A Stray Cat Taken To An Animal Shelter, Escapes And Returns To The Family Who Found Him…And Get's His Forever Home

Mr. Fancy, a stray tabby, was taken to animal shelter after a kind family cared for him for a month. However, he was determined to get back to them. Sometimes animals can just sense a good person. That was the case with Mr. Fancy. The long-haired tabby showed up in the yard of the Bosche family in Lucedale, Miss. early last year.

Anne Bosche said the family dog originally spotted him. She put out some food for him, which he accepted even though he seemed skittish. After the initial meeting, Mr. Fancy came back to the house each night for a month. He was wary at first but was waiting on the porch each day after about a week.

Eventually, the family made the decision to take him to a local animal shelter.

Mrs.  Bosche said she felt uncertain about taking the cat to the shelter. She said "I cried the five miles back to my house." Apparently she had good reason to. According to the shelter, he escaped 20 minutes after he arrived.

It took a month of navigating busy streets, but Mr. Fancy finally made it back to the family that had been so kind to him.

One morning Mrs. Bosche heard her husband talking to someone in the kitchen.

Confused, she walked in to see who it was. To her surprise it was Mr. Fancy. He ran up to her, meowing the whole way, when she entered the room. Mrs. Bosche refused to let him go again, and now Mr. Fancy has a permanent home.

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It Will Soon Be a Crime to Pierce or Tattoo Your Companion Animal Anywhere in the State of New York

It will soon be a crime to pierce or tattoo your companion animal anywhere in the state of New York.

“It’s simply cruel,” said Assembly member Linda Rosenthal. The Manhattan Democrat sponsored the legislation. While people can choose the pain of tattoos or piercings to satisfy their own “aesthetic predilections,” companion animals don’t have that luxury, she said.

On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the law that takes effect in 120 days.

The only exception is for markings done under a veterinarian’s supervision for a medical reason or identification.

Rosenthal said that’s intended, for example, for pets like her cat, which was spayed by a vet and given a little green mark to indicate that.

When done specifically for identification, the law says tattoos should include only numbers and letters allotted for a tattoo identification registry.

The law also doesn’t apply to ear tags on rabbits and guinea pigs.

Penalties for violations range up to 15 days in jail, and fines up to $250.

“This is animal abuse, pure and simple,” Cuomo said.

Similar legislation was introduced this past summer in New Jersey.

Lauren Schuster, Rosenthal’s chief of staff, said she believes Pennsylvania was first to enact this kind of legislation and the only other state so far. That followed the 2011 case of a woman who was piercing kittens and selling them on the Internet as “gothic.”

Rosenthal’s bill was introduced soon after that, Schuster said.

She said support grew this year after a Brooklyn tattoo artist posted a photograph of his tattooed dog online, saying he did it after the dog had surgery and was still under anesthesia.

Teresa Chagrin, animal care and control specialist for PETA, said tattooing and piercing animals causes them pain and violates existing laws against animal cruelty in all 50 states. She said she wasn’t immediately aware of others that clarified their laws like New York did.

Does Your Dog Really Remember The Hug You Just Gave Them?

When it comes to short-term memory, animals have very short ones indeed. A new meta-analysis examined more than 90 memory experiments carried out on 25 species encompassing birds, mammals, and bees.

Researchers at Stockholm University and Brooklyn College found that for dogs, events are forgotten after about two minutes—and that's on the long end of the spectrum. The average memory duration for all animals studied is 27 seconds, with chimps' memory as short as 20 seconds; that's a length of time that rats beat, reports National Geographic. Humans subjected to similar studies have had no problem remembering a sample stimulus they had seen as many as two days prior. In fact, based on these findings, "we think humans' ability to remember arbitrary events is unique," one researcher says.

Animals' memories can be broken into two categories—short-term and longer-term "specialized" memories, reports the University of Stockholm. And while animals can have excellent specialized memories (think birds remembering the exact locations of previous nests), memories of specific events tend to disappear in a span "ranging from a few seconds to several minutes," per the researchers' findings, published in December in Behavioural Processes.

That said, one researcher not involved in the study pointed out that some animals have shown the ability to capture episodic memories the way humans can—great apes have been shown to do so for days, if not years—while another cautioned that "it might be too early to argue that humans are the only ones who are able to mentally travel back and forward in time." (Dolphins, meanwhile, can recall whistles 20 years later.)

Dog Found in Animal Trap, Recovering Well - Needs Foster Home

 Chuck is a two-year-old Staffordshire terrier, and is from the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.  He was found outdoors by a family, with an animal trap clamped down on his left front leg.  The family that found him called the Kent County Animal Control, and with the assistance of Kelley’s Animal Clinic, medical staff were able to save his damaged leg.

Upon Chuck’s arrival, things didn’t look very good for the poor guy.  With the animal trap tightly clamped down, it was thought that they may have to amputate it.  However, using many medical disciplines, Chuck is still on all fours.

About a month into the recovery process now, Chuck is starting to undergo things like cold laser therapy, and water-assisted therapy.  The staff at Kelley’s are expecting that Chuck will make a full recovery, despite the terrible results that usually follow when a dog wanders across of one these cruel and inhumane traps.

According to Douglas Reeves, assistant chief of the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said that legal and experienced trappers usually pose little to no threat to the pets in this area.  He’s said that any and all traps are legally supposed to be clearly and plainly marked.  They’re required to have the name and address of the owner of the trap, or a valid driver’s license number attached to it as well.  There are also specific times of the year when it is and is not legal to set traps.

Anyone in the area trapping should have known there are rules, and also should know that failure to follow the regulations surrounding the practice carry a misdemeanor charge and very hefty fines.  When asked by reporters how often things like unidentified traps being found actually happens, all he could say was it was an exceedingly rare occurrence.

“I can think of three times I’ve heard of similar situations in my 25 years with the department”, Reeves said.

Website: Kent County Animal Control

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