Feral cats in Los Angeles go to work

Joy wrote:

I just don't
understand why having more cats around wouldn't also mean more fleas.

I think they're different types of fleas.

I was wondering about that - that would make a lot of sense.

Joyce

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jofirey wrote:

Think in terms of how many rats and mice one cat can kill in a lifetime.
Especially one that depends on them for food. Now think how many rats and
mice that is over ten years if they aren't killed by that single cat but are
allowed to reproduce at will for that period of time.

Good points!

Joyce
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There are some historians that believe the 'black death' (Bubonic plague)
was helped along because of people's superstition about cats. They didn't
want the cats around as they were associated as being a witch's familiar.
No cats around = more rats around. Rats carried fleas... fleas carried
plague

That has to be an urban legend. The Black Death was c.1350, the witch
panic didn't start until the 1580s. The Black Death was more often
blamed on the Jews, who had no particular association with cats.

Though people doing appallingly cruel things to cats didn't necessarily
have anything to do with a belief in witches. Some kinds of ritual cat
torture survived in Scotland until around 1800. (Maybe the people who
took part in it all emigrated to Texas to do it to rattlesnakes instead).

============== j-c ====== @ ====== purr . demon . co . uk ==============
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On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:14:05 +0000, Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
There are some historians that believe the 'black death' (Bubonic plague)
was helped along because of people's superstition about cats. They didn't
want the cats around as they were associated as being a witch's familiar.
No cats around = more rats around. Rats carried fleas... fleas carried
plague

That has to be an urban legend. The Black Death was c.1350, the witch
panic didn't start until the 1580s. The Black Death was more often
blamed on the Jews, who had no particular association with cats.

Though people doing appallingly cruel things to cats didn't necessarily
have anything to do with a belief in witches. Some kinds of ritual cat
torture survived in Scotland until around 1800. (Maybe the people who
took part in it all emigrated to Texas to do it to rattlesnakes instead).

Such torture is still common. I torture my kitty by stuffing his face with
freshly grilled tuna until he can't walk.

Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:

There are some historians that believe the 'black death' (Bubonic plague)
was helped along because of people's superstition about cats. They didn't
want the cats around as they were associated as being a witch's familiar.
No cats around = more rats around. Rats carried fleas... fleas carried
plague

That has to be an urban legend. The Black Death was c.1350, the witch
panic didn't start until the 1580s. The Black Death was more often
blamed on the Jews, who had no particular association with cats.

There was more than one wave of plague epidemic, though, so witch
hunts and cat superstition might have coincided with a later epidemic.

As for Jews, yes - part of keeping kosher involved certain kinds of
cleanliness in the home. So Jewish homes and villages tended to be less
attractive to rats.

Joyce

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On 07 Jan 2008 18:48:17 GMT, wrote:
Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:

There are some historians that believe the 'black death' (Bubonic plague)
was helped along because of people's superstition about cats. They didn't
want the cats around as they were associated as being a witch's familiar.
No cats around = more rats around. Rats carried fleas... fleas carried
plague

That has to be an urban legend. The Black Death was c.1350, the witch
panic didn't start until the 1580s. The Black Death was more often
blamed on the Jews, who had no particular association with cats.

There was more than one wave of plague epidemic, though, so witch
hunts and cat superstition might have coincided with a later epidemic.

As for Jews, yes - part of keeping kosher involved certain kinds of
cleanliness in the home. So Jewish homes and villages tended to be less
attractive to rats.

What certain kinds of cleanliness? I'm only familiar with such
superstitious prohibitions such as mixing meat/dairy, eating port or
shelfish, etc. I don't recall anything in the bible about keeping your
trash and excrement out of your water supply or anything else truly
beneficial. They certainly didn't know about quarantine and the sick and
healthy not assembling together to share their infections. The black plague
swepth through europe without any care of the population's ethnic or
religious background.

On 07 Jan 2008 04:57:17 GMT, wrote:
jofirey wrote:

Think in terms of how many rats and mice one cat can kill in a lifetime.
Especially one that depends on them for food. Now think how many rats and
mice that is over ten years if they aren't killed by that single cat but are
allowed to reproduce at will for that period of time.

Good points!

Actually no. If a cat kills a thousand rats from a population of ten
thousand rats, the population won't decline enough to matter. It isn't as
if those thousand rats could have an offspring of a million rats in few
generations and those million rats have an offspring of a trillion rats in a
few more generations. Food supplies aren't infinite.

If cat(s) take out a portion of the rats' population, the survivors will
simply take up the slack and in fact be healthier as a whole due to the
cat(s) pruning out the genetically inferior.

wrote:
Joy wrote:

I just don't
understand why having more cats around wouldn't also mean more fleas.

I think they're different types of fleas.

I was wondering about that - that would make a lot of sense.

And according to the history channel, it's true. The fleas were
specifically rat fleas, which need rats to survive and reproduce, but
will jump on and bite on almost anything warm blooded when their host
dies. Cats (and terriers, which I don't think were in wide use either in
places hard hit by plague) tended to serve as a buffer, keeping living
and dead rats out and away from human living quarters, and cleaning up
the rat corpses fleas and all promptly after killing the rats.

Maeve ^..^
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wrote:

jofirey wrote:

wrote in message

I've heard this a lot, and at first glance, it makes a lot of sense. But
then it occurred to me that, as every cat slave knows, cats also carry
fleas. So how does keeping cats around reduce the flea population? They
didn't have Advantage back then.

They also didn't let the cats into their living quarters or their beds
like we are inclined to.

I'm sure they didn't choose to let rats in, either. Rats would just come
in, but if someone discovered rats in the house, wouldn't they kill them
or shoo them out?

Plain to see you've had no experience with rats!
Fortunately there was no disease involved, but I had rats in
my attic in Pasadena. Outside of an occasional scuffling
sound at night, I was unaware of them, until critters called
"oriental rat mites" moved downstairs into my clothes
closets (and clothes). You think FLEA bites itch, try
mites!!!!!

"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote:

Plain to see you've had no experience with rats!

Plain to see that you didn't catch my previous post, where I said
just that!

Fortunately there was no disease involved, but I had rats in
my attic in Pasadena. Outside of an occasional scuffling
sound at night, I was unaware of them, until critters called
"oriental rat mites" moved downstairs into my clothes
closets (and clothes). You think FLEA bites itch, try
mites!!!!!

Hmm... you know, I suffer from an inordinate amount of itching. Very,
very intense itching, actually. It's only in particular places, pretty
much confined to my extremities. My hands (backs of hands only, not
palms), my forearms (back again, not the under part), and also my
feet - both top and the soles.

If it were just my feet, I'd assume athlete's foot. But since it also
happens on my hands - also on my fingers - and on my forearms (but not
the upper arms or shoulders, or anywhere on my torso), I figure it must
be something else. Flea bites, maybe? The itching is so intense it's
very hard not to scratch. Within a few minutes, I can remove the top
layer of my skin, and then I have a big sore. Sometimes this happens
before I become conscious of the fact that I'm scratching, and by the
time I realize it, it's too late.

Could this be from mites? Does it make sense that mites would attack
only the extremities?

Joyce

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