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Background on Cat Custody Cases

Cat 'custody' case shows court priorities are skewed

Landmark Cat Custody Case - Alaska

Pet Custody Mediation Services

Pet Custody Mediation Services

When Partners should consider Pet Mediation Services

Battle over the custody or ownership of your pets can be as heated and contentious as a custody battle for children except pet and animal right laws are not defined and clear cut. Your pet is a member of the family. If you are in a relationship that is ending and dogs / cats or other pets are involved, you may need help to reach a pet custody agreement or have pet mediator help resolve your issues. So what are the pet or animal right laws govern Pet custody and pet custody agreements? We can provide you with those resources. Let us help you.

If you are getting divorced, separated, a couple or roommates that are splitting or you are just moving on, a pet custody agreement is the only thing that will guarantee your access and visitation in the future.

Issues for a pet custody agreement / Mediation.

Joint / Sole custody / ownership of dog / cat / pet

Pet Visitation rights

% split of Pet Vet expenses

Ownership and licensing

Exposure to other pets / animals

What happens if an owner moves

Animal rights laws

Without a Pet Custody Agreement your partner can claim ownership and prevent you in the future from access to your dog, cat or other animal. Laws are not the same as child custody. Prevent a costly legal battle. Get your custody agreement in writing. We can help. As pet lovers, we want whats best for your pet and we offer affordable pet custody solutions. Pet mediation services is a low cost alternative. Let us help you reach a resolution.

Call for a FREE consultation 866-277-6325

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Sojourning Boston: Cabins

Sojourning Boston: Cabins

Pets On a Pedestal - On Point

Aired: Monday, July 14, 2008 11-12PM ET


A chihuahua named Tequila the day before the Westminster dog show in New York, Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
By host Tom Ashbrook:

Leona Helmsley was famously frosty toward human beings. Her nickname was "The Queen of Mean." Her infamous quote: "Only little people pay taxes."

Even so, it was a stunner when Helmsley's bequest left $12 million dollars to her favorite Maltese pooch, and up to $8 billion dollars to the dogs of New York. Eight billion. For dogs.

But in a time of Prozac for pets and big love for furry companions, Helmsley isn't the only American whose tie to her pet may have been her best relationship.

This hour On Point: people and their pets, and when pet love is pet crazy.

Guests

· Stephanie Strom, has been following the Leona Helmsley story for the New York Times

· Joel Gavriele Gold, psychologist and psychoanalyst who has been practicing in New York for more than 25 years. He is author of "When Pets Come Between Partners"

· Stephanie LaFarge, she is a psychologist and the senior director of Counseling Services for the ASPCA

· James Vlahos, his cover story in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine was titled "Pill-Popping Pets." He is contributing writer for National Geographic Adventure and Popular Science.

Chibi - 3 months

Somali pirates seize Japanese ship

KRAZY KAT GOT ME KOMMITTED

Drunken Swedish elk attacks toddler

by Anna Brones Jul 23rd 2008 @ 9:00PM
Having lived in Scandinavia, I love stories that involve moose or elk, and with so many running around the northern country, it's not hard to find them. The animals sometimes do weird things, like run amok on subways. But today's bit of Scandinavian news is even weirder; it involves a drunken elk.

Just outside of Gothenburg, a three year old was playing in her sandbox when a young elk walked up to her and bit her on the arm. The elk was apparently drunk after having consumed a few too many yeasted apples and after biting the young girl stumbled away from the backyard.

Elk roaming into residential areas isn't uncommon, but inebriated ones are. Something to keep in mind during your next trip to Scandinavia.

Pet rabbit credited with saving couple from fire

MELBOURNE, Australia—A pet rabbit is credited with saving a couple from a fire that swept through their home in the southern city of Melbourne.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade commander Mick Swift said the husband returned home from a night shift early Thursday and heard the family pet, named "Rabbit," scratching at the couple's bedroom door half an hour after he had gone to bed.

Swift said the husband, whose identity has not been released, discovered a fire in a back room and smoke spreading quickly through the house. He was able to escape the house with his wife unharmed.

Swift said the rabbit saved the couple from injury.

He said the blaze caused substantial damage to the house before it was extinguished by four crews of firefighters.

Bridgewater woman recounts fox attack

BRIDGEWATER - Shirley Doyle was down on her front lawn on Saturday, knocked over by an angry, and probably rabid, fox that had sprinted from the woods near her home while she was out for a walk. It had lunged at her ankle, and now it was growling and gnawing its sharp teeth into her lower left leg, even as the 71-year-old woman repeatedly hit it across the head with her shoe and screamed for help. Doyle thought she would faint from the excruciating pain, or even bleed to death.

Next door, Norman Millikan, a lanky 72-year-old who in recent years had undergone three heart surgeries and now has a pacemaker, was watching the movie "Dial M For Murder" with his wife. The film was reaching its climactic end, but something was bugging Millikan. He'd forgotten to lock his pickup truck. So he got up and walked outside.

Millikan at first thought the cries he heard were sounds of glee from one of Doyle's many grandchildren. Then he saw the fox, and he saw his Edgewood Drive neighbor writhing on her side, desperately trying to free herself from the growling animal.... continue



FOR THE RECORD: "Foxes can be petted, but not tamed" remember that!

Here's to you Chickipoo

Bon voyage

L.F.B & S.E.S & EB

Donkey Librarians

Rare white lion cubs are born in Germany

The trio were born last month at the zoo in the German town of Schloss Holte-Stukenbrock, after both the park's white lionesses gave birth simultaneously to seven cubs.

One cub died during birth, but the other three were being taken care of by their mother, named Kibo, out of the media spotlight.

The other three cubs, which are being looked after by keepers, attracted a lot of attention at the meet-and-greet, but they have a way to go before they match the celebrity of Germany's most famous zoo resident.

Knut the polar bear has attracted a worldwide following since his birth in 2006.

He was rejected by his mother, a former circus bear, which prompted an animal rights activist to suggest he should be left alone to his fate. The story, which first appeared in German newspaper Bild, spurred a public outcry and a mass-media interest that led to the production of books, toys and DVDs.

Knut was eventually raised by zookeepers and became the first polar bear cub to survive past infancy at Berlin Zoo in more than thirty years.

But his popularity has brought problems. Knut, who gets more than 200 visitors a day, has become "addicted to human beings," according to German animal rights activist Frank Albrecht.

Albrecht argues that animals born in zoos become so dependent on man they end up divorced from nature.

The German zoologist Peter Arras has even gone so far as to describe Knut as a "psychopath".

House Cat Adopts Red Panda Cub

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7498895.stm

Dutch cat suckles abandoned panda

The panda cub was rejected by its mother


A Dutch tabby cat has adopted a red panda cub, which was abandoned by its mother at a zoo in the Netherlands.

The adult panda, Gladys, rejected two cubs after they were born on 30 June. The Artis zoo in Amsterdam initially kept them both on an incubator.

But the zookeeper's cat had just given birth to four kittens, and allowed the pandas to join the litter. One of the cubs died last week.

Red pandas are a rare species only distantly related to giant pandas.

When fully grown, they are not much bigger than a domestic cat.

"The young panda is doing well in the circumstances," the zoo said in a statement.

"For it to survive, it is very important that it gets enough food and grows. We will see if this is the case over the next few weeks."

The cub does not have a name yet, but the zoo says that anyone willing to sponsor her will be allowed to name her.

The red panda is an endangered species that lives in Himalayan regions in China, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and Burma.

Penguins' Ills Signal Problems in Seas

Penguins' Ills Signal Problems in Seas
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP
Posted: 2008-07-01 15:24:16
Filed Under: Science News
WASHINGTON (July 1) - The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble, scientists now say. Penguins may be the tuxedo-clad version of a canary in the coal mine, with generally ailing populations from a combination of global warming, ocean oil pollution, depleted fisheries, and tourism and development, according to a new scientific review paper.

A University of Washington biologist detailed specific problems around the world with remote penguin populations, linking their decline to the overall health of southern oceans.

A Barometer of Environmental Health?
A Penguin colony in the Falkland Islands off ArgentinaPeter Macdiarmid, Getty Images

Many of the world's penguin populations are threatened, and their problems seem to reflect global environmental trends, a new report said. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true," the report's author said.

"Now we're seeing effects (of human caused warming and pollution) in the most faraway places in the world," said conservation biologist P. Dee Boersma, author of the paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience. "Many penguins we thought would be safe because they are not that close to people. And that's not true."

Scientists figure there are between 16 to 19 species of penguins. About a dozen are in some form of trouble, Boersma wrote. A few, such as the king penguin found in islands north of Antarctica, are improving in numbers, she said.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists three penguin species as endangered, seven as vulnerable, which means they are "facing a high risk of extinction in the wild," and two more as "near threatened." About 15 years ago only five to seven penguin species were considered vulnerable, experts said.

And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has already listed one penguin species on its endangered list, is studying whether it needs to add 10 more.

The largest Patagonian penguin colony in the world is at Punta Tumbo, Argentina, but the number of breeding pairs there dropped in half from about 400,000 in the late 1960s to about 200,000 in October 2006, Boersma reported. Over a century, African penguins have decreased from 1.5 million breeding pairs to 63,000.

The decline overall isn't caused by one factor, but several.

For the ice-loving Adelie penguins, global warming in the western Antarctica peninsula is a problem, making it harder for them to find food, said Phil Trathan, head of conservation biology at the British Antarctic Survey, a top penguin scientist who had no role in the new report.

For penguins that live on the Galapagos island, El Nino weather patterns are a problem because the warmer water makes penguins travel farther for food, at times abandoning their chicks, Boersma said. At the end of the 1998 record El Nino, female penguins were only 80 percent of their normal body weight. Scientists have tied climate change to stronger El Ninos.

Oil spills regularly taint the water where penguins live off Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil and have contributed to the Punta Tumbo declines, Boersma said.

The problems may be different from place to place, but looking at the numbers for the species overall, "they do give you a clear message," Trathan said.

And this isn't just about the fate of penguins.

"What happens to penguins, a few years down the road can happen to a lot of other species and possibly humans," said longtime penguin expert Susie Ellis, now executive director of the International Rhino Foundation.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.