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Awwww….it’s just so cute!

This is a tough one! I actually had to go to an online dictionary to find a definition for foreign that I could work with, and I came up with:  Not natural; alien

OK, so here is my take on the subject: I like everything to be in it’s proper place, nicely decorated and harmonious.  So I really do prefer living room furniture and accessories in my living room.   Therefore, car parts, tools, greasy rags, greasy old car parts, greasy tools, and, did I mention CAR PARTS are FOREIGN OBJECTS in my living room. Definitely alien to my decor. Not at all natural to my living space.

Unlike me, Taco LOVES foreign objects, he immediately claims them as his own:

This cat can sleep on anything!

You may be curious about why these foreign objects appear in my living room (me too).  My most awesome and amazing (one of many) 19 year-old son is going to school to be an auto technician, and he does quite a few repairs out in the driveway (this drives the wicked witch into severe fits of agitation) and inevitably the car stuff gets tossed in the living room for a few hours days weeks.  On the bright side,  I get car repairs done for cheap…so I try to be patient…grease and all…*sigh*

I just came across an awesome blog, The Conscious Cat a resource for conscious living, health and happiness for pets and their people.  The author of this blog is Ingrid King, also the author of Buckley’s Story – Lessons from a Feline Master Teacher.

In honor of their one year blog anniversary, they are having a fantastic giveaway, a gift basket from Whimsy Cats which includes an autographed copy of Buckley’s Story and lots of fun surprises for your feline family members.

If you’d like to enter the giveaway, go to The Conscious Cat and:

• Leave a comment on the anniversary post.
• Tweet about this giveaway or share it on Facebook for an additional chance to win and leave the link to your tweet/share in a separate comment.
• Subscribe to The Conscious Cat via  e-mail.  If you’re already subscribed, you’re automatically entered in the giveaway.
• Blog about this giveaway on your blog and leave the link in a separate comment.

The giveaway is open until midnight Saturday, March 15.

Casper the cat has become such a well-known user of a Devon bus service that the drivers know where to let him off.

Casper has been queuing with other passengers to get the number three service from his home in Plymouth for months, bus company First said.

The company says the cat often curls up on a seat during the ride.

I stretch daily, and Mango usually accompanies me.  My goal is to stretch 3 times daily, but I usually only get around  to 2 times.  

Mango looks forward to our daily stretching routine much more than I do!

Coal-fired power plants produce more than 100 million tons of the toxic-waste byproduct sulfur dioxide, the stuff that causes acid rain.

Called FGD gypsum, this synthetic powder is produced when coal plant “scrubbers”  remove sulfur dioxide from plant emissions.     

Last year, a coal ash pond just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, spilled and flooded about 300 acres of land with ash, killing many fish in the area. The spill damaged many homes as well, and cleanup costs are expected to be upwards of $1 billion. This catastrophe has prompted the EPA to draft regulations on how to handle toxic coal waste safely.  Guess what they came up with?

In 2001, the USDA together with the EPA began to promote FGD gypsum use in agriculture. Since that time, the amount of coal ash used by farmers on their fields has tripled. According to the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), nearly 280,000 tons of the byproduct was spread on fields last year.

FGD gypsum contains toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, but according to the EPA, “the mercury contained in FGD gypsum does not affect plants and runoff into water supplies at significant levels.”  Guess they never heard of PHYTOREMEDIATION, a technology which uses plants to absorb heavy metals from the soil.

If the waste from coal plants is toxic and must be dealt with in a manner that keeps it contained, I’m just wondering why the EPA would promote the same waste for use on FOOD crops.  Perhaps it’s just more cost-effective to sell toxic waste to farmers than to stop producing it in the first place.

Food that’s USDA-certified organic cannot be grown with coal ash.  I’m sticking with organic for my family, and that includes my cats.


Nature’s Variety Raw Food Diets Organic Chicken Patties 6 lbs.

OK, this is a little weird…cute though.  Does it make you want to go right out and buy wigs for your cats, so they can be Glamourpusses too?

Our cuddly friend, Mariah, poses with our cuddly cats. 

As we all know, there has been quite a bit of controversy about BPA in plastics and can linings. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic estrogen petrochemical (synthesized from oil) used to harden polycarbonate plastics  and is used in can linings.

The ester bonds that link the BPA monomers together are not very stable. Over time, these monomers break down, which releases BPA into whatever is surrounding it, such as food and water. 

Over 7 billion pounds of BPA was produced in 2007. That’s a lot of poison, from a lot of petro.

Just a very short overview of the dangers of BPA:

Veterinary researchers have found a link between BPA in cat food cans and hyperthyroidism in cats.

Bisphenol A is an endocrine disruptor, which can mimic the body’s own hormones.

A 2008 review has concluded that obesity may be increased as a function of BPA exposure.

A 2008 study by the Yale School of Medicine demonstrated that adverse neurological effects occur in non-human primates regularly exposed to bisphenol A at levels equal to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum safe dose of 50 µg/kg/day.This research found a connection between BPA and interference with brain cell connections vital to memory, learning and mood.

In vitro studies have suggested that BPA can promote the growth of neuroblastoma (cancer) cells.

It is fairly obvious that BPA, as well as any petrochemical, is not terribly healthy for your cat, you, or the Earth.  You can read some really great articles on my other blog, creating a better world.

Just for your information, EWG reports that the three human foods showing the highest levels of BPA is canned chicken soup, canned ravioli, and, most disturbingly, infant formula.

Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects. On the other hand, every single industry funded study ever conducted  (14 in all)  has found no such effects.

My opinion is that we should avoid ALL synthetic chemicals, as much as possible.  Yes, it’s difficult considering we produce BILLIONS of pounds of these chemicals annually, they poison everything they come into contact with, and they NEVER bio-degrade or photo-degrade.  A good, but sobering book to read is:
Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our Fertility, Intelligence and Survival? A Scientific Detective Story.
Basically, it clearly explains how we are killing ourselves and destroying our Earth with synthetic chemicals.

You can also read an article from Truth About Pet Food to try to figure out if the brand of canned food you get has BPA. Of course, if you feed you cat it’s natural diet of fresh, raw foods, BPA is not an issue!

This is a very informative video, and you can actually see the plants he’s talking about so there’s no confusion.

This is easy!  I have cats!

CRIME SCENE NUMBER 1: The case of the Broken Spice Jar location: kitchen time:Feb.7,2010 between 7 AM and noon, the evidence:

CRIME SCENE NUMBER 2: The case of Who Has Broken Into The Catnip? location: kitchen (everywhere) time: Feb3-4 11PM to midnight, the scene:

THE SUSPECTS:

Sumari:so cute and innocent

Mango:so fluffy and possibly innocent

Bella...partner in crime?

A Lifetime Of Crime: Purrs his way out of trouble every time

My guess is on the grey one for both incidents, but he’ll never admit guilt and the others are keeping mum.  Especially in the catnip incident in which they all took part in the spoils.

Since the passing of the Clean Water Act in 1988, sewage treatment plants are not allowed to dump sewage sludge into the ocean.  This is because sewage sludge contains all kinds of pollutants:

Synthetic chemicals, more than 500 found including chemicals from medicines, steroids, flame retardants and detergents,

Heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, mercury and radioactive material,

Bacteria and fungi, including 18 human viruses (including Hepatitis A, Polio), 19 different parasites, and 31 different types of bacteria,

Pharmaceuticals, of 72 pharmaceuticals, three (i.e., cyprofloxacin, diphenhydramine, and triclocarban) were found in 84 sludge samples.

Industrial waste such as arsenic, lead, mercury and radioactive material.

Since sewage sludge is too toxic to put in the ocean, the EPA has decided that it would be great to use it as fertilizer. Sludge is now called “biosolids,” and is defined as the nutrient-rich organic byproduct of the nation’s wastewater treatment process.   

It is now used on millions of acres of farmland in the US, or, if you like to produce toxic veggies you can spread it on your home garden, just look for the brand names Milorganite, Nu-Earth, Nitrohumus, and Baystate Organic.

Using sewage sludge, by any name, is expressly prohibited by the USDA’s organics standards.  Here are a few other resources for those who are interested:

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies And the Public Relations Industry
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
Common Courage Press

Sued and Censored
Michael Moore and TV Nation on Trial for Libel
Texas Observer; March 22, 1996

International Joint Commission
Draft Lake Michigan Management Plan for Toxic Pollutants, Chapter 4

Environmental Working Group
Dishonorable Discharge: Toxic Pollution of America’s Waters

Agency for toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Toxicology Profiles
U.S. Public Health Service

Health effects of heavy metals

I’ll go with the organic food, and organic cat food for my best furry friends!

A Tale of Tails, or more aptly, a Tale of the Average Length of the Tails.

The teensiest little Cat Tail is owned by Sumari, the Itty Bitty Kitty:

The Sumari Tail is 24 cm in length.  It also flicks incessantly, so who knows how accurate this measurement is.

The next smallest tail is the Mango Tail: 

This Tail is 26 cm in length, and quite fluffy, so fluffy in fact that the last few cm are absolute fluff.  Next up is the Great Grey Tail at 27 cm, belonging to the Famous Taco Cat : 

And finally, the tail of Queen Bella herself a whooping 32 cm: 

24+26+27+32=109 cm of tail!  Divided by 4, equals 27.25 the AVERAGE tail length of our four fabulous felines!

Most of us think nothing of giving our cats a nice fresh bowl of cold tap water, but that may not be such a good idea, for either you or your cat.

Many pharmaceutical and personal care products are entering rivers from sewage treatment plants or leaching into groundwater from septic systems.

Antibiotics, painkillers, sunscreen, hormones, drugs and much more are routinely found in U.S. waters. In some parts of our nation, male fish are growing female parts because they’re literally swimming in hormones.

Tests have shown that American drinking water is contaminated with perchlorate – the chemical used to make rocket fuel, and pharmaceuticals have been found in the drinking water of 51 million U.S. homes. Perchlorate can interrupt the production of thyroid hormones, and lead to hypothyroidism.

Tests on U.S. drinking water routinely find the residue of legal and illegal drugs, poisons, and synthetic chemicals.

Heavy metals are also seeping into our water. These are inorganic chemical elements with relatively high density, such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, nickel and lead.

Did you know that if you drink chlorinated water while pregnant, it can increase your child’s risk of heart problems, cleft palate or major brain defects?

Independent studies in such journals as Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology; Environmental Health Perspectives; American Journal of Public Health; and Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, as well as reports published by the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that millions of Americans become sick each year from drinking contaminated water, with maladies from upset stomachs to cancer and birth defects.

One recent study showed that 62 million Americans drink substandard water.  Many of the chemicals, drugs and toxins are unregulated, (meaning nobody checks to see if they’re in your water supply) so millions of people drink dangerous water that actually still meets U.S. government standards.

Water bottled in plastic is not really safer, and some has been proven to be just plain tap water anyway.  Reverse osmosis filtering systems are the best bet, and a less expensive option is a high quality water filter.