Chickees

Inspection

The office assistant weighs in on a summer project, experimenting with different materials for miniature chickees.

About Animals

Cell Phones for Canines & Cats     

 Jon Mooallem writes in The New York Times Sunday Magazine (1.13.2008) about many things cell phone, including info on how animal groups can benefit from our olde cells.

Groups that receive a donation from a business called Collective Good for these used cell phones include the Humane Society of the United States. The site with turn-in info & directions for selecting an animal group & printing the prepaid envelope is www.collectivegood.com

I found animal groups in Texas, Florida, Colorado, New Jersey, California & other places listed at the site.  When Collective Good receives the phones, it retools them for resale, or extracts metal from them if they can’t be repaired for reuse. A part of that value is what is collected for various causes, including animal rights.  

The NYT magazine’s Mooallem (hope the author likes bovines, eh?) wrote that Collective Good owner Seth Heine receives 20,000 old cell phones a month.   So penny by penny, it can add up.  The name fits, Collective Good.

You may want to follow Mooallem’s byline. He’s written entertainingly & informatively for The Times Magazine about dog breeding (2.4.2007).

Oscar, nursing home comfort cat

“A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat” by Dr. David M. Dosa of the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island is a must-read article in the New England Journal of Medicine ( July 2007). 

I reached it via www.boston.com/news/globe/heatlh_science.gallery

Oscar is a valued member of the 3rd-floor staff of the Steere House in Providence.  Oscar chooses only to visit at any length patients who are about to pass away.  At the time of the article’s publication, this unique creature had kept vigil for at least 25 individuals in their final hours. Steere House, a highly regarded,  sunny, crisp, and antiques-accented facility for terminally ill individuals, placed a Hospice orgnization plaque honoring Oscar on one of its walls. This uncanny feline selects whom to keep company & without fail, apparently, he has always known who was in their final hours. He arrived at the House as a kitten, brought in by a worker there.

A salute to Dr. Dosa for an article beyond comparison & to Steere House for flexibility in allowing a unique animal on site 24/7. 

A National Public Radio report on Oscar is via

www.npr.org/templates/story/story/php?storyld=12249387