CatDogBlog

Starving inhabitants of Nairobi (Kenya) feel too proud to eat dog food aid. Officials in drought-stricken Kenya reacted with horror and outrage on Tuesday to a plan by a New Zealand woman to send dog food to feed starving children threatened by famine in the East African nation.

Describing the idea as “absurd,” “insulting,” “offensive” and “immoral,” Kenyan officials vehemently rejected the donation and said they would put measures in place to prevent any similar assistance.

The would-be donor, Christine Drummond, has told the New Zealand press her mix is different from pet food, but made with the same ingredients, and she and her children eat it.

“It is immoral, it is unacceptable,” said Kenyan Special Programmes Minister John Munyes, who is coordinating the government’s response to the drought that has put up to four million Kenyans at risk of starvation.

“It is insulting us because we are poor,” she said. “We appreciate when people are willing to help us, but they should be sensitive about our culture,” said government spokesperson Alfred Mutua. “Telling us that you are giving us food for dogs in our culture is an insult of the highest order,” he said. “Maybe, she was trying to help, but I hope this offer is a result of naivety.”

The outcry began when Nairobi’s leading Daily Nation picked up a report about the offer of 6,000 packets of powdered dog food from The Press newspaper in Christchurch, New Zealand and splashed it across its front page. In the past month in just one of the Garrisa provincial hostpitals 40 people died from starvation, would their cultural pride have been the same, isn’t food… food?

A deaf collie dog has been taking lessons in sign language to make it easier to find him a new home. 8-month-old Blue’s first owners were expecting a baby so decided they wouldn’t have enough time to devote to him and his special needs.

The Little Valley Animal Shelter in Exeter took him in but potential owners have so far been put off in case his deafness made him difficult to train. Blue now understands seven signals and is a much happier dog!

The Little Valley animal behavioural assistant Gill Hodge said: “Dogs naturally use their own form of sign or body language such as tail wagging when they’re happy, raising hackles when they feel threatened - and they do this far more than they use their voices.”

Out of all the signs that Blue has learned his favourite is the ‘thumbs up’ which means ‘good boy’.

Dogs seem to have become the happiest and most pampered animals in China since the “Year of the Dog” is around the corner. Stories about generous pet-owners buying their dogs gifts have been reported by newspapers in some of the major Chinese cities in the advent of the traditional Spring Festival, or the Chinese lunar New Year, which falls on January 29th.

Hao Didi, 22, the owner of four puppies who lives in the Eastern (or Dongcheng) district of Beijing (China’s capital), said her family have prepared a traditional Chinese costume, or Tangzhuang, for the puppies for the imminent festival, and is planning to take them to the pet’s beauty salon.

“The Year of the Dog is something special to everyone in my family, as we love and care for our dogs so much as if it were a year for them,” said Hao. The Chinese lunar calendar counts the years with a rotation of the names of 12 animals. The cycling starts with rat, then follow ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster and dog, and ends with pig.

The shopkeeper of a Beijing Coolbaby Pet Product Chain Store said that his shop had busier business as the festival neared. The daily sales of dog clothing and toys rose about 30% in the past week than usual, she said.

According to a shop assistant, among all the dog clothes, the red ones and the traditional style Tangzhuang, varieties shelved especially for the Spring Festival, were the best seller, at more than 70 Yuan ($8.70/€7.20/£4.90) for each.

Dogs are also following the Chinese tradition, like their masters, to have a bath and haircut before the lunar New Year, a way people think can dispel misfortune when they embrace the new year.

Lassie, a collie, became the canine star of a string of movies in the 1940s and a TV series that started in the 1950s and ran for about two decades. In the series, the faithful dog regularly saved her human companions from various accidents and mishaps.

In a case of life imitating fiction, a 13-month-old cattle dog named Lassie helped rescue its injured master after he fell from a horse in eastern Australia, the man’s son said Tuesday.

George Crowther, a 90-year-old farmer from Queensland state, broke his hip and pelvis when he was pitched from a bucking horse and his foot became caught in the reins, his son Austin told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Crowther’s dog, Lassie, came to the rescue, snuggling in next to Crowther to keep him warm. When darkness fell, Crowther’s wife came searching in the fields with a flashlight but couldn’t hear his feeble cries.

“She went out and called for the dog and Lassie came up to where she was and (started) whimpering. She said, ‘Where’s George?’ ” Austin Crowther said. The dog then led her to the paddock where Crowther lay cold and injured.

Crowther was recovering in hospital Tuesday after having 37 screws and two metal plates inserted into his pelvis and hip. His family hopes he will return home next week, and expect he will continue to go out riding with his horse and dog. “He named her properly,” Austin Crowther said of his father’s four-legged friend.

“Measuring approximately 5 cm/2-inch wide, 2.5 cm/1-inch thick and 9.4 cm/3.7-inch long, the PetsCell sets the standard for GPS tacking devices for pets.”

In March 2006 a company called Pet Mobility will debut this first mobile phone for canines. The PetCell is a bone shaped device that hangs off the hound’s collar. It has its own number and after dialling the owner can speak to their dog via its two way speakers. The dog can of course bark back too.

The PetCell also has an option called GeoFence that will alert owners whenever their dog wanders beyond preset parameters, and built-in temperature sensors to indicate if the dog is too hot or cold. Owners can even attach a camera to the collar and get a wireless feed of exactly what their dog is looking at. Given that this is often like to be the rear end of another hound it is perhaps not too enticing a prospect. It’ll sell for around $400 in the US, though there’s no news yet on a European launch.

In Manchester, a cat interrupted its bosses nap, saving two lives. How? Well, Jean Poole and her 9-month-old granddaughter were dozing Tuesday in Poole’s home in the Newberry Estates mobile home park. Poole’s 7-year-old cat, Princess, woke them up, meowing loudly.

Poole got up, smelled smoke and heard crackling flames. She went to check the wood burning stove in the living room, and saw flames at the picture window. With fire blocking the front door, Poole grabbed the baby and went out the rear door. Then she returned to get Princess.

“She woke me up. I don’t know if I’d have smelled the smoke otherwise,” Poole said. Arriving firefighters found flames shooting through the roof. Scott Glassmyer, assistant chief of the Newberry Township Fire Company, said the blaze apparently started accidentally in a trash can outside, ignited the underside of the mobile home, spread inside the siding and broke through to the interior.

The Canton City Health Department issued a public health nuisance notice to Margaret Hughes. The woman says she never thought feeding a couple of stray cats would get her into trouble.

She was ordered to stop caring for Ghost, a stray cat she has been helping for over two years. Ghost the cat has always found a bowl of food and a warm bed on Hughes’ back porch. But no more….

Hughes says she feels terrible that she can not feed the cats, but she knows she can’t break the law either. The health department’s letter also states she can no longer care for any other strays that may come her way.

The letter says stray cats are a real nuisance in the city. The department told Hughes she could keep the cats if she got them vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and then brought them indoors. But Hughes says that on her fixed income, she would not be able to manage.

A basement remodeling project left Jany Chumas with one unsettling question after the drywalling was all done “where’s the cat?”

Mary Poppins, Chumas’ pet cat, was nowhere to be found after the workers installed drywall in a room January 2nd. Chumas said the cat is “the sweetest little thing but quite shy,” so she assumed at first that she had run away. As more time passed, she suspected the 7-pound cat could be trapped, and she and her daughter headed for the basement to search.

“I called her ‘Here, kitty, kitty’ and I could hear this faint, weak meow coming from behind the walls where they had just drywalled,” Chumas said Tuesday. She called the Eau Claire Fire Department on Friday and a crew went to the home, about five days after the remodeling work.

First they cut a small hole in the drywall near where Chumas heard the cat’s cries, but they found only insulation. Later they cut into the ceiling and Chumas called into the hole. Soon a weak, hungry, tired and dusty Mary Poppins “came tumbling out of the ceiling,” Chumas said. Some food and water put Mary Poppins on the road to recovery.

Cy, short for Cyclopes, a kitten born with only one eye and no nose, is shown in this photo provided by its owner in Redmond, Oregon, on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005. The kitten, a ragdoll breed, which died after living for one day, was one of two in the litter. Its sibling was born normal and healthy.

Burglar pretended to be a dog.
Police are hunting two thieves after one stole a purse from an elderly woman while his accomplice pretended to be a dog. Police in Stockton-on-Tees say it was one of the most unusual distraction burglaries they’ve ever encountered. The two men barged into a house owned by a brother and sister in their nineties just after midday on Saturday, reports local ITV news.

One of the thieves then dropped to his knees and started to bark like a dog and crawl around on all fours. Police say while the shocked 90-year-old woman and her brother, 93, looked on in disbelief, the second man grabbed the woman’s purse and the pair ran off.

Man chained up in kennel.
The woman up next should’ve done to the above thieves what she did to her husband…

A 75-year-old Polish man was chained up by his wife in a dog kennel because she was fed up with him coming home drunk. Zdzislawa Bukarowicza was chained up by his wife Helena and fed on dog food and water because she was sick of him spending all their money on vodka.

He survived almost three weeks living on an old blanket in the dog kennel and being fed from the dog bowl despite temperatures of minus 20 degrees at his home in Scinawa. He was eventually freed when friends, who had not seen him at their local for several days, called the police.