– – Tigers tend to be thought of as jungle creatures, but a British television crew filmed a population of “lost” tigers living at a higher altitude than any others known. These cats were spotted roaming in the remote Himalayan nation of Bhutan at an altitude of 13,450 feet!
While the number of tigers has plunged to fewer to 3,200 from 100,000 over the past century, countries where wild tigers range hope to double their numbers by the year 2022…
– – A regular furry character appears, in all places, on The Cleveland Show, a spin-off of Family Guy. This character is Tim the Bear, who is a telemarketer working at the local cable company with Cleveland. Voiced by Seth MacFarlane, Tim speaks with a Slavic or Eastern-European accent, and is the son of a black bear and a kangaroo!
Tim tends to be a bit naive about American culture, and is partially a psychological derivative of Steve Martin’s Wild and Crazy Guy persona. Tim has an ursine wife, Arianna, and a son, Raymond. Tim has deep religious convictions, and considers it racist when someone screams because he is a bear. He often accidentally slashes things with his claws, something that he’s quite ashamed of.
While I’m not a great fan of The Cleveland Show, it’s nice to see the infiltration of furry characters here, who seem to fit in rather well as bears in human society…and yes, he has a Facebook page!
– – Ah me…as if Sarah Palin shooting wolves from aircraft wasn’t enough, government agencies are seeking broad new authority to ramp up killings and removal of gray wolves in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes, despite two recent court actions that restored the animal’s endangered status in every state except Alaska and Minnesota…
Although once poisoned to near-extermination in the lower 48 states, wolves have made a major comeback in the last two decades under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. A backlash has occurred, however, as wolf packs have developed a taste for livestock and big game herds coveted by hunters.
As wolf populations have expanded in numerous states, they tend to push into agricultural and residential areas where domestic animals offer an easy meal. Various proposals would gas wolf pups in their dens, surgically sterilize adult wolves, and allow “conservation” or “research” hunts to drive down the predators’ numbers.
Wildlife advocates and animal rights groups contend, however, that the response to depredating wolves has become too heavy-handed, and that a string of court decisions in their favor underscores that the species remains at risk…
– – Geico has brilliantly re-invented classic lines and slogans, beginning with the little piggy who cried wee-wee-wee all the way home, and now posing the question of, “Can Geico save you 15% or more on car insurance?–Do woodchucks chuck wood?”- Remember how kids love that old chestnut of a tongue-twister when they’re about ten?
Well, these anthropomorphic woodchucks certainly chuck wood, and they appear to have made an afternoon’s entertainment of it, taking turns heaving the wood into a pond accompanied by their own maniacal laughter, sorta like the Beavis and Butthead of the rodent world.- -Oops, watch out, here comes the farmer, and he’s mighty ticked, shouting “Hey you dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood!” None too deterred by the farmer, the woodchucks continue chucking their wood…and do you blame them?– They’re woodchucks, for crying out loud, it’s what they do!
– -Catch this video airing on television or YouTube and elsewhere, sure to be a classic!
– – You gotta give the Syfy channel credit for trying to please us, and Beast Legends starting September 9th at 10:00 in my area just might be the ticket! Billed as an “investigative adventure series,” Legends features a team of a globetrotting animal doctor, a Harvard professor of evolutionary biology, a gifted illustrator, and a mythology maven as they explore the truth behind some of the world’s most renowned creatures. Your payoff will be a life-like computer-generated model of the creature investigated depicted living in the real world at the end of each show, kinda like the mortal combat simulations shown at the end of Deadliest Warrior matchings.
The show will follow season four of Destination Truth, which could make Thursday night quite a draw on Syfy for our types!- –All hail the mighty Kraken!
— Cats kind of tolerate us because we are useful to them; one can see this orientation in Katz, villain of Courage the Cowardly Dog. Now Courage has faced many enemies, often anthropomorphic, including my personal fave The Cajun Fox, who treats even his rivals with friendliness and can drive a car and pilot a plane!
Not as relaxed and laid-back as the Cajun Fox, Katz is a red, lanky anthropomorphic cat with purplish stripes who specializes in scam businesses, such as a vacation resort and motel, always with the intent of killing the patrons when he has no further need of them. Katz’s catchphrase is, “I wish you hadn’t done that,” usually uttered after he gets injured. Katz enjoys a “little spot of sport” with Courage, as all of his battles with the dog are games, such as a staring contest.
Springboarding off our previous post featuring spiders, an episode called A Night At The Katz Motel was indebted to Hitchcock’s Psycho, and featured Katz trying to kill Courage’s masters by using giant, horrifying spiders to eat them. Katz is a smooth and wonderfully sadistic feline who has a vaguely British accent and his own sinister background music, and lovingly maintains a spider collection.
As Katz did say, “Yes, set a plan; cunning, elaborate, over the top!”- –This is a furry villain you’ve got to love! 
– -Uh–oh!–The previous post has gotten me going again on Catwoman, and I’m afraid you’ll just have to ride it out with me…
Catwoman really has the complete package; she’s furry, female, and feline with just the right touch of sado-masochism going on. As the folks at Toyota might say, who could ask for anything more?
In the cult of Catwoman, I might be considered a zealot; I’d go door-to-door for her! In fact, I think a National Catwoman Day might be a good idea as kind of a fusion of Halloween, religion, and furry awareness. Besides, who couldn’t use another day off, especially for such a worthy cause?
Catwoman also has an approach-avoidance thing going on; she’s dark, and we wouldn’t have her any other way! You know that Catwoman would take you to heaven before she sends you to hell…
…and I know it’s all a fantasy. Catwoman belongs to Batman, after all. –But a fox can dream, can’t he? 😉
– – I’ve confessed before to having a weakness for Catwoman, and can you really blame me? It turns out, however, that a real-life “Cat-Lady” was staging robberies of boutiques in Queens and Manhattan in New York City, wearing a variety of disguises that included…(dramatic pause)…a cheesy cat mask! Her wanted posters were unusual, to say the least…crank up the Bat-Signal, Commissioner Gordon!
The felonious feline’s daytime identity was that of a death-metal band singer, who performed under the stage name of Purgatory. Now her evil-doing days are over, and Gotham City is safe again!
This was, of course, a pale impersonation of the genuine article, whose whip this wanna-be is not worthy to carry…Meow!
– – A 45-year-old British woman recently became a hate figure after she was caught by a security camera putting a living cat into a trash bin and slamming the lid. The cat, named Lola, was found distraught and hungry by her owners some 15 hours later by following her cries.
The woman, a bank worker, has apologized for the incident but just doesn’t seem to fully understand the outrage following her behavior. She apparently trashed the poor cat on a lark, thinking that it would be “funny” to put the feline into the dumpster. “OK, I shouldn’t have done it,” the woman is quoted as saying, “but it’s just a cat at the end of the day.”
–Just a cat?!- –Some of my best friends are cats, and perhaps we should participate in such merry sport by confining the woman responsible in a trash dumpster for 15 hours. Police are guarding the house of the woman after a Facebook page urged that she be put to death… 😦
– – We’ve all suspected for some time that our animal companions lead secret lives, like Perry the Platypus.–Well, a beagle in Thunderbolt, Georgia has tapped into the social networking thing and has his own Twitter account, spending the day tweeting about his day with the aid of his human. He has over 3,000 followers, a number which continues to grow daily.- -Catch this canine spy at JamesBondTheDog on Twitter…I just hope that he doesn’t run afoul of Blofeld or another of the Bond villains! 
FOXSYLVANIA 
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