Hello Friends,
Alberto here. Every week my purrsonal assistant brings me the best of feline stories on the internet and I select my five favorites. This week is all about creative ways humans are working with shelters to help felines find furever homes and make the time the cats do spend in the shelter much better. Does your shelter do anything newsworthy for felines? I’d love to hear about it!
Purrs & Head Bonks,
Cats in the Office Can be a Stress Reliever – The Virginia Pilot Online
I picked this story because it covers two of my favorite topics, cats with jobs and new, creative ways to help shelter kitties be adopted. The Law Offices of Waldo & Lyle, have three office cats, all rescues and all beloved by the staff and clients. The office administrator says this about the effect of the working legal felines, ““They bring joy and they brighten our day,” They all have different personalities and love people. Even Hilde, who hides during the day, wants to be around you when it’s quiet and calm.”
And then there’s the Harbor Gallery who has gallery cats (and sometimes a gallery dog). The gallery owner says, “They lay in the front windows and entice people in, I believe they make the gallery more home-like, friendly and warm.”
If your shelter hasn’t found creative ways to help shelter cats, purrrhaps you should suggest a working cat program.
Don’t Touch that cat: Humane Society program focuses on felines’ minds, not their cuddles – CBCnews
Two paws up to the Winniepeg Humane Society for their new program that focus’ on felines mental well-being. Shelter cats get bored and even depressed or stressed. These shelter employees and volunteers are being trained to broaden the range of activities for the felines in their care. After working hard to enrich the environment and life of their shelter cats, the shelter director has noticed that the cats are now more engaged with visitors, sitting in the front of their cages and looking to be touched by visitors. Improving the mental health of the cats improves their physical well being. Watch the video and see how happy these shelter cats are with the new program.
This idea is excellent for the cats in your home too. Are you at work all day? What does your kitty have to play with while you’re gone? Are there window sills to sit in, places to climb and toys to distract? We felines only have two speeds, fast or stop so when we’re not “stopping” (aka sleeping) we want to have some fun.
//www.cbc.ca/i/caffeine/syndicate/?mediaId=1115036739615
Even a 2-Year Old Human Can Make a Big Difference for Cats! – LoveMeow
Dear humans, this is the way you train future adult humans to care for and about felines-start early! Sam is a two year-old boy who so far, has helped to foster 17 kittens. His mom brought the first group of fosters home from Cat House on The Kings. Sam doesn’t do his fostering alone, it’s a family affair. Sam is gentle with the kittens and is learning about the importance of fostering to help cats find furever families (My brother Oliver and I were fostered). Sam’s mom says, “Any time we get new babies, Sam looks at them and says, ‘Hi little boo boos, they are so cute, so precious’.”
Be sure and watch the video with the article and purrhaps Sam’s story will inspire some of you human parents out there to teach your kids about fostering.
Felines, Coffee Relieve Stress at Library – The Daily Tribune News
My readers know I love a good cat cafe story and this is one of the best!
Since the Christmas season can be a stressful time of year, the Bartow County Library System in Georgia is offering a way to relax and unwind while helping the shelter find furever homes for their felines.
The Cartersville Public Library partnered with the Etowah Valley Humane Society to host its first Pages & Paws Cat Cafe. The cafe took place from 1pm-5pm and was a great success (and coffee was donated by a local company). Now that is innovative thinking and I’ve always said there is a littter-ary side to every feline!
Does your local library and shelter partner for occasional cat cafe’s?
Finding Homes for Elderly Felines – The Riverdale Press
Cats on Wheels was founded by New Yorker, Susan Wolfe who has been an active volunteer at the Manhattan Animal Care Center, playing with the cats, cleaning their kennels and writing short biographies about them. Her passion is to find loving homes for cats who’ve celebrated their eighth birthdays, the ones often passed over for adoption. She said, ““I realized when I was volunteering at the shelter, these incredibly wonderful, beautiful cats were at risk of being euthanized,” “It just became a mission for me to find a home for as many of them as I could.”
And this was why she co-founded Seniors 4 Seniors Cats on Wheels with fellow volunteer Brooke Smith. The organization offers prospective pet adopters rides to the center to and assisting them in finding a cat to adopt.
She also works to debunk the myths about older cats, especially the idea that they won’t be around long. Cats can live up to 20 years. Another belief is that health care costs of an older pet are prohibitive. All shelter cats receive thorough health exams from veterinarians.
Two paws up for the Seniors 4 Cats on Wheels program and the creative humans who go above and beyond to help these older kitties find furever homes!
What creative things does your shelter do to help felines? I’d love to hear about them and feature them in my Wednesday wanderings.
banned him from the building and even went so far as to create a wanted poster for the door.
instance, they do lots of neat things there and, aside from their special events, they even make it easy for visitors to understand what the cat cafe experience is. Check out their easy to understand graphic for visitors.
Lawyers Have Taken Over the Rally Cat Saga – NBC Sports 
Demeter’s Kitten Fur Perfume – Bustle
Deaf Woman Teaches Sign Language to Her Three Cats -Elite Daily
Crazy Cat Themed Wedding on the Isle of Man – Rock N Roll Bride
A Restaurant Just for Cats – Animals4.com
more than 40 years.
I’ve reported on cats who work in breweries, hardware stores, for police and fire fighters and even Russian cats who work in a museum but this is my first report of a cat working in a distillery. Ricky often greets visitors in a baby blue tie. Brett Connors, the distillery’s brand ambassador, adopted Ricky when he learned that the feline had FIV — feline immunodeficiency virus — which resulted in folks passing up adopting him as they were concerned about his medical costs.
Cat Draws Pension Without Lifting a Paw – SwissInfo.ch by Susan Misicka
When we sent the feline human to #BlogPaws in May she had a mission, to obtain signed copies of books from her fellow members of the Cat Writer Association to decorate her table and donate to the auction for our local shelter, The 
A Dutch photographer moved to Hong Kong and noticed something right away, seems everywhere he went there were cats. I say two paws up to these feline loving folks in Hong Kong and I might suggest that the folks in my own beloved U. S. of A get on this bandwagon!
Friendship Between Cat and Dog in Tokyo – Lonely Planet
Firehouse Kitty Brings Love to Fire House – Monsters and Critics
Library Cat Loses His Job…and Then…- Cuteness
Felines and Humans Now Can Have Matching Manicures – Bustle
Meet Four Professional Library Cats – Care2
Henry the Search and Rescue Professional Pet Detective – Cattime.com
My humans watch food programs on the big black screen. They also like to watch this thing called YouTube when they need to learn something (they recently used the YouTube to put together a treadmill for the female human). It stands to reason that felines can learn knew tricks with the YouTube thing as well. Case in point, watch this kitty master the art of dough kneading via video.
Kitty With Mad Bathroom Skills – UPI
Binky is not a cat to be messed with, as one criminal learned, the hard way. When this human tried to break in to a house, Binky was having none of it and not only did he prevent the burglar from getting anything in the house, he made sure the guy felt his wrath, the police had to call the purrr-a medics to treat the criminal’s injuries. Meow!
Cat Visits Every National Park And Enjoys It! – Distractify
A Formerly Homeless Tuxedo Cat Gives Back in A Wonderful Way – The Best Cat Page
Well this feline learned something new, never knew that cats were a tradition at the NY Times! The article says that the tradition started when foreign correspondents began to adopt and/or bring cats into their homes for companionship. Times journalists from Baghdad to Dakar to Pakistan, have continued the tradition of rescuing local cats and bringing them into their homes. It wasn’t only the love of cats but the ability to do something in places where there was so much misery and war. One correspondent described it this way, “At that point, in Baghdad, there were bombs going off several times a day, sometimes killing dozens of people at time,” he explained. “The cats were a catharsis. You were able to take care of them. You knew you were making a difference.” Many of these felines return home with the journalists and their families and find themselves in much “cushier” accommodations than their wartime digs.
Social media fame and stardom does have it’s drawbacks for felines just like humans. Take the case of Pepito, a French kitten with 34,000 Twitter followers (
The male human in our house is a tech professional and we often hear abut innovative stuff techies do. This is the first time I’ve heard of tech office news that is feline related. Ferray Corporation in Tokyo has 9 resident working felines at their office. Now lest my canine friends cry “foul”, no worries, Ferray Corp hosts bring your pet to work days and other species are invited. And even better, the company pays out a monthly bonus of 5,000 Yen ($42.00) to anyone who adopts a cat in need of a home.
Lisa Marie McKenzie received Romeo the cat as a Mother’s Day gift and she was thrilled, until she learned that pets weren’t allowed in her apartment. Rather than allowing her to give up the cat she loved, her neighbors stepped in with an unusual solution.
Those of you who follow my weekly Wednesday web wanderings know I’m a sucker for stores about cats with jobs and when the felines in question take matters into their own paws and get the jobs themselves, well, I must tell their stories.
While some people may be saying, “Are you kidding?” I say, IT’S ABOUT TIME!! The museum was created by Harold Sims, a retired college professor and cat shelter owner. Now I was surprised to learn that this is not the only cat museum in the world, there is one in Ohio that displays only Japanese toy cats, so this one is, strictly speaking the only one that honors house cats.
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