For those who may have missed it, President Bush has enraged much of the nation of India, by appearing to blame its growing middle class for rising food prices.

In addition to a series of articles on this subject, WORLDMEETS.US just posted this tongue-in-cheek warning to President Bush, about the growing demand for pet food among new members of India’s middle class.

Amit Baruah writes for the Hindustan Times of India:

U.S. President George W Bush should be a worried man. Not only are Indians eating more and better and driving up food prices, their dogs and cats are eating better, too … Read the rest of this entry »

In remembrance of the lost blog tradition of Kitty Picture Fridays, I offer you this image of some kind of illegal political shakedown. I think this cat works for Senator Obama. I imagine him going across the country, forcing people down and demanding they contribute to Obama’s campaign. And from the look on his face, whoever took that picture is next.

I’m trying to figure out how I read/watch/hear so often now that Rev. Wright was the end of Obama and that white Americans will say they’ll vote for a black(ish) man to a pollster, but won’t really do it. Then how did Obama rake in another $40 million (to Clinton’s $20 million) in March? Is it possible that, despite the media orgy, most Americans got past the Wright thing? Not past so much, because it still angers me when I think of it, but maybe they put it in perspective. With 80% of Americans believing this country is in bad shape, is it possible that 5 sound bites from a preacher isn’t what really matters to voters? And if so many people are only lying about voting for him, why are they giving him their money at a time when most don’t have a lot?

While Clinton is getting mostly big singular donations, Obama (in addition to some big donations) is getting double the money in small increments from actual individual people. More than 400,000 people donated to his campaign in March, including more than 218,000 first-time donors. He has had the highest number of donors contributing $200 or less although the analysts have noticed a jump in the $2,000+ individual contributions last month. These are not only minorities and college kids don’t have two dimes to offer. So who exactly are these cat enforcers shaking down for money?

I guess, considering he made $55 million in February, someone somewhere will be crazy enough to spin this $40 million as a bad sign. However, if you add to this the fact that he completely lost the respect of 1/2 the world’s population by bowling a 2 in PA and the emergence of SmokingAgain-Gate, He Cheats With His Human Foibles: Barack Obama Has Smoked Some More Cigarettes!, I predict he’ll only raise $30 million in April. What a loser.

And wouldn’t it be better if all these millions (for all the candidates) were going towards something better than cheesy ads no one believes anyway?
Obama’s fundraising outpaces Clinton’s - Yahoo! News
ABC News: Clinton Backers Growing Nervous About Prospects
NYDailynews.com: Obama raises $40M to Clinton’s $20M
Obama’s $40 Million Haul (And What It Means) - The Fix
Obama boasts wealth of ‘partners’ - - The Washington Times
Clinton Camp Feels Spent, and Outspent - washingtonpost.com
Political Punch: Obama is Smokin’

Since a blizzard has dropped a foot of snow on SW Ohio and I’m not going anywhere, I’ll treat you to a photo of my cat being cute. Here is Samuel on my bed:

This is another Guest Book Review by fiction writer Jessica Schneider who also writes for the highly visited site Cosmoetica, is Book Editor for Monsters and Critics and is the only contributor to her own blog.

Editor’s note: This is a special review, particularly poignant and fitting for the holidays. We urge readers to read it in full (click on the MORE).

Book Review: Taro & Tomi: My Feline Son and Daughter by Shizue Tomoda

by Jessica Schneider

For anyone out there who is a cat lover, I’d like to recommend this short yet delightful story about a woman adopting her 2 cats and her experiences with them.

From demanding attention, to plopping on desks while work needs to be done, to being warm and affectionate to then turning cold and distant, the story begins with her adoption of her male cat Taro. From fleas, to getting him settled into her apartment, to his unconditional love, this book briefly chronicles the development of the human-cat relationship.

The book is short—only 118 pages divided into 40 chapters, yet there are also adorable illustrations by Edwin Batawala that give this story a child like feel. Each chapter is contained and deals with a different anecdote, such as Tomoda installing a cat flap and teaching him how to use it, to Taro stepping on a hot stove, to even falling into the toilet.

Anyone who has had affection for an animal could certainly appreciate this story, which can be easily read in one sitting and also appreciated by a young adult as well. Later in the tale, Tomoda decides to adopt a female kitten that unfortunately lives only a very short life, but she (Tomi) and Taro quickly bond, forming a brother-sister relationship. Ultimately the kitten dies possibly from having been removed from her mother too early and Tomoda is left to grieve, and of course, express some hesitation towards adopting another kitten.

Ultimately, she adopts another female, who happens to be a stray, and she also names her Tomi. Tomi #2 and Taro bond once again, yet Tomi remains somewhat distant towards her owner and is not as affectionate as Taro. The 2 cats learn to respect one another’s space, as well as their space when it comes to their owner (Tomi prefers the foot of the bed while Taro goes by the pillow).
Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe your grandmother is like mine; they see the world with ‘other eyes.’

My grandmother would sometimes say upon seeing the glee in her little dog’s eyes when she returned home: Dogs are heart medicine for humans. Other times when her butter yellow canaries would sing and sing just because the sun rose, she would say, Birds are heart medicine for humans. But then, when her kitties would adorn various kitchen cupboards to help her cook by waving their tails like pendulums, she’d say Cats are heart medicine for humans.

I was thinking of this, because a friend who is so ill, has an oncologist who understands the grandmother/ grandfather wisdom… and lets patients lie in big green vinyl recliner chairs wearing their living kitty mufflers, kitty aprons, and kitty head warmers during IV chemo.

Blessed oncologist whose chemo rooms are like a menagerie. When I’ve been there for my own infusions… another story for another time, I have a recurring anemia… the most unusual thing is that the dogs lying against people’s legs or lying quietly in laps, and all the kitties are on a mission; no fighting goes on there, no scouting for mates, no being sidetracked. Each creature, fully present to their person. It must be so: Creatures are medicine for their humans.

We’ve got Mother’s Day, whether every mother is ‘good enough’ or not. Same, Father’s Day. But no Cat Day. No Dog Day. No Bird Day. Some of the very few creatures on earth who will try to uncritically stay with us no matter how weak, how strong, how strange, upset, preoccupied we act, no matter what.

So two stories, each mythic in its own way; they are from two different cultures where many people are still fighting, arguing and hating one another over a war that occurred 67 years ago. But also their two cultures despite all else… have a great unifier: their shared love of cats, large cats called tigers, and smaller tigers called cats.

The first story is a true one that came in a news release from China some time back.

The Tigers In the Temple

Walking fully grown tigers on a leash is all part of a day’s work for a group of Buddhist monks who have taken on the task of protecting the endangered animals by offering them a home within the walls of their temple.

The sanctuary is run by head monk Phusit Khantidharo, who insists all 10 tigers living at the Pha Luang Ba Tua temple in western Kanchanaburi province in Thailand have adopted peaceful Buddhist ways.

“We are a big family here and we live together, not just with the tigers but many animals,” said Phusit, sitting cross-legged on a rock surrounded by five large tigers that take turns to affectionately nuzzle up to their saffron-robed master.

The tigers, with names like Storm, Lightning and Great Sky, live among monkeys, horses, deer, peacocks, geese and wild pigs in a scenic gully where they are free to roam and feed during the day.

Visitors to the remote temple, about 200 kilometers west of Bangkok, are invariably stunned by the sight of the monks frolicking with tigers as if they were ordinary domestic cats.

One monk, who weighed less than half his furry companion, was bold enough to crouch down and mock fight with the big tiger, which gently lunged back with its deadly claws retracted.

The monks have documented the personalities of all the big cats in a booklet with profiles varying from “likes to be a star and loves showing off” to “pretends to be tame and gentle but will bite.”

The first tiger was brought to the temple in 1998 after being injured by a hunter, but died within days.
Soon after, two very ill cubs arrived with large knife wounds in their stomachs. Inexperienced hunters had tried to cut them open and inject them with the preserving agent formalin in a bungled attempt to stuff them for a collector. Read the rest of this entry »

Dying people at a Rhode Island nursing home get warm fuzzy purring in their last few hours.

AP: Oscar the Cat Predicts Patients’ Deaths

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

David M. Dosa, M.D., M.P.H., “A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat” in The New England Journal of Medicine, 357:328-329 (July 26, 2007)

Washington Post Chat with Dr. David Dosa

Max the Utahn: Clairvoyant Utah cat comforts dying

Max, the cat that’s always in a penguin suit, has more mystique than his friends at the Alpine Valley Care Center realize. Center employees believe the 8-year-old feline can tell when people are ill or about to die — and he behaves accordingly.

Did you ever think your purring cat wouldn’t love you so much if you didn’t fill her bowl every morning?

It that happened, you could say it runs in the family: a major new study published today in the journal of Science says that the ancestors of today’s domestic cats came to and bonded with humans for f-o-o-d — unlike other animals such as dogs:

Your hunch is correct. Your cat decided to live with you, not the other way around. The sad truth is, it may not be a final decision.

But don’t take this feline diffidence personally. It runs in the family. And it goes back a long way — about 12,000 years, actually.

Those are among the inescapable conclusions of a genetic study of the origins of the domestic cat, being published today in the journal Science.

The findings, drawn from an analysis of nearly 1,000 cats around the world, suggest that the ancestors of today’s tabbies, Persians and Siamese wandered into Near Eastern settlements at the dawn of agriculture. They were looking for food, not friendship.

They found what they were seeking in the form of rodents feeding on stored grain. They stayed for 12 millennia, although not without wandering off now and again to consort with their wild cousins.

The story is quite different from that of other domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, goats, horses — and dogs, cats’ main rivals for human affection. It may even provide insight on the behavior of the animal that, if not man’s best friend, is certainly his most inscrutable.

“It is a story about one of the more important biological experiments ever undertaken,” said Stephen J. O’Brien, a molecular geneticist at the National Cancer Institute’s laboratory in Frederick, Md., and one of the supervisors of the project.

“We think what happened is that cats sort of domesticated themselves,” said Carlos A. Driscoll, the University of Oxford graduate student who did the work, which required him, among other things, to befriend feral cats on the Mongolian steppes.

The study also says the ancestors of today’s house kitties also condescended to join man (and woman) in the fertile crescent (instead of Egypt) nearly 10,000 years ago, much earlier than previously believed.

And all cats have comon ancestry:

Read the rest of this entry »