Dave’s wife drives the family Opel 60 km daily to get to work, through tons of traffic. It’s averages about a 2-hour trip there and back at rush hour. One evening after arriving home, she tells Dave there’s a funny noise coming from her car engine.

Dave takes a look and finds a teeny tiny black and white kitten yowling his heart out. It was shaking from fright,” said Dave. “My wife had driven 60km on the country’s busiest and deadliest highways and roads with this kitten in the engine! But that’s not all – so I’m holding the trembling kitten and I count four feet, two ears and ONE eye – the poor thing!”

They rush the kitten to the vet, and discover that although he has only one eye, he didn’t suffer any major injuries from his wild ride. The vet estimated that he was about eight weeks old.

Dave and his family adopt the kitten, whom they call Sneax (because his bright white paws look like sneakers and he ‘sneaked’ into the car).

Fast forward two months. Sneax has happily taken over the household and is an integral part of the family. When he’s not napping, he enthusiastically chases the mouse pointer on Dave’s computer screen, attacks errant shoelaces, and knocks evil fridge magnets onto the floor. Dave claims that Sneax wants to be Spiderman when he grows up.

[LINK: bizcommunity.com]

I LOVE this little kitteh!!!!!

[LINK: FoxChattanooga.com]

In her cluttered home, there were dozens of books on cats and dogs. “At her dental surgery she would feed every stray cat that came along, no one would go hungry,” former client Keith Clissold said yesterday. “She didn’t have any family but everybody knew her.”

Only a dozen people attended her funeral, but her legacy will live on as her bequests feed, shelter and save the lives of a multitude of pets in the next few years.

[LINK: news.com.au]

Campaign finance reports showed that Smoke spent $14.37 of the $236 he’s raised on “dinner for campaign staff” from the pet store. But don’t worry; he wasn’t feeding college interns; his campaign manager, Sita the Cat, was the recipient of the free meals.

“It’s just a general protest against the way expenditures are handled,” he said of his billing his campaign for a household expense. “You have people dumping road signs all over the right-of-way, forcing the city to spend money to clean it up, all by candidates who give lip service to caring about the environment.”

He said his few donations came from personal friends, and he’s not going to hear from real estate developers about how he’s spent their money.

“My taking care of my cat is above what some of the people have done,” he said, referring to candidates donating money to each other to get more matching funds from the city, and candidates accepting money from developers with business in front of the city. “I think there are a lot of abuses, and I don’t partake of any of them.”

Boulder campaign finance administrator Dianne Marshall said the city code doesn’t say which campaign expenses are legitimate, only that expenses have to be disclosed.

“It’s not unusual that he would buy food for campaign helpers,” she said.

Later, Sita became a national sensation when she was the subject of one of the questions on National Public Radio’s popular quiz show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”

In the “Lightning Fill in the Blank” round, host Peter Segal asked comedian Paula Poundstone to guess what justification Smoke gave for using campaign funds to feed his cat.

Sita could not be reached for comment.

[LINK: DailyCamera.com]

George’s owner, Chris Jackson, registered George with the British Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming (BBNLP), the United Fellowship of Hypnotherapists (UFH) and the Professional Hypnotherapy Practitioner Association (PHPA). Each accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George’s credentials.

The UFH later admitted the mistake, which it said has since been corrected.

A PHPA spokesman said the organization makes great effort to ensure every applicant is a fully-qualified hypnotherapist.

The BBNLP said it exists only to provide benefits to its members, not to check or certify credentials.

George could not be reached for comment.

[LINK: BBC News]

Heather Allen of Halo Animal Rescue says she has never seen anything quite like this in her fifteen year career of saving animals. The chihuahua pup’s mom died while giving birth, leaving the pup needing a source of nourishment… fast!

Allen called Animal Control looking for nursing mothers. The only thing Animal Control had available was a black cat with four kits about the same size as the Chihuahua pup.

They dropped the pup in with the littermates, and so far, so good. Whoever eventually adopts the pup might even find that he’s litter trained!

LINK: Halo Animal Rescue

Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.

Cowell says that Tizzie was found near some railroad tracks in the 1970s by a couple who gave the cat to Jim’s mother. This 1975 photograph shows Jim’s mother and Tizzie.

Jim hopes that his story will prompt the couple who originally found Tizzie to come forward and help verify Tizzie’s age. Tizzie’s vet has no record of her age, so she’s unlikely to make it into the record books without further proof.

[LINK: gather.com]

Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.

It’s not unusual for cats to want to go to school, but it is unusual for cats to graduate with high school diplomas. Oreo C. Collins has done just that, earning her sheepskin from Jefferson High School Online. Remarkable enough for a cat, but at two years old she is also the youngest ever to graduate from Jefferson.

Superachiever Oreo comes from the most humble of beginnings. Found in a roadside ditch when only a couple of weeks old, the Collins family of Macon, Georgia, adopted and nutured her.

Kelvin Collins, who is the president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Central Georgia encouraged Oreo in her scholastic efforts by helping him investigate online diploma mills.

He helped Oreo sign up to work for her diploma online, and even paid the $200 tuition fee for her.

Oreo was a star pupil, earning mostly “A”s in her classes, including credits for an essay she wrote about her “life experiences.” Collins did provide some support in helping Oreo complete her coursework, help she probably wouldn’t have needed if she’d been born with opposable thumbs. It didn’t hurt that anytime Oreo missed a test question, the test provided a helpful hint at the answer.

Oreo was rewarded for her academic prowess with extra treats and a self-cleaning litter box.

Unfortunately, Oreo’s diploma is not the same as a GED diploma. GED tests cannot be taken online. Collins says that Oreo’s “degree” serves as a warning to those ready to buy worthless diplomas. “We (the BBB) do a lot of stories on these diploma mills, but a lot of times consumers really don’t get it until you show them an example of how they (the diplomas) aren’t worth much.”

Like many recent graduates, Oreo is unemployed and living with her family. But Collins insists that we need not worry about her future: “Like Oreo wrote in her test essay, she always lands on her feet.”

[LINK: msnbc.com]

Keith Griffin (right) was charged this week with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after authorities found more than 1,000 images on his home computer. But Griffin alleges he had no knowledge of the illicit images and claims his cat was behind the downloads.

According to Griffin, his cat regularly sits on his computer keyboard, and on several occasions he came back to his computer to find that “strange material” had been downloaded.

Police didn’t buy it. Griffin is currently being held in a Florida jail. A family friend is caring for the cat.

Shame on you, Mr Griffin.

[LINK: Miami Herald; PHOTO: Manchester PG Careers]