He looked like Brendan Gleeson and carried himself like a mob boss. Naturally he was my dad’s favourite child

My dad is not a religious man – he goes to the pub when my mum goes to mass – but I’m sure that meeting Oscar was a spiritual experience for him. When they locked eyes across the scrubbed concrete floor of the shelter that Oscar presided over with mob-boss-like remove, an oath of loyalty was sworn. The other cats mewled in vain.

I had walked in hoping for a grey kitten akin to Berlioz from The Aristocats and walked out with an aloof ginger tomcat who looked like Brendan Gleeson and possessed the world-weariness of someone who had seen unspeakable things. If cats smoked, he would have been on 30 a day. Everybody loved Oscar. He deigned to tolerate only my dad.

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Whether by striking workers, poets or Pussy Riot, our feline friends have long been used as a symbol of resistance – radical by nature, they refuse to be tamed

In the 60 years since Julie Andrews sang about the cheering possibilities of whiskers on kittens , the fetishisation of the feline form has only grown stronger. Earlier this year, Somerset House even opened a Hello Kitty caf e as part of its Cute exhibition . By way of balance there is, of course, a jokey online culture about the unspeakable evilness of cats. These are the ones who deliberately sabotage your printer, or post video diaries commenting on the futility of your dating life. But beyond this binary, there is a more nuanced narrative of the cat as a figure that makes a virtue out of complexity and ambivalence. So perhaps we would do better to think of the cat as dissident, oblique, even radical.

Rudyard Kipling caught this attitude best in his Just So Stories of 1902, a series of whimsical origin myths. In The Cat That Walked By Himself, Kipling tells how Wild Dog was the first animal to venture into the cave of stone age humans, attracted by the smell of roast mutton. The dog becomes a couple’s “First Friend”, a devoted and useful hunting companion and security guard who is happy to submit to the collar of domestic servitude. Wild Cow and Wild Horse soon follow suit, eager to labour in return for plenty of hay. Finally comes Wild Cat, who stalks up to the entrance of the dwelling and proceeds to lay down his terms. “I am not a friend, and I am not a servant. I am the Cat who walks by himself, and I wish to come into your cave.”

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Welfare experts say people need to choose pets with natural body shapes so their health doesn’t suffer

Would-be dog owners should avoid bulging skulls, protruding eyes and shortened twisted legs and instead opt for a naturally healthy body shape, an international team of experts has urged.

The health and welfare implications of extreme canine body forms has become a pressing issue, with experts repeatedly warning of the myriad problems faced by breeds with flat faces – from breathing challenges to difficulties exercising and giving birth.

Flat-faces

Large and protruding eyes

Shortened, twisted legs

Facial or body skin folds

Lack of tail

A clearly overshot or undershot jaw

A disproportionately broad head and shoulders

Eyelids turned in or out

A bulging or domed skull

A sloped back with an excessively low rear end and excessively flexed hind legs

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£150 for a dog’s injection. £900 to monitor a rabbit overnight. Thousands for cat surgery. How did pet care become such big business?

One crisp Sunday afternoon in late February, Louise Taylor noticed that one of her family’s two pet rabbits, Honey, couldn’t stand up properly. “We got an appointment at the emergency vet and they gave her painkillers and drugs,” says Taylor, a 46-year-old civil servant. “But she still couldn’t stand. The vet said he thought she should stay in overnight, and it would cost £900, or we could take her home, and it would be £200. It didn’t feel like much of a choice.” She believes it was presented as: you have to, if you care about your rabbit.

Thinking back on it now, Taylor says the family, which did not have pet insurance, had been prepared to be pragmatic. “She was eight and a half years old; that’s quite old for a rabbit. They tend to live eight to 10 years. But we did what the vet said.”

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He was the perfect childhood companion, until he grew weary of wearing Al Capone and Lawrence of Arabia costumes. Then he went missing ...

I grew up on a bleak and windy smallholding in Cornwall, deep in the Methodist farming hinterland between the Lizard and Land’s End. We had pigs, cows, geese and hens, dogs and cats, 13 acres and no money. Aged eight, I was told I could have my own kitten, and was taken to a tumble-down granite barn belonging to the sister of one of our neighbours. There I fell for a grey-green tabby. Taking him home that Saturday morning, I was the happiest girl in the world.

During lunch a rat-a-tat-tat of potential names gunned out of my mouth in hope of my parents’ approval. Fluffy? Toffee ? Each met with gagging noises. Later I played with him as my parents watched the Ascot races on our tiny black-and-white TV. In the mix, running the Coventry Stakes, was a handsome bay called Tachypous (meaning “swift-foot” in Greek). My parents, lovers of Greek and Roman history, seized upon this, and before I knew it my kitten was called Tachypuss.

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Pet food is a £120bn industry, with vast resources spent on working out how best to nourish and delight our beloved charges. But how do we know if we’re getting it right? By Vivian Ho

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From dachshunds to pugs, our canine friends are bred to better serve as emotional crutches or status symbols

You may have missed a recent international incident. Last week, we Brits got wind of a very worrying development across the Channel. “Sausage Dogs to be banned in Germany,” ran alarmed headlines in the UK press. The Germans, for their part, were so baffled by this response that they reported on it themselves. “Brits Fear for the German Sausage Dog”, ran a puzzled article in Bild , the country’s best-selling newspaper.

“ There will always be sausage dogs ,” a spokesman told the BBC, which was in turn reporting on the Bild story. “We will just never see any with legs one centimetre long.” They were not banning the breed, they explained, just proposing a law that could stop breeders making dachshunds more and more indistinguishable from actual sausages, thus worsening their knee, hip and back problems.

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Germans want to ban ‘torture breeding’ for extreme characteristics. Plus: don’t even think about swimming in British waters this Easter

I’ll say this for the Germans: when they’re right, they’re so right. Word reaches us that dachshunds are to be banned in Germany.

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Loving us but hating other dogs, Buddy was a delight at home and a nightmare away from it. When his time came, we decided to give him one last outing

My partner, Paul, and I are dog lovers through and through but our office jobs meant it had never been practical, or fair, to have a dog of our own. In lockdown our working situations changed, however, so we visited Oxford Animal Sanctuary and met Buddy, a labrador/border collie cross. He was nine and very reactive to other dogs. Knowing he had spent three years in and out of kennels, we couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him in what must have been an incredibly stressful environment. So on 4 July 2020 we brought him home.

With us, Buddy was docile, gentle and obedient. He never barked or charged around; he was the perfect house dog. A real character, he loved waking us up by grabbing the corner of the duvet in his mouth and ripping it off. He adored playing football and always tried to join in when I attempted Yoga With Adriene or a Joe Wicks workout. But the sanctuary had warned that if he saw another dog he would become agitated and aggressive and want to charge at them. So every time we took him for a walk, Paul would have to go ahead and make sure the coast was clear.

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