Green Options

A jaguar recently swam onto an island located in the Panama Canal. It then triggered a hidden camera that took its picture. This is the first time a jaguar has been photographed in the 86 year history of 3,707 acre Barro Colorado Island– one of the most well-researched tropical ecosystems in the world.

The hidden camera had been set up as part of an annual effort to inventory mammals that live on Barro Colorado Island. According to the researchers who set up the cameras, the finding is exciting given that jaguars are already considered rare throughout the entire country of Panama (see photo below).

So just how far did the jaguar have to swim?

How could we not want the safest, healthiest litter for this little lady?

Our hunt for an alternative cat litter began when our vet said that clay litter was a respiratory irritant. The more we researched cat litter, the more we learned that clay wasn’t just bad for our sweet kitties, it was bad for the planet. Clay, which makes up about 90% of the cat litters on the market, does not biodegrade. On top of that, much of the clay used in cat litter comes from strip mining. Yikes! Luckily there are all sorts of good options out there!

Fifteen-year-old Bostonian Jordan Star has emerged as the surprise driving force behind a bill to ban the cruel practice of ’surgically silencing’ cats and dogs by removing their vocal cords.

Star, a freshman at Needham High, decided to take action after coming across a dog that had been debarked and abandoned. “It was just horrible,” he said of the dog’s struggle to get his attention. “It was just like a hoarse, wheezy cough. In a shelter, all they are is a mutilated animal, which makes them harder to adopt.”

While animal control officers in San Jose, CA are still investigating into who may have tortured a cat so badly that he had to be euthanized, officers say there is “some indication there may be another cat out there with a partially lost tail.”

As a writer for EcoWorldly, I should think about the mass demonstrations currently swelling in South Korea, where I live. I should think of the struggle between Chavez’s revolution, the entrenched oligarchies, and the confused youth of Venezuela, where my brother lives. I should think of any number of critically important world events currently unfolding. I should. But all I can think of is a small, orange kitten with a physical disorder.

Now, it’s a well-known fact that infants are not always similar to the adults that nurture them. Sometimes, they’re not even of the same species. What do I mean? Take the young hippo and the 100 year-old tortoise, for example. But when a 5 week-old orange tabby kitten in rural South Korea is taken in by a 26 year-old peregrinating writer with a return ticket to California, things get tricky.

What’s more, the kitten I brought in last weekend and unwittingly adopted is not a normal kitten. At 5+ weeks of age, it’s becoming clear that the animal has cerebral hypoplasia. That’s a fancy way to say “his coordination’s not so hot.” In fact, although he’ll probably live a full and otherwise normal life, he’ll never be able to walk properly. Hence my current dilemma: what do you do with a drunken kitten?