Morals of a Cat

B-A-D Kitty!!

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.

- Stephen Wright

Source: The Web

It occurred to me only after I put this picture up that this cat was dead. Believe it or not, I had actually convinced myself that it was just sleeping soundly...

Bad Attitude

A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She doesn't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.

- Jerome K Jerome

Source: The Web

On the Other Hand, Good Kitty!!

"Big-eared babies don't cry as much, it's true!" So says Ms Kitty Steinie...

In an article from Hamilton entitled "Cat Overlooks Babies' Big Ears" I read where Steinie the cat suckles and cleans two baby rabbits as well as six kittens of her own. The cat rounds the baby bunnies up and returns them to the basket whenever they hop off behind the couch.

The rabbits, named LC and Vege-eater, arrived in the student flat last month. Now they're part of a model nuclear cat family, seeming to settle in well. The family sleeps in a basket at the bottom of a storage closet in the Hillcrest flat of Conrad King, 20, Mark Hanlen, 20, and James Lumsden, 19. A dog at a friends' flat killed the rabbits' real mother and six siblings. The students tried the cat - and it worked.

Source: The Dominion Thursday 19 October 2000 - NZPA photo source: Waikato Times

Relief All Around

Toilet training: Doogal gets the hang of things.

by Richard Macey

It is not civilisation's biggest problem but, thanks to the ingenuity of a Sydney woman, a solution is in the can. In January, Jo Lapidge bought her children, Ben and Sophie, a Burmese kitten. "We only had Doogal a week before I was regretting getting him," Mrs Lapidge said yesterday, recalling the smell of his litter tray and the work keeping it clean. Then she saw the movie Meet the Fockers, featuring a cat trained to use its owner's toilet. "I thought, 'Right, I'm going to train my cat to use the toilet'." There were plenty of potty training devices for children, but Mrs Lapidge could not find anything similar for cats. So, after 2 months of tinkering on 15 prototypes, she developed her first invention, Litter-Kwitter, a system of colour-coded rings.

The first step is to replace the litter tray with a red disc. Once the cat is doing its business in the middle, the disc is mounted on the toilet bowl. When leaping onto the red disc has been mastered, it is replaced with an amber ring that has a small hole, getting kitty used to balancing over the water. As progress is made, a green ring with a bigger hole is introduced. Finally, the rings are removed, leaving the cat to balance on the normal toilet seat. There was little risk of drowning, Mrs Lapidge said: "Cats are very nimble."

She believed kittens could be trained in 8 weeks. "Training Doogal was a lot easier than my son," she said.

Mrs Lapidge, who is seeking a manufacturer, is confident she has a commercial success, expecting her invention to sell for $80 to $140, compared with the $4,000 needed for a litter tray over the course of a cat's life. She has won a place in Fresh Innovators, a national campaign highlighting new inventors, but confesses Doogal can't flush.

Source: www.stuff.co.nz 4 May 2005 photo credit Bob Pearce/Sydney Morning Herald

The Lioness and the Oryx

A lioness in central Kenya has baffled wildlife experts by adopting a baby oryx, a kind of small antelope normally preyed upon by big cats.

In the afternoon, they lay down together to rest

Reports say the full-grown lioness came across the oryx two weeks ago in the Samburu Game Reserve, scaring off its mother. Instead of then attacking the defenceless calf, the lioness adopted the baby, protecting it from other predators, including a leopard.

Extraordinarily, the lioness still allowed the mother oryx occasionally to come and feed her calf before chasing her away. But the rule of the wild ultimately prevailed on Sunday when a male lion attacked and killed the baby oryx while the lioness was sleeping.

"This is either an extraordinary case of maternal instinct or simply the eighth wonder of the world," local Herman Mwasaghu told The Nation newspaper. Mr Mwasaghu was one of the first to spot the unlikely pair, which proved a powerful draw for tourists and game workers alike. The lioness would lie down to rest in the afternoon and its unlikely charge would curl up beside her.

Wildlife expert Vincent Kapeen said he thought the lioness spared the oryx "because animals have a special instinct to care for the young. What is baffling is why the relationship has lasted so long," he was quoted as saying.

According to the AFP news agency, the sad end to the story came on Sunday when the lioness led the oryx to the river to drink. Weakened by two weeks of looking after her adopted baby, she fell asleep, failing to notice a hungry male lion in the area.

The oryx was no more. Patrick Muriungi, a receptionist at Samburu Lodge, told AFP the lioness was grief-stricken when she awoke to realise what had happened. "She was very angry. She went around the lion about 10 times roaring, and then disappeared," he was quoted as saying.

Source: news.bbc.co.uk Monday 7 January 2002

Lion Defies Nature by Adopting Oryx - Again and Again

Nairobi, Kenya - A lioness who has already defied nature twice this year by adopting a baby oryx - an antelope that Africa's top predator usually likes to eat - has done it again, adopting a third oryx. Game wardens at Samburu National Park said Monday they had found the lioness with a four or five-day-old oryx called Easter Saturday. She had previously adopted newborn oryxes over New Year and on Valentine's Day.

On each occasion, she has given the calves affection, protection from other lions, and even allowed their natural mothers to come and feed them. "Yesterday, two oryxes came (near the lion and calf), probably the mother and father," chief warden Simon Leirana told Reuters. "The lioness left the calf and went to sleep in the shade. The calf went to its mother and started suckling for about three minutes, then the lioness ran toward them and the mother oryx ran away."

Leirana said the calf tried to follow its mother, but was pursued by the lioness who eventually won "her" baby back.

Wardens said the latest adoptee looked well and strong. Oryx number two was taken away from the lioness after its condition deteriorated from lack of food. Oryx number one was not so lucky. The lioness managed to protect it for two weeks before a hungry male lion with a traditional diet seized the baby while the lioness was napping.

Source: www.reuters.com 1 April 2002

Purr a Day Helps Cats Get Better

London - Scientists say there is some truth to the myth that cats have nine lives. They've discovered that cats purr to help them get better when sick or injured - thus enabling them to cheat death, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph.

The researchers at the Fauna Communications Research Institute in North Carolina call the purr a natural healing mechanism, said the report. They say the purr helps their bones and organs to heal and grow, working in a similar way to ultrasound on humans. Exposure to similar sound frequencies are known to increase bone density.

Dr Elizabeth von Muggenthaler, the president of the institute, was quoted as saying: "Old wives' tales usually have a grain of truth behind them and cats do heal very quickly. The healing power of purring seems to explain their nine lives." She told the newspaper: "We are starting to solve a 3,000-year-old mystery as to why cats purr. The next phase will be to explain the mechanics of the process." - DPA

Source: The Evening Post 20 March 2001

While I really like this story and agree that what it says sounds plausible, I would have to ask: what sort of a place is the "Fauna Communications Research Institute"? Is this a place where legitimate science is done? (Possibly not, but they probably enjoy their jobs anyway.)

Source: Probably Funny Times, years ago

Which cat ate your Prozac?

Or Swap for What Have You

Neither One Has Worms!

Source: the web

Living Dangerously

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.

- Albert Schweitzer

Source: the web

Source: www.thesun.co.uk "Cat and Moose Game" sent to them by Ian Salmon

A cat that has befriended a female bear visits its pal at the Berlin zoo.
The cat first showed up in the bear's enclosure in 2000 and the two have been close friends ever since.

Source: New York Daily News Wednesday 5 November 2003 photo credit EPA

Cat and Bear Reunited

Berlin - Muschi, the small cat that formed an unlikely friendship with a half-ton bear called Maeuschen, which means "Little Mouse" in the Berlin zoo, has been reunited with her companion after pining outside the bear's cage for months. Muschi, which means "kitty," appeared in the bear's enclosure about 3 years ago. But last October, the bear was locked into a cage while her living space was enlarged. The distraught cat took to roaming around the zoo and sitting outside the cage. Zoo keepers took pity on her and this week allowed her into the cage with the shaggy female Asiatic black bear. "Now they're happy," said Heiner Kloes, a member of the zoo's management board. "The cat is popular with our older, regular visitors."

No one knows where Muschi came from. "She appeared from nowhere. We decided to leave them together because they got on so well," said Kloes. "They share meals of raw meat, dead mice, fruit and bread and lie in the sun together." The enlarged enclosure will reopen in the spring.

Source: story.news.yahoo.com Friday 9 January 2004 via Reuters

Farm Cats

Source: www.strangecosmos.com s

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