The happy story of Charles the traveling cat

A brief newspaper story – only bad news gets the big column inch count – related the story of Charles the traveling cat. Months after his human (a.k.a. “owner” – ugh!) thought she had lost him forever, Charles, who lived in New Mexico, turned up in Chicago.

Somehow, he had “escaped” from his house while a friend of his human was taking care of him. (With friends like this . . . !) That was the last anyone saw of Charles for 8 or 9 months – until he surfaced at a shelter in Chicago. There, staffers learned he had an embedded ID chip, found out where Charles was from and contacted his person.

She was ecstatic to know her cat lived. But . . . she couldn’t afford the round trip air fare to pick him up and bring him home. The story gets better: Hearing of the woman’s plight – she in Albuquerque, Charles in Chicago – a local man traveling there for a wedding offered to pick up the cat and bring him back.

End of story. Let’s just assume all this came to pass and there’s been a happy reunion in Albuquerque.

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And on that happy note – a major departure, I know, from many of the posts here – this blogger announces a vacation, effective immediately. (What time could be more apropos than “the dog days of summer”?)

After writing 200 posts in about 15 months; after too often feeling like a scold; after suspecting I was too often singing to the (too-small) choir . . . time out for R & R! Back next month some time.

Till then, I hope we'll all think about animal rights and do right by animals. (And if you've just found this blog, please dip in and read and comment.)

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P.S. Can’t resist citing one more science story about animals, written by Natalie Angier, of the NYTimes. Yesterday she wrote about why we find some creatures unsightly, even if they aren't threatening to us. In a lesser writer’s hands, this story -- “A Masterpiece of Nature? Yuck!” -- could be dull. Not so with Angier! Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/science/10ugly.html?th&emc=th
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