All articles tagged with #cats
Pixie, a 49-gram premature kitten, and Puck, a 60-gram second premie, were rescued by neonatal kitten expert Hannah Shaw and kept in isolation while receiving intensive care. When they finally met after two weeks, Pixie’s lead helped Puck gain confidence and the pair formed a strong sibling-like bond. Now about two months in, they’re thriving and have a forever home together.
A study of over 1,400 university students and staff across 20 institutions found that individuals with high emotionality—a Big Five trait describing intense feelings—are more interested in cat-based stress-relief programs than dogs. Cat interactions lowered cortisol after about ten minutes, offering fast emotional regulation, and the results held across roles (student or staff) and demographics, suggesting campuses should consider including cats in animal-assisted interventions to reach those who respond best to feline contact.
Wizards of the Coast unveils the Cats Are the Best Superdrop for Magic: The Gathering, releasing June 15, 2026 on MagicSecretLair.com; pre-queue opens at 8 a.m. PT and the sale starts at 9 a.m. PT, with some cards previewed at MagicCon: Las Vegas and free shipping on single orders over $99; more cards to be revealed ahead of release—sign up for updates to stay in the loop.
Blueberry, a 1-year-old munchkin cat rescued by Out of the Woods Rescue, battled severe allergies and secondary infections before vets found two large mouth masses that required full mouth extractions. Now toothless but thriving, she’s bonded with her foster brothers and is seeking a patient family to love and manage her chronic conditions.
Ikea’s PS 2026 Easy Chair is a $200 inflatable armchair built around a tubular frame with a dual-chamber air seat, pumped by a foot pump and wrapped in a fabric layer for comfort. Weighing about 8 kg (18 lb) and packing into a six-inch-thick box, it marks Ikea’s return to inflatable furniture after earlier failures and has reportedly withstood cat testing as well as human testing, signaling potential future air-filled products beyond this chair.
Amazon Prime Video’s Kevin is a chaotic yet heartfelt eight-episode animated coming-of-age about a tuxedo cat who leaves his owners for a shelter, navigating independence alongside a quirky animal ensemble in a distinctly New York setting, with a star-studded voice cast led by Jason Schwartzman and Aubrey Plaza.
Uruguay has detected Sporothrix brasiliensis, a fungus that causes skin infections, in cats, other pets, and people, signaling cat-to-human transmission and a potential regional spread across South America. The fungus thrives in warm-blooded hosts and spreads through scratches or bites; diagnosis is by microscopy or culture, and treatment is antifungal but lengthy. Public health efforts emphasize fast diagnosis, treating both humans and pets, and controlling stray cats to prevent wider outbreaks, amid reports of thousands of human cases across the region over the past decade.
A study published in Physiology & Behavior with 12 cats found that the scent of food strongly influences feline appetite. Repeated exposure to the same odor reduced intake, but introducing a new scent revived interest in food, indicating olfactory cues drive feeding via habituation and dishabituation. The findings could help stimulate eating in cats with health issues by using scent to boost appetite.
A WIRED review portrays Crimson Desert as a cat-dad sandbox: you play as Kliff in a sprawling open world where you can adopt up to 30 cats (including a portly ‘loafy’ named Potato), pet them, and let cat companionship flavor a grand adventure that blends satisfying combat, inventive traversal, and gorgeous scenery—launched with bugs but patched over time, with a future multiplayer mode teased.
A fresh Broadway revival of Cats, titled The Jellicle Ball, retools the show as a joyful queer ballroom experience led by a young, New York–trained ensemble alongside veteran stars; it preserves much of Weber’s score while injecting bass-driven, club-like energy and ball culture sensibilities. The result is a celebratory reinvention that broadens Cats’ appeal and showcases new talent, though some moments feel conventional rather than fully transformative.
Walkers in Prospect Park found two kittens inside a green Uber Eats bag left under a bench; a third orange cat was later found, and all three were rescued by Dana Heis, vaccinated, and placed in foster homes as they await adoption, with a plea not to abandon pets.
Uruguay detects Sporothrix brasiliensis in cats, other pets, and people, signaling a cat-borne fungal threat spreading across southern South America. Transmission through scratches or bites can cause sporotrichosis in humans, often requiring antifungal treatment for weeks or months; roaming street cats complicate containment and raise cross-border outbreak concerns with Brazil and Argentina, a pattern health authorities have warned about for the region.
A Live Science feature by Sophie Berdugo outlines how humans and domesticated cats evolved from a mutual pest-control partnership into a more complex, sometimes asymmetrical relationship. Tracing cats to African wildcats and their spread with agriculture, the piece argues that while early cats helped curb rodents in small settlements, their role in large grain stores likely diminished, prompting a broader rethink of what mutualism means and what a cat is in our shared ecological story.
A study from Yamaguchi University analyzed the spines of five cats and used high-speed video to show that the thoracic spine is much more flexible than the lumbar spine, enabling a sequential midair righting maneuver. The thoracic region can rotate about 50 degrees with little effort, allowing an initial head-and-front-leg rotation before the rest of the back follows, while the stiffer lumbar spine acts as an anchor. These findings explain why cats often land on their feet and could inform veterinary approaches to spinal injuries and inspire more agile robots.
An international study published in Science maps the first large-scale genetic landscape of domestic-cat cancers, revealing shared driver genes with humans and dogs—most notably FBXW7 in feline mammary tumors—and suggesting cross-species insights for prevention and therapy; preliminary data also hint that FBXW7 mutations influence chemotherapy responses, and a public data resource has been released to advance feline oncology and its relevance to human cancer under a One Medicine approach.