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man's best friend. - joe (here kitty, kitty) friday
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How odd. Maybe it's because cats are less excitable than dogs?
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Statistics are wonderful aren't they?
Dangling questions:
A) What do the cat owners die from?
B) Do they actually live any longer?
I'm sure that the owners of man-eating tigers are also less likely to die of heart attack and stroke, but that's not a good thing.
"Dr. Adnan Qureshi ... and his team analyzed a group of 4,435 people who had answered questionnaires about pet ownership and other risk factors."
And how do dead people answer questionnaires?
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jump to conclusions at your own risk -- from the same International Stroke Conference. edit: from another report on the pet study.. "In the new study, Qureshi's team analyzed data on 4,435 Americans, aged 30 to 75, who took part in the federal government's second National Health and Nutrition Examination Study, which ran from 1976-1980. According to the data in the survey, 2,435 of the participants either owned a cat or had owned a cat in the past, while the remaining 2,000 had never done so. Qureshi's team then tracked rates of death from all causes, including heart and stroke. Cat owners "appeared to have a lower rate of dying from heart attacks" over 10 years of follow-up compared to feline-free folk, Qureshi said. The magnitude of the effect -- a 30 percent reduction in heart attack risk -- "was a little bit surprising," he added. "We certainly expected an effect, because we thought that there was a biologically plausible mechanism at work. But the magnitude of the effect was hard to predict." Qureshi -- proud owner of his own feline, Ninja -- stressed that dogs probably would bring people the same kind of benefit, but the numbers of dog owners in the study wasn't big enough to count statistically. HealthDay
Last edited by tsuwm; 02/22/2008 6:01 PM.
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so, cats help you live longer, but catnaps will kill you.
ok.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Yes,I guess it's wise to wait for the results of the study on what cat owners die of before they can get a heart attack.
Though(P.S.)cats are wonderful pets when they are not braking your precious china (On looking up china in Webster's online I almost had a heart attack because the page produced some heavy thumping music, a present from the Rep.of China),
hanging in the curtains, shredding whatever, throw themselves in front of your feet in a staged suicide attempt.
Last edited by BranShea; 02/22/2008 6:49 PM.
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Pooh-Bah
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I suppose I'm exhorting the chorus by citing the old cause-and-effect argument that casts doubt on almost any proposition. When it was suggested that a bottle of beer every day makes you live longer the reply of course was, maybe the beer had nothing to do with it but instead the kind of individual who can relax with a single drink is also the kind who lives longer
Cat owners liver longer because while loose cats are less destructive the vast majority of dog owners much to the consternation of their neighbors do let their pets run free and are therefore under more stress
Fellow lovers of the brew I am dalehileman@verizon.net and apparently don't care who knows it
Bran they also spray on the furniture
That is cats not beer drinkers
dalehileman
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There is documented science that petting one reduces blood pressure in a human. [Sorry to be unable to cite any studies.] On the downside, from experience A. can also state that losing one can cause serious heart injury of sorts. 
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I liked the part about "pet ownership and other risk factors"
(Condolences Aramis)
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 Of cats I had two: a black male and a calico female. The pretty female was the breaker, thrower off of Pots and Soupterrines and Blenders and all set to give you a heart attack. The black male was sage and sedate so he kept the balance till they both died at the age of over twenty. Chickens I think, if you have a yard, are more beneficial than cats as pets. Even though they are not as caressable as cats. Research requested.
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Chickens I think, if you have a yard, are more beneficial than cats as pets. Even though they are not as caressable as cats. Research requested. The Pookwife, in her wisdom, bought four young chicks at the local annual agricultural show. Three of which turned out to be roosters, thus necessitating their dispatch by yours truly. Well, I suppose they were beneficial, since we ate one and the other two are in the freezer, but generally speaking they are only worth it if they lay eggs. Plucking and gutting them to eat is not worth it when you can buy them so cheap at the supermarket. I wonder if chicken soup reduces blood pressure? 
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I wonder if chicken soup reduces blood pressure? It sure reduces the chicken's bloodpressure. The Pookwife should have bought young adult chickens. I had mine from a friend and I could see what I got. They layed their eggs in sisterly understanding and consequently also lived to a high age (for chickens). Wise chickens; the only way for chickens to stay out of the soup is to lay eggs to a high age.
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The Pookwife, in her wisdom I was right--you are a guy! (Er--I learned on this forum that to Brits, the word guy is a bit pejorative. In case you are also of that mindset, let me hasten to say that I meant it only to denote a male.)
As to chickens; no, they don't make good pets in the sense of companionship. My relatives on the farm in Tennessee had a henhouse; they'd let Uncle Bennett reach right under them to get their eggs. Not so for me! They'd all scramble off their nests when I opened the door. One time I looked back only to realize in horror that I'd left the door open and they were out. (I was a kid at the time.) The front of the henhouse was flush with the barbwire fence that surrounded the cow pasture; this meant that, to herd the hens that had run behind their house, I had to drop down and roll under the barbwire first on one side, then the other. Luckily for me they all sought the security of the inside, so the whole operation only took a few minutes. I was SO relieved that my carelessness had gone unobserved; it was only much later that my uncle told me he had watched the whole circus, laughing!
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The Pookwife, in her wisdom I was right--you are a guy! I told you before, it's like Winnie THUH Pooh! Don't you remember your Pooh lore? The conversation where Christopher Robin says he thought Winnie was a girl's name and Pooh patiently explains that it's Winnie THE Pooh, which makes all the difference. (Er--I learned on this forum that to Brits, the word guy is a bit pejorative. In case you are also of that mindset, let me hasten to say that I meant it only to denote a male.) 'Guy' is not a pejorative to Australians. Though, like Brits, we tend to use 'bloke' instead. Guy is more American. But we understand American, even though they don't understand Aussie.  As to chickens; no, they don't make good pets in the sense of companionship. My relatives on the farm in Tennessee had a henhouse; they'd let Uncle Bennett reach right under them to get their eggs. Not so for me! They'd all scramble off their nests when I opened the door. Chickens tend to like to have one person they regard as their keeper and whom they trust. They will often run away from anyone else. Usually it is the person who feeds them.
Last edited by The Pook; 02/27/2008 12:41 AM.
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I wonder if chicken soup reduces blood pressure? It sure reduces the chicken's bloodpressure. hahahahahahaha true.
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Chickens tend to like to have one person they regard as their keeper and whom they trust. They will often run away from anyone else. Usually it is the person who feeds them.
OK, what's the antecedent of it in this paragraph?
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Chickens tend to like to have one person they regard as their keeper and whom they trust. They will often run away from anyone else. Usually it is the person who feeds them.
OK, what's the antecedent of it in this paragraph? ?
formerly known as etaoin...
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Chickens tend to like to have one person they regard as their keeper and whom they trust. They will often run away from anyone else. Usually it is the person who feeds them.
OK, what's the antecedent of it in this paragraph? It's like determining a word knowing only the first and last letters. We still understand the message.
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Chickens tend to like to have one person they regard as their keeper and whom they trust. They will often run away from anyone else. Usually it is the person who feeds them.
OK, what's the antecedent of it in this paragraph? It's like determining a word knowing only the first and last letters. We still understand the message. The antecedent is "one person they regard as their keeper..."
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Even though 'They often run awayfrom anyone else' is the statement preceding 'It'... Doesn't that add ambiguity?
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Even though 'They often run awayfrom anyone else' is the statement preceding 'It'... Doesn't that add ambiguity? Life is ambiguous. Antecedents often do that, in many languages. I suppose English is worse than some other ancient and modern European languages, where the case/number/gender of the antecedent will agree with the pronoun and possibly remove the ambiguity. I agree it could have been better written (what's the antecedent there!) but the context of the paragraph makes the meaning clear, however.
Last edited by The Pook; 02/28/2008 3:20 AM.
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the context of the paragraph makes the meaning clear, however. Almost. I did eventually settle on the correct antecedent but it took me a bit.
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Um, I have to admit that I had to re-read the paragraph too Pook. Since we were originally talking about cats, at first I thought you were making a joke about the chickens usually running away from the person that feeds them.
Many cat owners I know say that their pet has a favourite in the home. They'll love one person to death, but will only marginally tolerate the existence of the other person, looking upon this other person as some stray human who will sometimes feed them.
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Wasn't it when there was a thread about dogs recently someone said " A dog has owners, a cat has servants?" I never experienced that preference thing with cats. Only that they specifically tend to jump on the knees of non cat lovers. They just HAVE to give it a try. Our cats liked the whole family equally. Cats are so amusing (in between the wreckaging).
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Has this thread travelled back in time? Where are all the other posts? About the etymology of harbinger, etc.?
Weird.
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I suppose there must have been a few problems implementing new anti-spambot software or something? For a while it wouldn't let me login and I got all sorts of error messages. Wouldn't work at all with Firefox. Seems better now though.
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yes, sadly, it looks like we lost a couple days of threads. ah well, c'est la vie!
formerly known as etaoin...
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 A great big lot of interesting pet - lore has been lost. For harbinger etymology ( hydra) just look up the Online Etymology.
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