Hello Cat Lover!
Today's edition will cover:
Cats in the news...
Health issues...
Web sites...
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CATS IN THE NEWS
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Some of you may have read this already, since it showed
up on the front news page of Yahoo last week. Seems a cat
named Gracie made an unplanned trip from home in her owner's
suitcase, unknown to him! He left on a business trip and
didn't notice he'd packed the cat.
Cat owners know how much their little darlings love to snuggle
down into small places, and some of these kitties have made
some rather drastic journeys to faraway places. These kinds of
news stories show up fairly often.
Gracie, a resident of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, ended up
in Fort Worth, Texas, when a stranger picked up the wrong suitcase
at the airport's baggage claim area by mistake and took it home.
He was so shocked to have a cat jump out when he got home, he
said he "screamed like a little girl."
If Gracie hadn't been wearing ID tags, he would not have known
she had an owner. She would have been OK, as he said he would
have gladly kept her. But he called the number on the tag and
reached a crying wife who had been frantically looking for her
cat.
She made it back home on an $80 plane ticket and was gratefully
reunited with her owners. The man in Fort Worth said he would
have named the cat "Suitcase" if he'd kept her.
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Do you remember reading about that incident on Christmas Day
at the San Francisco zoo? The day 3 teenage boys were attacked
by a tiger, and one died? Well, the latest news is that these
boys had been teasing and harassing the tiger (imagine that),
and provoked the attack.
An investigation showed that all the boys had alcohol in their blood,
two of them above the legal limit.
They also tested positive for marijuana. One of the 2 survivors
admitted all three of them were drunk, and were yelling and waving
at the cat as they climbed on top of the railing.
Zoo officials said they will raise the height of the railing around
the enclosure to prevent such things in the future. (I think they
should lower it... might clean up the gene pool.)
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*See below, under WEB SITES, for a story about a tiger that was
shot to death in Texas the same day.
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HEALTH ISSUES
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Update on my kitty, Lucky Girl:
Just heard from the vet the other day, and Lucky Girl
is doing fine. She had to have her bad eye removed, but
is healing fine and will be able to come home next week.
Thanks to all who wrote in with well wishes...
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A new study on cat DNA was just released in January, in
the journal, Genomics. After studying more than 11,000
cats from all over, they've determined that cats originated
in the Middle East. These studies will help researchers
identify and treat genetic diseases, they said.
I wrote a little more about it in my blog:
http://cathealthproblems.blogspot.com
[Thanks to Jean for sending this in!]
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WEB SITES
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I have been working on my web site diligently the last
couple of weeks and have finally finished a new page.
It's the result of a suggestion by someone to make my
products more accessible to everyone, so I created a
"catalog" page. Take a look and see what you think:
http://www.theproblemcat.com/catalog.html
Thanks to Judy for her eagle eyes... she spotted all
my goof-ups, which I hope I have totally corrected now.
If you see anything that isn't working right, let me
know! I hope I'll know how to fix it....
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*
Big Cat Rescue is offering a $5,000 reward for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever shot and
killed a female tiger near Dallas, Texas on Christmas Day.
http://www.bigcatrescue.org/video/b42008/5000reward.htm
It appears the one-year-old tiger was someone's private
pet. She was declawed and leashed with a rusty cable.
Authorities think she probably got to be more than the
owner(s) could handle. [Some people have to learn the
hard way that wild animals don't make good pets. In this
case, it was the tiger that paid the price.]
To contact the organization, email them here:
info @ bigcatrescue.org
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A SMILE FOR YOU ;-)
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I shared this before, but there is an updated video
out now, as this woman currently has 136 cats in her
three-room apartment in Russia... up from 108 or so a
few months ago...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASG6r9rhwcE
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This is a very clever little web page:
http://procool.ru/interesting/funny_kitten.htm
It should be viewable for everyone, even if you're on
dialup. It will be immediately obvious when you get
there that it's a Russian site, as you won't be able
to read the titles (unless you know Russian, of course).
But that's OK. You don't need to. I figured out that
you can change the size of the image by clicking on
the choices in the drop-down menu if you need to set
the image to fit on your screen.
It's very simple, and self-explanatory. Enjoy...
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Do you have any interesting stories to share about your
cats? Send them in and I'll put them here in
this newsletter. (Include your name and website
if you have one, and I'll give you a "plug" for
your website. Or, anonymous is OK, too. It's
up to you.)
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If you ever want to review past issues,
here is where they are stored:
https://www.ymlp.com/pubarchive.php?catsgalore
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