CUTE PUPPY PICTURES

My Chief Research Assistant (a.k.a. Mom) has been totally unhelpful lately with my blog.  She says she is too busy with planning conferences and going to the Humane Society and taking care of foster kittens and mowing grass and watching all the Titanic specials on TV.  Those aren't very good excuses, if you ask me.  But sadly, nobody asked me, so I am stuck trying to write my blog without much help.

Anyway, Mom said maybe I could just make a blog that was mostly all pictures that would be easy to find on the internet, plus also something people would want to look at.  So right away I thought of puppy pictures, because there's really nothing cuter than a puppy!  And what I came up with was a bunch of totally adorable puppies, and I hope you like looking at them!

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INTERESTING WORDS......AGAIN!

QUINTESSENCE

A lot of people know what this word means, but they may not know where it comes from.  Back in the old, ancient days, the philosophers thought everything in the world was made up of one of four elements: air, fire, earth, and water.  But none of these four elements really seemed to explain what all the amazing things up in the sky, such as stars and plants, were made of.  So the philosophers decided that these heavenly bodies were made of a fifth element, or essence, which was higher and more pure than the other four.

So this fifth essence was called pempte ousia in Greek, and it was translated into Medieval Latin as quinta essentia.  In Old French, it was quinte essence, and finally about 1400, the word became quintessence in Middle English.  Since then, this word has evolved to mean the purest, most perfect, and most concentrated essence of something.

SCUNNER

This is a word from Scotland and northern England.  It can be used as a verb meaning "to feel disgust or aversion" or "to be in a state of disgusted irritation."  Another way to use scunner is as a noun, usually in the phrase "take a scunner to."  Also a scunner can be the object of your dislike or a nuisance.  For example, my doggy brothers can be real scunners sometimes!

The history of this word is that it came from the Middle English word skunner, which meant "to shrink back in disgust," and also from the word scurnen, "to flinch."  The first known use of scunner was in the 14th century.

TESTUDO

If you have ever seen one of those movies about ancient Romans fighting wars, you might have seen the soldiers make a testudo.  And the way they make it is they all hold up their shields and overlap them, so that they have a nice little roof to keep the nasty arrows and lances and rocks and stuff from hitting them.  It's really very clever, if you ask me.  Another type of testudo is a sort of roof on wheels that the soldiers could stay under when they were going up to the walls of a city that they were attacking.

The word testudo means a tortoise or tortoise shell in Latin.  The word was first used in 1609.

INTERROBANG

An interrobang is a punctuation mark that combines a question mark and an exclamation point.  It is used to show that you are asking a question in an excited way.  You might have written sentences that have both marks at the end, but maybe you didn't know there was an actual name for this.

A question mark can also be called an "interrogative point," and printers call an exclamation point a "bang," so when you put these two terms together, you get interrobang.  This new form of punctuation was invented in 1962 by Martin Speckter, who was the head of a New York advertising agency.  Mr. Speckter got the idea of putting the question mark and exclamation point right on top of each other instead of side by side.

At first, this new symbol was pretty popular, but after a while, people stopped using it.  And by the time Mr. Speckter died in 1988, the interrobang was just another fad that had gone away.  There are still some people who use it, like cartoonists, for example, or people who are just writing fun stuff to each other.  But what people use now is mostly the two symbols beside each other and not the combined symbol.  Because when you look at the symbols written on top of each other, they just look weird.  Or at least that's my opinion!

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A PITBULL NAMED KILO

This is a true story about how an ordinary family dog saved his humans' lives and became a hero.  It all happened in Graniteville, on Staten Island, which is in New York.  That's where Justin Becker lives in an apartment with his girlfriend, Nicole Percoco, and their pitbull, Kilo, who is 12 years old.

Photo from video via silive.com

I couldn't find the exact date of this event, but it might have been March 31.  Anyway, it wasn't very long ago.  And what happened was that a man came to the door, and he was wearing a FedEx uniform, and he said he had a package for Justin.  But when Justin started to open the door, the FedEx man tried to push his way into the apartment, which is not something that FedEx people usually do.  So right away, Justin knew that this man was a bad guy who was trying to get in and rob them.

Justin started fighting with the fake FedEx guy, and he managed to knock him down, and then he was trying to shut the door on him.  And that's when Kilo the pitbull came running to attack the scary intruder.  Kilo got his head out through the door that was partway open because of having the bad guy trapped in it.  But then the guy pulled out a gun and shot Kilo in the head!  After which the bad guy ran away.

Kilo's dad, Justin Becker.  Photo by Steve White.

Kilo was bleeding a whole lot, and it seemed like he would die since he had got shot in the head.  Nicole told Justin he should just hold Kilo and let him die in his arms.  But Justin didn't want to give up, so he took Kilo to the veterinary hospital.  And after they x-rayed Kilo, they found out that the bullet didn't go all the way inside his head!  Instead, it hit his skull, and then it went out through Kilo's neck.  Which I guess means that Kilo is a very hard-headed dog!

Kilo with his bandage and cone.
Photo by Steve White.

"This is like, one in a million," is what the surgeon, Dr. Greg Panarello, said.  And he also said that Kilo was very lucky.  The staff at the hospital put an "S" on Kilo's bandage, which stands for "Superhero."  Now Kilo has to rest up for a while and take painkillers and antibiotics and wear a cone.  The bill came to $2,200, which shocked Kilo's dad.  But he said it was worth it because it saved his dog's life.  Mom was not shocked by the amount of this bill because she has had to pay some vet bills that were even bigger than that.  Luckily, Mom loves us and will pay even really big bills, whether she can afford it or not.  And maybe someday we can pay her back by biting an intruder and saving her life!

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I AM JEEVES

This is me

I am Jeeves the kitten.  I am a yellow tabby boy, and I don't have a tail.  I was born in a barn, but that's okay.  Lots of kittens are born in barns.  All the cats I used to know were born in a barn.  Or close to the barn.  We used to eat in the barn.  There were big dishes with cat food, and we could eat out of any dish we wanted to.  There were horses in the barn, and hay.  You can snuggle down in the hay and sleep.  It's a good way to keep warm, and the hay smells nice.  But a mouse smells nicer.  Especially after you catch it.

One day a lady came to the barn and took me and two of my sisters away.  It was the first time we rode in a car.  We were scared.  Janey pooped.  We rode a long time in the car, and we were very quiet.  We did not want the coyotes to find us.  Or whatever bad things might be in the car.

This is Janey

Then we went to a place where they stuck us with sharp needles.  After that, we went in the car again.  We were very scared and quiet.  When we got to our new home, the lady put us in a cage.  There was a big, soft bed.  The bed was not made of hay, but we liked it because it was soft and warm.  This new place where we live now is not a barn.  It's called a house.  It is warmer than a barn, and there are no horses.  The lady who brought us here is our foster mom, but we just call her Mom.  She is nice to us, except when she squirts icky stuff in our mouths.  And when she cuts our toenails.

Jilly is shy

I had a thing called a hernia, so I got surgery to fix it.  The reason I had it was because I got run over by a car.  It hurt when that happened.  I have never gone under a car again because I learned my lesson.  The surgery hurt at first, but now it doesn't hurt, and I feel fine.  I don't have that lump anymore in my belly where the hernia was.

Mom named me Jeeves, which is something that British people name their butlers sometimes.  I don't know what a butler is, and I don't care.  I think my name sounds kind of funny.  My sisters are named Janey and Jilly.  They are what you call a tortoiseshell color.  I am much prettier than they are.  We don't have tails because we are part Manx.  I don't have any tail at all.  My sisters have short tails with kinks at the end.  Mom says their tails are like fishhooks.  I wish they would catch some fish with their tails.  I like to eat fish.

I'm not shy.  I like to purr.

Jilly and Janey had some surgery, too.  They did not have a hernia.  They had something called a spay.  Before they got their surgery, they smelled very interesting.  Mom said they were in heat.  I don't know what that means, exactly.  I just liked the way they smelled.

We had to get a bunch of medicine squirted into us.  Medicine tastes bad, so we don't like it.  Mom said we had some stuff wrong with us, so that's why we had to take medicine.  Finally, we got all better and stopped taking it.  But then we got something called giardia.  We had it before, and now we have it again.  So we have to take medicine again.  I really hate taking medicine.

Janey purrs, too, but I purr better.

All three of us are very itchy.  I am the itchiest of all.  I scratched so much that I made my itchy spots bleed and hurt.  But I couldn't stop scratching.  The lady who keeps sticking us with sharp needles said that we have allergies.  She gave me a shot that made me not itch so much.  Now all my scabs are drying up and falling off.  My hair is growing back.  My sisters' hair is growing back, too.  Mom says we all look moth-eaten.  Especially me.  I don't care what I look like.  I just want to stop itching.

Mom said that someday we might get adopted.  I don't know what that means.  Mom says that first we have to take our medicine and get well.  I don't want to take medicine, so I don't think I want to get adopted.

Sometimes I miss living in the barn.  I miss the hay and the horses and all the cats I used to know.  I miss my Mama Linda.  She used to feed us every day.  I was her favorite kitten, even if she did run over me.  She called me Yeller, like Old Yeller, who was a dog.  I don't know if it's better to be named after a dog or after a butler.

My sisters and I are almost 7 months old now.  We don't have to live in a cage anymore.  We can run around in the house and play.  We have learned to poop in a special box.  I like to sleep in bed with Mom.  I bite her feet through the sheet.  She doesn't like that.  I don't know why she doesn't.  It's lots of fun.

I have to go play now.  Bye.

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HIDING UNDER A BARN

When Mom went to the Blue Summit part of town, which is near the Blue Ridge part of town, she visited a Jewish cemetery there.  The name of this cemetery is the Kehilath Israel Blue Ridge Cemetery.  Mom had heard of this cemetery many times, but she never knew where it was before.  Anyway, this cemetery is on the very top of the Blue Ridge, so there is a nice view of trees and stuff all around.  A congregation called Kehilath Israel owns the cemetery and keeps it all nice for its members to be buried there.  Mom isn't totally sure, but she thinks kehilath Israel means "congregation of Israel."

One thing that was especially interesting about this cemetery was that it had a special memorial for all the members of two families who died during the Holocaust.  As you probably know, the Holocaust was a very horrible part of World War II when the Nazis were killing as many Jews as they could.  Plus they also killed gypsies and homosexuals and retarded people and pretty much anybody they didn't like.

So anyway, when Mom saw the name "Devinki" on the memorial at the cemetery, she remembered that she had read an obituary in December about a woman named Maria Devinki, who spent more than two years hiding in a hole under a barn, with her husband and her mother, so that the Germans wouldn't find them and kill them.  Well, I did a little in-depth research, and I learned more about Mrs. Devinki's experiences.  So now I'm going to tell them to you.  I wish there was a heroic dog involved in the story, but there is not.  There are only heroic and mostly scared humans.

Mrs. Devinki was born in Hanover, Germany in 1920, and her name at that time was Mala Braun.  She had two brothers.  When Mala was very young, her family moved to Wodislaw, Poland, and they had an export business.  More than half the people who lived in Wodislaw were Jewish.  The Brauns had a good life in a nice house, and they even had servants.  Mala went to school, where she was very good at math, and she wanted to be a teacher.  In the afternoons, she studied at a Hebrew school.

Then the war started, and Hitler took over Poland.  Mala's father was sent to the Treblinka death camp.  Mala was working in an ammunition factory when her boyfriend, Fred Devinki, came to her home one night to warn her that the Germans were planning to take all the Jews away.  He convinced her to marry him that very same night.  Then a non-Jewish friend of the family, whose name was Jusick Gondorowicz, helped the two of them plus Mrs. Braun get out of town in a hay wagon and go hide in a hole under a farmer's barn.  They had to pay the farmer a bunch of money, like $2,000 a month in today's dollars, so that he would hide them.

The hole was about 10 feet by 15 feet.  No one could stand up in it, not even Mrs. Devinki, who was only 5 feet tall.  It was very boring to be in the hole because there was nothing to do except sleep or talk to each other.  The farmer's family couldn't read, so they didn't have any books.  The farmer's wife cooked potatoes for the pigs, and she gave the same food to the hidden Jews.   She also gave them bread that she baked, but only after it had gotten stale and hard.  At night, Mr. Devinki crawled out of the hole and went to the well to get them some water to drink and take baths with.  Sometimes the Germans came to the farm, looking for Jews, and they stuck their bayonets between the floorboards of the barn, but luckily, they never found the secret hole.

One of Mrs. Devinki's brothers stayed in the hole with them for a while, but then he went out trying to get some of their former belongings to sell, so they would have money to keep paying the farmer, and he got caught by the Germans and killed.  Mrs. Devinki's other brother and his wife stayed with them part of the time, too.

Then the farmer's neighbors started asking him where he got the money to put bricks on his house, so that place wasn't safe to hide in anymore, and they went to another farmer that they knew.  This farmer was really, really poor, so he was willing to hide them for whatever they could pay him.  They told him they would give him more money after the war, if they got through it alive.

Finally, the Soviets came, and they ran the Germans out of Poland.  After that, it was safe for the Devinkis and Brauns to come out from hiding.  They had spent a total of 27 months living in holes under barns.

Lots of people visit the graves in this cemetery.

They walked 11 miles back to Wodzislaw, but the non-Jews were not happy to see the Jews come back to their home town.  So the Devinkis moved to Sosnowiec and opened a grocery store.  Mrs. Devinki's other brother, who stayed in Wodzislaw, got killed in May 1945 by some Poles who didn't like Jews.  After that, the Devinkis and Maria's mother went to Regensburg, Germany.  Maria and Fred started a textile business, and they had a son named Sam.

In 1950, the whole family moved to Kansas City.  I couldn't find any reason given for why they picked Kansas City, but for some reason they did.  I also don't know why Mala changed her name to Maria.  Anyway, at first the Devinkis ran several grocery stores, and Mrs. Devinki worked in a department store.  Then Mrs. Devinki borrowed some money from a cousin so she could buy a piece of land.  She later sold the land to the Kansas City Life Insurance Company, because they wanted to make a parking lot there.  This sale was the start of Devinki Real Estate, which was a company that Mrs. Devinki ran with her husband and later with her son, Sam.

Photo by Gloria Baker Feinstein

Maria and Fred Devinki also had two daughters named Ida and Karen.  The couple was married for 50 years before Mr. Devinki died in 1993.  Mrs. Devinki was active in Kehilath Israel Synagogue and in many other Jewish groups.  She helped found the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.  People said that she was a very brave and generous woman who liked to help others.  Also I think she must have liked dogs because she posed with a dachshund for a portrait photograph!

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MORE NICE DOGS AND CATS THAT NEED HOMES

Today I am going to tell you about some poor, homeless dogs and cats who have been at the Humane Society of Greater Kansas City for a long, long time.  I've told you about some of them before, but they still need homes, so I am going to repeat myself!  Mom says this is called repetition for emphasis.  If you know anybody who lives anywhere near Kansas City and who can adopt one of these dogs or cats, just send them on over to the Humane Society.


O'MALLEY

This shepherd-chow mix is about 3.5 years old and weighs 50 pounds.  He was a stray, and he had been hit by a car.  His right front leg was badly broken, so it had to be amputated.  But O'Malley soon learned to run fast on just three legs, and one thing he loves to do is play fetch.  He gets along well with female dogs, but not with all male dogs.  O'Malley can be sort of shy with new people, but he's fine with people he knows.  The best kind of home for him would be fairly quiet and have no kids.











MAX

Max is a beagle, and he likes to do that "woo, woo" kind of barky-howly thing that beagles do.  He should probably not live in an apartment or someplace where he will annoy the neighbors if he gets really talkative.  Max actually hasn't been at the shelter very long, but he is an older dog, like maybe 10 or so.  Older dogs need homes, too, so that is why I am telling you about him, along with these other animals that are long-time residents.  Max is very sweet and friendly, and he weighs 29 pounds.

A few more things you should know about Max are (1) that he has a cataract in his left eye, so he can't see too well on that side, but it doesn't seem to bother him, (2) he has heartworms, so he will get treated for them, and (3) he won't be neutered because one of his testicles is still up inside his body, which makes the surgery harder to do, and since he is an old guy, it's a bigger risk than with a young dog.

MOLLY

This pretty girl is a greyhound-shepherd mix.  She is about 5 years old, and she is a little shy, but very sweet, after she gets to know a person.  Molly has been to obedience classes, which helped her be a little better socialized.  She gets along with some dogs, but not with ones that are really dominant.

SMILEY

Everybody likes to play with Smiley because he is so good at fetching a ball.  As long as you keep throwing the ball, he will keep bringing it back and dropping it for you to throw again.  Smiley is part pit bull and part pointer, and he weighs 40 pounds.  He shouldn't be in a home with smaller dogs or with cats.

PRETZEL

Pretzel is 6 years old and very friendly.  She loves playing with other cats.  The people she used to live with couldn't afford to keep her any longer, so they brought her to the Humane Society.

NIKKI

When Nikki first came to the shelter, she was very skinny.  Also she had some wounds, like maybe she had been bitten by a dog.  But she got healed up a long time ago, and since then she has been looking for a home.  Nikki is 4 years old, and she is very friendly.  She is the kind of cat who likes to be picked up and held, and she will also climb on your shoulder.  At least, that's what she does with Mom.

KIMMI

This lovely long-haired kitty is 3 years old.  Her front feet have been declawed.  She is very affectionate, and she gets along well with other cats.  Kimmi would be happiest in a quiet home.

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SAVANNAH CATS

A Savannah cat in habitat

If you want to make a Savannah cat of your very own, here's how you do it:

1.  Get a male African serval cat.
2.  Get a female domestic cat that is an Egyptian Mau, an Ocicat, an Oriental Shorthair, or a Domestic Shorthair.
3.  Mate the two cats together.
4.  Hope you get kittens.

A serval in habitat in Tanzania

As you can see from this process, the Savannah is a hybrid breed of cat.  The first litter of Savannahs was bred by Judee Frank in 1986, using a Siamese named Savannah as the mother cat.  So this is where the name of the breed came from.  After a while, some other cat breeders got interested in this new hybrid, and they started breeding Savannah cats, too.  The original version of the breed standard was written in 1996, and it was sent to the board of The International Cat Association.  TICA officially accepted the breed for registration in 2001.

Savannahs are one of the biggest breeds of domestic cats.  They can weigh anywhere from 7 to 30 pounds.  The first litter of kittens that you get from crossing a serval with a domestic cat is called the F1 generation.  Then when those kittens grow up and have kittens of their own, that is the F2 generation.  The males in the first few generations can't make kittens, just like mules can't make mule babies.  It's some kind of thing that happens with hybrids.

Anyway, by the F5 generation, the males can start being fathers, but by then the kittens don't look as much like the breed standard as the earlier generations do.  So at that point, it's best to start over with a male serval and make another F1 generation.

It's harder than you might think to get Savannah kittens, and this is because serval males are sometimes very picky about what girl they want to mate with.  And then if they do mate, there could be problems with the kittens because the gestation period for a serval is 75 days, and for a domestic cat, it's 65 days.  Which means that sometimes the kittens are absorbed or aborted or are born too early.  So if you want to buy a Savannah kitten instead of breeding your own, you will have to pay a bunch of money.  An F1 male could cost between $7,500 and $22,000, and an F2 male between $4,500 and $16,000.  An F1 female might cost from $6,000 to $22,000, and an F2 from $4,500 to $14,000.  With prices like these, I think you should seriously consider buying a basenji puppy instead!

Savannah cats have a small head, long neck, rounded ears, hooded eyes, long legs, and a short tail with black rings and a solid black tip.  On the backs of the ears, there are markings called ocelli, which look kind of like eyes.  Some animals such as fish or moths have ocelli, and these have the purpose of fooling their predators.  But I'm not sure why Savannahs have them.  Maybe it's just for decoration.

The color of a Savannah depends on what breed its mother was.  The breed standard allows a brown spotted tabby, silver spotted tabby, black (with black spots), and black smoke.

A lot of people say that Savannahs are like dogs because they are loyal, and they follow their owners around the house like a dog would.  They can be taught to fetch and even to walk on a leash.  If a Savannah has been socialized when it was a kitten, it is usually very friendly.  Savannahs are smart and curious, and they figure out how to open cabinets and get into all sorts of things.  Also they can jump really high, like to the top of a refrigerator or the top of a door.  Some of them can jump 8 feet high from a standing position.

Many Savannahs like water, and they will splash all the water out of their dishes or get in the shower with their humans.  The early generations often make chirping sounds, like servals.  Or they might also meow, like a domestic cat.  Sometimes they hiss like a serval, which is a different sort of hissing than other cats make, and it sounds more like a snake hissing.

So now you know all about Savannah cats, and if you want one, you can pay Big Bucks to get it, or else you can make your own, like I told you at the start.  Personally, I think having a cat that big in the house would be kind of scary, especially if it started hissing at me, so I am not even going to suggest to Mom that we get one!

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