#mspca

A selection of tonight's Penultimate Sillies:

Those eyes!, MSPCA Cape Cod, Centerville, MA 2022

From the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' Our Dumb Animals (1921).

HAS YOUR CAT BEEN PLACED ON A CALORIE RESTRICTED DIET? WE ARE LOOKING FOR VOLUNTEERS! Help our group at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Angell Animal Medical Center understand why some cats are better at losing weight after being placed on a diet! We’re looking for volunteers with a pet cat previously placed on a diet by their veterinarian after being diagnosed as overweight or obese (Body Condition Score of 6 or greater on a 9-point scale). Any reduced calorie diet qualies (e.g., a diet prescribed by your veterinarian, a low-calorie diet that was purchased over-the-counter, or your cat was fed the same diet with reduced intake). Cats are eligible whether or not they lost weight after dieting! Additional eligibility criteria include: must be indoor-only, 4 to 11 years of age, have no known gastrointestinal disorders or recent lower gastrointestinal issues such as diarrhea, and given no antibiotics within the last 6 months. Participant responsibilities include: ▪ Signing a virtual consent form ▪ A one-time stool sample collection from your pet ▪ Returning the sample and a brief questionnaire using a prepaid shipping label that we provide IF YOU'D LIKE MORE INFORTMATION REGARDING THE STUDY, PLEASE CONTACT OUR TEAM!

MIFRAH HAYATH [email protected]

Harvard School of Medicine / MSPCA

Is it like binary to them?

Seemingly, a cat's meow triggers in the cat a response in a way that parallels the way the pores on CDs are read and converted into imagery and sound through transduction.

Cats are born knowing to meow to gain their own feline mother's attention, and seem to learn their meow-language automatically as they grow and age, suggesting that feline language is genetically encoded into a cat's brain from birth.

I have several questions

1. How many is several?

2. Were they together or did a bunch of separate ferrets get loose in one Boston neighborhood?

3. Seriously how many is several?

4. If they are all from one place how did they get there? (Almost all ferrets in the US come from one breeding operation and to keep a monopoly they spay and neuter all their ferrets before they leave the property so this probably isn't just like a case of someone had two ferrets and they had a bunch of baby ferrets and now they have a lot of ferrets)

5. How many is several? I mean it's got to be more than four right?