News Briefs for the Week of May 19, 2002
By Marcella Durand for Cat Facts
- Brits Prefer Cats
And that's not all the interesting news from across the Atlantic. According to research conducted by the Cats Protection League (CPL), cats outnumber dogs as pets in Great Britain by about 1.4 million, with 7.5 million cats keeping the Brits happy company at home. This compares to only 4.9 million cats owned in the U.K. in 1979.
In a survey conducted by the CPL, nearly 40 percent of people surveyed named cats as their favorite pet, while only 7 percent preferred dogs. Fifty-seven percent said they liked cats because they were affectionate, 49 percent liked their independence and 46 percent liked that famous feline cleanliness. Cats were most popular with the 35 to 44 age group, while older people preferred dogs. (Go figure! Maybe they actually like mud all over the house.)
Nearly two-thirds of cat owners said curling up with their cat was their favorite way to relax-beating out chatting with a friend or going out for a drink. Surprisingly-or maybe not-almost half of both men and women said they would rather wake up with their cat than their partner (kitty doesn't hog all the blankets, just some of them). And 98 percent of women said they would rather date someone who liked cats, which makes perfect sense, of course. After all, would you want to date someone who didn't appreciate an independent, yet affectionate, nature and the ability to groom oneself with one's tongue?
- No Bill of Rights for British Pets
Enough food and water to sustain you; freedom from discomfort, pain, injury and disease; freedom to express your normal, feline behavior; freedom from fear and distress-is that so much for a cat to ask?
Well, apparently it is. In an effort to curtail what it says is a drastic jump in animal cruelty cases, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in Britain proposed a "Bill of Rights" that would make five basic "freedoms" for animals law. "We are saying that every owner should have a duty of care to every animal," says a spokeswoman for the RSPCA.
Unfortunately, the Bill of Rights was dismissed as "silly nonsense" by Elliot Morley, the Animal Health Minister. Morley is presently working on updating Britain's animal cruelty laws, some of which date back to 1911. He says he has received more than 1,800 letters from individuals and organizations during the consultation period on the proposed Animal Welfare Bill, which would consolidate what he calls "outdated" animal cruelty laws into one piece of legislation.
The RSPCA says that reports of animal cruelty have increased over the last 10 years by 86,531, from 36,625 cases 10 years ago to a horrifying 123,156 cases today. The RSPCA had hoped that a Bill of Rights would prevent many of these cases from occurring. "At the moment, legislation does not enable us to do anything with animals unless they are already suffering," says the RSPCA spokeswoman.
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