Sophia: lock your doors!

Elephants and other species can experience emotions akin to those present in disturbed people. Writing in the June/July issue of Seed Magazine, GA Bradshaw recounts a the story of pair of "traumatized" elephants who witnessed the slaughter of their families being massacred and grew up to be mass murderers, indiscriminately killing rhinos and other animals. He goes on to discuss the burgeoning body of evidence for parallels to human psychology in many vertebrates and even some invertebrates, and tantalizingly asks whether this means that humans' "unique" and subtle psychologies aren't more common than we like to think.

Until a few years ago, making such inference and diagnosing elephants with PTSD would have been dismissed as anthropomorphism. But no longer. Elephant psychopathology, chimpanzee infanticide and other un-animal-like behaviors are part of a growing body of research that suggests science is building toward a radical paradigm shift. Streams of new data and theories, critically from neuroscience, are converging into a new, trans-species model of the psyche. Humans are being reinstated back into the species continuum that Darwin articulated, a continuum that includes laughing rats, octopuses with personalities, sheep who read emotions from the faces of their family members and tool-wielding crows.

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Sophia we just adopted 2 kittens, and even though like ChiKat, I had to fill out a very lengthy form, the only thing they ever really asked me to do is come and talk to them face to face (the form said they would do 1 - 2 home visits before you could take the cat home). I was worried because we live on a boat - sorta out of the norm - and they wouldn't feel comfortable letting us adopt. So I also investigated adopting from the SPCA shelter which didn't have the home visit requirement (but all their kittens were taken).

Sophia: lock your doors!

I think this is definitely a theme.

Sophia: lock your doors!

I think this is definitely a theme.

This time they were definatly locked (it was the only way to keep the door shut)! I think that the cat ran in while I was bringing my luggage in, and then ate the cat food and used the litter box that was there for my cat.

I could use door locking lessons, though.

I think that the cat ran in while I was bringing my luggage in, and then ate the cat food and used the litter box that was there for my cat.

Neighbor's cat tried this. Devi was not impressed, which is what alerted me. And of course, Mister Kitty sees any open door as an enthusiastic invitation, so...

No wonder she took it so calmly!

Some of the rescue places want to do home visits. Does that seem a little bit like overkill to anyone else?

You're in a college town, right? I suspect rescue places in those areas are even more likely to do home visits, just to make sure that your "3BR w/scrtch pst" is not actually a dorm room.

They called my landlord to make sure that pets were allowed when I got my dog.

Growing up on a farm, we got used to cats (and occasionally kittens) just showing up and becoming part of the barn cat family. Once a cute siamese kitten showed up at the farm - other siamese kittens showed up at neighboring farms the same day.

Our siamese grew up into a beautiful, healthy cat. I don't know about the other kittens, though.

Distillery leak turns Polish lake into vodka:

A LAKE has been transformed from freshwater to 30 per cent vodka after a leak from a nearby distillery.

Farmers and workers from Wielkopolska. in in Poland rushed to fill their boots with the brew - three times the strength of wine. A 71-year-old woman, who lives near Lake Bracholinskie, said: "If God doesn't help, everyone will be a drunkard with only a hole where the lake was."

A friend of mine -- Mitch Wagner, who may be remembered from Table Talk -- got blackballed from cat adoption agencies in San Francisco because he answered truthfully that he'd consider declawing. Not only did they refuse to give him a kitten, they called other shelters to warn them against him. I expect less Left-Coastish shelters may have a more forgiving policy.

Still, there are enough crazy cat ladies/animal hoarders/ shady animal research suppliers out there that I don't blame shelters for putting in some elementary spot-checking.