in this day and age

The day would eventually get weirder when Captain Marvel knew the boxing techniques that Wildcat had shown to Billy.

"How did you know that move?"

"Oh that? Billy showed me! He said you're pretty cool!" Marvel beamed

[skrunksthatwunk]

thinking about how eiji's a pole vaulter and how ash talks about eiji "flying" and how eiji's associated with bird imagery and how eiji's free (unlike ash) and how eiji comes in on a plane and leaves on a plane and how ash cannot fly, ash cannot be free, how nyc is ash's prison, and how ash is the leopard who dies climbing the mountain, unable to live at such elevation, how he was trying to reach the sky and be free but was always stuck to the earth, how he chose to die instead of climbing back down, how he chose to die where he could see the sky and hope and freedom almost like a bird with eiji's letter right in front of him rather than letting everything go wrong and ruin it once again, how eiji's a failed pole vaulter anyway, how a bad fall ruined his career and grounded him (physically and emotionally), how it took flying to america and meeting ash and needing to save him and skip for him to try flying again, how he landed hard and harsh and still the thought of that escape compelled ash to protect eiji at all costs because if he could fly that means something to him, even if he doesn't think he can fly, how eiji is the manifestation of his hope and how when he breaks and asks eiji to stay with him a while he folds himself over his legs and weighs him down and traps him and grounds him, how ash fights like hell to keep eiji alive not because he thinks he can be like him (hopeful, flying, innocent), but because he makes him forget the gravity of his situation, and so he can see eiji fly again. how he wants to see him escape. how eiji is a bird and ash is a wildcat and how ash never once saw eiji as prey. how eiji never saw ash as a predator. how it is eiji's naivete that first endears ash to him, how it is his freedom and flight and removal from darkness and his ability to leave that darkness that really roots eiji in ash's blood as something essential to him keeping on living in this hell of nyc. how it is that distance from the violence and that hope for the future that ash chooses to surround himself in as he dies. how ash dies in a dream because he feels more than anything that he can't fly like eiji, that he can never leave. how his violence is a part of him and will be forever, how it weighs him down. how he wants to enjoy the view from the mountainside rather than looking up from the ground below. as if they can both fly. as if he is with him up there and not grounded. eye-to-eye with what he can't have, seeing eiji's homeland: the sky. how he dies trying to reach the top because he couldn't take retreating and trying again. how ash, tired and tired and tired and convinced it will go on forever if he crawls back down the mountain, chooses to close his life deluged in eiji, in eiji's insistence that they can fly together, in eiji's hope for him and for them, in eiji's beautiful dream. how ash dies without trying to realize that dream. how ash, in dying, destroys it.

[jadeseadragon]

#Repost @scotlandisnow

"Following the release of Scottish wildcats into the Cairngorms National Park last year, this summer 'Saving Wildcats' are getting ready to release more into the population 🐈

Tracking their movements using GPS radio collars, we know 17 of the 19 released last June, have stayed within the project area. With some starting to settle down but most continuing to roam about the countryside, scoping out different areas.

As Scotland's last remaining native cat species, we're proud to support this project and make progress towards vital global conservation."