When Cats Saved Mankind

Cats and mankind have been living in harmony for many years but that has not always been the case. There have been times when cats have been nearly wiped out in the name of God. And what happened the Black Death reigned supreme for a lot longer than it should. So we will go back to the beginnings of recorded history to the time of the pharaohs of Egypt. Here cats were revered as Gods and many were mummified to last for eternity. Because the cats guarded the grain warehouses and killed the rats and mice that fed on the grain. Therefore reducing famines, that were the curse of Egypt. It was illegal to kill cats in those days, like cows in India today.

Then the nine lives of the humble cat who only wanted to help mankind by killing rodents that carried disease took a serious turn for the worse during the middle ages. Where witch hunts and burning at the stake were the norm. Someone who didn't like cats somehow connected them to witches and they were burnt at the stake with there owners. How they made that connection I'll never know. It started off with Pope Gregory IX in the 1232 who deemed the common house cat as diabolical. Then to make matters worse in1484 along came the greatest cat killer of all time, Pope Innocent VIII, who decreed something along the lines of all cats came from hell and should returned to the fires of hell by fire. Cats were mercilessly prosecuted and were burnt, so they would return to the fires of hell. It is amazing any survived because if you were caught with a cat you were burnt together. I still go to church and sometimes I just wonder why. And of course the Black Death was in the background surviving and thriving, because there were no cats to kill the rats that carried the fleas that caused the disease. Then along came the cat's savior King Louis XIII of France, who in the 1630s repealed the law and cats once again started to live. But they were still hated and killed for many centuries after that. I don't know if the Black Death subsided but cats once again protected mankind against the diseases carried by rodents. And the famines brought on by mice plagues.

Cats actually carry a few parasites, a few fleas and some diseases and a few can turn serious but not many. If cats were causing too much sickness they would not have invaded our lives as well as they have. But there are still people out there who do not like cats. When I first went to China about 20 years ago there were very few cats living with people and very few wild cats. I was amazed because I've had cats all my life and I never thought people didn't like cats. But then in China the people said cats carried disease and that was it. I think that might have something to do with that cat sick you get in your eye. Not serious just a slight problem for a week And if you were pregnant you had to keep away from cats. I think they were referring to toxoplasmosis, but if you get that when you are a kid it should not affect your baby. They also said cats were dirty but I don't think so. I think cats are one of the cleanest pets you can have. I think that came from the cats killing the rats and mice. Because rats are very dirty animals then because the cats killed and ate them they will also be dirty. A dirty by connection type of thing. Also there were some big sewer rats running round during the day. Once I saw a rat and a cat face off each other and the cat wasn't much bigger than the rat. They were about a foot apart staring each other out and the cat ran away. I'm not surprised the rat's teeth were bigger that the cats.

I think one of the reasons there were not many cats around is because they used to eat them. And every now and then the restaurant cat catches would pick up an cat they could find and take them back to the restaurant. I remember seeing cats in glass displays out the front of the restaurants. But somewhere between then and now they banned eating cats. So cats are now not on the menu and now there are cats everywhere. Most of them started off in someone's house and got thrown away, as most are very friendly. Also they have this thing about stomach worms. And in those days China was not as modern as now so stomach worms would have been a problem. Fleas are not really a problem because they have tile floors and wooden furniture.

If this attitude towards cats goes back generations then one can understand why historians say the Black Death started in China. Where there are rats and no cats then the rats dominate and that would have been a precursor for the disease to get close to people. Now when I go back to China there are still rats running around but not so many in the housing estates. There are many down by the river. Also they have a very efficient rubbish clean up system that keeps the cities very clean. Where I stay the rubbish is collected everyday. That would also keep the rat population down. And with so many discarded cats running around the rats don't have much of a chance. I've never seen this but I suspect the government picks up a lot of cats. There used to be colonies of stray cats living in some places but now I don't see them any more.

Now cats have once more retained the spot on the sofa and any mouse or rat that comes inside better beware. Well I hope so except our cat was rubbing noses with a rat once. I thought he was going to get his nose bitten but he didn't. I think just the smell of the cat keeps most rodent away. There are diseases out there that are carried by rodents and some are very deadly like the hantavirus and the plague or black death. If any of these deadly diseases turn the cat into a host then it will be goodbye cats and possibly goodbye us. But until that happens we should keep on loving our cats. And if there is ever a population explosion of the rodents who carry the hantavirus then humble cat might be our last hope. There is no vaccine and no cure for the hantavirus. 

For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm 

Thank you for your time 

Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist

Will The Cocolitzli Virus Return With Climate Change

I was a follower of Gerard Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" theory of the colonization of the Americas. But lately that theory has come under attack and the main culprit is the cocolitzli virus. This virus is a local virus, native to the Americas and it is deadly. Dr Francisco Hernadez, a Spanish physician in Mexico at the time of the conquest, in his writings never named the disease. He listed the symptoms but never named the disease. 

If it was smallpox or the plague or one of the other diseases from Europe, he would have known the disease and said so. But since he didn't name the disease Dr. John S. Marr MD an Historical Epidemiologist assumed he didn't know what it was. It was a new disease, native to the New World. But the Aztecs knew about it and they had a name for it, the Cocolitizli virus or the great pest. It is estimated this virus killed 16 out of every 20 people. It was deadly. There were 2 outbreaks one in1545 and the other in 1576 then it vanished. It is estimated to have killed around 17 million people.

Now fast forward to New Mexico in 1993 there was a strange deadly disease that was killing people very fast. It turned out to be a new strain of the Hantavirus that had first surfaced during the Korean war. Now this virus is also deadly. But the main difference between these two viruses is the one in New Mexico was transmitted from the rodent, a deer mouse to humans. While the Cocolitizli virus ended up, epidemiologist historians surmise because of how many people were killed, that the virus was transmitted from human to human.

If the Hantavirus goes human to human the human race has problems. Well it has already gone human to human once in Argentina there was an outbreak in 1998. There it went from patient to doctor and to wife and husband. We were lucky it died out before it did any serious damage to the human race. Because it died out so fast the host rodent was never found.

Now we will go back in history to the native Indians living in the South Western desert areas of America. The same area were the Hantavirus came back to life in 1993. The Indian peoples who live in the southern desert regions of the USA have a saying, “If a mouse walks over your bedding burn your bedding, and if a mouse moves into your house you move out.” They had been plagued by the disease for generations, but for modern man it was a new disease. This disease is like the Cocolotozli virus the local peoples knew about it but Spanish did not.

Also it might have paid a part in why the Native Indians left the desert areas. One of the unexplained migrations from early America is why did the Indian people pack up and leave their beautiful cities in the southern desert areas of the USA. There might have been a mice plague leaving the Indians with two choices – stay and die or leave so they left. 

The main reasons put forward so far are the usual ones, overpopulation with global warming equals famine so they left for greener pastures. The main problem with this theory is, if you are starving you can't walk very far. Also being humans we don't like to just up and go, well I don't. 

 

The archaeological record shows that they had what looks like the ritual burning of their homes meaning they weren’t coming back. I would say the ritual burning had more to do with the mice having moved in, so it was time for the native peoples to move out and on. If there was a mice plague and they saw mice everywhere they would have an incentive to leave. 

The local Indians would have been aware of the connections between the mice and the disease and they would have realized that to survive they would have to leave. Actually it is a mystery where they went, no one seems to know. 

Knowing about the mice and keeping out of their way has been passed down from generation to generation. It is possible to have started in antiquity so the saga of mice and men continues to this very day.

For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out. http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm 

Thank you for your time 

Peter Legrove The suburban survivalist

"Be Fruitful And Multiply"

I never thought I would read these words on a religious pamphlet.
Times they are a changing, if more religious people got off the "Go forth and multiply" band wagon we might have a chance.

God said on the first page of the Bible (Genesis Chapter 1 verse 22, 28) "Be fruitful and multiply" but if you read on further there are other references to not overdoing the multiplying. 

In the Genesis 3 verse 16 (King James Version) it is written "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children" God is not really making out that getting pregnant and having babies is a happy thing to do. 

Also further on in the first book of the New Testament in Matthew 24 verse 19 Jesus says "And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Admittedly here the Lord Jesus is talking about the end of times. And now I think we are nearing the end of times, so it might be time to lay off having too many kids. 

At the moment possibly the greatest threat to mankind is overpopulation when it is combined with global warming and peak oil. 

But it is both politically and religiously taboo to do anything about it, so what do we do. We can watch as the world overpopulates itself towards extinction. When we look back at modern history through the last few thousand years we can see that the population has nearly always been controlled by famines. 

 

In India there were famines throughout the 1700s and 1800s. One famine was so bad there were not enough living to bury the dead. It was called the Skull Famine or something like that. So our future doesn't look too bright. 

The growth model will be the end of civilization as we know it. 

Most scientists seem to agree on global warming being caused by human activities but no one has ever mentioned doing anything about the population. It seems obvious that doing something about the population would affect global warming, but it is politically and religiously incorrect to do so. 

So we carry on as usual and hope for the best. But Armageddon as mentioned in the Bible could happen any time soon. I would say anyone 50 or younger should see the start of the collapse of civilization as we know it. 

  For more gloomy stories about what we could expect very soon check out.

http://www.animalsdinosaursandbugs.com/Weakest-Link2.htm
Thank you for your time
Peter Legrove
The suburban survivalist