Cat Stuff

Best Friends Forum

Expand your capacity to help your animal friends from your own home by joining the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary Forum.

For the Birds

The Gabriel Foundation is a parrot welfare organization which provides for the complete physical, psychological and environmental well being of the parrots in the organization’s care.

Quotable

"Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the'dumb' animals made for the hills."~ B.R. Myers, author (1963- )

Fishing Hurts

Fish are smart; they can use tools and they have impressive long-term memories and sophisticated social structures.

Fish feel pain, just as all animals do. Fish suffer when they are impaled in the mouth and pulled into an environment in which they cannot breathe.

Fish suffer horribly on the journey from sea to supermarket.

Guess Who?

Among the most beautiful and gentle animals on earth. Vital to the ecosystem and enhance our lives in many ways. Eat millions of bugs nightly. Bring us approximately 450 commercial products. Yet for all they do, are continually killed due to superstition and fear. The life expectancy exceeds 20 years, but slow birth rates limit their population growth. Who am I? I am a bat.

TTouch Forum on Best Friends

On this week's Best Friends' Forum Debby Potts explains the TTouch which "is a gentle hands-on technique that combines a specific form of bodywork with movement and learning exercises that work on a cellular level to improve health and behavior. TTouch helps to release tension and increase body awareness, which allows the animal to be handled without provoking typical fear responses."
To join the forum or submit a question click here.

Los Angeles Bans Tethering

"The municipal code that was passed today clearly defines that a dog must not be tethered. It does have caging requirements if needed. The law also has a provision, that you can tether your dog if you are completing a temporary task, like repairing your fence, a party, the gardener, etc. but also is very clear on how to tether your dog. For example, length must be three times the length of the dog and it must be with a body harness free from entanglement with access to food, water and shelter at all times."

Pet-abuse.com

pet-abuse.com is a nationwide database of animal cruelty cases which also defines animal cruelty and offers solutions.

Elephant Emotions

"Stress, trauma and other social disruptions - what biomedical research has identified as having profound influences on human psychology, physiology and behaviour - holds for other social animals such as elephants."