Two Toasted Marshmallows

So there's a kickstarter happening soon for a beekeeping book on how to breed honey bees for resistances to a really bad parasite called Varroa destructor. This is important because this parasite has been devastating beekeeping for decades, adapting to chemical treatments, and now it's just landed in Australia. The kickstarter itself boasts super cool rewards like this adorable custom honey bee plush toy:

Please share it if you can, the info's all on the pre-launch page linked here:

And so it begins. Here they are in the first few weeks of their life. We called the breeder just before this litter was born. She was very happy to let us come and meet the parents and see where the kittens were going to be raised. This is so important. The breeder should always be happy to show you these things. If they won’t, then likely the conditions won’t be to your liking and you shouldn’t buy from them!

Meeting the parents also allows you to get a glimpse of what the temperament of your kittens will be like. Not only via genetics but also their environment. A nervous mother will often pass on that trait to her kits, you should make sure the parents are curious and social. 

And by TOXIC I mean even just a few pollen grains or the water from a vase holding cut lilies or even just biting into a stem or leaf can cause fatal kidney failure.

They may act aloof, and generally behave as if they live on a higher plane of existence than us mere humans. But cats are more present than we might sometimes think.

In recent years, scientists have shown that cats actually bond deeply with humans. These complex creatures can and will communicate with us, and they even track our movements when we’re not around.

Even more amazingly, cats can recognize their own names (an ability we mostly associate with dogs), and now new research shows that this feline feat goes much further than we realized.

In a new study, scientists discovered that in addition to knowing their own names, cats also appear to recognize the names of other cats they’re familiar with, and may also know the names of people who live in the same household.

That may sound a bit strange – to think that your cat might know your name – but dogs can be trained to remember the names of hundreds of different things, so perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising.

Maybe the weirdest bit is realizing that these aloof, seemingly disengaged creatures have been surreptitiously listening to us talking all this time.

“What we discovered is astonishing,” animal science researcher Saho Takagi, now at Azabu University in Japan, explained to The Asahi Shimbun.

“I want people to know the truth. Felines do not appear to listen to people’s conversations, but as a matter of fact, they do.”