Danielle Spires Photography

Eizaburo Ueno, an agriculture science professor at Tokyo University in Japan, had long wanted a Japanese Akita dog. One of his students encouraged him to adopt Hachikō, from the Odate city in the Akita prefecture of Japan. Ueno soon took him back to live in Shibuya. As Hachiko grew older, he started to see Ueno off to work in the morning at the Shibuya Train Station. Later in the day, Hachikō…

In 1960, famed animal trainer Frank Inn adopted 3 year old mixed breed Higgins from the Burbank Animal Shelter, thinking he saw something special in the mutt. He was believed to be a mix of Miniature Poodle, Cocker Spaniel, and Schnauzer. Higgins first came to national attention as the uncredited dog who played “Dog” on the sitcom Petticoat Junction for six of the show’s seven seasons, from 1964…

On April 25, 1945, outdoor writer Gordon MacQuarrie reported for the Milwaukee Journal that a mallard had laid an egg in a nest on top of one of the pilings near the Wisconsin Ave Bridge, over the Milwaukee River. Once the stories hit the papers, the duck had laid two more eggs. This story was initially sort of a joke or curiousity….a lot more important things were happening in 1945. The…

In 1924, in order to boost morale in the super overcrowded Eastern State Penitentiary, a “rather unusually intelligent” dog was sent to live at the prison with Warden Groome and inmates. Warden Groome learned therapy dogs had helped in other prisons and adopted Pep to help out. Pep arrived at Eastern State on August 31, 1924: his mugshot was taken, he was given an official intake number…

Orangey was an incredibly in-demand cat actor back in the 50’s and 60’s! Orangey belonged to Hollywood animal trainer Frank Inn, and was a beautiful ginger cat with a patient personality for filming. Orangey made his movie debut in the 1951 film Rhubarb, in which he plays the namesake character, a “millionaire” cat who was gifted an entire baseball team by his late owner. According to the book…

The Loveland Frogmen are bipedal frogs that have leathery skin and webbed hands and feet. The 3′ tall cryptids have frog-like heads with wrinkly skin on top of them. The Frogmen have the ability to use sticks like tools, and emit sparks from wand. This could mean that the frogs have an ability to control electricity in some way. In May of 1955, on the outskirts of a small town known as Loveland,…

American GI Ed Downey was in New Guinea moving a Jeep out of some mud when he heard a whimper from a nearby foxhole & found a tiny 4lb fully grown Yorkie which he named Smoky. He sold Smoky to Cpl. William Wynne for 2 Aus pounds, the equivalent of $6.44, around $109 in today’s dollars. Wynne kept and trained Smoky, helping her survive for 18 months in the worst war conditions. Smoky learned more…

ie Tarbox Beals is considered one of the first published female photojournalists as well as one of the first female night photographers. And she also had a love for cats and cat photography. Jessie Tarbox Beals Antique Cat Photography After winning a cheap prize camera through a magazine when she started her first teaching job in 1888, Beals found her passion for photography. By 1899, Beals…

In 1925 a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through the people of Nome, Alaska. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, Alaska. With the one airplane they had frozen solid, officials decided their only choice was to use sled dogs to transport the antitoxin. It was COLD! The mushers were facing a blizzard with below freezing temperatures and insanely…

William Key, a former slave, Tennessee businessman, and self-taught veterinarian, bought an Arabian mare named Lauretta, a mistreated circus horse who was very neglected. William nursed her back to health while peddling Keystone Liniment (a horse medicine). Lauretta foaled a colt and William Key originally intended to give the colt a biblical name, but the foal was so homely and clumsy that he…

The cactus cat is a legendary “fearsome critter” of the American Southwest. The cactus cat was generally described being a bobcat-like creature, covered in hair-like thorns, with particularly long spines extending from the legs and its armored, branching tail. It is said to use its spines to slash cacti at night, allowing juice to run from the plants, returning later after the sap has fermented…

The WWII Coast Guard at the port of Baltimore decided they needed a mouser aboard their navy vessel, and soon found Herman, known as an “expert mouser” and hired him to keep the ship free of mice and rats. Herman then officially became a member of the U.S. Armed Forces at eight months old. “It is a good thing to get rid of rats in general,” Col. Richard P. Strong, Medical Corps, United States…

The Fresno Nightcrawler aka the Fresno Alien has been witnessed multiple times in California. Once in Fresno, once in Yosemite with video evidence, but supposedly he was also sighted in Poland and Billings, Montana as well. But let’s be real, he’s a Cali dude. Fresno nightcrawlers are about 5′ tall, with most of their height being made up of their legs. They are thin, white humanoid creatures…

Fumika Koda is a Japanese artist that focuses her art primarily on her rescue cats. Koda took in stray cats throughout her life, and soon began to depict their individual personalities in soft and intimate silk paintings. Koda graduated from Kyoto University of Art and Design and was a winner of the 2008 President’s Award at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. Her art has been shown in Japan,…

Jimmy the Raven (often referred to as Jimmy the Crow) was an expertly trained raven that starred in some of the most famous films of all time. Jimmy belonged to animal trainer Curley Twiford, and was “discovered” while Jimmy was riding on Twiford’s bulldog, Squeezit, along with two parakeets. Twiford once said training corvids were the easiest, and (of course) training cats were the most…

This story is for my true crime-heads and cat lovers. TW for murder. In 1994, the RCMP found the body of Shirley Duguay, a mother of 5, buried in a shallow grave in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Right off the bat, the primary suspect was her husband Douglas Beamish. The only known photo of Snowball Investigators found a blood-soaked leather jacket buried with Shirley’s body. The blood belonged…