Caturday felid trifecta: Japanese spa offers cat back massages, bobcat running through snow, comfort cats at Calgary airport

January 27, 2018 • 9:00 am

The staff of Gus the cat includes a massage therapist, and Gus meows loudly at the door when a client is getting a massage. I’ve often suggested that they put a “cat massage” on the ticket, with an extra charge of $5 (part of the money must go for Gus Treats). Well, a Japanese spa not only does that, but apparently has trained the cat to give massages! I’ve never gotten a paid massage, but I’d gladly do it at this place!

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From the CBC, we have some nice shots of a pouncing bobcat (Lynx rufus) in New Brunswick:

At first, he thought it was just a fox or a groundhog, but closer inspection revealed something much more spectacular.

Paul LeBlanc shot these photographs of a bobcat near Sackville on Sunday while out taking pictures of wildlife.

“When I looked through the lens, it was like, ‘Wow,'” he said.

The photos show the animal pouncing on its prey. LeBlanc managed to get photos of the animal in mid-jump.

In his day job, LeBlanc works as a civil technologist in Moncton but considers himself an avid shooter.

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Also from the CBC. If you’re flying through Calgary, you might want to schedule a long stopover.  This report also comes from the CBC:

Cats have a bit of a reputation for being stand-offish, or at least picky about whom they’ll cuddle with and where.

But Taz, a short-haired tabby cat, is breaking that stereotype at the Calgary International Airport.

Dressed in a cherry red vest that reads “Pet Me” in all capital letters, he’s one of two cats that regularly visits the airport with the Pet Access League Society (PALS), offering free snuggles to anyone who wants one.

“He’s just super loving and super cuddly,” said owner and PALS volunteer Heather Rutherford.

Heather Rutherford and Taz volunteer once a week at the airport for roughly 1.5 hours. (Mike Symington/CBC)

The program aims to reduce anxiety and stress that can be associated with delayed flights or long lines, and also helps to cheer travellers who miss their pets back home.

Rutherford was a volunteer with the stress-reducing therapy dogs program at the airport, which began in April 2016.

When she adopted Taz in October 2016, she recognized he’d make a great addition to the four-legged airport team, given his gentle “personality that just loved everybody,” she said.

She got him screened and approved to volunteer at the airport, and says she’s had nothing but positive feedback since then.

Photo: Mike Symington/CBC

Beverly Newton, who was travelling through the airport Monday morning, said the time spent with Taz at the terminal was “heartwarming.”

“Nothing beats having a nice furry little pet to say hi to.”

Indeed!  Screw the pooches: go for the furry cats! (Dogs aren’t furry and, I suspect, will get you worked up with their sycophancy rather than relieving your stress.) Here’s a video of the program:

 

h/t: Julian, Susan, Tom

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 27, 2018 • 7:45 am

We have a potpourri today. All readers’ comments are indented, and the first come from reader Jackie:

I’m sending photos of a Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) from our Portland, Oregon backyard this past summer. They are called “The Ghosts of the Pacific” because they are so stealthy. He came up the creek bed to eat strawberry plants for 2 days. He (I call him Bambi) would stand stock still for 10 minutes watching for any motion.

From reader “deadend41”:

Thistle tortoise beetle (Cassida rubiginosa) larva. New Paltz, NY (July 27, 2014). Native to Europe, this species was first reported in North America in the early 1900s. They feed on plants in the Asteraceae family, with thistle being a favorite. The larva pictured is defended by its spines and a fecal shield of its own making.

Sycamore assassin bug (Pselliopus sp.). New Paltz, NY (July 27, 2014). Like most assassin bugs (Reduviidae), Pselliopus is an ambush predator that uses its proboscis to dispatch prey. They stalk woodlands and their borders, and, as their name suggests, can be found on the vegetation of Sycamore trees.

And a sad raccoon (Procyon lotor) photographed by reader Darryl Ernst:

Last Friday a raccoon staked out a spot in the bushes right next to a  door to my office. He (she?) stayed at this door for hours. I’d  periodically check on him and every time I’d start opening the door he would start right for it, just like a cat or dog that wants in. I didn’t have much but I gave him a bit of food which he didn’t appear to eat, at least not much of it. I snapped the first pic as we were peeking at each
around the cracked open door.

At about 5:30 I left to go to the gym and he was not at the door. I walked around my car and put my bag in the passenger side front seat, closed the door and then turned around to walk around the front of the car, and there he was curled up just like a cat under the bushes. He wasn’t more than 5 feet from me and wasn’t the least bit alarmed. He was very well groomed, clean nice looking fur, bright eyes and very comfortable around me. I walked right up to him and talked to him and he  was not alarmed. He merely raised his head and looked at me. I snapped a  couple more pictures with my phone, including the 2nd one attached and  then decided to try and find a wildlife control service. After a few  tries I got one on the phone and explained the situation and that I  thought the raccoon might be an escaped pet. They said based on what I described they didn’t think there was any cause for concern. They asked  that I check in the morning to see if he is still hanging around the building and if so to give them a call back. My daughter and I checked the next morning, but he was nowhere to be found. I hope he is OK!

I’ve asked for a followup report on the raccoon, if there is one to be had.

 

Saturday: Hili dialogue

January 27, 2018 • 6:30 am

We’ve reached the weekend: it’s Saturday, January 27, 2018, and it’s National Chocolate Cake Day. I wish I had some of those. It’s also Data Privacy Day, so change your passwords.

On this day in 814, Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, died in Aachen, supposedly of pleurisy. His son, Louis the Pious, succeeded him.  On January 27, 1302, Dante was exiled from Florence for financial misdeeds and corruption.  In 1521, the Diet of Worms began, lasting until May 25.  I have to say that fasting is a better way to lose weight, even over just four months!  On January 27, Henry VIII died at age 55. He was not in good shape; as Wikipedia reports:”Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout. His obesity and other medical problems can be traced from the jousting accident in 1536, in which he suffered a leg wound. The accident re-opened and aggravated a previous injury he had sustained years earlier, to the extent that his doctors found it difficult to treat. The wound festered for the remainder of his life and became ulcerated, thus preventing him from maintaining the level of physical activity he had previously enjoyed.” Upon his death, his son Edward VI became king.

On this day in 1754, Horace Walpole, in a letter to a friend, coined the word “serendipity.”  And for Jane Austin fans, today celebrates the first publication of Pride and Prejudice in the UK (1813).  On January 27, 1896, this happened (again I quote from Wikipedia): “Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8 mph (13 km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2 mph (3.2 km/h).”  And on this day in 1935, Iceland became the first Western country to make therapeutic abortion legal. (Russia preceded them by doing it in 1919). On this day in 1958, when I was already nine, the Lego company patented the design of Lego bricks; those original bricks are still compatible with ones produced today.  On this day in 1965, an act of the Canadian Parliament put in place the design of the Canadian flag. You know what it looks like; if not, go here.  On January 27, 1967, a fire at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida asphyxiated three astronauts in the command module of the Apollo 1 spacecraft: Gus Grisson, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Grissom was, of course, one of the original Mercury Seven.  Finally, on this day two years ago, the World Health Organization announced an outbreak of the Zika virus.

Notables born on January 27 include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756), Lewis Carroll (1832), Donna Reed (1921), Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948), Mimi Rogers (1956), and Rosamund Pike (1979; see her in the new Western “Hostiles“, which got generally good reviews).  Those who gave up the ghost on this day include Francis Drake (1596), Giuseppe Verdi (1901), Thomas Crapper (1910), Nellie Bly (1922), the crew of Apollo 1 (1967; see above), Mahalia Jackson (1972), Jack Paar (2004), John Updike (2009), J. D. Salinger (2010), and Pete Seeger (2014).

Here’s Mahalia Jackson singing at a service in Chicago when Martin Luther King, Jr. was preaching. Now that would have been something to see!

And a compilation of Baryshnikov’s dancing. I swear, this guy seemed to defy the law of gravity with those leaps:

Crapper did not invent the toilet, but was involved in the sanitary fixture business. And he didn’t give his name to the toilet. Wikipedia reports—read and learn:

It has often been claimed in popular culture that the slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories. A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during World War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e. “I’m going to the crapper”.

The word crap is actually of Middle English origin and predates its application to bodily waste. Its most likely etymological origin is a combination of two older words, the Dutch krappen: to pluck off, cut off, or separate; and the Old French crappe: siftings, waste or rejected matter (from the medieval Latin crappa, chaff). In English, it was used to refer to chaff, and also to weeds or other rubbish. Its first application to bodily waste, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, appeared in 1846 under a reference to a crapping ken, or a privy, where ken means a house.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili, frustrated by the snow, continues to search for the Door Into Summer:

A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m checking whether the neighbors have the same weather.

 In Poliah:

Ja: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Hili: Patrzę, czy u sąsiadów jest taka sama pogoda.

From Matthew: a cat crashes his bike in a dream:

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/956152024059412480

Also from Dr. Cobb; a California mountain lion has kittens. Wish them luck (and turn on the sound)!:

Grania found this gem:

From Heather Hastie:

https://twitter.com/41Strange/status/955696474276311040

Cyclist waters a thirsty koala

January 26, 2018 • 3:15 pm

It’s Friday afternoon, and here’s your start-of-the-weekend animal. All I know is what YouTube says (below) and that the guy is a mensch:

It’s stinking hot in Australia right now. So much so that koalas [Phascolarctos cinereus] are drinking water, which is something they don’t ordinarily do. Cyclist Matt Sully was riding around the Adelaide Hills last Thursday when he came across a thirsty little guy who was looking for a drink.

A bar worth frequenting

January 26, 2018 • 2:30 pm

It’s the dive bar Continental in the East Village of New York, and it has a new policy, stated in the window.

The owner says it’s not that serious: he won’t literally throw people out if they use the l-word. But he’s a language maven:

The notice has been hanging there for five or six days, says Trigger Smith, the owner of the decades-old neighborhood dive. He admits the policy is tongue-in-cheek, but really does hate that word. (For that matter, he’s also no fan of phrases like “It’s all good,” “You know what I’m saying?” and “My bad”), but literally gets special loathing because of its ubiquity. “Since it’s English, it’s probably happening in England, and maybe Australia,” he tells Grub Street. “I had a woman from Miami the other night tell me it’s happening down there,” he says. “And it’s not just millennials. Now you hear newscasters using ‘literally’ every three minutes on the Sunday news shows. What’s annoying is people aren’t even aware they’re saying it. How could you be so unaware of your words that it’s coming out every couple minutes?”

As I read this, I thought of another phrase I don’t like: “To be honest. . . “.  When someone says that to me, and they’re a friend, I’ll stop them and ask, “You mean that you’re usually not honest with me?”

If that sign isn’t enough to lure you to 25 Third Avenue, at St. Marks Place, they also offer six shots of anything for $12.

National Geographic has a new book on famous Bible characters

January 26, 2018 • 12:30 pm

Reader Graham saw this for sale in his local supermarket:

It turns out that this is actually a book that came out in November, and the Amazon sales don’t look very good.

Now I haven’t seen this, and Graham didn’t describe its contents, but my question is this: what the hell is National Geographic publishing stuff like this? As I’ve described several times, recently the magazine has been on a pro-religion and pro-Christianity kick, cranking out books, movies, and articles implying that what’s described in the Bible is real.  Thanks, Rupert Murdoch! (He and his Fox network bought the magazine.)

Even the Amazon site doesn’t describe the book’s contents. The only substantive discussion of what’s in it is on this i24 broadcast (an Israeli television station). Although the guest, “spiritual mentor” Ronnie Hatchwell says this: “At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether the stories happened or they didn’t, but they do influence us”, she does pitch the woo later on (“we’re all searching for the god within us”; “we’re always drawn to this bigger power, which is God”, etc.). To judge where Hatchwell’s coming from, here’s what she says on her website:

Ever since I was a little girl In Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harrari, Zimbabwe) and then a  teenager in London, England, I have encountered telepathic and out of body experiences. I always felt that there was more to life as we see it.

Sometime in the late 80’s I underwent an experience which was to change the way I perceived life in general.

I began what is known as channeling – it first came about as “automatic writing” where I would receive non stop information. This was an extremely high intelligence which to my knowledge at the time had no resemblance to anything I had ever come across. This information always signed itself off as SOL, which I was later informed to be the initials of SERVICE OF THE LORD -in Kaballah “Malachei Ha”sharet”- I once took the writings to a Kabalist who was quick to say that the information that I receive is exactly that of Kaballah and that because it comes through me the language is easier for the laymen…

Ooookay. . . .  What appears to be going on here is that National Geographic, which was hemorrhaging money until it was bought out by Murdoch and his empire, is trying to drum up business by adding a big dose of Christianity to the National Geographic brand. Does anybody here still subscribe to this rag?

h/t: Graham