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TOKYO We all know that cats love to look down on their human owners with disdain, but we never think they’re actually going to turn their tails up on us and leave, especially when we hold all the bargaining chips as their ever-loving carers who lavish them with pats, warmth, and never-ending bowls of food and water. Still, despite all our love and affection, there are felines who are desperate to get out there and explore, and with little regard for the feelings of humans, they can be gone for hours, days, or weeks, without even stopping to consider the...

A stray cat gave birth to a litter of kittens on the streets of Las Vegas. One of them was determined to stand out. Nikki Martinez @myfosterkittensNikki Martinez, a rescuer and foster based in Las Vegas, took in a stray momma and her kittens after they were rescued during a TNR (trap-neuter-returned) job. "Mama was living on the streets and delivered her babies outside. I took them in to foster," Nikki shared with Love Meow. Two of the five kittens sadly didn't make it, but the rest of the family quickly settled in and began to thrive in a safe...

The world's crankiest cat, whose permanent scowl inspired countless memes, a best-selling series of books and a movie, has passed away at the age of seven. Grumpy Cat - real name Tardar Sauce - shot to fame in 2012 in a YouTube video that received 15.7 million views, and went on to amass a $100M fortune for her former-waitress owner Tabatha Bundesen. But her family from Morristown, Arizona, took to Instagram this morning to announce the news that she'd died on Tuesday from a urinary tract infection, saying: 'Some days are grumpier than others'. The internet sensation was born with...

Grumpy Cat — the world’s most famous feline, whose frowning face spawned countless memes and an empire that includes plush toys, comics, books, calendars, perfume, sneakers, lottery tickets, and even her own Lifetime TV Christmas special — has died at age 7. “We are unimaginably heartbroken to announce the loss of our beloved Grumpy Cat,” read a statement released early Friday morning by her family and manager. “Despite care from top professionals, as well as from her very loving family, Grumpy encountered complications from a recent urinary tract infection that unfortunately became too tough for her to overcome. She passed...

I am more of a cat person than dog, but that doesn’t mean I hate dogs. I prefer cats over dogs, that’s all. However, I really dislike cat hating dog people, for some unknown reason, I’ve met too many dog people condemning cats out of the blue, such as they are useless and etc. I never understood the reason why they have the urge to bad mouth cats while I pet their dog. Over the years, I’ve realized that the saying, “You are what you eat.” is true. You are more likely to be a cat person if you prefer...

The last time the Strogoff's saw Diamond was one day before the Montecito Mudslide destroyed their property and surrounding neighborhood. The family decided to evacuate their home when warnings came in about the impending storm. They left quickly and couldn't round up their two cats, Diamond and Huguette, in time. When they returned home a few days later to assess the damage to their property, their pets were nowhere to be found. The family had to relocate for a year until their property was repaired. They returned home in January 2019... On Monday, Noelle was talking to a worker who...

They're cute, they're fluffy, and they're public enemy number one in Australia. Australia is at war -- with feral cats. By 2020, the government wants to kill two million free roaming cats, a large chunk of the total feral cat population, which is estimated to be between 2 and 6 million. Some areas of Australia have gone even further. In the northeastern state of Queensland, there's even a council offering a $10 ($7) bounty per feral cat scalp.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publication TED: The Economics Daily, April 4, 2017: “In 2015, households spent an average of $528 on pets, or about 1 percent of average household spending. Pet expenditures include pet food; pet purchases, supplies, and medicine; pet services; and veterinary services. Average household spending on pet food jumped from $190 in 2014 to $230 in 2015, or from 37 percent of average household spending on pets to 44 percent. “Average household spending on veterinary services, which reached over $200 in 2008, was $133 in 2015, or about 25 percent of average household...

If you have a cat, you might think of yourself as your feline's parent. After all, you feed your cat, you snuggle him, and you probably even talk to him. Your cat, however, sees things a bit differently. According to Dr. John Bradshaw, your feline friend likely thinks of you not as a parent, but as "a larger, non-hostile cat." Bradshaw, a biologist at the England's University of Bristol, has studied cat behavior for 30 years, and he's constantly finding new insights into the ways cats interact with humans. For starters, it's always on their terms. He weighed in on...

No need to call the fire department this time. A cat hanging from the edge of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) was rescued after quick action from a group of Brooklyn students on Friday. School secretary, Jane Pieratti told Patch that students from Benjamin Banneker Academy noticed the cat hanging off the expressway near Clinton and Park avenues in the early afternoon and took action, getting the word out and even trying to catch it. Most of the students who spotted the cat from school windows were in a lesson at the time, so Pieratti said they had to wait to...

The Appearance of the Fierce Lykoi Kitty! Scary as they might be, their appearance is really just down to the breed not having an undercoat, and beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Lykois have the roan pattern, which is an intermix of normal color hair with white hair, and the mandatory balding of the hair coat. Kittens appear quite normal at birth and only begin to lose their coats a week or two after birth when they start to look fluffy. At three to four month, the kitten will have the Lykoi appearance. Although the coat appears...

Here’s an alarming but little-known figure—stray cats and pet cats allowed outdoors kill 3.6 million birds every day on average in the United States, for a total of at least 1.3 billion birds per year. That’s most likely a sizable chunk out of the U.S. land-bird population, which the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center estimates is around 10-20 billion....[snip] But some cat lovers are also bird lovers. Two of them, a birdwatcher named Nancy Brennan and a bird biologist named Susan Willson, have developed what they believe is a solution...

The ancient square, the site where Julius Caesar was murdered, is to get a make-over courtesy of fashion house Bulgari, which plans to spend some €800,000 restoring the ruins to an accessible state. Currently visitors can only admire the square from above. It is closed to all except a colony of stray cats and the human volunteers who operate a sanctuary for them in the south-west corner... Off-limits and overgrown, its archaeological remains stacked into piles, the area needs considerable work to make it accessible to the public, including securing the ruins, installing walkways and building public bathrooms... There have...

A very lucky cat in Montana is happy and healthy after thawing out -- literally -- at an animal clinic over the past week following a miraculous rescue. The owners of Fluffy, who live in Kalispell, Montana, in the far northwest of the state, found her in a snow bank on Jan. 31 -- unresponsive, with her fur matted with ice. The low in nearby Whitefish was a bone-chilling 8 degrees on Jan. 31, and they had received about 16 inches of snow for the month.

[R] researchers found that people with high genetic risk of schizophrenia and who also presented high levels of Epstein-Barr virus antibibodies had an increased probability to pertain to the schizophrenia group — more than eight times higher, to be precise. Also, among participants with schizophrenia, around 10 percent had both high levels of antibodies against this type of herpes virus and a higher genetic risk for schizophrenia, compared with only a little over 1 percent of the participants in the control group. The study did not seek to establish cause and effect relationships, but the researchers suggest that preventing infection...

People with the infection were more likely to have schizophrenia, experts found Parasite T. gondii is believed to affect 350,000 Britons and 60million in the US Findings add to previous research showing a link to mind-altering behaviours

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) - The Metro Richmond Zoo recently welcomed seven new cheetah cubs. Vaila, a second-time mother, gave birth to septuplets on Nov. 30. The zoo says all seven cubs are doing great and growing fast at their cheetah breeding facility. They plan on moving the cubs into the zoo sometime in March and will make an announcement when they can be seen on exhibit. "This is a very special birth to us because not only is it a big boost for cheetah conservation by increasing the captive population, but also a cheetah having 7 cubs at once...

Many apartments have restrictions on renters having pets. But what happens when the renters are the pets? A California man is renting his Silicon Valley studio apartment to a pair of cats for $1,500 a month, The Mercury News reported. The apartment lacks a kitchen, but cats are not known for their culinary skills, so it all works out. “Basically I’ve got two renters that don’t have opposable thumbs,” David Callisch told the newspaper. “It’s actually great. They’re very quiet, obviously. The only problem is they stink up the place.” The rent for the cats, named Tina and Louise, is...

The substance that triggers this state of feline ecstasy is called nepetalactone, a type of chemical called a terpene. This simple, small molecule is part of an unusual chain of events, not previously seen by chemists. The researchers believe that understanding the production of these nepetalactones could help them recreate the way that plants synthesise other chemicals like vinblastine, which is used for chemotherapy. This could lead to the ability to create these useful medicines more efficiently and quickly than we are currently able to harvest them from nature. Usually in plants, for example peppermint, terpenes are formed by a...

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