Safety | The Swiss Cats

Our friends of the blog Playful Kitty published a list of tips to approach the spring in complete safety. Further to a Claire’s recent misadventure, we wish to draw your attention on another spring danger : the melting of snow on the roof of houses, in particular in mountain.

The snow accumulated on the roofs of houses melts during day because of the sweetness of the temperatures by sunny weather, but freezes again partially at night. Big blocks of snow put on an ice sheet slide slowly along roofs eventually fall, and that can give that :

Claire was on visit at a friend in the mountain and she parked her car on one of the places in front of the house … You imagine if it were a cat or quite different living being ?
To avoid an accident, a responsible owner will pay attention to clear the snow from his roof, or to indicate clearly the incurred danger if it is not possible.

For Claire and her car, it is too late, but at home, I verified at once that we risk nothing !

Zorro : When we were teens, Claire gave us fleas. I do not understand why she did it, saw that now she applies us every month flea treatment again and again to avoid that we still catch it. They are not logical, our domesticated ones…

©ANIS

Loupi : You understood nothing, Zorro! She did not give us fleas, she made us get a chip ! A micro-chip ! As we use the same word in French and in Italian for the insect and for the object, you mixed everything : it is in fact about a glass capsule of the size of a grain of rice which is inserted under our skin towards the neck ; it cannot move, nor be destroyed by a shock. It contains a transmitter…

Zorro : Cool, then the NSA can follow us, and see everywhere where we go ? We have a GPS ?

©ANIS

Loupi : *sigh* No, Zorro … The transponder is a transmitter which bustles only in the passage of a specific reader. It contains a code of unique identification at the world level. If something happens to us (accident, loss, …), the police, the veterinarians, and the shelters are equipped with readers who will then allow to identify us and to warn our domesticated ones. Our data appear in a national data bank, and their update (moving or owner’s change for example) is free. In Switzerland, it is the ANIS company which takes care of all this. The solution of the micro-chip is preferable to the tattoo which is practised in certain countries to identify an animal, because a tattoo can become illegible in time, or the part of the body on which it appears can be damaged in case of accident.