Free Republic

PC repair chap turned pet detective to diagnose the defectiveOn Call The unconditional love of a pet is often a solace, and perhaps never more so than at the end of a busy working week. Which is when The Register competes with the animal kingdom for your affection by delivering a new edition of On Call, our Friday column in which we share your stories of scratching out a living delivering tech support. This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Walt" who fixes computers. "One day a client came in and complained that her laptop would not turn on."...

In a discovery that pushes back the timeline of domestic cats in North America, archaeologists have uncovered the earliest known feline remains in the modern-day United States.The find comes from the Emanuel Point II shipwreck, one of the vessels in the doomed 1559 expedition led by Spanish conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano. Published in American Antiquity on April 14, the study sheds light not only on the fate of these cats but also on their role in early colonial ventures...In September 1559, a powerful hurricane devastated the Spanish fleet anchored off the nascent settlement of Santa María de Ochuse.Several...

Tourists Matthew Nannen, 45, and Bailee Crane, 58, were visiting Inspiration Point at Utah’s scenic Bryce Canyon National Park with their elderly tabby — now named Mirage — when the trio took a fateful plunge on Monday night or Tuesday morning, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, citing the sheriff’s office. Mirage, who is estimated to be 12 years old, was found by hikers on Tuesday night in a soft black pet carrier and in remarkably good condition... The fortunate feline only suffered two fractured canine teeth and a few fractured ribs — but miraculously “seemed to have weathered the fall...

A Maine Coon named Zeus has taken the internet by storm, earning millions of views across social media platforms with his sheer size and playful antics. Standing at an impressive 4 feet tall when on his back legs, Zeus is not your typical house cat. This gentle giant has captured the hearts of millions, and his owner, Daniela Ermolaeva, couldn’t be more proud of the attention her beloved pet is receiving, as highlighted in a recent feature by The Independent. Zeus, weighing 13 kg (around 28.6 pounds), has quickly become a sensation on Instagram under the handle @zeus.mainecoon.official. His rise...

A Colorado city plans to seize residents' pet cats and dogs in a bid to limit the number of animals allowed in households. On August 1, pet owners in Northglenn - about 40 minutes outside of Denver - will not be allowed to have more than four cats, dogs, or a combination of the two 'totaling no more than four.' The new pet ordinance was recently approved by the city council 'at the request of residents and after extensive research and discussion,' the city said. The restriction was introduced after concerned residents complained of 'excessive noise and waste caused by...

Bad news for environmentally conscious pet owners: cats’ and dogs’ eating habits are responsible for dumping as many as 64 million tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year — roughly the equivalent of driving over 13 million cars. That’s due to all the meat our furry friends gobble down, according to new research. There are more than 163 million dogs and cats in the US, and they just love to eat. In fact, cats and dogs in the US consume about 19 percent as many calories as people do in the US, or about as much as 62...

First it was the cow farts. Now it’s dog “sh*t.” Moral of the story: eco crazies will never be satisfied until people start seeing climate change threats in their soup. Leftist newspaper The Guardian published an April 9 story that reeked of being desperate for attention, even if that meant making its writers look like cats that have been overdosing on catnip. “Pet dogs have ‘extensive and multifarious’ impact on environment, new research finds,” read the headline coughed up like a hairball from science writer Donna Lu. The syntax read like a Babylon Bee special, “An Australian review of existing...

Certain vaccinations are important for pets to protect them from several fatal diseases. However, while this process is important, pet owners should be careful to make sure they are not over-vaccinating their animal companions because this can lead to health issues. Over-vaccination in pets is when a pet is inoculated with the same vaccines multiple times. When this happens, it can result in adverse effects on your pet's health. This can be dangerous to some animals because they are vaccinated too frequently for their bodies to handle. Studies show that over-vaccination can cause hypersensitivity reactions and autoimmune diseases. Over-vaccination is...

A series of earthquakes near the Greek island of Santorini have led authorities to shut down schools, dispatch rescue teams with sniffer dogs and send instructions to residents including a request to drain their swimming pools. he strongest earthquake recorded was magnitude 4.6 at 3:55 p.m. Sunday, at a depth of 14 kilometers (9 miles), the Athens Geodynamic Institute said. A few tremors of over magnitude 4 and dozens of magnitude 3 have followed. There were no reports of damage or casualties. Earthquake experts and officials from the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection and the fire service have...

A cat has made three flights between New Zealand and Australia in just 24 hours after being forgotten on a plane. Mittens, an eight-year-old Maine Coon, was booked to travel from Christchurch to Melbourne on 12 January - but her cage was left in the Air New Zealand aircraft's cargo hold. After waiting for three hours for Mittens at Melbourne airport, owner Margo Neas was told by ground staff the plane had already returned to New Zealand with her pet. During that flight the heating was turned on to keep the cat comfortable, Ms Neas said. The pet - who...

…although drones sound super high-tech, most are nothing more than tiny machines with a camera attached, hardly more elaborate (or sturdy) than your average radio-controlled toy car. Which means that they might not survive a casual encounter with even a small predator—like a house cat. The drone pilot in this video is a surveyor who uses the machinery to take aerial pictures of the properties and heritage landmarks that he works on. It’s a useful technique, and one that makes his job a lot easier. But in this clip, we see a possible pitfall, in the form of a feline...

After 60 years of searching, geneticists have finally identified the gene behind the marmalade coloration in domestic cats. Two independent teams of researchers found any fiery-hued fuzz on our beloved clawed floofs is likely the result of a missing segment of DNA in a non-protein-coding part of the cat's genome. "It's been a genetic mystery, a conundrum," Stanford University geneticist Greg Barsh told Sara Reardon at Science. Barsh and his colleagues discovered cat skin cells from which orange fur sprouts express 13 times as much RNA from a gene called Arhgap36, compared with skin cells from cats with no orange...

https://youtube.com/shorts/6W9Bl6xDHQU?si=MltDK9CilU6F9hAh

A grandmother looking for her lost cat apparently fell into a sinkhole that had recently opened above an abandoned western Pennsylvania coal mine and rescuers worked late into the night Tuesday to try and find her. Bright lights illuminated snow flurries and various equipment at the site while crews worked above and below ground, video from the scene showed. Crews lowered a pole camera with a sensitive listening device into the hole in Marguerite on Tuesday morning but it detected nothing. A camera lowered into the hole showed what could be a shoe about 30 feet (9 meters) below the...

I'm about to spill the beans and let you in on a little secret. "Do Haitians eat cats" is one of the most frequently asked questions of Haitians in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and professional settings. Many Haitians feel uncomfortable answering this question. I, on the other hand, don't have this problem. Get ready. This one will shock you. Do Haitians eat cats? Yes, they eat cats. However, eating cat meat is not a daily or nationwide practice. Haitians mostly eat cats on December 24th in a national festivity called "Reveyon", a big Christmas party. This is...

A video recently emerged showing several cows lying dead on roadsides in California’s Central Valley amid an avian influenza outbreak across the U.S., sparking biosafety concerns. The dead cows were close together with swarms of flies buzzing around them, video shows. Dr. Crystal Heath, a veterinary doctor with the Berkeley, California-based nonprofit Our Honor, took the video Oct. 8 and shared it on Twitter on Oct. 17. The dead livestock were in front of Mendonsa Farms and Land O’Lakes Borges Dairy, both in Tulare County, Heath said. There were no visible warning signs of potential biosafety risk that the exposed...

Diorama Shokudo is a place where foster parents and cats can meet and become happy! (Translated from Japanese)

A much-loved moggy called Rosie, believed to be the oldest cat in the world, has died at the ripe old age of 33. The tortoise-shell walked into the hallway of her home in Norwich, Norfolk, lay down and passed away, said her devoted owner Lila Brissett, 73. Rosie was born in 1991 and turned 33 on June 1, which in cat years is an extraordinary 152. Lila never got around to registering her pet as officially the oldest in the world, but the current Guinness World Records holder, a cat called Flossie from Kent, is a mere 28 years old....

The last few weeks support my theory that leftist feminist - lefteminism - is not a political or social ideology but a form of psychosis. For the idiots out there, I’m not talking about the idea that women should be treated equally to men with only a few necessary allowances for differences. I’m talking about the bizarre ideology that had been on display again and again in this campaign. Lefteminism has nothing to do with empowering women. It is merely a collection of hysterical daddy issues compounded by its affluent, over-credentialed practitioners’ personal psychodramas. Now, this is where we stop...

Guy Stops to Save a Kitten, Gets Ambushed 0:43 VIDEO AT LINK............ WARNING! GRAPHIC!..........................