Holly the Cat's Incredible Journey

A Cat’s 200-Mile Trek Home Leaves Scientists Guessing

Nobody knows how it happened: an indoor house cat who got lost on a family excursion managing, after two months and about 200 miles, to return to her hometown.

Even scientists are baffled by how Holly, a 4-year-old tortoiseshell who in early November became separated from Jacob and Bonnie Richter at an R.V. rally in Daytona Beach, Fla., appeared on New Year’s Eve — staggering, weak and emaciated — in a backyard about a mile from the Richters’ house in West Palm Beach.

“Are you sure it’s the same cat?” wondered John Bradshaw, director of the University of Bristol’s Anthrozoology Institute. In other cases, he has suspected, “the cats are just strays, and the people have got kind of a mental justification for expecting it to be the same cat.”

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Cat 'arrested' for break-in at Brazilian prison

The confiscated items strapped to the cat's body included drill bits, files, and a mobile phone

A cat has been detained in the grounds of a jail in Brazil with contraband goods for prisoners strapped to its body with tape.

The white cat was apprehended crossing the main prison gate.

The incident took place at a jail in Arapiraca city, 250km (155 miles) south-west of Recife in Alagoas state.

The confiscated items included drill bits, files, a mobile phone and charger, plus earphones The cat was taken to a local animal centre.

The jail holds some 263 prisoners.

A prison spokesperson was quoted by local paper Estado de S. Paulo as saying: "It's tough to find out who's responsible for the action as the cat doesn't speak."

Officials said the items could be used to effect a means of escape or for communicating with criminals on the outside.

The incident took place at New Year, but the photo has only recently been released.

via BBC News

Investments: Orlando is the cat's whiskers of stock picking

Ginger moggy beats the professionals and a team of students in the Observer's share portfolio challenge

Orlando's share-picking skills were purr-fect. Photograph: Jill Insley

The Observer's panel of stock-picking professionals has been undone in our 2012 investment challenge by a ginger feline called Orlando who spent time paw-ing over the FT.

The Observer portfolio challenge pitted professionals Justin Urquhart Stewart of wealth managers Seven Investment Management, Paul Kavanagh of stockbrokers Killick & Co, and Schroders fund manager Andy Brough against students from John Warner School in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire – and Orlando.

Each team invested a notional £5,000 in five companies from the FTSE All-Share index at the start of the year. After every three months, they could exchange any stocks, replacing them with others from the index.

By the end of September the professionals had generated £497 of profit compared with £292 managed by Orlando. But an unexpected turnaround in the final quarter has resulted in the cat's portfolio increasing by an average of 4.2% to end the year at £5,542.60, compared with the professionals' £5,176.60.

While the professionals used their decades of investment knowledge and traditional stock-picking methods, the cat selected stocks by throwing his favourite toy mouse on a grid of numbers allocated to different companies.

The challenge raised the question of whether the professionals, with their decades of knowledge, could outperform novice students of finance – or whether a random selection of stocks chosen by Orlando could perform just as well as experienced investors.

The result indicates that the "random walk hypothesis", popularised in economist Burton Malkiel's book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, is perhaps truer than we thought. Burkiel's book explores the idea that share prices move completely at random, making stock markets entirely unpredictable.

"It's time to crack open the Whiskas," said a good-humoured Justin Urquhart-Stewart. "The cat's got talent." To celebrate his success, Orlando's owner, former Cash editor Jill Insley, has bought him a red collar in the style of Urquhart-Stewart's omnipresent red braces.

All but one of Orlando's stocks (Morrisons) rose during the last three months of the year, including specialist plastics and foam company Filtrona, which Orlando had hastily swapped for under-performing Scottish American Investment Trust in September.

By contrast, the professionals refused to swap any stocks at the end of the third quarter and paid the price. British Gas fell by 19% and Imagination Technologies dropped by 16.8%, dragging their portfolio down by an average 7.1%.

The students may have finished last, but displayed the best performance of all the teams in the final quarter, their portfolio increasing by an average 5.4%, including a fantastic performance of 17.4% for property company Savills.

Their trading decisions were key: at the end of the final quarter they swapped Mulberry for Aviva and Betfair for Tesco. In the final quarter, Aviva's share price increased by 17% (compared with a rise of only 6.6% for Mulberry during that time) and Tesco rose by 1.2% (far superior to a fall in the Betfair share price of 5.4%).

Nigel Cook, deputy headteacher at John Hoddesdon School, said: "The mistakes we made earlier in the year were based on selecting companies in risky areas. But while our final position was disappointing, we are happy with our progress in terms of the ground we gained at the end and how our stock-picking skills have improved."

A spokeswoman for Orlando said he was not available to give an interview because of a claws in his contract.

via The Observer | Thanks to Alexandros Kamarineas

The Japanese cat that holds the clues to an internet prankster

When a real life feline becomes part of the cat-and-mouse game between hackers and authorities, a global audience is assured.

There is a hacker terrorising Japan with a computer virus, bomb threats and riddles. Meanwhile, a stray cat wandering a small island near Tokyo holds important clues on its collar. This is no movie. This happened this week. An unnamed hacker in Japan really did leave a memory card on a stray cat's collar, and journalists and authorities really did have to crack a few riddles to locate said ownerless feline.

If befuddled agents of the NPA (National Police Agency) didn't already get the point, they should now: they are being toyed with, and the lack of headway they've made after months of taunting is more than a little embarrassing. This is after the NPA "extracted" what appears to be false confessions from four suspects, who have been recently released. The hacker is clearly trying to paint authorities as inept, and succeeding.

So far, according to Wired, Japanese authorities have only been able to identify two things about the hacker: one, he or she programs in the popular programming language C#, and two, he or she knows how to use proxies so they can post on the largest text-based forum on the internet, 2channel. While western audiences might not be familiar with 2channel, its US equivalent 4chan should ring a bell .

All the authorities have on the hacker is information that could describe any internet prankster in the digital era – be it Anonymous activists or YouTube trolls. Even the decision to leave an important clue on a cat leaves the tell-tale scent of internet culture on the case. The hacker's taunting tactics are nothing out of the ordinary for internet pranksters, either. Any time Anonymous defaces a website, they make sure to rub the site owners face in it with codified language, in the form of seemingly random slogans and weird music videos featuring Rick Astley or Oprah Winfrey. They would say they are in it for the lulz, or the act of confusing and enraging their foe.

There has always been a cat-and-mouse game between authorities and hackers, with one trying to wrestle control and assert superiority over the other. This dance is not just about evading your hunter, but also humiliating them. One of the most well-known hackers, Kevin Mitnick, was famous for how well he played this game. Mitnick went as far as tapping into cellphone networks to monitor when FBI agents were closing in on him, only to clean his apartment of evidence – except for a box of donuts in his fridge labelled"FBI donuts".

Gabriella Coleman, author of Coding Freedom: the Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, describes it bluntly: "If you are being pursued, to humiliate your hunter is pretty sweet, no? I mean, escaping your hunter is great but evading him/her is truly the cherry on top. The hunt becomes a very public game." The publicness of the Japan hacker's game is worth repeating: he or she sent both the media and the authorities riddles (much like the Batman villain the Riddler), effectively ensuring that his or her pranks get their fair share of press coverage.

No motive for this hacker has surfaced yet, but the possibility that this is a big protest against the country's new anti-piracy law – a measure that went into effect in October 2012 that means offenders can be imprisoned for up to two years – can't be ruled out. Of course, this could just be a teen flexing his or her cyber muscles and trying to make a name for themselves, an always important cause to a young internet citizen.

Given the international press the stunt with the cat has received, future pranks will likely become larger and more complicated, whatever the motive. Either way, this hacker currently has the world as a stage. Pranksters, like most performers, need an audience to survive.

 

via The Guardian

Ernest Hemingway letters reveal upset over cat

Newly released letters by writer Ernest Hemingway have shed light on his distress over the death of his cat.

The celebrated author was forced to put down Uncle Willie after he suffered two broken legs in a road accident.

"Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years," Hemingway wrote to a friend in the 1950s.

The set of 15 letters will be displayed to the public at the JF Kennedy Library in the US.

Hemingway's correspondence over several years was with Gianfranco Ivancich, a younger Italian man with whom he struck up a friendship in Venice in 1949.

The Nobel Prize winner, whose works include The Old Man and The Sea and For Whom The Bell Tolls, also wrote of tourists visiting his villa in Cuba on the same day he was forced to end the life of his pet.

"I still had the rifle and I explained to them they had come at a bad time and to please understand and go away."

The writer wrote that one of the uninvited visitors said: "We have come at a most interesting time. Just in time to see the great Hemingway cry because he has to kill a cat."

The war veteran added that it was a difficult task to end his pet's suffering because he had never been forced to kill "anyone who purred with two broken legs".

In the letters, which were bought by the JF Kennedy Library Foundation from Mr Ivancich late last year, the author said that his letter writing suffered because of his work.Hemingway's work was rich with masculine pursuits and themes, including fishing, hunting and bullfighting.

"I wish I could write you good letters the way you do. Maybe it is because I write myself out in the other writing," he said.

Mr Ivancich, now in his eighties, still writes every day due to encouragement from Hemingway, who died in 1961 from self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Via BBC News

Kitten Kast

This little feline needed a bit of human help to keep her nine lives intact. Toffy (that’s her name) caught her paw in the door, and a modern vet prescribed a type of “airplane swing” just like the one used on human patients with broken limbs. Purpose is to stretch muscles so that bone can knit easily.

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via Modern Mechanix

A Cat Named Groucho

Recently auctioned on eBay was this newspaper clipping which Zeppo sent to Groucho in 1975, along with a note that read, "Groucho, thought this cute, will try to come see you next week. Love, Zeppo."

The caption reads:

All that's missing is the cigar to make Groucho, this mustachioed cat, look just like his famous namesake. Groucho, who's half Siamese, has two other unusual features: his hind legs are twice as long as his front ones, and he has no tail. Groucho, owned by the Morris Gilbert family of Brownwood, Tex., won a blue ribbon at the Brown County pet fair last fall after judges chose him the most unusual cat displayed.

The seller made this statement in the listing:

I was Groucho's personal secretary and archivist for the last three years of his life, and am the author of the book RAISED EYEBROWS: My Years Inside Groucho's House. Groucho received this item from Zeppo in July of 1975. He did, in fact, get a kick out of the cat photo (Groucho had a weakness for kitties to begin with), but rather than saving the note and photo and putting it into a scrapbook, he simply tossed it into the waste basket under his desk. (After all, Groucho would hardly have looked upon a note from Zeppo Marx as a rare and desirable collectible!) So - I retrieved the note, envelope, and clipping from the trash and saved it for whatever passes as posterity.

That would be Steve Stollar, who authored Raised Eyebrows.

The clipping, note, and envelope went for $299 to the only individual who placed a bid.

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Reblogged from The Marx Brothers

Mark Twain Has Lost a Black Cat | From the New York American.

Have you seen a distinguished looking cat that looks as if it might be lost? If you have take it to Mark Twain, for it may be his. The following advertisement was received at the American office Saturday night:

A CAST LOST - FIVE DOLLARS REWARD for his restoration to Mark Twain, No. 21 Fifth avenue. Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light.
- reprint in Kansas City Star, April 5, 1905

via www.twainquotes.com

Hearing Aid for Cat (1948)

Via Modern Mechanix

Cat Mothers White Mice (Jun, 1931)

“PATSY,” pet cat of Miss Madge Mahoney, of Brooklyn, must have read all about the peace talk in Washington and decided to take it to heart, for she has put aside all her feline hatred of her age-old enemies, rats, and is mothering four white rodents as if they were her kittens. At the left we see her having a meal of milk with her foster children without any hard feelings whatever.

Via Modern Mechanix

The ‘Cat Lady’ Conundrum

Here’s a little-known and slightly terrifying fact: According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 60 million people in the United States are infected with a parasite that may migrate into their brains and alter their behavior in a way that — among other things — may leave them more likely to be eaten by cats. New research into this common parasite — Toxoplasma gondii — may offer clues to the phenomenon known to the unscientifically-minded as “crazy cat lady” syndrome.

The basic facts: Toxo can infect many species, but it undergoes sexual reproduction only in cat digestive tracts. Once the parasite reproduces, the cat passes it in its feces, where the next unwitting host picks it up by digesting it (intentionally or unintentionally). Then the cycle starts again. In the long run, Toxo must find its way back to a cat’s stomach to survive. So the parasite has evolved a complicated system for taking over its hosts’ brains to increase the likelihood that they’ll be eaten by cats.

How? Scientists are still figuring that out. Research conducted this year by Toxo expert Robert Sapolsky of Stanford, and also by Joanne Webster, professor of parasite epidemiology at Imperial College London, has found that Toxo actually causes rats to become attracted to the smell of cat urine. 

Might Toxo explain why some humans develop an unhealthful attraction to cats and apparently become immune to the smell of their urine? And might that explain the mystery of crazy cat ladies? “That idea doesn’t seem completely crazy,” Sapolsky says. “But there’s no data supporting it.”

Not yet. But Jaroslav Flegr, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, is looking into it. He has spent years studying Toxo’s impact on human behavior. (He found, for example, that people infected with Toxo have slower reflexes and are 2.5 times as likely to get into car accidents.) He won’t have results of his study for a while and refuses to speculate. But Joanne Webster says the connection isn’t much of a stretch: “In our evolutionary past, perhaps we were eaten by cats, too,” she says. 

via The New York Times

Cat Pictures Used to Scare Away Birds (1933)

via Modern Mechanix!

Cat Woman on the Loose in Manhattan!

Go to http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/06/cat_woman_on_the_loose_in_manh.html