Tagged: Cats

Cats love attention, but a feline at the Richardson Animal Shelter outside of Dallas is positively gobbling it up.

Skinny the Cat is a five year-old tabby. So far, so normal. But there’s more to this cat – a lot more. Skinny weighs in at 41 pounds.

Skinny’s size attracted the notice of the Associated Press, which reported on the North Texas tabby.  And thankfully, now the animal center is deluged with calls from folk looking to care for the cat.

“We have fielded a lot of calls,” says Dennis Wooten, manager of the Richardson Animal Center.  “The challenge now is sorting throw all those calls to find out what’s best for Skinny.”

Tim League is a pretty big deal in the movie business. He’s founder of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema – which in turn led to distribution arm Drafthouse Films. He also founded Rolling Roadshow and Fantastic Fest. But Tim League could soon be best known for his role as a judge in an internet cat video contest.

That’s right, internet cat videos. If you're one of the few humans left on earth unfamiliar with the concept, you can head over to a little website called YouTube and type in “cat.” You’ll get funny cats, funny cats in water, how to wrap a cat for Christmas and about 1.8 million others. Internet cat videos are big.

Just last month, Minneapolis hosted the first ever Internet Cat Video Film Festival. The idea was attributed to the Walker Art Museum’s “cat-lady-in-residence” but went on to draw an estimated 10,000 attendees. Internet cat videos are truly big time.

The Austin Animal Center is running a promotion throughout June, reducing its adoption fees for all animals to $20. Normally, it runs you $75 to adopt a pet through the city. The center is running the promotion in order to get more people adopting. 

Abigail Smith, Austin’s Chief Animal Services Officer, says even the full $75 doesn’t come close to paying for the care of an animal that gets dropped off.

“It’s hundreds of dollars when you consider the stray holding period, the intake vaccines that we do. This year we’re seeing a particularly bad flea season, so everybody is getting flea and tick medicine," says Smith. "There’s a very high incidence of heartworm dogs that come in here, and that’s extremely expensive to treat. So, $75, which is basically our standard fee, doesn’t even cover hardly any of it.”