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I have a question regarding credit card processors. I run a small business, and accept credit cards, however is there a way to prevent paying the high fees with this service? Can I just slide the credit card plate, in the old fashion way and take the deposit slips to the bank?

Just saw another ad by the Humane Society. They do wonderful work and help animals who have been abandoned or treated cruelly. I hate these ads, not for their poor taste, they are actually done well and are a needed message about treating animals with love and humanely. What bothers me about the ads is the starkness of the cruelty man exacts on an animal who loves unconditionally and is always happy to see you. They don't care what kind of day you had or how much money you make. The're always happy when you walk in the front door....

Leaping through the air, claws outstretched these cats appear locked in mortal combat. But rather than a deathly duel over a mouse or territory, this acrobatic pair are simply play-fighting. Dubbed the 'ninja cats' after the Japanese feudal warriors, the sparring pair are in fact Muffi and his friend Tiger.

Residents in Old East Dallas say they are fed up with dogs roaming the streets at night killing their cats. They've heard the killings outside their bedroom windows and watched the dogs trot off. But they don't know what to do. They can't capture the dogs themselves. They say Animal Control doesn't come out while the dogs are still there. And they say police won't respond if humans aren't in danger. "I'd just like to get a gun and sit on my front porch and shoot them. I'm just so mad," said Will Olliverson, of Junius Heights. He found his...

Dear Mr. Robinson: I've given the matter quite a bit of thought and have decided it is time to ZOT you. I was tempted when I noticed posters were allowed to insult anyone who disagreed with them; even more tempted when I saw new posters banned for asking questions, or expressing an opinion outside the mainstream - (though I must confess anyone adopting the screen name "Christ was killed by conservatives" was not going to last very long ! I'm sure he was referring to the Sanhedrin, but still...) When I saw your post today about getting "millions of people"...

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans. Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food. Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's. The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat. Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings. This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore. "The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with...

MIAMI — Police say a Florida teenager who is accused of killing more than a dozen cats in two south Miami neighborhoods fits the profile of a sociopath. In the 10-page arrest affidavit for Tyler Hayes Weinman, police said they tracked the 18-year-old’s car electronically and traced his cell phone before charging him with the crimes. The affidavit was unsealed today, the same day Weinman was formally arraigned in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

A young mountain lion was trapped and relocated by the Colorado Division of Wildlife after eating a house cat Monday ... north Boulder. “He was just too close,” Churchill said. “We wanted to give him a spanking and move him out of town.” Wildlife officials previously tagged the same cougar in February when the kitten was stuck in a tree, Churchill said. He is part of the five-year Front Range Mountain Lion Study, which aims to track mountain lions between Lyons and Evergreen to better understand cougar movement trends and develop a way to mitigate aggressive behavior near human establishments,...

Do cats ever regret anything?.... My favorite answer regarding felines: “They regret not being large enough to eat their keepers.”

...In the genetic analysis, published in 2007, Driscoll, another of us (O'Brien) and their colleagues focused on two kinds of DNA that molecular biologists traditionally examine to differentiate subgroups of mammal species: DNA from mitochondria, which is inherited exclusively from the mother, and short, repetitive sequences of nuclear DNA known as microsatellites. Using established computer routines, they assessed the ancestry of each of the 979 individuals sampled based on their genetic signatures. Specifically, they measured how similar each cat's DNA was to that of all the other cats and grouped the animals having similar DNA together. They then asked whether...

ANIMAL experts have been pussy-footing over the explanation for a cat that has developed bat-like wings on either side of its back. The long-haired white feline was born a normal kitten, but started to develop furry wing-like appendages on either side of its back when it was just a year old. Scientists believe the growths may be the result of a genetic mutation caused by chemicals during its mother's pregnancy. Alternatively, the cat which was discovered in Chongqing, China, may be a freak that developed from two embryos. However, the puss does not seem to be bothered by its wings,...

Today is a very sad day for me. I lost my nine year old best friend, Spunky. I came home this afternoon and found him paralyzed in his back and legs. I rushed him to the vet and he said some large cat, at his age, will develop blood clots. He said there was nothing that could be done. I agreed to have him put down. H leaves a brother, and me.

My oldest cat-14 years old, Smokie, has bone cancer in his jaw. Most of his right mandible has been eaten away. It was swollen and sore a week ago and I took him into the vet today. Vet said there isn't much to do for him, just watch how he eats and his overall behaviors will tell us how he's doing. She said there is a surgery, they don't do it, to remove the affected bone area and replace it with steel. It's 1500$ at least and no guarantees of recovery or cure. She had to sedate him for x-rays...

He will not stop making biscuits on my belly. I shoo him away; back he comes. I smash him down flat on my lap; he pops back up and starts kneading. He is purring loudly enough to wake the dead, too. Maybe I smell bad or something. Cats are truly inscrutable. Which is probably why Jonah Goldberg doesn’t like them. You always do know where you stand with a dog. The Goldberg household is getting a feline inhabitant; Jonah is going to do a contrast and compare of Cosmo and the cat. Well, I can give him a few points...

Just wondering what your opinion is about people who post vanities when their opinions could be posted to existing threads.

Now that I have navigated successfully the Bermuda Triangle of Storage that is the Closet of Doom, I realize that Horus rightly has been concerned about my welfare when I am up in the office. Especially when I go into the closet! When I occasionally would venture in there to look for something that had been swallowed up, he would follow me in with all his feline indicators on high alert. I just chalked it up to inexplicable cat behavior, bt now I know that he truly feared for my well-being. Not that I am anthropomorphizing, really. He wasn’t concerned...

You’d think the animal never ate. Tobie decided to fix himself a sandwich. Peanut butter and grape jelly. He got out the bread and spread one piece with peanut butter. His next step was to go to the pantry in search of a new jar of jelly. In the five seconds or so it took him to accomplish that task, Tiger had the bread (with peanut butter) off the plate, out of the kitchen and under the dining room table. Fortunately, he kept the peanut butter side up. Being the slow humans that we are, it took us awhile to...

Horus has no clue about Sarah Palin, but he has finely tuned radar for when I want to be cat-imated and when I don’t. Just like every cat ever born, Horus knows when he’s wanted, and he studiously avoids putting himself forward when it suits his human. No. He inserts his patently NOT-TRANSPARENT catself between me and my computer whenever I really have to get something done on the aforementioned device. Like my expense report or my email when I absolutely, positively have to get a message out FIVE SECONDS AGO. (“Horus, you are a DOOR, not a window,” I...

And cute. And cuddly. And playful. Kittens, that is. How do you think we ended up with three? Queen2 called me from the pet store yesterday (rescue kitties, not purchasable kitties). She was “considering” letting the kids get a kitten. After I stopped chortling hysterically, I asked her what she was going to name it and what it looked like. “I’m just THINKING about it,” she asserted. (Queen2’s consort is allergic. “That’s why Pfizer makes Zyrtec,” I told her.) Heh. The kitten comes home today. Once you start “looking” at kittens, all is lost. You get sucked into the great...

My reasons for leaving the Party that I’ve felt at home in since I became politically aware are numerous. I will start with quoting countless conservatives who feel as I do - I didn’t so much leave the Republican Party, it was the Party that left me. The elected Republican officials failed to implement a conservative agenda, despite having the Presidency and both houses of congress. No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drug Entitlements; they even tried to force Amnesty for illegal aliens upon us. They have given us a government that would make even LBJ blush. Our businesses and land...

MSPCA investigators are searching for whoever “cooked” a 6-week-old kitten in a microwave, nearly killing him. “Edison” was brought to Angell Animal Medical Center in Jamaica Plain with life-threatening injuries consistent with being burned in a microwave, said MSPCA-Angell spokesman Brian Adams. His entire tail may have to be surgically removed, Adams said, and both of his ears may have to be amputated.

hello i just try to log in to my firefox and didn't have no results can u help me with that theres no way i can opend my firefox and before i could opend and now i can't is there any way u can help

What else is there to do on Thursdays besides FReep and listen to TSN?! C'mon, eat, drink, breathe SAVAGE?

A Santa Barbara man will spend nearly a year in jail for banging the head of his roommate's kitten against a wall. Nicholas David Thompson pleaded no-contest to a felony animal cruelty charge and he was sentenced Monday to 360 days in Santa Barbara County Jail. Superior Court Judge Frank Ochoa also ordered the 21-year-old defendant to attend anger management

U.S. streets could soon be overrun with cats if communities fail to get a handle on growing feline populations, a veterinary medicine researcher says. *** Who herds cats? The perception is that the government provides funding for the control of cats, but "by and large, that is not the case in Ohio," Lord said. "Government has tended to not want to be involved with cats. And I don't know if they can avoid it anymore." ***

Escondido, Calif. (AP) -- The North County Times fired an editor for altering an Associated Press story to read that a Los Angeles city councilman strangled a kitten at a news conference about his city's new pet sterilization law. The newspaper published a story Wednesday that read, "'We will, sooner rather than later, become a no-kill city, and this is the greatest step in that direction,' Councilman Tony Cardenas, who co-authored the bill, said as he strangled a kitten at a City Hall news conference."

Paris Hilton left her pussycat at the vet almost two weeks ago and still hasn't gone back to get her. And now, the woman from whom Paris adopted the cat says Paris can't have the cat back -- because she's abandoned it!

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty. Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with "lost cat" signs. Then she got a phone call. "Hi, you're not going to...

SANTA FE, N.M. -- A woman drowned when she apparently tried to retrieve a kitten from a 55-gallon rain barrel at her home southeast of Santa Fe. Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said 48-year-old Deborah Hill was found by her husband Sunday afternoon after he returned home from running errands. Solano said the couple had dragged the plastic barrel inside their home because they wanted to thaw ice that had formed in the barrel. The barrel, which Solano said was tied to a door so it wouldn't tip, was about one-third full of water when the kitten fell in....

Sometimes, when you're a stray kitten, you have to depend on the kindness of strangers. Just ask 8-week-old Dasher, who had to be rescued twice in one day. Dasher was scooped up by a good Samaritan from a road in Taunton Tuesday. He'd suffered a broken leg after being hit by a car. The woman brought him into the warmth of her car, but he wasn't out of trouble yet. The little gray tabby climbed inside the dashboard.

A Freeper Warrior Cat.

Lawrenceville, Ga. (AP) -- A man captured neighborhood cats and kittens and fed them live to his pit bulls, authorities said Thursday. Tye Hilmo, 21, was charged Thursday with aggravated cruelty to animals. Hilmo was already in jail on drug, firearm and probation violation charges, Gwinnett County sheriff's spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais said. The new warrant charges that Hilmo "did give injured live cats and kittens to his pit bull dogs and let the pit bulls kill the already injured cats and kittens. Hilmo would capture and injure neighborhood cats for this purpose."

I often wondered what exactly makes a FReeper a FReeper? Is it the simple act of reading articles on FR? Do you have to post articles or replies? To call yourself a FReeper do you need to engage in effective activism like writing letters to politicians, getting out in the street to carry signs, or, is being a FReeper an attitude. If so, what attitude is that? Knock yourself out.

Page 46, July 30, 2007 Issue of Star Magazine has a picture of Lindsay Lohan sitting on what looks to be a tall bar stool. Her legs straddle that stool and its legs. The lightening is low. The magazine states that it is Lindsay at the Pussycat Dolls in Las Vegas at the PURE night club on July 14th. What they failed to see..............

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - A game of cat and mouse is under way between the U.S. government and Florida's Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum over the fate of dozens of felines roaming the former home of the Nobel Prize-winning author

OAKLAND, Maine -- State biologists have begun investigating the second reported mountain lion sighting in a week in central Maine. On Tuesday, Kelvin Higgins of Oakland provided a sample of fur and possibly some skin to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The animal shed the fur while grooming itself on a rock in Higgins's backyard in April

WASHINGTON - Garfield, Morris and the Aristocats get the fame, but look to the origins of today's furry felines and you find "lybica," a Middle Eastern wildcat. Domestic cats can be traced to wild progenitors that interbred well over 100,000 years ago, new research indicates. "House cats — which includes fancy breeds and feral cats — those cats all form a genetic group that is virtually indistinguishable from ones in the Middle East," said Stephen J. O'Brien of the National Cancer Institute. "So, domestication, for sure, took place in the Middle East where those cats live today," added O'Brien, co-author...

Has anyone else noticed he has been saying horrible things about Ann Coulter, for example he said she is screwing up the country and so forth. I don't know about y'all but I won't be buying any of his books.

Cat owners can now see what their pet gets up to once they go through the flap. It follows the launch of 'cat cam' by a German inventor, reports the Daily Mail. Jürgen Perthold, who lives in America, attached his light-weight camera to the collar of his tom cat Mr Lee. "I wanted to find out what he gets up to, where he spends his days," Mr Perthold said. "He goes out the whole day, sometimes he returns hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he also says out all night. It gave me the idea to equip...

It's no secret that cats are popular online. In fact, the fickle felines inspired a Web Search column (www.startribune.com/websearch/?p=112) that received a great reader response. Since then, though, an entire kitty subculture has emerged on the Web in the form of cat photos with funny sayings written on them.At first, they were called cat macros, but now go mostly by the name lolcats -- combining the Web abbreviation for "laugh out loud" (LOL) and "cats." The captions are written with poor English and bad grammar, as if the cat is commenting on the situation depicted in the photo, which sometimes...

How can I buy a gun for protection in California? what are the steps? please help! I know nothing ... it would be great if you could also advise the model you would recommend too. thank you

NEW CASTLE, Ind. - A cat helped spare a family from death by carbon monoxide poisoning by jumping on the bed and meowing wildly as fumes filled the home, the owners said. Eric and Cathy Keesling said their 14-year-old cat, Winnie, played a crucial role in saving their lives March 24 after a gasoline-powered water pump in their basement caused the odorless but deadly gas to build up. About 1 a.m., the domestic shorthair began nudging Cathy’s ear and meowing loudly. “It was a crazy meow, almost like she was screaming,” said Cathy, who hesitated to get up until Winnie’s...

Animal rights advocates are calling on federal food safety regulators and pet food companies to expand a nationwide recall of dog and cat food to include dry varieties, claiming they make pets sick. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it had no plans to suggest a wider recall to pet food companies, and veterinarians said they have not seen a trend of animals becoming ill after eating dry pet food.

A Chinese man says his cat can clearly pronounce his own name. Mr Sun, from Beijing, says two-year-old Agui says his name when he gets frightened

Sugar and spice and everything nice hold no interest for a cat. Our feline friends are only interested in one thing: meat (except for saving up the energy to catch it by napping, or a round of restorative petting…) This is not just because inside every domestic tabby lurks a killer just waiting to catch a bird or torture a mouse, it is also because cats lack the ability to taste sweetness, unlike every other mammal examined to date. The tongues of most mammals hold taste receptors—proteins on the cellular surface that bind to an incoming substance, activating the cell's...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

You've heard of Picasso - but what about Purr-casso? Check out these images from Burton Silver's book Why Paint Cats. And look closely - are they real or is someone pulling your whiskers?

After some internet research I just started my kitty on a methyl b12 due to a possible pancreatic inefficiency. He has an abdominal mass and I haven't wanted to do anything too invasive due to his age. The methyl version gets absorbed better so it seems. I may have to try pancreatic enzymes. Anybody familiar with this? My kitty went through a bout of what appeared to be pancreatitis and I've nursed him over that, but he still doesn't have much of an appetite so I am spoon feeding him. He does not seem to be gaining one ounce even...

Puppy Bowl III at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Animal Planet has reinvented the Big Game with the cutest, fuzziest and - at times - fiercest players on the field. Join us for tackles, fumbles and fouls on the third annual Animal Planet Puppy Bowl!