My dog Chloe hard at work guarding the house, ...........ya right!
Services for your Pet
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Cabo and Waffle
Cabo and Waffle were adopted from the animal shelter, they are loving their new homeand are taking swimming lessons, so they can use the family pool
Nubbs and Samantha
These are my new friends, Nubbs and his sister SamanthaNubbs got his name after an unfortunate incident as a kitten where he lost the tips of both
ears.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Brittany
This is my girl Brittany, she's 16 years old, she is such a sweetie, she wasn't to happy withParker and Sophie coming to live with us, but she has taken on the role of mother and now
they are all best buddies.
Sheena Warrior Princess
Sheena is a sweetie, but boy can she talk, from the moment I walk in the door, to the time Ileave, talk, talk, talk, and I have no clue what she's saying.
I don't think it really matters, she just wants to emote
Carmen
This is my friend Carmen, she has been a little down lately, she just lost her bigsister Casey.
Her family has been giving her lots of tlc, and I've spent some extra time with
her to cheer her up. She loves to go for early morning walks to the park.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Buster and Daisey Mae
Buster and Daisy Mae, waiting patiently for their mom to return home from Hawaii, she promised to bring them home some really cool doggie gifts.
Echo
This cutie is Echo, he's Maggie's brother, he is full of mischief, his favorite activity is taking allhis moms shoes out of the closet and hiding them.
Maggie
This is Maggie, she is a sweet old blind girl, I'm always fascinated watching her navigate her way around the house out the doggie door
and around her big back yard without a problem
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Minnie the Bichon
This is Minnie, she is a cute Bichon Frise, she was a blast to hang out with, her family comes home today, and she is excited to see everyone.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The three Musketeers
Lucy, Charlie Brown and Peanut mugging for the camera, or the treat I'm holding abovethe camera.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Cats are in control... who knew
Not that I ever doubted this, but it's nice to see it in writing
If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.
Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.
This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.
"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."
They know us
Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.
McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.
McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.
Tough to test
Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries - capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.
The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food - the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry - as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.
When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.
McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.
The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology
Source: Live science staff
If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.
Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.
This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed. The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.
"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."
They know us
Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.
McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.
McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call. As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.
Tough to test
Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers. So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries - capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not. In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.
The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats. They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food - the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry - as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.
When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.
McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.
The results were published in the July 14 issue of the journal Current Biology
Source: Live science staff
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Pet Airways
Pet Airways
New airline devoted to transporting animals
Fantastic idea
I wonder if they show pet movies
http://www.petairways.com/
New airline devoted to transporting animals
Fantastic idea
I wonder if they show pet movies
http://www.petairways.com/
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Maddie's big brother Hannibal
Maddie's big brother Hannibal, giving me the "what are you doing" lookMaddie back from vet good as new
Maddie just got home, candy free and hanging with her big brother Hannibal and thosecrazy kitties, I think a family conference is in order when mom and dad get home
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