pet connection

I love finding  distinctive products to share, such as this outdoor cat feeder, which is made in the United States. by a by a small company with an obvious love for cats.

The Outdoor Cat Feeder is designed to keep birds, ants and rain out of the cat food. It’s  perfect for managing trap-neuter-release feral cat colonies and for cat rescue programs.

Details from the website:

• Two snap-out dinner trays for easy swap out for fresh food.
• Food bowls hold up to 12 cups of dry food each.
• A moat surrounds the interior food dish to prevent insects from getting to the food.
• Moat can be used with water, powder or spray.
• Dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning.
• Keeps leaves and other debris from forming land bridges that bypass the moat.

The unit is relatively inexpensive at $16 plus $14 for the cover. A lot of thought and labor went into designing this feeder, and I applaud Carter Pets for  this product.

Above is the bowl within a bowl. The outer “moat” is set up so you can add water to prevent ants from reaching the inner food bowl. The inner 12-cup bowl has a cover with a wooden knob. Oh, and the company send you two! Just to let you know, the cover is not very secure so don’t expect it to prevent cats from popping it off. I would use the cover to keep food fresh in the second bowl which I would keep inside and then rotate.

The tent design is pure genius. A vinyl cover  sits snugly over a metal tension rod, so rain slides right off the ends. The sides have two flaps that pivot open for cats to enter, but a bird could not get in. Most birds, anyway. We all know  some aggressive species that can get into anything.

I don’t think it would stop squirrels, but I honestly can’t say I  know if squirrels like cat food.  In my part of Florida squirrels are pretty rare. Cranes and turtles are everywhere, though, and I could see them trying to get into this contraption. But, really, this is a nice product, and I think most situations it will keeping food from being eaten by anything other than cats.

Here’s a video of my son Nico and two of our cats, Georgia (black shorthair) and Caesar (Maine Coon) checking out the feeder:
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The website for The Outdoor Pet Feeder includes a discussion page on feeding feral cats that can be found here.

I am going to donate this product to a local rescue called For the Love of Cats.

Meow, for now!

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Mass market advertising that deal with certain topics (bodily functions, etc) traditionally uses a lot of euphemisms, so as not to offend delicate sensibilities.

The New York Times reports that Arm & Hammer decided “solid” and “liquid” didn’t do the trick for them.

“Now there’s a new litter that even eliminates feces odors,” says a chirpy actress with two cats perched on her lap in a new commercial, by Ferrara & Company, of Princeton, N.J. “Your litter may control urine odor, but what about feces? Only Double Duty litter combines advanced odor eliminators with Arm & Hammer baking soda to destroy both overpowering smells on contact.”

Ed Kline, product manager for the pet care group at Church & Dwight, which owns the Arm & Hammer brand, said cat owners had come to expect cat litter to counter only one smell.

“When you talk to consumers, they say the litter’s job is to handle the urine odor and their job is to remove the feces odors by grooming the box,” Mr. Kline said. After the company developed a litter that promises to address what marketing materials call this “unmet need of cat owners,” their initial instinct was to use oblique language in advertisements.

Alrighty then!

Pacemaker procedures on the rise: A piece of trivia I bet you didn’t know: Up to 500 dogs a year undergo surgical procedures to have pacemakers implanted. From an AP story:

Grommit, the yellow Labrador, got his silver dollar-size implant in 2006 after tests showed the blackouts he was experiencing were caused by a defect in his heart’s natural pacemaker that put him at risk of sudden death.

His owner, Molly Hare, 41, of Terre Haute, Ind., said she didn’t have to think long about whether to allow Dr. Green, a Purdue University associate professor of cardiology, to perform the $2,000 procedure on Grommit.

“The options were I could come home and find him dead on the floor or I could have the pacemaker put in and he’d have a long healthy life, so that’s what I chose,” she said of her pet.

In Grommit’s two-hour surgery, typical of pacemaker implants, Green threaded two wires through the dog’s jugular vein into the correct positions in his heart to deliver stabilizing electrical impulses. Next, the pacemaker — a tiny computer and battery encased in a metal shell — was implanted beneath the skin at the back of his neck and the wires hooked up.

[...]

A recent exam by Green and three veterinary cardiology students found Grommit’s four-year-old pacemaker is still delivering the electrical zaps needed to keep his heart beating between 50 and 180 beats a minute, depending on his level of exertion.

The pacemaker units were originally manufactured for human implantation, and are recalibrated, then made available to veterinary hospitals after their human patients no longer need them. I asked Dr. Kelly Byam of the Abel Pet Clinic in Elk Grove, Calif., about the topic, and if veterinarians are seeing more arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythm), requiring the use of pacemakers. She was kind enough to offer her opinion:

“The incidence of arrhythmias is likely unchanged. Arrhythmias are present in many breeds, causing syncope (fainting). In the past, it wasn’t really feasable to implant pacemakers. It is the availability of the technology that has increased and made it feasable to implant pacemakers (used people pacemakers) in pets that has led to the increase.”

Why BSL doesn’t work:The National Canine Research Council cites a Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) study that explains why breed-specific legislation fails every time. The reason comes down to a simple mathematical equation. According to the study, in order to prevent a single hospitalization as a result of dog bite, a city or town would have to ban 100,000 dogs of a particular breed. To avoid a second bite, double that number. That’s hardly a workable policy, don’t you think?

Iams Home 4 the Holidays: In another reminder that October is Adopt a Shelter Dog month, Iams is promoting a project aimed at saving 1.5 million homeless animals. It’s called Iams Home 4 the Holidays, and it runs through the end of the year. They’re pledging to give 5 million bowls of food through their Bags 4 Bowls program. Good for them. Every little bit helps.

Feral colony in trouble: A colony of feral cats camped out adjacent to Lehigh Valley International Airport is creating problems for authorities, as they’re attracting foxes and raptors that can encroach on the airport’s runways and interfere with air traffic. TNR wouldn’t help in this case. The Morning Call says the options are dwindling, down to the one that everyone would rather avoid. (Thanks to Mary Cvetan for the tip)

John Lennon’s legacy: It was hard not to notice that this past Saturday would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. Among the remembrances was a special to the New York Times about a family in San Mateo, Calif., who befriended John and Yoko in the early 1970′s. While at first blush the story may not seem to have any relevance to the pet world, bear with me.  Read the story to the very end, and you’ll see the pet connection (pardon the pun), and another reminder of John Lennon’s impact on everyone he touched.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credits: Double trouble, Arm & Hammer.  Lennon letter, Barbara Hong, via NYT.

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“No really, I have no idea how she gained that weight.”

I’ve said that, even though I knew my dog was eating too much (because of  someone else in the house giving a few too many snacks on a daily basis, hmph!). Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly skewers these little “obfuscations,” as she calls them, in her latest Fully Vetted column. Dr. Khuly lists her five greatest hits. Here’s the top of the list:

1. The insta-lump

“You mean, you just noticed it today, right? Because that mass that looks like it’s been growing for six months is unlikely to have morphed overnight into that hard lump. Cells just don’t divide that fast.”

Yes, this one is most popular. And while it might be true that a lesion appeared “suddenly,” such observations are taken with a grain of salt. Human observations of pet lump-dom are too often untimely.

Just tell the truth. They know if you’ve been bad or good.

Ongoing BSL battles: Local and municipal battles over breed-specific legislation (BSL) continue, and we’re tracking it all. In Topeka, Kan., the city council will be taking it up again on Tuesday, along with a trap-neuter-release plan for feral cats. As it stands now, Pit Bulls, Staffordshire and American Staffordshire terriers are effectively outlawed. From the Lawrence Journal:

The proposed ordinance would replace that ban with a more general regulation on dangerous dogs. Dogs declared dangerous after a court process would have to be spayed or neutered.

Another section would allow the capture of feral cats, which would be neutered, vaccinated and returned to their original locations.

Assistant city attorney Kyle Smith said the proposal is intended to improve public safety, protect animals and save the city money. He said scientists have determined that pit bulls aren’t any more dangerous than most other dog breeds.

“Yes, they are a big dog, but there are others,” Smith said. “If it’s a good dog, just because it’s a certain breed doesn’t mean it needs to be kicked out of the city or put down.”

Stay tuned. Meanwhile, in Carroll County, Ga., pit bulls are squarely in the crosshairs. The following is from the Times-Georgian:

Components of the proposal look at requiring pit bull owners to house only one dog per pen, but not necessarily one dog per owner, and the dogs would have to be registered and have a microchip implanted.

Pit bull owners would be able to keep the ones they have, but wouldn’t be allowed to have any more, according to the discussion, and a person could be fined as much as $500 if found to be in violation.[...]

Councilman Terry Miller wanted to know if there was a constitutional issue in singling out a specific breed. Littlefield responded that it’s constitutionality has been tested, and there is no issue.

“There are incidents of guns going off shooting people or cars hitting people, but we’re not fining them,” he said. Miller repeatedly asked for statistics that show pit bulls to be more dangerous than other dogs and questioned the potential fine of up to $1,000 per violation.

“If a German Shepherd does this, would the fine be less?” he asked.

Hard to know, but I’m betting there wouldn’t be the same outcry to kill the dog before the day is out.

Ah, the memories: Every single pet owner I’ve ever known thinks back from time to time about when their adult cats, dogs or rabbits were babies, and how impossibly adorable they were. So you can of course relate to this post from BC x Four reminiscing about when Brynn the Border Collie was young, fluffy, had the biggest eyes, and did the cutest things. If you can resist the post’s pictures of Brynn at 10 weeks, you’re made of tougher stuff than I.

Dueling dogs: Two women, each training a dog.  One an Afghan, one a Golden, with an accompanying tune that always reminds me of Bert Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and pigs. Enjoy.

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A frog and a bear, seeing America: Quick, what’s that line from? You don’t remember? Go check out Sarah Andrew’s post. She’s a woman of consummate good taste. She remembers.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Image credits: Pinocchio, trinity2.wordpress.com.

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Heard the one about the cat in the stat?

I’m talking about the seemingly endless list of cat statistics wielded with enthusiasm by everyone from the staunchest cat advocate to the fiercest cat enemy. You know, how a single unspayed cat can produce enough cats to cover the earth twice over in a week?

For my SFGate.com column this week, I spoke to our own Gina Spadafori, Vox Felina blogger Peter J. Wolf, and Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer and science journalism professor Deborah Blum.

“I kept coming across some very dubious claims,” (Wolf) told me. “And the more I’d dig into them, the worse it got. You’d start out thinking there was broad support for a particular claim, but you’d start drilling down a little bit and see all the references supporting that claim pointed to the same flawed study. So this ‘broad support’ became questionable.”

[....]

“Take the estimates of how many birds are killed each year by cats,” he said. “A 1993 article usually called ‘the Wisconsin study’ is constantly being cited, with an estimate that between 8 and 219 million birds were killed by free-roaming rural cats in that state.”

But 15 years ago, study co-author Stanley Temple told the Sonoma County Independent, “The media has had a field day with this since we started. Those figures were from our proposal. They aren’t actual data; that was just our projection to show how bad it might be.”

Despite that apparently definitive disclaimer, Wolf discovered that the study and those numbers are still being cited in such publications as the New York Times (2007) and the Journal of Conservation Biology (2009). Even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cites the study, he said.

There are a number of reasons why these kinds of numbers gain traction, some related to cats specifically — people who hate cats, the sheer scope of the real threats to bird populations, like habitat destruction and pollution — but the problem extends far beyond the cat issue.

Pulitzer-prize winning science writer Deborah Blum feels Wolf’s pain, too. Blum, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, said, “In science journalism, we spend a lot of time looking at this particular problem. Why do some numbers get this bizarre traction? Why do people believe it, when if they did a little digging they’d find it’s not only wrong but in some cases even does harm?”

Why, indeed? Find out here.

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Now Bonney Brown is up. Making a massive push for adoptions and TNR and has a 92 percent save rate for cats through June. Lots of great resources from Alley Cat Allies on starting a TNR program. Her presentation will cover how to respond to people who want to bring feral cats into the shelter, helping people who care for feral cats and are getting complaints, convincing officials to accept TNR and finding new homes for feral cats who cannot go back.

Introduces Beata Liebetruth, the help desk manager at Nevada Humane, who will speak on how to educate people about TNR versus impoundment and almost certain death. Most people want cats saved and are glad to learn about TNR. Our challenge is to share information with the caller about TNR and its effectiveness. (more…)

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