Our cat expert guides you through everything you need to keep your feline friends purrfectly happy – and the kit that’s not worth your money

Cats’ stock may have fallen some way since being worshipped in ancient Egypt, but the domesticated kind still live pretty rarefied lives. Cat kit is big business, despite reassuringly few cats being trusted with credit cards of their own.

But what do you actually need to keep your pet feline safe and happy? I live with three of the furry little simpletons, Hamilton, Brando and Ripley, so have hopefully gleaned some insights. I’ve outlined some must-buys below, along with a few things I think can be safely avoided.

Continue reading...

The high drama at Chelmsford could have been avoided if a new system for halting races was in place

Racing came perilously close to a calamity on Saturday evening, and had events unfolded differently after nine runners set off for the most valuable race of the night at Chelmsford, this column might well have opened with the words “Racing is still in shock …” instead.

The start of the Essex track’s 8.30 race was entirely unremarkable, but what happened next was, in the words of a racecourse spokesperson, “unprecedented”. The tractor used to pull the starting stalls off the track failed, and the gate was still in the middle of the home straight as the runners began to turn for home with their riders starting to stoke them up for the final run to the line.

Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

While Football Daily only has two hands and needs both of them to type this drivel every day, we can’t help but feel the pair of them would have been snapped or bitten off if we’d offered Liverpool fans a five-point lead at the top after 11 games before a ball had been kicked in this season’s Premier League. While the denizens of Anfield had no particular reason to believe Arne Slot wouldn’t do a decent job as successor to Jürgen Klopp, the managerial shoes into which he was stepping were undeniably huge. And if they needed proof that follicly-challenged Dutchmen are capable of making a pig’s ear of managing an elite English club in their first big job outside of the Netherlands, well … let’s just say they didn’t have to travel too far to seek it out.

The craziest game I have ever been involved in and I can’t imagine it ever being topped … there can’t have been a greater comeback in the history of football – four goals in the last five minutes to win the game” – Yarm manager Stephen Jackson calms down just enough to reflect on his side’s wild 6-5 win against Sunderland West End who, wait for it, were 5-2 up after 90 minutes.

Continue reading...

Readers respond to the government’s proposals to reform the Mental Health Act and end injustice in the treatment of severe mental illness

I read your editorial on the proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act with interest ( 6 November ). The act serves as the balancing point between the state’s negative duty not to interfere with individual liberty without good reason and its positive duties to prevent harm to vulnerable people and the wider public. The criteria for detention represent the threshold at which both of those duties are triggered: detention under the MHA is also a gateway to rights to proactive care and support both during and after detention. We may argue about whether the existing criteria for detention strike the right balance between the state’s positive and negative duties, but it is at least the same balance for everyone.

The draft bill sets a much higher threshold for detention unless a person has committed a crime, and while this will lead to fewer people suffering the trauma and indignity of being detained, it will also mean fewer people receiving the positive support and protection of the state – that is unless they commit a crime. Even leaving aside the unexplored equalities implications of such a perverse incentive, it can surely be neither less restrictive of the individual nor more caring of the state to force people into the criminal justice system in order to receive the help they need.
Michael Chalmers
Associate director of mental health law, North London NHS foundation trust

Continue reading...

Too many men are being diagnosed late, says Oliver Kemp, especially those in high-risk groups

Wes Streeting’s order to review prostate cancer screening guidance could not come at a more important time ( Report, 5 November ). Prostate cancer is the second-most deadly cancer among men. High-risk groups, including those with a family history and black men, are twice as likely to die from it. The existing “informed choice” system, which requires men to request testing, is failing. As a result, too many are being diagnosed late – as Chris Hoy was – which drastically reduces their chances of survival.

A screening programme for high-risk groups could reverse the rise in late-stage diagnoses and deaths. We also have data to prove that, for these groups, the advantages of screening and subsequent treatment outweigh the risks of overtreatment by a factor of four. A national screening programme would move the UK from being one of the worst performers on prostate cancer in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to one of the best.

Continue reading...

Southbank Centre, London
Two concerts, including the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s fiercely challenging Viola Concerto, showcased the versatility and communicative skills of Lawrence Power

The viola player Lawrence Power is a resident artist at the Southbank Centre this season. As well as playing concertos and chamber music, he’s exploring less conventional performances, and the first of those, Lawrence Power’s Lock-in , was a mix of video, live performances and spontaneous poetry readings, in which Power included music that he had commissioned during the Covid lockdowns.

Some of those miniatures were screened in the performances that Power had streamed in 2020. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Objets Trouvés runs through a collection of string tropes before alighting on a fresh, original idea; Garth Knox’s Quartet for One imagines a deconstructed string quartet and has the viola play the four instrumental parts in succession, while Thomas Adès’ tiny Berceuse for viola and piano is extracted from his opera The Exterminating Angel. Two more substantial new pieces were performed live. Fazil Say’s Sonata for solo viola is a two-movement memorial to the Turkish viola player Roşen Güneş, its first movement a set of variations on a insistent keening theme, while Héloise Werner’s Mixed Phrases takes lines from a poem by Rimbaud, which a soprano (Werner herself) atomises into syllables and isolated phonemes as the viola urges her on, creating a witty to-and-fro.

Continue reading...

The show’s first blind contestant continues to bowl us over with his sharp wit and spine-tingling moves. We’re calling it – he’s a dead cert for the glitterball

For 10 interminable seconds on Saturday night TV, the lights went out. Thankfully, it was deliberate. The Couple’s Choice routine performed on Strictly Come Dancing by blind comedian Chris McCausland included a “blackout moment”, where he danced in the dark to immerse viewers in his sightless world. It was a powerful and poignant interlude which was hailed by the judges as “absolutely spectacular”.

This spine-tingling piece of television was reminiscent of the silent dance performed by actor Rose Ayling-Ellis, the show’s first deaf participant, in 2021. That routine would be voted Bafta’s Must-See Moment – as well as garnering a spot in our own hall of hoofing fame – and Ayling-Ellis went on to lift the glitterball trophy.

Continue reading...

Memory deficits could have longer-term consequences and increase risk of conditions such as dementia, researchers say

Asthma is linked to memory issues in children – and the condition appearing early may make memory difficulties worse, research suggests.

The study found that children with asthma performed worse in memory tasks than children without the lung condition.

Continue reading...

Despite his fall from grace, the royal always seems to find a pal to pay his way. In a world awash with murky interests, it is rather important that we find out why

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a fortune is usually dead keen to throw it at Prince Andrew.

Because they keep on doing it, don’t they? They just can’t help themselves, from the oligarch son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s then president who so obligingly paid £3m over the asking price for the Duke of York’s former marital home at Sunninghill Park to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who so famously lent the duke’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson £15,000 to help clear her debts. Even after King Charles stopped paying his security bills, Andrew is believed to have found what the royal journalist Robert Hardman’s biography of the king delicately calls “ other sources of income ” related to his contacts in international trade – a phrase that makes you long for the good old days of Fergie gamely doing WeightWatchers ads to pay off her overdraft or Princess Anne’s son-in-law going on I’m A Celebrity to discuss her reaction to his novelty boxer shorts.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Continue reading...