Ulsan has no plans, repeat, no plans to catch street cats

Yesterday the twitterverse in Korea exploded with the news of a plan by the district of Namgu in Ulsan (close to Busan, in the south of the country) to offer cash rewards to people who would capture street cats. The planned campaign was said to be (paraphrasing) a "unique way to reduce the hindrance and damage caused by street cats".

Such a campaign might not have raised much of a fuss a decade or two ago, but as I have written before (here and here for example), Korea is on the verge of becoming a cat-loving country. From personal experience alone I get the impression that a slight majority still sees cats as pests, but this is continuing to decrease.

After the planned campaign hit the news Twitter exploded, and the bulletin boards on the websites of Ulsan and Namgu district filled up with messages on the planned campaign. The most retweeted one was this one that I retweeted as well:

Fast forward a day, and the Namgu website now has the following popup:

What it says is this:

"Announcement about street cats

This is to announce that we have no plans in our city district to order the capture of cats or award money to those who do."

So just one day after the news we either have a backtrack or a clarification in order to calm the flood of emails and messages and tweets that have been coming in.

It is possible that the city was thinking of something along the lines of this article from two years ago - the article details how some cities in Gyeonggi-do (the province surrounding Seoul) have given money to those who capture cats...who are then neutered and released, no harm done. This so-called TNR (trap-neuter-release) program is the only way to achieve a happy balance between those that do and don't like cats, and it is also the only way to assure a stable population.

According to this article from today, the local government is saying that they have been neutering street cats since June and this "campaign" was a mistake - perhaps they were planning to carry out a reward program in the same way the other cities mentioned have. Who knows. In any case, Ulsan would like you to know that it definitely does not pay people to capture street cats and please just leave us alone now we really don't pay people to do that and have no plans to do so....

Read more...

Final hand update

You may already have noticed from the increased posting frequency, but as of three days ago my hands have been bandage free and have more or less healed up:

In case you missed it, the failure of Operation Help Cat was what caused the hands to be bandaged in the first place, plus a tetanus shot and a lot of antibiotics in both pill and IV needle form. The hands were bandaged for a total of six days, not too bad. And yesterday while at Seoul Tower I managed to sneak a stray cat a meal of dry food so everything is back to normal on the feline front.

By the way, Cosmoglotta is now up to 1939, and including the break during WWII that means there isn't much left to go. The latest issue is about the history of the alphabet, an article translated from French.

Read more...

Hand update

After another visit to the hospital including a 15-minute IV injection of antibiotics, my right hand is now more or less normal aside from the scratches you can see here. With only my left index finger still held up (until at least Saturday) typing speed is almost back to normal, and I have an extra long post just about ready to put up to prove it.

It's quite nice to have the benefit of medicine to give one the courage to pick up a cat with pneumonia to try to help it, even if the attempt fails. At worst (in Korea at least) this means one is out about $400, and after a few trips to the hospital and a few days of annoyance one is back to full health again. Without the convenience of a tetanus shot within the first eight hours though and who knows...I actually remember one of the few times as a child being scared by my teacher, one that decided to tell us about what happens to a person with lockjaw as their symptoms progress. Can't remember why he decided to tell us about that (I think it was grade 4) but he went into a fair bit of detail, about first not recognizing your family anymore, always being thirsty, then one's jaw locks up, back arches and that's the end, according to what he told us that day.

Although now that I think about it, maybe he told us that on the day we got vaccinations against it. All I can remember is him telling us about the disease but certainly there was a reason for it. Perhaps he put too much emphasis on the scariness of the disease and not enough on the "so now that you're getting vaccinated, you don't need to worry about it!" part.

This also reminds me of this video from Steven Pinker, on the myth of violence. That is, that the world is currently at the most peaceful state it has ever been, in spite of the fact that we have the capability to wreak more destruction than we ever have before. He mentions in the video some of the violent sport humans used to enjoy, including burning cats. And while it is true that we certainly have progressed in that area, one must also keep in mind that without an effective means of protection against disease and hunger (i.e. animals can steal the food you worked hard to produce and no food could easily mean death), it's no wonder that human-animal relations were not at their highest back then.



Edit: one day after mentioning yesterday that my girlfriend now has a blog (every post with pictures of our cats), we see the effect of the Page F30 Bump. Page views are off the charts! is somewhat inaccurate (since you always end up redoing the chart anyway) but sounds better than page views have substantially readjusted the chart's upper limit!

Read more...

Quick hand update

I don't want to spend too much time writing about the condition of my hands after the failed cat rescue attempt, but here's what they look like after a visit to the hospital today:

My spacebar thumb is back which is nice. Left index finger has been attached to some sort of stiff board to make sure it doesn't move at all, as that finger is somewhat swollen. Total hospital bill should end up somewhere around $400.

On a related note, my girlfriend has a blog now, and thus far it has nothing but pictures of our cats (Windy, Goma and MB when he was living in Korea). The post this link goes to shows Windy a few days after we picked him up off the street (scrawny enough that his shoulder blades came together) vs. Windy now (trying to lose weight). Yesterday she was absolutely thrilled that three people came in a single day, including one from the US. The thrill of watching the visitors to one's first blog...

Read more...

How does the Dvorak keyboard compare to Qwerty with three hurt fingers?

After yesterday's disastrous cat rescue attempt, I went to the hospital again this morning to get the hands looked at and now they look like this:

The bandages are not so much because my fingers have been completely mangled (because they haven't), but rather because I'm not supposed to use them for a few days, which includes typing. That means that I have to type with seven digits for the next few days.

So while we're on the subject, how does the Dvorak keyboard that I use compare in a situation like this? Seven digits is much slower than usual, but is it still relatively faster/more comfortable than Qwerty? This applet will tell us a bit.

Sample text from Wikipedia:

English dictionaries describe finger as meaning either one of the five digits including the thumb, or one of the four excluding the thumb (in which case they are numbered from 1 to 4 starting with the index finger closest to the thumb). Linguistically, it appears that the original sense was to include the thumb as a finger: the word is derived from *‍penkwe-ros (also rendered as *penqrós which was, in the inferred Proto-Indo-European language, a suffixed form of *penkwe (or *penqe), "five", which has given rise to many Indo-European-family words (tens of them defined in English dictionaries) that involve or flow from concepts of fiveness.

That gives us the following:

Unusable fingers right now are fourth from the left, plus fourth from the right. The thumb doesn't really count because the spacebar can be hit with the unhurt left thumb although admittedly I'm not used to using it for that purpose. Now that I think about it my left thumb never really does anything when using the computer.

Left index finger: Dvorak 14%, Qwerty 21%
Right index finger: Dvorak 20%, Qwerty 19%

Looks to be about the same. One interesting thing though is that Qwerty is easier to type with one hand because Dvorak is optimized for two hands, with all the vowels on the left. I don't have any sources to prove that but that seems to be the case. The Korean keyboard is quite similar to this too with a lot of left-right hand alteration that is great for two hands but not so fun when a cat has reserved the use of one of your hands and you only have one to spare.

Anyway, that's probably enough typing for now. Apparently I'm supposed to leave the fingers alone as much as possible today.

Read more...

Operation Help Cat ends in failure

Whenever I see a cat on the street here in Seoul the first thing I do is take out my trusty tupperware tin with dry food and try to give the little guy a meal in some secluded area where humans and cars won't cause stress. Today while walking by the temple I noticed a cat that was sitting out in the sun, and got ready to give him some food.

Unfortunately this cat was a bit of a wreck. His face was somewhat disfigured and was breathing strangely, and seemed to have pneumonia and no sense of smell, which was why he wasn't interested in the food. To make a long story short, a few minutes later I eventually noticed him half sneaking into a tunnel and thought it would be a good time to catch him. It turned out that it was a good time to get my hand bit and scratched in a number of places. Behold the result a few hours and 150,000 won ($150) of medical fees later:

(that's our cat Goma checking out the damage)

Now, I know what you're thinking. Dave, you're an idiot - why would you try to grab a stray cat you've never seen before. Usually I wouldn't, but there was this other cat in the summer of 2009 that was almost exactly the same as this one...

Summer of 2009: one morning on the way to work my girlfriend phoned to tell me that there was a cat sitting out in front of a building by the Starbucks I often visit. I told her that I would keep an eye out for it, and a few hours later there he was, a grey kitten sitting alone in front of a building. Cats pretty much never sit out in the open like that unless something is wrong, and this cat didn't respond to food or milk either. The plan then was to get the kitten's trust by standing still and giving the squinty eye signal for long enough, and then hopefully bring him to the vet. Unfortunately along came a security guard from the building who looked at the cat and said 먹어 먹어~ (eat, eat) with a wave of his hand, which scared the kitten which then ran away...and into a tunnel behind the next building.

Two days later: the kitten showed up in front of the building again. This time the security guard was nowhere to be seen and I managed to pet the kitten. This time he didn't run away due to being too weak, and it was easy enough to scoop him up and take him to our apartment. We named the kitten Lucky and he got better for about a day, but then contracted pneumonia and died at the vet the next day. Probably not the best name to give him, but I suppose being able to sleep in a real bed at least one day was better than another night on the street.

So that was the thought going through my head today when I saw the kitten about to enter the tunnel - same lack of smell that Lucky had, same disfigured face, same pneumonic breathing, and this time I thought I would make sure that I would bring him in to the vet before it was too late.

One minute later, nursing a bleeding hand and going off to wash it and find a hospital to get a shot against infection, my thoughts had suddenly changed to something more along the lines of ech, I guess little Whiskers is on his own then. Unfortunately I can't befriend a stray cat in a matter of minutes to take him off to the vet, and given that nine out of ten times an unwanted grabbing from behind is probably an attack in the animal world, the cat reacted in a way that made perfect sense. So sometimes Operation Help Cat ends in failure.

But sometimes Operation Help Cat turns out to be a grand success.

Read more...

Band photo

Looking through some pictures from a month or two ago, it seems that Windy and Goma thought they were posing for an album cover for one of them. Very well done.

Read more...

Just a cat post

I'm uploading some pictures and videos so it's time for a cat post.

Windy is a bit overweight now and we try to get him to exercise as much as possible, and this is one of the methods I use. Turn him over, touch his leg on one side and he'll try to bite, then touch the other and he'll go for the other side, and keep that up for a minute or two and it resembles a personal trainer monitoring a person doing situps. The session here in the video was a bit quick but I took the video myself and didn't want to try setting the camera up again.



Next is Windy interfering with plans for European domination.

Something else he likes to do - sit on my lap with legs out in front and get presented with object after object which he will then smell.

Closer:

What about MB, the cat I took care of at the temple?



That video is from March last year. MB has always been a special case as he grew up at the temple and is used to having a large place to live in, and the two days he spent at the apartment where I live (not that big) were not at all enjoyable for him. Still, the temple was not the best environment: while better than being on the street, over the two years he was there he hurt his tail, got covered in tanglefoot (that sticky stuff used to catch mice) which took two weeks to get off, got in fights with other cats there all the time, acquired a skin condition I had to give him medicine for for two weeks (snuck it into these tiny sausages he likes so he never noticed), had something wrong with his eye, and (the final straw) disappeared for six days after which he turned up with his foot swollen to twice its size. We took him to the vet for two weeks for that and it was lucky that he didn't end up losing a toe from gangrene.

So in July I took him to Canada (Calgary) where he now lives at my dad's house. Now instead of sleeping in the rafters in the basement he looks like this.

Oh yeah. A real bed. Interestingly enough, after spending so much time outside (24 hours a day for 2+ years) he has no desire to go outside. The other cat at the house (Meeka) loves going outside and always asks for it and it seems somewhat akin to a person who grew up in the suburbs but likes to go the bad part of town to hang out (Meeka) vs. one who actually grew up on the street (MB) and thus has no attachment to it whatsoever after things improve.


Now that the personal update is done, I also have some real news: I wrote last year that Korea is on the verge of becoming a cat-loving country, and a couple months ago on Lee Hyori's positive PR for street cats (the video there has been taken down though). A few days ago there was another good sign of improvement here regarding cats: I went to COEX this week, which is the big convention centre that looks like this. In the bookstore inside (Bandi & Luni's) the newest book being exhibited at the very front was one called 행복한 길고양이 (Happy Street Cat(s)), which was made by a person who has a blog here who spent five years taking pictures of street cats for the book. It seems to be selling quite well, and a book with not just cats but also street cats is extremely important, because as I mentioned in that Lee Hyori post there is still a large number of people that like cats, but only if they are purebreds, and for some reason see cats on the street as an entirely different species.

The best picture on the blog? Probably this one.

http://cfile25.uf.tistory.com/image/162D2D354CB3159C7033CB

Read more...

Windy, you don't fit there anymore

Short explanation: Windy is our cat, we got him when he was a kitten.

When we left the house during the day we put him in the pink carrier bag to keep him from chewing wires or who knows what when nobody was around; as a result Windy got to love the carrier bag and treated it as his bed.

Windy grew up, we upgraded his box to a hard plastic one. He sleeps there but still feels an attachment to the pink one.

Then we got another kitten. The pink carrier bag is just right for him so he'll use it from time to time. Windy's way too big to fit in there anymore. Windy begs to differ.

Even with an extra plastic bin inside (don't ask me how it got there), Windy makes a valiant effort to protect his territory, against the newcomer.

At the end of the day though, it's not a big deal.

Read more...

Dog registration in Gyeonggi-do (the province surrounding Seoul) to increase from 7 cities to 17

Here's a good piece of news for animals in Korea - a dog registration program that until now involved 7 cities in Gyeonggi-do is now increasing to 17. The program works as follows: dogs that are three months old and above have to get registered and have a tiny chip put into them that identifies the owner. The process is free, and there is a fine of 300,000 Won (about $260) if you don't do it. The system is to:

1) Help owners find their dogs if they get lost, and (more importantly)
2) Prevent people from throwing dogs away that they don't want anymore. One often hears stories of people that adopt a puppy, then get bored with it and leave the dog on the street after it grows up. Well, you can't do that anymore if the dog has a chip.

The province is spending $350 000 this year on a plan to put microchips in some 60,000 dogs. It will also be spending $2.6 million on the construction of an animal shelter this year in Hwaseong (another city in the province) for strays, and this one should include all animals, not just dogs.

Cities until now: Suwon, Seongnam, Anyang, Bucheon, Goyang, Uijeongbu, Namyangju. New cities: Ansan, Shiheung, Gunpo (lived here a year BTW, great place), Uiwang, Paju, Yongin, Gwangmyeong, Osan, Pocheon, Dongducheon.This map shows the location of the cities with the original cities in green and the new adherents in red. Seoul is right in the centre.

The article doesn't contain any information on cats but anything to increase the responsibility of pet owners will have a small reciprocal effect on them too.

Read more...

Windy the cat and his daily diet of grass

When returning home every day, my cat Windy demands a handful of grass with many a hearty meow so I'm sure to always have some prepared. The other day I took a picture and two videos of the daily event. Truly, truly exciting stuff.

Read more...

Lee Hyori's positive PR for street cats in Korea

Korea is not yet a good place for cats. As I wrote a year ago I believe Korea is on the verge of becoming a cat-loving country, but it's certainly not there yet. This week this was made especially clear as a story broke about a woman in her 20s who stomped on her neighbor's cat who had found its way into the hallway (he left the door open) and eventually killed it by throwing it off the 10th floor. So what will happen to the woman? Animal abuse of this type can be punished with a fine of a few hundred dollars, up to around $4500, but this was an exceptional case for a man who killed a large number of dogs, and that was only due to an extensive PR campaign by an animal rights group.

A new political party called the 진보신당 (they did quite well in the last election) has been pushing for tougher penalties for animal abuse, and has released a statement here.

The view the average person has on animals however is most important. In general, this is the type of person you're likely to encounter in Korea re: cats:

1) Someone who hates / fears them. Seems to be very common among people in their 40s and 50s, but can be found at any age.
2) Someone who doesn't have much of an opinion either way on cats. Fine, nothing wrong with that.
3) Someone who seems to like cats and may have one...but only likes Persian cats, expensive ones with long fur. These people are not much of a help at all to be honest, as they usually see their showroom cats as being completely different from the poor street cat. And finally:
4) Someone who likes and/or has cats, regardless of the breed or place of origin.

That brings us to Lee Hyori. She's likely Korea's most famous female singer, and has been that way for about a decade now. She actually made the news today as well re: plagiarism in her new album, but that's another story. Singers in Korea are by and large performers, not songwriters. Back to cats: she has two cats of her own which are Persians, but she treats street cats very well too. Here's a video of her in Thailand shooting a commercial, whereupon she spots a street cat and gives it something to eat (starts about 20 seconds in). This may seem very normal to someone outside of the country, but in Korea people who spend time with cats or help out stray animals are often thought to be weird or lonely (something along the lines of the crazy cat woman in the Simpsons) so a star deigning to stop and give a street cat something to eat is actually very impressive.





Videos of her are plentiful, but this one in particular IMO needs to go viral. Luckily the person that uploaded it added English subtitles too.

Read more...

Another kitten update, this time with video

I finally have a video of the kitten I saved three/four days ago. The vet we took him to is closed on Sundays and kittens need to be fed pretty frequently so he's back at the apartment for a day and a bit. This video was taken just after the Korean football/soccer game with Greece (Korea won 2 - 0) so I have a red shirt on. The video's just me giving the kitten milk but there isn't much else a two-week-old kitten does at that age. On Monday I'll take him back to the vet, and after about another week or two there once he's able to eat by himself he can go to a good home.

Read more...

Kitten update

By the way, I took the kitten I found two days ago to a vet I know really well here and he's in great condition. The plan is to pay for them to take care of him for a week or two but hopefully during that time someone will think he's cute and arrange to keep him. If that fails, then we may bring him back to the apartment as by then he should be easier to take care of. Right now he's about 11 or 12 days old and thus needs to be fed with a plastic syringe and can't go to the bathroom by himself, but at about a month old they become much more self-sufficient.

And if you live in Seoul (Gangnam area) or don't mind coming up here to see a kitten, let me know.

Read more...

Saturn transiting the Sun as seen from Neptune in 2061, and David Letterman's first Shuttle launch

Crazy cat day here is finally over (MB's hurt toe is a bit gangrenous but the vets think they should be able to keep him from losing half of it by keeping him there for a week and Windy is back to normal after freaking out at the new cat in the apartment), so let's wrap it up with a quick two videos to share.

The first is this one, showing Saturn transiting the Sun in 2061 as seen from Neptune. Transits are opportunities that you never want to miss since they're free data about the atmospheric makeup of a planet or body as the Sun begins to become obscured by the atmosphere first, but not so valuable that one would want to send a probe to somewhere like Neptune just because of it. But if we have a probe around Neptune at the time, this is what we'll see:



A much sooner transit is the 2012 transit of Venus, as seen from Earth.

And in This Week in Space for this week (which I haven't watched yet), the most interesting parts seem to be David Letterman recounting his first Shuttle launch watched in person, and an interview with Elon Musk.

Read more...

Idiom Neutral output may slow in the next few days due to cats

When I went to the temple today it turned out that MB had cut his foot somehow and was limping about, so off we went to the animal hospital for a checkup. He'll be going back tomorrow and in the meantime is at the apartment, and since Windy (the cat that lives here) doesn't like anybody he hides under the bed, comes out and hisses, goes back under the bed, etc. Last time MB was here he got bored at night and began yowling at 2 am, and if the same thing happens this time all the cat commotion will make it tough to write much in Idiom Neutral and/or work on the Idiom Neutral - German dictionary. Depending on the cat situation (whether they get along, MB hates the apartment or not, and how long it'll take for his leg to heal) the next few days might be a bit sparse in terms of Idiom Neutral content.

Read more...

My cat Windy hates coffee

Here's a video from yesterday that I just uploaded:



It's my cat Windy and he hates coffee, or at least I think he does. Every time he sees it he tries to bury it in the same way he buries stuff in the litterbox. But then again sometimes he'll try to bury his food as well so hard to say exactly why he does it.

We're talking in Korean so I thought I'd transcribe the dialogue here as well. So yeah, this is what I sound like when talking in Korean.

Me: 자, 윈디. -- Okay, Windy.
Gf: 무서운가봐. -- (He) seems afraid (of something).
Me: 커피 마셔봐. 지금 비디오 찍고 있어. -- Have some coffee. I'm taking the video now.
Gf: 어때? -- How's this?
Me: 아니, 바닥에 내려와서. -- No, let him come down to the floor first.
Gf: 일로와, 버디. -- Come on, Buddy. (Buddy's my nickname but she meant to say Windy here)
Me: 윈디, 여기 커피가 있어. -- Windy, there's coffee here.
Gf: 귀찮은거야. 아까... -- He doesn't want to. Just before...
Me: 윈디, 커피 냄새 좀 맡아봐. -- Windy, smell the coffee.
Me: 윈디! 아, 온다. -- Windy! Ah, he's coming.
Me: 자! 어때? 아침에 한 잔. 어때? 아침에 한 잔! -- Okay. How is it? One cup in the morning. How is it? One cup in the morning!

Read more...

My cat Windy playing fetch

Apparently cats don't like to play fetch but both of mine just love it, so I must be doing something right. Today I took a short video of Windy in order to provide evidence. Sorry for the shaky camerawork but you have to throw the fuzzy soccer ball just right in order for him to want to run after it and I had the camera in my other hand at the same time. A throw away from the cat = boring. Straight to the cat = boring. Too slow = boring. Too high = boring. A throw over the shoulder and too quick to catch = awesome, must catch, put in mouth and bring straight back!

The first successful fetch happens at 0:20, and a second one takes place near the end.

Read more...

Calendar in Korea devoted to helping out street cats sells 500 copies in 10 days

Good news for street cats in Korea. The author of Catstory.kr worked with the Korean Cat Protection Society (한국고양이보호협회) to make a 2010 calendar featuring pictures of cats for the low low price of 9000 won ($7.70 US), and 500 copies sold out within ten days (from 15 to 25 December). What makes this calendar special though is that it doesn't feature pictures of well-groomed house cats but rather pictures of cats actually taken on the streets of Korea, so some of them are cute but others have obviously been living a pretty tough life.

All the photographs can be seen at the link but here are two quick examples. First two cute kittens living on the street together:

And an adult cat not too happy about having his picture taken.

All the proceeds go to charity so that's about $3700 minus expenses (including delivery)...perhaps $2500 that went straight to street cats in Korea. Even without buying in bulk dry cat food can be purchased for 17000 won for 7 kg, so at bulk rates this might work out to two tonnes of dry cat food, and with an average of 85 grams per day needed for a cat that works out to enough money to feed 65 cats for a year. Looks like they'll need to double the print size to 1000 copies next year.

Read more...

Windy the kitten attacking my hand, attacking his tail

Six weeks ago I received word that there was a kitten around Gangnam Station (one of the central parts of Seoul) that seemed to be without a mother, and was just hanging out outside a fitness centre, watching people work out and watching the TV and otherwise just sitting there by itself. Upon receiving directions to the kitten I found the fitness centre, went down the stairs and lo and behold, there was a kitten hiding underneath a sign, super thin to the extent that its spine was almost sticking out the back. Needless to say we took the kitten home, fed him daily, and now he's just fine. Here he is six weeks after the rescue operation attacking my hand, and attacking his tail. These videos were taken just yesterday.





If you listen carefully to the background in the second one you can hear a Korean drama being played - it's a drama that is kind of a copy of 내조의 여왕 (Queen of Housewives) that has been playing recently.

Read more...