Meet Stumpy. He was born last week with four legs. That'd be okay if he was a dog or a cat, but he's a duck.

I searched around for other odd animal mutations, and here is what I found:
- a six-legged dog... with two penises
- a cat with two faces
- and a hermaphroditic deer with seven legs

Perky (as she is now known) was undergoing surgery to repair the gunshot wound when she stopped breathing and flat-lined... but she came back from the dead. Perhaps cats aren't the only animals with nine lives.

Mozart, an iguana in Belgium, doesn't need any help from Viagra to hold a lengthy erection. He has now had an erection for six days straight. And quite unfortunately, if it doesn't go away on its own, doctors are going to have to take it away themselves... not just the erection, but the whole thing. Poor Mozart may have his penis amputated.

Lucky for him though, losing a penis isn't the end of sex for iguanas. The scaled creatures, like koala bears and komodo dragons, have two penises. Yes, you heard right - two penises. And when they mate, as poor Mozart was when he became permanently erect, they use only one penis at a time. So thanks to his trusty back-up penis, Mozart's sex life isn't over... though he may feel like less of an iguana with only one penis.

A kitty used up another one of its lives by after it managed to survive three weeks in a cargo hold flying all over the world with no food or water. She was flying from London to Munich, though bound for D.C, when she disappeared. She reappeared in Denver last week, severely malnourished, but likely to live another day.

A fat cat gets stuck in dog door trying to steal food. The FDA approves a doggy diet pill. A walrus does a better job getting in shape than half of America.

Over 3 million dogs in the U.S. are considered obese, with nearly 20 million more overweight. Whodathunkit that it'd be possible for so many dogs, so energetic and full of life, to become obese. Maaaybe (just a wild guess here) it's because 65% of adults in the U.S. are overweight and probably don't take Fido out for as many walks as they should. Yet they continue to get dogs, only to raise them in household where they probably sit on the couch with their owner, who's watching Desperate Housewives and snacking on ice cream.

And the really sad thing is that even though it says on the bottle "NOT FOR HUMAN USE," you know at least a few poor souls will try to take it rather than just taking their dog out for a walk.

And a happy ending to the last post I wrote... approximately six hours before moving across the country, I finally got my cat back.

She's recently gone into heat, and I fear this fact will keep her from getting back to me sooner, if at all. Her instincts are kicking in and she's probably going to get knocked up in some dark corner, become a single mom who doesn't know how to hunt, and then her and her babies will die. I've got to quit being such a downer.

There is a stray running around (that's eating all the food I leave out for Sophie) and I wish they could make friends and the stray could show Baby Kitty the ropes (Baby Kitty is my nickname for Sophie). In Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco, strays Riley, Delilah, and friends show pets Shadow, Chance, and Sassy the ropes of the owner-less city life. I hope a stray could do this for Baby so that if I never see her again, she can still manage life. In the movie, Chance is smitten with the stray lifestyle, but in the end, he goes home. I hope this happens to Baby more.

Tonight I received two phone calls about my cat. One guy called and said there was a black cat in his window. He said it had a collar, so I knew it wasn't Baby, but I went to check it out anyway. Sure enough, it wasn't my cat. At least I wasn't disappointed, since I already knew it wasn't her. But part of me was making excuses like, "Maybe someone put a collar on her."

The next call came from a girl who said she saw the cat cross the street and into a parking lot. I went to investigate, but had no luck finding any cat.

When I was about to leave again, a girl who had seen us wandering with flashlights came out and told me she saw my cat at 5 a.m. this morning. It was meowing and it woke her up. She went to look and it was a little, black, long-haired kitty... my little black, long-haired kitty. She was in a neighboring parking lot, the one where we saw her by the brush the other day, so the cat was meowing quite loudly (probably seeking a male). The sad thing is that I set my alarm for 4 a.m. and went to search for her. I wish I'd stuck around 'til 5.

This whole thing is a goddamn rollercoaster. If a cat dies, it dies. You are sad, but you know the cat is dead and nothing will change that. You get over it relatively quickly. When a cat disappears, you don't know what's happening. You're in a constant search with ups and downs. Something happens that gets your hopes up, then something happens that smashes them, then you try something else and they're up again, then smashed, then up, then smashed. I can't even count the number of times I've looped this rollercoaster over the past few days. The uncertainty of everything is numbing. I leave out food, and I know that if she's eating it, she'll probably be okay. But I don't know if she's eating it, and therefore I don't know if she's going to be okay.

I try not to get my hopes up about finding her. I can't be disappointed that way. But every time someone calls, every time I think I have a new trick that will bring her back, I can't help but say to myself, "This is going to work." And it never does. Everywhere I look, I see something and I think it's her. A dark block of cement, a knocked-over grill, a shadow of a leaf, anything dark in the corner of my eye forces me to turn my head at lightning speed, sure that it must be her. And of course, it never is. Sure, I am always disappointed, but these things could bring my cat back, and if I didn't try, it's my own fault if I never hold her again.

The most agonizing part of all of this is that I'm moving to the other side of the country. I was supposed to move tomorrow morning, but have now put it off until Monday. Come Monday however, I have to move... whether or not Baby Kitty gets back into my arms. Everyone says, "Oh, she'll be back, just give it some time." But what time do I have? I need results now. I need my cat back.

Anyhoo, the new lead dog in this third installment is not some dog from a long line of movie stars (cough, Lassie, cough), but rather just a regular dog picked up from an animal shelter.

If you remember Lucky from the first two movies, that is who Crumpet (the shelter dog) will be playing. On Tuesday, she got a makeover to look a little more like Lucky, and filming starts this week. I can't wait 'til it's out in theaters! And yes, I am a nerd.

Q: What do all these animals have in common?

...

A: THEY'RE DEAD.

Pet preservation. One word: creepy. I would not want my dead dog staring back at me 365 days a year.

This is different from traditional taxidermy. Most taxidermists won't touch pets because they can't get them to look the same at all. But with pet preservation, they freeze the animal, use some sort of vaccuum that sucks out all the moisture, so then you're left with a frozen, but now dry (and therefore not meltable) animal. Pretty gross if you ask me.

If you want to always see Schnookums there, get a painting done, or a sculpture, or just anything other than the carcass sitting right there in your living room.

And don't make pillows out of your beloved animals either. That's just as creepy.

Is it really that dangerous to fly your pet? I decided to take a look at the pet travel options on the big international carriers Northwest, Delta, and United.

All three let you bring animals in the cabin with you for domestic flights, but usually there is a one animal per person, and a two animal per flight rule.

As far as international travel goes, Northwest will allow carry-on to most destinations, with the exception of the U.K., Hong Kong, and Hawaii. Delta only allows carry-on pets in the general North America region, and will not fly any animals in any way (carry-on, checked luggage, or cargo) to the U.K. United Airlines will only fly pets to the U.K. as cargo.

Everyone thinks that you can't bring pets into the U.K. without having to quarantine them, but you can. It just requires completing a long and tedious list of pre-travel tasks, part of the Pet Travel Scheme, such as blood tests, microchip implantations, a series of vaccinations, and the proper passport documentation for the animal. Basically, it's a huge pain in the ass and can take several months to get done. Six months is probably the bare minimum one should allow to get everything done. The blood tests have to be carried out at EU-approved laboratories, of which there are only two in the United States.

I've read a lot about flying your pet as checked baggage and it's not as bad as it seems. It is not at all advised to sedate your pet prior to flight. Most deaths during flight are a result of the animal being put under. It will be scary for animals to be up during the whole thing, but they will make it out okay. Animals do occassionally die during flight, but it is rare, and probably had more to do with the owners than the airline.

There are strict guidelines that airlines must follow, such as not flying any animal as checked baggage or cargo when the temperature anywhere along the flight is above 85 degrees, or above 75 degrees for snub-nosed animals. Certain areas of the world and country are completely banned from flying animals through during the summer months.

Basically, airlines are a lot more concerned than one would think.

Pet travel information:
Northwest Airlines Priority Pet
Delta Airlines Pet Travel Information
United Airlines Pets

Luckily it's not like this all the time. Since Sophie Jack has disappeared, we've been patrolling the brush where we spotted her. The first night, we had no light to look into this heavily-brushed brush. We slowly got dinky flashlights over the period of a few hours, but even they didn't do much help. Then my boss went and got the cops, and they came over and put on all five of their super bright spotlights, and rolled them across the brush. They even got out and helped look with us. It was very kind of them, but unfortunately, we still didn't find Sophie. It's the thought that counts though, and I appreciate it to no end.

Material culture is defined as tool-use that is taught to other members of the same species. So since the dolphin moms are teaching the dolphin babies how to use sponges, that's definitely material culture!

Chimpanzees and orangutans are other examples of the very few species with known material culture.

They left that day with Potsie, the 25 lb. cat, instead of a dog. But Potsie acts much more like a dog anyway.

When Trevor took a paper route about a month ago, he discovered that Potsie liked to tag along during the 5:30 a.m. deliveries. She would accompany Trevor to each and every delivery, even when it rained. This is an awesome cat.

Speaking of zebras... ever seen a zonkey?

I should explain.

One of my cats has gone missing… an indoor cat lost in the outside. Sometime the other night, one of my roommates left the apartment and didn’t see Sophie Jack sneaking out behind her. The cat got trapped in the hallway and after a series of events involving a number of people I don't know, the cat ended up in the stairwell the next morning and when my landlord opened the back door to the outside, out came running my little Sophie Jack. And now she’s lost in a world she’s never known, a loud one filled with cement, traffic, factories, and rail yards.

I'm exhausted. Both my mind and my body are just exhausted. All day yesterday I combed through the neighborhood in the 95-degree weather plastering flyers at every house, apartment, store, and factory in my neighborhood, sticking notes under the door of every resident in my building, and visiting animal shelters in vain hope that someone picked her up and brought her in. I had sweat straight through my clothes several times over, stained my face with tears and dirt, sunburned my skin, and blistered my feet.

We finally saw her late last night and proceeded to dig through an immense patch of brush for hours. About an hour after that I saw her, and was just a few feet away from her. She was at the edge of a parking lot overlooking the brush. She was scared out of her mind though. As soon as I crinkled the toy that is her favorite in the world, she took off at the sound of it and never found her after that. We gave up at 2 a.m.

Here's to hoping tonight produces better results.