What a great photo!

Our cat Sweetie Wildcat looked like this when our neighbors Chris and Leigh Ann rescued her from a parking lot in a thunderstorm. Sweetie has loved us unconditionally since she joined our family. (Here’s a link to her story: http://www.mykesweblog.com/2006/06/fast_food_kitte.html)

If you know who took this photo, please leave a comment so we can give well-deserved credit.

A two-faced “Janus” cat had entered the Guinness World Records at 12 years old, for being the longest living cat of his kind. Frank and Louie’s condition is a birth abnormality, and most cats born that way do not live long.The record holding cat is doing well and living in the area near Worcester MA with his pet-mom Marty, who has a background in veterinary medicine. Marty was working at Tufts Veterinary Medical School when she got Frank and Louis, who was brought in at one day old to be euthanized.

Frank and Louie the cat was born with two faces, two mouths, two noses, three eyes — and lots of doubts about his future.

Now, 12 years after Marty Stevens rescued him from being euthanized because of his condition, the exotic blue-eyed rag doll cat is not only thriving, but has also made it into the 2012 edition of Guinness World Records as the longest-surviving member of a group known as Janus cats, named for a Roman god with two faces.

“Every day is kind of a blessing; being 12 and normal life expectancy when they have this condition is one to four days,” Stevens said, stroking Frank and Louie’s soft fur as he sat on her lap purring. “So, he’s ahead of the game; every day I just thank God I still have him.”

Frank and Louie’s breeder had taken him to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, where Stevens was working at the time, to be euthanized when he was just a day old. Stevens offered to take him home, but experts told her not to get her hopes up.
Janus cats almost never survive, and most have congenital defects, including a cleft palate that makes it difficult for them to nurse and often causes them to slowly starve or get milk in their lungs and die of pneumonia. The condition is the result of a genetic defect that triggers excessive production of a certain kind of protein.

But Frank and Louie did not suffer from most of the common Janus problems. Stevens used feeding tubes to nourish him for three months, hoping that would also save him from the danger of choking on food going down two mouths.

It turned out she didn’t have to worry about him choking, because Frank and Louie used just one of his mouths to eat.

“The condition itself is very rare, and I think that the fact that this cat became an adult, a healthy adult, is remarkable,” said Dr. Armelle deLaforcade, an associate professor at Cummings and head of the emergency services section.

Colleagues at the veterinary hospital told Stevens that trying to raise Frank and Louie might not be good for him — or her.

Still, she “stood firm and stood by the cat, and I’m really glad she did because this cat really has fewer problems than many cats that have very normal anatomies,” deLaforcade said.

Frank and Louie’s two faces have a complicated relationship. Both noses work, but one mouth does not have a lower jaw and isn’t connected to his one esophagus, so he can’t eat with it. Stevens discovered that only after the cat got an MRI later in life.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/30/house-cat-with-2-faces-lives-12-years-sets-record/#ixzz1hT0NQXIY

A dog known as ‘Yeti’ nurses adopted piglets in Camaguey, Cuba. Yeti has been pulling double-duty nursing not just her own young but also the 14 swine.

Source: Time magazine

Kitten with Kiss rock band face

Video: http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2c1f_owney_movie.html#1

Owney and an unidentified Albany, New York, letter carrier

Railway mail clerks considered the dog a good luck charm. At a time when train wrecks were all too common, no train Owney rode was ever in a wreck. The Railway mail clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags on his collar. Each time Owney returned home to Albany, the clerks there saved the tags.

Owney poses in a mail train with his mail clerk friends

Postmaster General John Wanamaker was one of Owney’s fans. When he learned that the dog’s collar was weighed down by an ever-growing number of tags, he gave Owney a harness on which to display the “trophies.”

On April 9, 1894, a writer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “Nearly every place he stopped Owney received an additional tag, until now he wears a big bunch. When he jogs along, they jingle like the bells on a junk wagon.”

In June, Owney boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio. While he was there, he was shown to a newspaper reporter by a postal clerk. Owney became ill tempered and although the exact circumstances were not satisfactorily reported, Owney died in Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897. Mail clerks raised funds to have Owney preserved, and he was given to the Post Office Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1911, the department transferred Owney to the Smithsonian Institution, where he has remained ever since. Owney can be seen on display in the National Postal Museum’s atrium, wearing his harness and surrounded by several of his tags.
Source: The National Postal Museum

via The Animal Rescue Site

The 14-year-old Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix won the honor Friday night at the 23rd annual contest at the Sonoma Marin Fair.

Link: World’s ugliest dog title goes to Chinese crested-Chihuahua mix

He was a very special dog in Gold Canyon, loved by everyone in this beautiful community of about 16,000 people. Numerous articles in the The East Valley Tribune, The Arizona Republic, the Gold Canyon Ledger, Gold Canyon Lifestyles and other local publications and newspapers. He was also quite famous in events such as Special Olympics as a therapy dog.

Kramer died of complications from Coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as “Valley Fever”, a disease of the lungs that is common in the southwestern United States, it affects humans and animals as well. For more information please visit:

http://www.goldcanyondog.org/valleyfever.html

IN MEMORY OF KRAMER
1992 – 2005
by “Dad” Curt Fonger

I guess the best way to refer to KRAMER was that he was a “Good Will Ambassador”. He did his magic by way of gentle demeanor, wagging tail and those beautiful brown eyes with those golden eyelashes. Never bashful about going directly up to a man, woman or child which in and by itself, was nothing less than amazing in that – he was abused by people when he was a “Little boy” himself.

He won the hearts of everyone he came in contact with. He had a calming affect on the mentally challenged, the elderly, children with serious illness, and other dogs. Kramer’s canine intuition told him just what to do with and for “that” person when he was by their side. He was an absolute charmer and his “smaller than most” stature among the larger dogs was deceiving as his heart was the biggest part of him. He instantaneously won everyone over the moment they touched his silken head of reddish gold hair – people and children bonded to Kramer upon contact.

Yes… Kramer was one of those “Once in a life time” creatures to come into your life and you always went away with a smile and better for the experience. He did what many psychologists and psychiatrists practice to do and that was to: relax the mind, forgive your anger and live a little happier and why not?

In China, Tibetan Mastiffs are in demand. A local website, qingdaonews.com, says a Chinese coal magnate spent ¥10m ($1.5 million) in March for a Tibetan mastiff named Sensation (Hong Dong in Chinese).

Source: BusinessWeek

From National Geographic

Gold Calico in the fall leaves