A HORRIBLE HOARDING OF CATS! by Chloe

On the news yesterday morning, we heard the most awful story!  It was about a woman right here in Kansas City who was hoarding cats!  This means that she had way more cats than she could take care of in the proper way that cats expect to be taken care of, so lots of the cats were sick or even dead.This woman had something like 120 cats, and 50 of those were dead.  The dead cats were all wrapped up and labeled with their names and the...

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DOGS, DOGS, DOGS TO ADOPT!

It's been way too long since I told you about some of the poor, homeless dogs at the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City.  All of these dogs would make totally fabulous pets, and they are just waiting for someone nice like you to come along and adopt them!Pixie is a 4-year-old chihuahua who weighs 9 pounds.  She gets along great with other dogs, but she needs to have a quiet home without really young children.This is Trenton, who is only...

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MORE INTERESTING WORDS

It's time to get out the dictionary again and learn a few more words.  Or to look at some words we already know, and learn where they came from, which Mom seems to think is interesting, for some reason.  So here goes!SUPERNUMERARYIf you are a regular part of a group, like for instance a club or an office staff or a wolf pack, you are a numerary.  But if you are brought into the group just for a little while, then you are a supernumerary....

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Welwitschia: A Really Weird Plant!

There's this very bizarre plant, and it grows in Africa, in the Namib Desert, and it's called Welwitschia.  And not only does it have a weird name, but it looks really weird, too, sort of like a big pile of old, twisted, halfway dried-up leaves.  Welwitschias are called a "living fossil" because they probably were already around back in the Jurassic Period.  And if you ever saw the movie Jurassic Park, you will know that there were...

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OWNEY THE POSTAL DOG

The other day, when Mom went to the USPS site to order some stamps, she was shocked to see a stamp with a dog on it.  And it wasn't just any dog, it was a dog named Owney, who was the Postal Service mascot.  The reason why Mom was so shocked to see this dog on a stamp was because she and I had never even heard of Owney before, even though he is a pretty famous dog.  So right away, Mom ordered 60 stamps with Owney's picture on them,...

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THE STORM THAT KNOCKED DOWN TREES, by Nicky

Friday night last week we had a really horrible, extremely destructive storm!  It happened the night after we had just already had a frightening storm on Thursday night, so it was definitely not pleasant getting scared out of our wits for two nights in a row.  Mom knew the storm was coming because she heard about it in the weather forecast, but she just casually went to bed anyway and went right to sleep, as usual.  I can't believe...

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The Coolidge Family and All Their Many Pets

John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, and he grew up to be the 30th president of the United States.  He is the only president we've ever had who was born on the 4th of July.  He went to Amherst College, and after that he was apprenticed to a law firm in Massachusetts, where he "read law."  This was a way of learning the law and getting a law degree without actually going to law school, which...

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A Dog Named Buster

This is a story about a dog who lives in Boulder, Colorado, and his name is Buster.  He is part labrador retriever, and he maybe has some beagle and pit bull mixed in, too.  Buster got adopted from the Humane Society of Boulder Valley when he was just a puppy.  His human's name is Samantha Squires, and she is a single mother with a 4-year-old son.Buster was living a very happy life in Boulder with his family, including doing all kinds...

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