Cats too fat? August 7, 2007
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on Aug. 6th reports now that research is indicating that diabetic cats in the U.K. are approaching the half million mark.
Fat cat!
Mice can relax. Even nesting birds can sing a little more cheerily.
Their number one enemy, it seems, is getting so fat he can barely be bothered to get off the sofa for a night’s hunting.
Vets have found that cats are imitating their owners’ couch potato lifestyle.
As a result of eating more and exercising less, more than a third of cats are overweight and the number of cases of feline diabetes has risen five-fold in 30 years.
Edinburgh University (U.K.) researchers estimate that one in 230 – or up to 400,000 pet cats – is diabetic.
“The lifestyle of cats is changing. They are tending to eat too much, gain weight and take less exercise . . . Unfortunately, just like people, cats will over-eat if they are offered too much tasty food, particularly if they are bored and have little else to do . . . so they have little to do all day but eat, sleep and gain weight.”
-Danielle Gunn-Moore, a professor of feline medicine
Take “Goliath” for example:
In addition, stressed-out Britons are increasingly relying on cats for companionship.
Vet Elaine Pendlebury said much of the problem was because of owners giving their cats calorie-laden treats.
She said: “People are feeding them things like sausages from their own table. Sausages are quite high in salt and quite fatty.
“If you want to give your cat a treat, give it a small bit of boiled chicken or, even better, play a game with your cat.”
The diabetes study, published in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, looked at the veterinary records of 14,000 cats, coupled with questionnaires filled in by owners.
Cats are not the only pets to be losing the battle of the bulge. A quarter of dogs are clinically obese and overweight rabbits and even hamsters are also a common sight in vets’ surgeries.
Garfield ain’t nothing to this!
Leftcoast to have a Pigeon Planned Parenthood . . . August 3, 2007
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“The poop problem has become
August 3, 2007
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http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSSYD1415720070801
Catholic dean on leave after YouTube outburst
Wed Aug 1, 2007 9:27AM EDT
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Free $50,000 Practice Account.CANBERRA (Reuters) – A Roman Catholic priest who unleashed a torrent of expletives and racist abuse against skateboarders outside his Australian cathedral, only to have the outburst filmed and placed on YouTube, has been put on leave.
The Reverend Monsignor Geoff Baron, the dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Australia’s second biggest city, Melbourne, was videotaped swearing at and abusing a group of teenagers using the cathedral grounds as a skate park.
“Move, you f****** fool,” Baron tells one skater in the video, slapping one of the group across the head and prompting a torrent of abuse in reply.
Pointing to a skater lying on the ground, Baron is heard telling the youth “Little foreigner there, look at the sleepy eyes, black hair.”
“At least he’s got hair. You f****** bald p****,” one youth replies. Others spat on and shoved the furious priest.
The embarrassed Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, placed Baron on indefinite leave after the outburst appeared on YouTube, while security guards began patrolling the cathedral grounds Wednesday amid threats of reprisal attacks.
“I want to relieve the dean of the pressures and responsibilities he carries as dean of the cathedral,” Hart said, promising further action.
Baron apologized for the outburst Tuesday, but on radio described the skaters as “jackals and hyenas” who had provoked him with allegations he was a pedophile.
“It was outrageous behavior. I let myself down terribly badly, quite clearly, and I’ve also brought scandal and shock to other people,” he told local radio.
The video clip of the outburst, which was filmed a year ago but only recently posted on YouTube, was viewed tens of thousands of times but is now listed as “removed by the user.”
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August 3, 2007
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A Scheme to Profit From Panda Poop
By AUDRA ANG,AP
Posted: 2007-07-30 13:18:58
Filed Under: Weird News
BEIJING (July 30) — Nothing says “I love you” like a photo frame made from panda poop.
The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base has come up with a dung-for-profit scheme that turns droppings from the endangered species into odor-free souvenirs ranging from bookmarks to Olympic-themed statues of the animals, state media and base officials said Monday.
AP
The facility in the southwestern province of Sichuan houses about 40 bamboo-fed pandas who produce less than a ton of excrement a day.
“We used to spend at least 6,000 yuan ($770) a month to get rid of the droppings but now they can be lucrative,” Jing Shimin, assistant to the base director, was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.
The products will be made at a local handicraft company mostly from undigested bamboo culled from the panda waste through a special process, Xinhua said.
An official who answered the phone at the Chengdu facility said the dung is “carefully selected, smashed, dried and sterilized at 300 degrees Celsius (572 degrees Fahrenheit).” He refused to give his name but said the products will be of all colors because they will be dyed.
“They don’t smell too bad because 70 percent of the dung is just remains of the bamboo that the pandas are unable to digest,” Jing said.
While no price has been set, he said the most expensive souvenirs will contain a panda hair – collected from the wild – in each package.
The 2008 Olympic statues will feature “athletic pandas performing various Olympic sports,” Xinhua said.
In March, base officials said they were looking into making high-quality paper from the fiber-rich panda excrement, inspired by a trip to Thailand, where they found paper made from elephant dung.
The Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand already sells multicolored paper made from waste produced by its two resident pandas. Making paper there involves a daylong process of cleaning the feces, boiling it in a soda solution, bleaching it with chlorine and drying it under the sun.
The panda is one of the world’s rarest and most beloved animals, with about 1,590 living in the wild in China, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. Another 180 have been bred in captivity.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-07-30 12:11:55
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/a-scheme-to-profit-from-panda-poop/20070730121109990001
