Screwworm quarantines threaten adoption transport approach to achieving Best Friends’ “90% live release rate” threshold for “no kill” status AUSTIN, Texas––From agribusiness pundits to zoonotic disease researchers, online commentators were mystified on June 18, 2026 to see Best Friends Animal Society senior director of national programs Brent Toellner lined up to testify to the Texas […]
What if your cat could kill 10 billion insects?
Allegation that cats are an existential threat to bugs is multi-magnitudes even more exaggerated than allegations of cats’ threat to birds SÅO PAULO, Brazil––Somehow a Brazilian undergraduate paper purportedly portraying domestic cats as an existential threat to insect life managed to buzz around the world and the web for six months before coming to […]
California bans declawing cats without seceding from the United States
42 nations have now banned declawing cats, & nine of the ten Canadian provinces, but only four U.S. states SACRAMENTO, California––California governor Gavin Newsom on October 9, 2025 endorsed into law AB 867 by state assembly member Alex Lee, a Democrat from Milpitas, “which bans the practice of declawing cats when not medically necessary,” […]
How solving the blue pork mystery might save cats, hawks, owls & eagles
Anti-coagulant rodenticides are less & less effective, so people use more & more of them GRAFTON, Massachusetts; MONTEREY, California––Blue pork from wild pigs in early August 2025 put secondary poisoning caused by toxic accumulations of the anti-coagulant rodenticide diphacinone into tabloid headlines. To wildlife advocates, however, the relatively remote possibility of people suffering illness or […]
Injunction vs. San Diego HS “return-to-field” cat practices made permanent
No more dumping kittens or cats with clear signs of ownership, orders judge SAN DIEGO, California––San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal on June 9, 2025 ended the long-running “cat control trial of the century” with a final ruling that the San Diego Humane Society has sufficiently amended how it handles cats found at […]
H5N1 hits cats at Wild Felid Advocacy Center & wild pumas in the Olympics
Wild cats stricken directly under the Pacific Flyway HARSTINE ISLAND, Washington––Killing 20 of the 37 large and exotic cats at the Wild Felid Advocacy Center of Washington between December 2 and December 23, 2024, an outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza on Harstine Island, Washington, south of Seattle, appears to have brought more attention to […]
Veterinary greed vs. animal health on the Colorado ballot
The Denver Dumb Friends League & Dr. Jeff, Rocky Mountain vet, are on the same side this time DENVER, Colorado––Veterinary protectionism vs. animal health is on a state ballot for perhaps the first time in direct, naked, unmasked, undisguised greedy form in Colorado on November 5, 2024. Colorado Proposition 129 “creates a career pathway for […]
“Hurry up & wait,” courts tell Paul Watson & San Diego cat advocates
Watson to remain in Greenland jail until September 5; cat trial on hold even longer NUUK, Greenland; SAN DIEGO, California––British prime minister William Gladstone in 1868 declared that, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” Be that as it may, both of the courtroom dramas gripping animal advocacy attention in mid-August 2024 have been postponed until September. […]
Rare “staggering disease” found in a Colorado mountain lion
Will the “staggering disease” discovery become a factor in the Cats Aren’t Trophies ballot initiative campaign? DENVER––How did “staggering disease” jump from domestic cats in Sweden, Austria, and Scotland into a wild puma [mountain lion] in Douglas County, Colorado? What effect might the discovery of “staggering disease” in a Colorado puma have upon the Cats […]
H5N1 avian flu goes global: what that means for for us & for animals
H5N1, much less deadly than it once was, has spread from pole to pole & from birds to cats & mice ANNAPOLIS, ATLANTA––No one at either the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases [ProMED] or the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention is saying so yet, but the chances of keeping the avian influenza H5N1 from […]