ResourcesResources
The following resources may help you develop a greater understanding of your animal companions and community pet services. There's so much to discover!
Don't forget to click daily at The Animal Rescue Site (www.animalrescuesite.com) where your free click feeds and cares for rescued animals in shelters. Where else can you give so much for so little?
LOCAL NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Animal Rescue New Orleans (ARNO) is a no-kill, volunteer-run non-profit agency committed to rescuing and aiding homeless animals. They have a wealth of adoptable pets and city-wide initiatives. Without their efforts, the fates of thousands of abandoned pets would be bleak. Please consider donating supplies or time to their cause.
www.animalrescueneworleans.org
Louisiana SPCA may have the perfect adoptable pet to keep you or a lonely pet company. With the help of other local agencies, they bring an array of spay/neuter and educational services to the community as well.
www.la-spca.org
Spaymart partners with other organizations to reduce euthanasia rates by providing proactive spay/neuter initiatives to the public. If you're looking for a wonderful cat to adopt, be sure to check here. Volunteers and contributions are always needed to continue their programs. www.spaymart.org
MOBILE VET SERVICES
Pam Doskey's Doskey Mobile Veterinary Care provides a full range of veterinary services for dogs, cats, and exotic pets in your home.
504.812-5986
504.812-5987
Pet au Pair is not affiliated with and does not endorse any organization or company listed herein.
What Makes Cats So Captivating?
Cats have long been considered mysterious, even by those who keep them. For those who love felines and for those who don’t understand why, let’s see what makes these creatures so captivating.
Plenty of people enjoy having cats around. According to a recent national survey, there are 93.6 million pet cats in the U.S., outnumbering dogs by 16.1 million (American Pet Products Association 2009-2010 National Pet Owners Survey). And who says they’re anti-social? Most domesticated cats live with another cat in the home. Despite being solitary hunters, they are actually social creatures. Why else would there be a word—clowder—to describe “a group of cats”? Their communication skills are highly sophisticated: research suggests that domestic cats developed the meow to talk only with humans; they use other vocalizations to talk amongst themselves.
Cats existed for millions of years before dogs came onto the scene. Perhaps the most famous of the prehistoric cats is Smilodon, the saber-toothed tiger. But all domestic cats are descended from the African wild cat. Audubon’s Species Survival Center in New Orleans has successfully cloned African wild cats, which were carried to term in the womb of regular domestic tabbies.
Aside from camels and giraffes, cats are the only four-footed animals that walk by moving both front and rear legs on one side, then the other side, lending them an air of grace, or is it a swagger? We’d be confident too if we had the feline’s amazing ability to right itself while falling from great heights.
Cats view the world differently than we do. While they can’t see in pitch black, they can see clearly with only one-sixth the illumination we need. With the equivalent of 20/100 human vision, they can see things far away much better than we can, but they tend to be far-sighted, so things up close might be blurry to them. And, yes, cats do see in color: they respond to the purple, blue, green, and yellow ranges but the red end of the spectrum appears grayish to them.
Among the many famous cat-adorers in history, Sir Isaac Newton is credited with inventing the first cat flap so that his feline companions could come and go without disturbing his research. Genghis Kahn, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, and Benito Mussolini were all confirmed cat-haters. Perhaps men who want to dominate the world resent that cats won’t submit to them.
Domestic cats spend about 70% of their day napping and 15% grooming so they’ll look good while doing all that napping. With so much of their time already accounted for, cats require less daily maintenance than dogs. There are endless bits of trivia, but the best way to find out more about these fascinating animals is to actually know one.
