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You can redirect scratching without declawing by giving your cat a better surface to scratch, placing it where the scratching already happens, and making the old target less appealing. This works because scratching is normal cat behaviour — used for marking, claw maintenance, and stretching — so the goal is to change where it happens, not to stop it entirely. This approach suits indoor cats of any age; if scratching started suddenly or comes with other changes in behaviour or health, treat it as a possible medical or stress issue and involve a veterinarian.

Why cats scratch

Scratching is not spite or misbehaviour. It serves at least three purposes:

• Marking — claws leave both a visual mark and a scent from glands in the paws, so scratching communicates territory.
• Claw maintenance — scratching sheds the outer layers of the claw and keeps them in condition.
• Stretching — the motion exercises the shoulders, back, and paws.

Because scratching meets real needs, punishment tends to backfire: a cat may simply scratch where you are not watching, or become more anxious. Redirecting the behaviour is more reliable.

Match the scratcher to your cat

Cats have preferences, and a post they ignore is usually the wrong type rather than a refusal to use one. Offer variety first, then keep what gets used.

A useful rule: a vertical post should be tall enough that your cat can stretch to full length with its front paws reaching the top. Unstable or short posts are a common reason cats return to the sofa.

Place scratchers where scratching happens

Put the new surface next to the spot your cat already targets, not in a back room. Once it is being used consistently, you can move it gradually — a few centimetres at a time — toward where you would prefer it.

For a cat that scratches in several places, place a scratcher at each site. Near favourite sleeping areas and room entrances also helps, since scratching often happens on waking or when moving between spaces.

Redirect in the moment

When you see your cat start on the furniture:

1. Interrupt calmly — a soft sound or a toy tossed nearby is enough to break the moment. Avoid shouting or spraying, which can create fear rather than a new habit.
2. Guide to the scratcher — place the cat on or beside it, or dangle a toy along the surface so the paws make contact.
3. Reward immediately — praise, a treat, or a play session right after scratching the correct surface. Timing matters: the reward must follow the behaviour, not the interruption.
4. Repeat consistently — new habits form over days to weeks, not once.

Protect furniture while the habit forms

Temporary barriers give the new routine time to take hold:

• Double-sided tape or a smooth plastic cover on the targeted area.
• A throw or fitted cover over the arm or corner being scratched.
• Furniture moved slightly, or a scratcher placed directly in front of the spot.

These are short-term measures. Remove them gradually once the scratcher is in regular use.

When scratching points to something else

Scratching is usually normal, but changes in pattern can signal more:

• Sudden increase in scratching, especially in a previously settled cat.
• Scratching at walls, doors, or unusual surfaces rather than furniture.
• Over-grooming, hiding, appetite changes, or litter box changes alongside the scratching.
• New stress — a move, a new pet, a new baby, or changes in routine.

In these cases, the scratching may be a symptom of stress or a medical problem. A veterinarian can assess whether there is an underlying issue and advise on next steps. Declawing is a surgical procedure that removes part of the toe, and it is not required to solve a scratching problem — the steps above address the behaviour directly.

An equine rescue is a nonprofit organization that takes in horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules who have been neglected, abused, or surrendered, then rehabilitates them and finds them new homes through adoption. The Equine Rescue League, a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit established in 1990, describes its mission as supporting the responsible use of working, sport, and pleasure equines while preventing neglect or abuse, offering community education, and providing rehabilitation and adoption services. If you are looking for a way to help equines in need—through donations, supplies, events, or adoption—this is how that kind of organization typically operates.

The animals an equine rescue serves

Rescues in this space generally work with the full range of equines, not just riding horses:

• Horses — working, sport, and pleasure animals
• Ponies — smaller equines often at risk of neglect due to low perceived value
• Donkeys — frequently overlooked in rescue work
• Mules — crosses that fall outside many breed-specific rescue networks

The Equine Rescue League explicitly names all four groups in its mission, which matters because a horse-only rescue may not be equipped to take in a donkey or mule.

Core services: prevention, rehabilitation, adoption

An equine rescue's work usually falls into three connected areas.

Preventing neglect and abuse

This includes responding to reports of at-risk animals, working to keep equines out of harmful situations, and educating owners and the community about responsible care. Education is a prevention tool: an owner who understands basic equine needs is less likely to let an animal deteriorate.

Rehabilitation

Once an equine arrives, the rescue provides the care needed to restore health and condition. This is the "helping and healing" phase—it can take months, and it is the most resource-intensive part of rescue work.

Adoption

After rehabilitation, the goal is a permanent, appropriate home. Adoption services match equines with adopters, which frees space and funding to help the next animal.

How rescues fund the work

Rescue organizations are typically nonprofits, and their funding comes from a mix of sources. The Equine Rescue League's own materials point to several:

Donation receipts are available upon request, and the organization states that donations are tax-deductible—worth confirming with your own tax advisor for your situation.

How the public can support a rescue

You do not need to adopt to help. Practical entry points include:

• Donate money or supplies. Farm, barn, and riding equipment are all accepted, not just cash.
• Shop the tack shop. The Equine Rescue League's Bubba's Tack Shack is open Saturdays 8am–12pm or by appointment, selling used tack and grooming supplies at discount prices, with all proceeds going to the horses at the shelter.
• Attend an event. The rescue holds open houses—for example, a Spring Open House on May 16th and 17th, 10am–4pm—and seasonal sales such as a Labor Day Yard/Tack Sale.
• Subscribe to updates. The organization offers a virtual e-Newsletter for people who want to follow farm happenings.
• Volunteer. Its own thank-you notes credit staff, volunteers, and even bakers for making events succeed.

What to check before you engage

If you are evaluating any equine rescue, including this one, a few concrete questions will tell you a lot:

1. Which animals do they take? Confirm horses, ponies, donkeys, and mules are all within scope if that matters to you.
2. How long have they operated? Established organizations have a track record; the Equine Rescue League dates to 1990.
3. Is the nonprofit status verifiable? A 501(c)3 designation is checkable and affects whether your donation is tax-deductible.
4. Where does the money go? Look for statements that proceeds benefit the animals directly.
5. Can you visit? Open houses and shop hours give you a chance to see conditions firsthand.

An equine rescue exists to move animals from neglect or abuse to health and a permanent home, and it funds that work through donations, resale, and community events. The most useful next step is usually the smallest one: check the rescue's event calendar or shop hours, show up, and see the operation for yourself before deciding how you want to help.

Birmingham City University (BCU) is a large, practice-based university in Birmingham, in the UK's West Midlands. It offers undergraduate, postgraduate and Clearing routes across a wide range of subject areas, and it positions itself around work experience, industry-standard facilities and social mobility. If you want a university that emphasises applied, career-facing learning in a major UK city, BCU is worth shortlisting; if you want a small, campus-contained or research-intensive institution, it may be a weaker fit.

What "practice-based" means at BCU

BCU describes itself as having "a focus on practice-based learning." In practice, this means courses are often built around applied work, industry-standard facilities and placement or work-experience opportunities rather than purely theoretical study.

The university backs this up with several claims on its own site:

These are BCU's own cited figures, so treat them as the university's positioning rather than independent verification. The practical takeaway: BCU is a reasonable choice if work experience and facilities matter more to you than, say, a traditional research reputation.

Study levels and subject areas

BCU covers both undergraduate and postgraduate study, plus Clearing options that include HNDs, Foundation Degrees and Degree Programmes.

Subject areas listed on the site include:

• Accounting, Finance and Economics
• Acting and Theatre
• Architecture
• Art and Design
• Business and Management
• Computing
• Construction and the Built Environment
• Education and Teacher Training
• Engineering
• English
• Fashion and Textiles
• Film, Animation and Photography
• Games
• Health Professions
• Jewellery
• Law
• Marketing
• Media and Journalism
• Music
• Nursing and Midwifery
• Psychology
• Social Work and Community Studies
• Sociology and Criminology
• Sport and Life Sciences

That spread is broad enough that most applicants will find something relevant, but the strength of the offer is concentrated in creative, health, business and built-environment fields rather than, for example, pure sciences.

Postgraduate study is framed around three motivations: pursuing a passion, advancing a career, or changing direction. BCU runs postgraduate Open Days if you want to explore that route.

How to apply, including Clearing

The main routes described on the site are:

1. Standard application — for most undergraduate and postgraduate courses, via the usual UCAS or direct postgraduate route.
2. Clearing — for courses with places still available. BCU states Clearing is open from 2 July 2026, with places available to start "this Autumn, or in January 2027." You search courses, then call 0121 331 6777 to apply. The hotline is open weekdays 9am–5pm. If you already have your results, you can also apply online.
3. Open Days — an Undergraduate Open Day is listed for 10 October, covering courses except Sport, with booking required.

Personal statement support

BCU offers a free Personal Statement guide that includes subject-specific examples from real students and guidance on using AI safely. This is useful if you are applying through the standard route and want a concrete starting point rather than generic advice.

Next steps if you are considering BCU

• Search courses by UCAS points, search term or subject area to see what is available, including in Clearing.
• Book an Open Day (undergraduate or postgraduate) to see the campuses and facilities.
• Check scholarships — BCU runs scholarship schemes that may provide extra funding and support; eligibility needs checking on their site.
• Take the virtual tour if you cannot visit in person; it offers 360-degree tours of facilities across campuses.
• If you are starting this September, the "Starting at BCU" section covers what to do before arrival, timetables and welcome week.

One practical caveat: the site does not publish tuition fees, entry requirements or scholarship amounts in the material available here, so confirm those directly with BCU before making a decision.

Being an artist means sustaining a working practice, not just producing occasional pieces. The clearest way to see the difference is through a painter like Holly Farrell, a Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. Her practice shows how subject matter, routine, and intent separate a working artist from a hobbyist: she paints the common tools of day-to-day existence, and she treats those still lifes as meditations on people and places she has known.

Working artist vs. hobbyist

The line is not talent or income. It is whether the work is organized around a continuing practice.

For Farrell, the through-line is explicit: nostalgia drives her subject matter. That single stated driver explains why her paintings return to ordinary objects rather than ranging across unrelated themes.

Still life as portraiture

The most useful idea in Farrell's practice is that still life can function as portraiture. She considers her still life paintings to be simple meditations on people and places she has known.

That reframes what a still life is for. Instead of a study of objects, it becomes a way of holding a person or place in view through the things associated with them. The objects are not the subject so much as the evidence of the subject.

How to read a still life this way

• Ask what person, place, or period the objects point to, rather than what they depict literally.
• Notice which objects are chosen and which are left out — selection is the portrait.
• Look at how ordinary the items are. Farrell's subjects are the common tools of day-to-day existence, which keeps the reference personal rather than monumental.
• Treat the painting as a meditation, not a document. It records a feeling about someone, not a likeness.

Why nostalgia and daily objects sustain a practice

Nostalgia is often dismissed as sentiment. In a working practice it does real structural work:

• It supplies an inexhaustible subject. Everyday tools and domestic objects are everywhere, so the artist never runs out of material.
• It creates consistency. A single emotional driver keeps a body of work coherent across years.
• It lowers the barrier to starting. The artist does not need a grand theme to begin a painting — only an object tied to a memory.
• It gives the viewer an entry point. Everyone has ordinary objects charged with personal meaning, so the work reads without explanation.

If you are building your own practice, this is the transferable lesson: pick a driver specific enough to repeat and broad enough to never exhaust.

What a studio-based painting career looks like day to day

A studio practice is less romantic and more administrative than it appears. Based on how Farrell's practice is described — living and working in Toronto, with painting as her occupation — the recurring elements are:

1. Studio time as a default. The studio is where the working day happens, not a place visited when inspired.
2. A settled subject territory. Time goes into exploring one area deeply rather than searching for a new theme each time.
3. Slow accumulation. A body of work builds piece by piece; no single painting carries the career.
4. Presentation and context. Work is shown and explained — the phrase "still life as portraiture" is itself a framing that helps viewers understand the intent.
5. Place as input. Living and working in one city means the people and places feeding the nostalgia are close at hand.

How to look at this kind of work

If you encounter still life painting that reads as portraiture rather than decoration, use these questions:

• What is the emotional temperature — warm, elegiac, matter-of-fact?
• Are the objects elevated or left plain? Plainness usually signals personal memory rather than display.
• Does the composition feel like a portrait's framing — a single subject given full attention?
• What would you need to know about the artist's life to complete the reading?

The last question is the point. Still life as portraiture asks the viewer to supply the relationship, which is why the artist's own statement — that these are meditations on people and places she has known — matters more than any visual analysis.

The takeaway

Being an artist, in this model, means choosing a subject you can return to for years, tying it to something you actually feel, and showing up in the studio to work through it. Farrell's practice demonstrates the whole chain: nostalgia as the driver, everyday objects as the material, still life as the form, and portraiture as the meaning.

Routine veterinary care for dogs centers on regular wellness exams plus preventive treatments — vaccinations, parasite control, and dental checks — scheduled at intervals that change as a dog ages. It is the care you book when your dog appears healthy, not the care you seek when something is already wrong. Greenville Veterinary Clinic describes itself as a full-service facility providing professional health care to cats and dogs at every stage of life, which is the general-practice model this article assumes.

Wellness visits vs. sick or emergency visits

These are different appointments with different goals, and knowing which one you need saves time and stress.

A wellness exam can turn into a sick visit if the vet finds something — that's normal and not a sign you booked wrong.

Core preventive care

Vaccinations

Vaccination schedules are set by your veterinarian based on your dog's age, lifestyle, and local risk. Some vaccines are considered core for most dogs; others (like those for certain lifestyle or regional risks) are recommended only for dogs with specific exposure. Ask which vaccines your dog actually needs rather than assuming a fixed list applies.

Parasite prevention

This covers both internal parasites (such as intestinal worms) and external ones (such as fleas and ticks). Prevention is typically ongoing rather than a one-time treatment, and the right product depends on your dog's size, age, and environment. Your vet is the right source for which product and how often.

Dental checks

Dental health is part of the physical exam. Vets look for tartar buildup, gum inflammation, and broken or loose teeth, and can advise on home care or whether a professional cleaning is warranted.

How often, and what gets checked

Frequency depends on life stage. Puppies need more frequent visits because they're completing their initial vaccine series and growing quickly. Healthy adult dogs are generally seen about once a year. Senior dogs often benefit from more frequent exams because problems tend to appear earlier and are easier to manage when caught sooner.

At a typical exam, expect the vet to:

• Take a history — appetite, energy, bathroom habits, behavior changes
• Weigh your dog and compare to previous visits
• Check the mouth, eyes, ears, skin, and coat
• Listen to the heart and lungs
• Palpate the abdomen and check joints and mobility
• Review which vaccines and parasite preventives are due

The weight trend and history are often as informative as the hands-on exam, which is why keeping annual visits matters even when your dog seems fine.

Signs your dog should be seen sooner

Don't wait for the next scheduled visit if you notice:

• Not eating or drinking, or a sudden change in either
• Vomiting or diarrhea that persists or repeats
• Limping, stiffness, or reluctance to move
• Difficulty breathing, coughing, or choking
• Collapse, seizure, or disorientation
• Straining to urinate or defecate
• A wound, swelling, or lump that is new or changing
• Eye or ear discharge, or persistent scratching

When in doubt, call the clinic and describe what you're seeing — staff can tell you whether it warrants an urgent visit.

Preparing for an appointment

1. Gather records. Bring vaccination history and any records from a previous vet, especially if you've recently moved or adopted. This prevents unnecessary repeat vaccines.
2. Write down your questions. Note behavior changes, diet questions, or concerns as they come up, so you don't forget them in the room.
3. Note current medications and preventives. Include names and how often you give them.
4. Bring a stool sample if asked. Some clinics request one for parasite screening.
5. Use a leash or carrier. Keeps your dog and other patients safe in the waiting area.

Choosing a general practice

Look for a clinic that offers full-service care for dogs and cats, states its scope clearly, and can tell you how it handles after-hours emergencies — either through its own service or a referral partner. If your dog has a chronic condition, ask whether the practice manages it in-house or refers to a specialist.