Me: Move. I need to fold clothes.
We could not keep the little tyke, we have too many cats, and one of them was having a nervous breakdown about the presence of the kitten. (Meatball has abandonment issues)
Pooli, AKA Princess Papule, was a ship's cat born in 1944 who served on the attack transport USS Fremont, earning three service ribbons and four battle stars:A World War II veteran cat today celebrates her 15th birthday.Now this is a life well lived.
And she can still get into her old uniform with its three service ribbons and four battle stars.
The cat, Pooli, short for Princess Papule, was born July 4, 1944, in the Navy yard at Pearl Harbor, her present owner, Benjamin H. Kirk, said.
Kirk explained that Pooli was taken aboard the attack transport USS Fremont that day by his nephew, James I. Lynch, now a specialist in administrative services for the Board of Education.
Pooli saw action at the Marianas, the Palau group, the Philippines and Iwo Jima. And she became a shellback when the ship crossed the equator.
Kirk revealed that when battle stations rang, Pooli would head for the mail room and curl up in a mail sack.
If you love cats, and you've considered running away to join the circus, then the fact that a Cat Circus Looking for a Tour Assistant is like ……… well ……… catnip:Has your dream always been to run away with a cat circus? Then here's the job for you! Samantha Martin and the Acro-Cats are looking for a tour assistant to travel cross-country with a troupe of trained cats (plus a groundhog, a chicken and a few rats) as they purr-form at venues in cities across the United States.BTW, it appears that this is on the level, as you can see at their web site, which puts the lie to that old cliche "As difficult as herding cats."
Job Requirements:
1. Animal care experience - Daily, weekly and monthly cat care duties - including but not limited to general and advanced cleaning and care/welfare of animals and their living environment.
2. Out-going personality, a keen sense of humor, the ability to roll with the punches, a flexible schedule, a high comfort level engaging with crowds of cat lovers, open to new experiences, lots of fun and craziness. We travel in a tour bus and share RV/hotel rooms.
3. Physically fit - able to lift and transport up to 50 lbs of show props and animal carriers from tour bus to stage and back.
4. Theater experience a plus - purr-form front and back of house duties, stage management, operate the light and sound, and help on stage with animals and prop placement.
5. Work with volunteers - wrangle and train volunteers who help with the shows.
Pay varies by show and includes per diem. No cat allergies. MUST LOVE CATS!
Serious applicants only. This job is a LOT of work and time on the road, but also the opportunity of a lifetime.
Like the characters played by the actor who inspired his name, Pacino was no scaredy cat. The brown tabby had prowled the streets of Los Angeles, a drifter scraping for his next meal.I'm asking my reader(s) to help me here, and come up with a drawing, or a photoshop, of a cat wearing a beat cop or night watchman uniform.
After the cat was turned in at an L.A. County animal services shelter, there was little hope that Pacino would be adopted. He was too distrustful, too fierce, too mean.
Then Melya Kaplan came along, looking for a cat with grit, street smarts and attitude.
The 10-pound, 6-ounce cat would become the nighttime warden at the Original L.A. Flower Market, making sure rodents and other vermin didn't get out of hand. He's part of a group of tough cats recruited by an animal rights nonprofit to find homes in places that could use their hard-scrabble qualities. Along with another cat named DeNiro, Pacino would prowl the Italian side of the flower market. Of course.
"Mother Nature doesn't make mistakes," said Kaplan, executive director of Voice for the Animals. "We probably just haven't found a purpose for it yet."
As part of the Working Cats program, street cats like Pacino are rescued from animal shelters and sent to locations ranging from police stations, like the LAPD's Wilshire and Foothill divisions, to private homes, businesses and schools. Over the years, the program has placed about 500 cats in nearly 50 locations.
Kaplan, a frequent customer of the market, developed the program in 1999 when Carl Jones, a market employee, told her about the rats in the workplace. Exterminators would spray the warehouse with poison, but the vermin remained. Every so often, a customer would spot a pair of beady eyes hidden in the row of flowers.
………
About 15 years ago, Kaplan made a proposition to Yamabe. She would deliver three cats to the flower market to get rid of the rats. And if they could not take care of the rodents, she would take them back.
The market currently has 15 cats, and Jones and Yamabe said they do not see any rats.
Kaplan attributes the program's success to the simple fact that adding a predator to an environment will scare away its prey. Once rodents smell a cat on the prowl, they go somewhere else, she said.
"It's not anything new. People used to have barn cats or church cats to keep out rodents," Kaplan said. "We just brought [it] to the city, and it seems to be really working."
Yamabe remembered one gray cat that died after several years of service patrolling the second-floor parking lot. Within days, the rats returned and Yamabe needed to call for another cat.
………
For a cat like Pacino, living in a warehouse almost certainly adds years to his life. Living on the streets is tough on any sentient being, including a cat. Kaplan said cats that might have lived fewer than five years on the streets can live more than 14 years in a home, business or police station. They're given meals and the buildings give them protection from bad weather, dogs and cars.
………
Kaplan said that in time, some of her more veteran cats got used to being around people and became house cats. That, in turn, created space for other cats to be rescued by the program.
"We're saving cats and helping people. And it's always great when the two grow closer together and we can place another cat," she said. "It's what I call a win-win-win."
Have you ever wondered why cats wiggle their butts before pouncing?Cats are lovely creatures that never fail to amaze us. They are full of quirks and often have a lot of spontaneous antics that keep everyone in the house amused. Cats have a cute little tush that they are proud to show off. They often like to wiggle and shake their hind quarters when they are about to pounce. It is cute and adorable, but why do they do that?It's like runners pushing back against the starting block.
Let’s look at cats’ wild cousins, the big cats. Wild cats such as tigers, lions, leopards tend to grind the ground with their hind quarters before they pounce. It is a way for them to get into position and brace themselves before they attack. Domestic cats share a similar feature – instead of grinding the ground with their hind legs, they wiggle their behind vigorously to attain balance and leverage.
If you do not see this, and think, "I love cats," you are not truly a cat lover.Sorry, give me a second. BREATHE JANE. BREATHE…okay. Just a few more deep breaths.The most depressing thing is that we are likely to see more outrage over how CCA would treat dogs than how it would treat human beings.
Almost there.
So Corrections Corporation of America — the people who brought you immigrant abuse in their private Texas prisons — want to get into the animal shelter business. In Citrus County Florida.
IT’S NOT ENOUGH that CCA is understaffing their people prisons to cut corners, resulting in higher levels of inmate violence and death. Which they then overbill for. And you can’t FOIA how many sexual assaults are happening there because as a private company they’re not responsive to FOIA requests.
They’ve been sued for insufficiently treating inmates who have health problems because that costs money, then they pay academics from Temple University to run “astonishingly misleading” studies that say they “save money” because they don’t take into account health care costs. Which they don’t want to pay.
They also hire people to work in prisons who have, you know, murdered people.
