Archive for the ‘Animals/Animal Rights’ Category

Vote For My Kittens and Help Other Animals!

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

I’ve entered Taz and Bonkers in the Humane Society Spay Day 2010 Photo Contest.

Spay Day is The Humane Society of the United States’ and Humane Society International’s annual event to inspire people to save animals’ lives by spaying or neutering pets and feral cats.

So what’s in it for us? Well, there are lots of cool prizes we could win. But the real benefit is for the HSUS and other charities. They get donations from the people who vote, and that’s where you come in…

I’m asking you to vote for Taz and/or Bonkers. Each vote requires a $1 donation to the Humane Society, and you can give as many votes as you like.

Of course if you see other pets you like then by all means give them some votes. The Humane Society needs the support!

“Taz”

Vote

 

“Bonkers”

Vote

 
Thank you and enjoy all of the pets!

 

Taz and Bonkers: Cats in a Sink

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

We never would have guessed our crazy kittens would be such water nuts. Then one night I went looking for Bonkers because it was just. too. quiet. (Those of you with children know what I mean.) I discovered him in the bathroom sink. He was just sitting there allowing the leaky faucet to drip water over his backside. So we grabbed the camera and…..



 

Cat finds way home after 11 days, 2 broken legs.

Friday, December 25th, 2009

I’m glad Giggle-Blizzard made it home, though somewhat worse for wear.

…..

The cat disappeared from his Spring Hill home Nov. 15.

Eleven days later, on Thanksgiving Day, owner Tracie Steger heard a faint meow on her front porch.

“My niece opened the door and he came hobbling in, two legs forward, and then baby steps with his back legs,” she said.

Giggle-Blizzard was home – but with broken hind legs.

Steger has 13 pets, and on the night her cat went missing, she had called for her animals to come inside. They all came, except Giggle-Blizzard.
…..
After about 10 days, some bad news: A neighbor said she’d seen Giggle-Blizzard get hit by a car the previous Saturday more than a mile from home.
…..
Steger didn’t give up hope. She and Christopher spent the afternoon looking in the area where her cat had been hit.

The next day, Giggle-Blizzard arrived back home.

“I really believe if we didn’t go out on Wednesday and leave our scent trail, he wouldn’t have found his way home,” Steger said.
…..
Giggle-Blizzard had two severe fractures. He has had two surgeries to set the bones and now wears two green casts. Veterinarian Mike Kern of the Animal Care Center of Weeki Wachee describes the injuries as serious but isn’t surprised Giggle-Blizzard made it home.

“They do very, very amazing things,” he said.
…..

 

Proof; Heterosexuality Leads to Bestiality and Child Molestation!

Monday, September 28th, 2009

No, I’m not actually claiming that heterosexuality leads to sexual perversion. But if that headline made you bristle, just think about how LGBT people feel when we’re made the targets of specious attacks by people who seek only to harm us.

That being said, the story below is real. Don’t read on if the idea of man/cow sex acts and child sexual abuse make you queasy.

…..
A New Jersey judge has dismissed animal cruelty charges against a cop accused of committing a sex act with young cows, saying a grand jury had no way of knowing whether the animals were “tormented.”

Moorestown police officer Robert Melia, who is currently suspended, allegedly engaged in oral sex acts with five calves in Southampton in 2006.

Since New Jersey currently has no law explicitly banning such an act, prosecutors in Burlington county brought animal cruelty charges against Melia, the Philadelphia Daily News reports.
…..
The judge’s dismissal does not mark the end of Melia’s legal woes.

He, along with girlfriend Heather Lewis, was arrested in April 2008 for sexually assaulting three girls over a five-year-period.

Authorities investigating those charges reportedly uncovered videos on his computer of a girl being “subjected to sexual activity” in addition to taped encounters between Melia and the calves.

Time for an industrial size bottle of Brain Bleach to get those images out of my head.

 

Cheyenne Cherry, Confessed Kitten Killer, May Get 10+ Years.

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Cheyenne Cherry, who confessed to roasting the kitten and trashing the apartment of an ex-roommate as a prank, is being charged as an adult with with cruelty to animals, multiple counts of burglary, arson and criminal mischief. She faces more than ten years in prison if convicted of all counts. Sadly it appears Ms. Cherry has a history of criminal behavior including robbery and armed dog-napping.

The teen accused in a Bronx kitty killing was busted last year in the armed dog-napping of a teacup Yorkie, police said.

Cheyenne Cherry’s boyfriend snatched the pooch from a woman in a Bronx park last June after holding a BB gun to her forehead, police said.

Days later, Cherry, 17, had the nerve to send friends to show up with the dog when a $500 reward was posted, the pooch’s owner said. “She’s evil,” Johan Castro, 23, said.

Despite her June 2008 arrest for larceny and extortion, along with two other busts, Cherry was released without bail after being charged with letting a friend’s kitten die inside a 200-degree oven.
…..
“It was just a joke,” Cherry said after her arrest for robbing a man of his iPod at gunpoint. She pleaded guilty to robbery and got five years probation.

Cherry also had a 2007 arrest for smacking a girl in the head with jewelry, police said.
…..
“My sister is no cat killer,” said David Cherry. “Cheyenne is not an animal hater. She has a little Yorkie that she loves.”
…..

Sure, Mr. Cherry, she’s “no cat killer”. The fact that she admitted she did it and laughed it off apparently slipped your notice. Frankly she sounds like a budding case of antisocial personality who needs to be locked up long term and given extensive treatment before she’s released again–if she’s released again. But that’s just my opinion.

 

It’s a Boy! And a Girl!

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

As some readers may recall, Sapphocrat and I were married on August 9, 2008. Like many married couples we came to the conclusion it was time to expand our family. Our twins came into the world on March 24, 2009. Now I don’t want to hear any sniggers about that only being seven months after our wedding. They’re adopted.

Bonkers and Taz Commandeer Grandma’s Chair After She Goes to Bed.

 
Needless to say both kittens promptly found the computer keyboards and began typing. Taz (our girl) says “.,l5;4lfrrr`1322222222222222222″ and Bonkers says, “aws9s0qp/45″. They’ve also discovered how to bring up Google and Firefox Help. I can only imagine what they’ll learn in the coming weeks.

 
Fear not. This won’t turn into one of those OMG look at what my little one did today! blogs where every sneeze, poo and scribble is documented in great detail. In the future the cats will only appear when they have something relevant to say.

 

Heartless Teen Confesses to Roasting Kitten in Oven.

Friday, June 5th, 2009

A 17-year-old girl confessed to roasting a kitten in an oven; an act she passed off as a joke. As an animal lover (cats in particular) I am sickened beyond words at her barbaric act of cruelty to an innocent, defenseless animal.

 

***Warning: Graphic details of animal cruelty in story except.***


 

…..
“I hate cats,” Cheyenne Cherry, 17, allegedly told investigators when asked about the heartless crime.

Cherry’s confession came after she was arrested Wednesday by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

She and an unidentified juvenile allegedly broke into Valerie Hernandez’s Tinton Ave. apartment on May 6 and trashed the place.

Then in a shocking act of animal abuse, they tossed the woman’s kitten, Tiger Lily, into the stove and cranked up the temperature, ASPCA assistant director Joe Pentangelo said.

Cherry told authorities that she and her accomplice “thought we would play a joke on Valerie and mess up her apartment.”

…..

Firefighters found the female cat’s remains smoldering in the oven after neighbors complained of smoke coming from Hernandez’s apartment.

…..

Besides roasting the kitten, Cherry and her friend allegedly slashed Hernandez’s furniture, unscrewed light bulbs and threw bleach on the walls, Pentangelo said.

“I think what was done cries out for justice,” Pentangelo said. “It’s a shame that this kitten had to suffer like this. For the kitten to get caught up in whatever was going on with them is a tragedy.”

Pentangelo said the kitten was burned so badly a necropsy had to be performed to determine its sex.

Cherry was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals, burglary, arson, reckless endangerment and criminal mischief. She was released to the custody of her mother.
…..

 

 

Gay Penguins Now Raising Adopted Chick.

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

What an adorable little story.

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The zoo, in Bremerhaven, northern Germany, says the adult males - Z and Vielpunkt - were given an egg which was rejected by its biological parents.

It says the couple are now happily rearing the chick, said to have reached four weeks old.
…..
The six “gay” penguins remain at the zoo, among them Z and Vielpunkt who are now rearing the chick together after being given the rejected egg.

“Z and Vielpunkt, both males, gladly accepted their ‘Easter gift’ and got straight down to raising it,” said a zoo statement.

“Since the chick arrived, they have been behaving just as you would expect a heterosexual couple to do. The two happy fathers spend their days attentively protecting, caring for and feeding their adopted offspring.”
…..
There have been previous reports of exclusive male-to-male pairings among penguins, some of which have also included the rearing of chicks.

Homosexual behaviour is well documented in many different animals, but it is not understood in detail, says Professor Stuart West, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford.

Professor West says it has been suggested that homosexual activity could serve various purposes - for instance, it may relate to social bonding and establishment of dominance among bonobo chimps, while in some bird species, females may come together to rear young.
…..
“Homosexuality is nothing unusual among animals,” Bremerhaven zoo said on Wednesday.

“Sex and coupling up in our world do not necessarily have anything to do with reproduction.”

I know the RRRWers had their eyes shut for that part about sex and coupling not necessarily having anything to do with reproduction. As to the part about “homosexuality is nothing unusual among animals”, cue the collective screech of “we’re not animals! we’re humans made in God’s image” etc, etc. If only such ignorance were truly blissful instead of harmful.

 

Gay Animals and Human Nature.

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Here is another wonderful guest article by Ebon.

“What a piece of work is a man” ~ Shakespeare, Hamlet

My mother had lesbian cats.

Seriously.

I was raised by my grandmother but when I was twenty, my mother and step-father’s marriage finally imploded and they split up. My mother took their female cat, Cass, with her. When she moved in with her current partner, he already had a female cat of his own, Sam. And they became, well, lovers. Sam was old even then, half-blind and deaf as a post so Cass would go out, hunt a mouse, stun it and bring it back for Sam to play with (which somehow manages to be both horrible and sweet at the same time). They shared bowls, shared a basket and yes, for all the gutter-minds out there, they engaged in the sex act.

One of the more common criticisms thrown at gay people is the accusation that homosexuality is somehow “unnatural”. Now firstly, have you ever actually looked at nature? If humanity had stuck purely with what was natural, we would be living in a tree, eating our meat raw and dying of dental abscesses. The life of man in the state of nature is, as Hobbes said, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Most of us are not aboriginals, most of us do not know how to live in harmony with nature. Even if we allow tool-making as “natural”, how many of us know how to make a decent bow or fletch arrows, how to make gunpowder or construct a snare? I know how to do those things, maybe a few of you do as well but how many? One percent would probably be being generous. The entire history of civilised humanity is a flight away from nature, a history of adapting nature to our own ends. Many ancient cultures (including the Roma) had a tradition that a communal fire was open to anyone that turned up and that was because, in the time when communal fires were common, the darkness was full of things with big teeth that wanted to eat you. The life of man in a state of nature is not The Flintstones, it’s having few natural weapons and being eaten by things with plenty of them. What saved humanity, what has made us the dominant species on the planet (unless Douglas Adams was right about the mice) is that we adapt nature to our own ends, change and refine it until it does what we want. So let’s not have any veneration of “nature” from people living a life which is entirely unnatural.

Secondly is that they’re just plain wrong. Now, we need to be careful with our definitions here because describing animals as “gay” or “lesbian” risks imputing human thought processes upon animals which do not share them but biologists have observed homosexual behaviour (that is, choosing to engage in sexual acts with a partner of the same sex even when mating partners of the opposite sex are available) in roughly fifteen hundred species. In about a third of those, homosexual behaviour is common and well documented . In Germany and Japan, penguins often form gay couples. When the German zoo authorities attempted to break the couples up by separating them and importing penguins of the opposite sex (largely to boost breeding numbers), it simply didn’t work. The zoo director remarked that the relationships were too strong and, amusingly, German gay rights groups protested the seperation. In American Bison, homosexuality is so common that the Mandan festival of Okipa (intended to ensure the bison’s return) concludes with a ceremonial re-enactment. The Lakota have a specific word for homosexual bison: pte winkte (meaning “bison two-spirit”). Giraffes virtually follow the old Greek saying of “a girl for duty, a boy for pleasure”, being more common than heterosexual coupling. Bonobos are almost uniformly bisexual. This listing could go on for some time but the point is made. Homosexuality is widely known in the animal kingdom and thus, in nature. Therefore, homosexuality is, by definition, entirely natural.

What is a uniquely human behaviour though, is homophobia. Again, we have to be careful not to apply human values because there is no such thing as “marriage” in most of the animal kingdom but nowhere in nature, excluding humanity, is there any kind of prejudice against homosexuality. Animals fight for all kinds of reasons; for territory, for food, for a mate or for dominance but in not one species outside humanity has violence ever occurred because one party took exception to another party shagging their own gender. Gay, straight, it doesn’t matter to them. If you can keep up with the pack, you’re fine.

When Cass died several years ago of cancer (which cats are prone to, get yours checked), Sam began to pine for her and when she died herself three months later, family tradition is that she died of a broken heart. When I think of the two of them or of my own two adored cats, Mac and Jelli (who died seven months ago and three weeks ago respectively), I sometimes wonder if they didn’t have the better deal. The life of a house cat is sleeping, playing, eating and being petted. We call ourselves an intelligent species but our feline friends don’t give a hoot about which god you worship or who you love so really, which of us are the intelligent ones?

I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth” ~ Lord Summerisle, The Wicker Man

 

Stop Seal Hunting in Canada.

Saturday, March 29th, 2008

Warning. The following video is graphic and depicts images of animal cruelty. It is not recommended for very sensitive or young viewers.

According to The Humane Society, more than 275,000 seals will be slaughtered this year for their fur. You can help stop the cruelty.