(taken from our other blog, Nerds on the Road – http://wp.me/pCL6J-aI)

Beware. by the end of this you”ll know more than you need to about our new cat.

Once we got a bigger place to hang out, we were finally able to have a cat in our lives again. I think we had the new trailer for a day when I started looking on craigslist for needy cats and within a week, on a routine dog food stop at Pet Smart, we walked in just as they were closing the adoption counter. There were tons of cute cats, mostly adults or sister brother pairs, and one young orange cat. I often say stupid things for no reason so I saw the orange cat and said “I don’t like orange cats, they’re terrors.” What my mind had used to come to that conclusion was that every orange cat I’d ever known was a horrible half wild tom cat (and maybe I’m a bit of a ginger-cat generalist). Since 80% of orange cats are males, because orange is basically the calico of male cats, I assumed the orange cat, although the prettiest one, was a male. I read the card above the cage anyway, and it was a girl! I immediately and illogically changed my mind about her and decided to make a connection. I put my hand to the glass and she put her paw to the glass and it was done. There were several other females that were pretty but I was happy with a young cat, not a kitten, and one not too set in their ways already. All the cats were from the New Orleans Animal Control and had either been dropped off or caught feral, they didn’t have any clue which one she was.

We did all the paperwork and took her to the RV parked out front in a little cardboard cat carrier. She was surprisingly calm, didnt meow, didnt scratch, just quietly worried and hoped for the best. We went back inside to buy some things for her, and $150 later (egads) she was the most spoiled cat in the trailer park. I took her out once during the drive back home to give her some water, she just walked around the RV curios and sniffing everything, then mostly quietly went back into her box (except for the part where her water spilled and she got all wet - didn’t like that).

When we got back to the trailer without any issues or noise. When I opened her box, Chena -lover of all things box, was right over top waiting for the surprise. I knew it might not be the best idea to introduce them that way but I had high hopes. They would have to be best friends eventually, it’s a condition my pets have to endure (within reason). As I’d hoped, the cat didn’t even look at Chena, almost looked right through her while curiously looking around the trailer.  After that she made herself right at home. Never once hid or peed on anything, didn’t meow uncontrollably, hiss at us or try to escape. Just laid out in the open or played with her new toys.  She spent one night in the bathroom just in case her litter box skills werent perfect and after that shes been with us almost every minute of every day. I even gave her a bath on the second day because she smelled like kennel and pee and she was fairly decent about that, didn’t scratch, just a little worried.

As far as her personality, shes very trusting and affectionate but sometimes she would duck from us when she got in trouble, like she thinks we’re going to whack her one, but shes getting used to the idea that we wont be doing that. She has the “I want to trust you so badly and love you unconditionally but some bastard kicked me” syndrome. She came to us with 2 shaved areas. Her belly from being spayed and the side of her back leg. We considered at first, that although strange, maybe it had to do with the spaying but upon closer inspection the hair was longer (more grown out) and there was a 1 inch scar. She may have got cut on a fence, beat up by a raccoon.. who knows. Shes also pretty scared of loud noises, as is Chena but for different reasons. The first time she got scared was by a storage chest closing loudly, she ran from me for several minutes. It was painful that she was so afraid of me but after hours of apology and showing her that what she was scared of wasn’t so bad, shes started to understand. Now when she gets scared she looks at you intently and wide eyed to make sure you give her a sign that you didn’t mean it to scare or hurt her. You have to walk up to her and pet her or pick her up and apologize – If you don’t, she’ll run off and be scared and overall lose trust. Sensitive little kittehs!

It took us a while to name her. We went though all the cliche names for orange cats, and cats in general ans since she nibbled your hand, nose or face while she’s being brushed, we considered Nibbler (from futurama) but decided on a completely different little black monster, Susa Ataris from My Neighbor Totoro. They are soot sprites that hide in the shadows and are said to be good luck – there’s no real connection between them and her personality but it sounded like a cute name and we were sick of having nothing to call her. Within a day she was coming to Susa and it was set.

She’s super curious, what cat isn’t though right. Every time you’re doing something at the counter shes up on hinds mewing at you to know what’s going on. We encourage her curiosity by showing her every single thing she wants to see. Whether its a running tap, sink full of soapy water or jalapeños. After the first 2 times of climbing up my legs, she figured out she could get picked up if she just taps them with her paws. I find that the more you show cats willingly, rather than making things and places forbidden, the sooner they get over it. She walked all over my camera equipment and art supplies twice (on the top bunks), getting hair on everything, then never cared to hang out up there again (save the random kitty freakout and run around the trailer session).

Although I got her the cutest little princess bed, she lays on the hard floor and wont even go into the bedroom except sometimes when we’re sleeping. Good for me because I prefer my clothes stay somewhat hair free before I put them on. When I work she often sits on the breakfast tray beside me and lays her head on my arm. Making it hard for me to type but too adorable to resist. She also likes Jalapeno chips so any time we snack on them she gets her own little crushed chip to snack on.

All in all I think we’re pretty lucky people and got the best cat we could have possibly found.

She’s undergoing lessons in fetchology, climbing the walls control (claw control), lick the doggys face and ears and most exciting of all, harness training! Shes going to be even more awesome than she already is!

TARA HAGAN
(video http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid34284524001?bclid=0&bctid=78909918001)

The Observer

A group of dog owners set up camp at Sarnia’s city hall Monday to protest Ontario’s ban on pit bulls.

“Basically, it’s not right to be cruel to animals,” said Josh Atkinson, organizer and owner of Justice, a five-year-old pit bull.

“The City of Sarnia and a lot of other cities in Ontario are killing dogs for no apparent reason whatsoever, just because of the name pit bull. It’s ridiculous.”

A dozen people were on hand with their pets and homemade signs, reading: “Stop the killing of our pets,” “Pitbulls have rights, too,” and “Pitbulls are family.”
The group also planned to protest at the Sarnia and District Humane Society.

Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said the demonstrators were barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s provincial legislation — not the city, or the humane society. They should be at the MPP’s office, he said.

“I don’t even agree with the legislation myself, but we have to enforce it.”

The 2005 Ontario Dog Owners Liability Act says any Staffordshire bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers, American pit bull terriers and any dog that looks “substantially similar” is illegal, and only those already living in the province at the time of the ban are allowed.

Bradley said the law has been a stress on animal control workers, noting that he preferred the city’s previous ‘dangerous dog’ bylaw, which dealt with the animals on a case-by-case basis, rather than by breed.

Last year Sarnia made a pledge to consult an expert before putting any more dogs on death row. The move followed a number of confusing cases hinging on whether or not the dogs were pit bulls, or boxers, while officials admitted to euthanizing at least one dog every month, because of the ban.

“It’s very fuzzy legislation; the province passed it, but now they have no involvement in the law itself,” said Bradley. “In fact, I’d like to go join those protesters, myself.”

Article found at: http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2540872

Justices Void Law Banning Videos of Animal Cruelty

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: April 20, 2010 at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/us/21scotus.html?hp

WASHINGTON — In a major and muscular First Amendment ruling, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a federal law that made it a crime to create or sell dogfight videos and other depictions of animal cruelty.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 8-to-1 decision, said the law created “a criminal prohibition of alarming breadth” and that the government’s aggressive defense of the law was “startling and dangerous.”

The decision left open the possibility that Congress could enact a narrower law that would pass constitutional muster. But the existing law, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, covered too much speech that depicted lawful activities.

The case arose from the prosecution of Robert J. Stevens, an author and small-time film producer who presented himself as an authority on pit bulls. He did not participate in dogfights, but he did compile and sell videotapes showing the fights, and he received a 37-month sentence under a 1999 federal law that bans trafficking in “depictions of animal cruelty.”

Dogfighting and other forms of animal cruelty have long been illegal in all 50 states. The law applied not to the underlying activity, but to recordings of “conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.” It did not matter whether the conduct was legal when and where it occurred; under the law, what mattered was whether the conduct would have been illegal where the recording was sold.

The government argued that such depictions were of such minimal social worth that they should receive no First Amendment protection at all. Chief Justice Roberts roundly rejected that assertion, saying that “the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter or its content.”

He acknowledged that some sorts of speech — among them obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct — have historically been considered outside the protection of the First Amendment. But he rejected the government’s analogy to a more recent category of unprotected speech, that of trafficking in child pornography, which the court in 1982 said deserved no First Amendment protection.

Child pornography, he said, is “a special case” because the market for it is “intrinsically related to the underlying abuse.”

As a general matter, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the government outweigh its costs.” He continued, “Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise that judgment simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it.”

Having concluded that the First Amendment had a role to play in the analysis, the chief justice next considered whether the law on animal-cruelty depictions swept too broadly.

The 1999 law was enacted mainly to address what a House report called “a very specific sexual fetish.”

“Much of the material featured women inflicting the torture with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes,” according to the report. “In some video depictions, the woman’s voice can be heard talking to the animals in a kind of dominatrix patter.”

When President Bill Clinton signed the bill, he expressed reservations, prompted by the First Amendment, and instructed the Justice Department to limit prosecutions to “wanton cruelty to animals designed to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.” But since then, the government has used the law in several prosecutions for trafficking in dogfighting videos.

Chief Justice Roberts said the law applied even more broadly. Since all hunting is illegal in the District of Columbia, for instance, he said, the law makes the sale of magazines or videos showing hunting a crime here.

“The demand for hunting depictions exceeds the estimated demand for crush videos or animal fighting depictions by several orders or magnitude,” he wrote.

The law contains an exception for materials with “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.” Those exceptions were insufficient to save the statute, the chief justice wrote.

“Most hunting videos, for example, are not obviously instructional in nature,” he said, “except in the sense that all life is a lesson.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, saying the majority’s analysis was built on “fanciful hypotheticals” and would serve to protect “depraved entertainment.”