These cat-astrophes must be stopped!

"Not again," we hear you groan as Animal News sadly has to report on yet another case of a cat trapped in a car engine.

In what has become a horrific cat-alogue of automobile disasters (see here and here), one more cat has endured a car journey from hell:

When the mechanic popped open the bonnet he was greeted by small, shivering, black and white cat trapped under a pipe.

Mr Dale Tattersall, workshop manager, said: "We couldn't believe it. It was covered in oil and dirt and was boiling hot. We managed to it out and give it a good wash and it seems to be doing well.

Another cat hitches a ride

The BBC reports on Tilly, yet another cat to get trapped in an inappropriate part of a car. In common with our exposé on cats that get trapped in engines, Tilly has also managed to hitch a long distance ride with an unsuspecting motorist.

A cat has used up one of its nine lives after getting stuck behind the front grille of a car and surviving for 70 miles on a trip from Surrey to Sussex.

Now that we are at 15 incidents, Animal News is starting to wonder whether these events are more than a coincedence... Is all this car tres-puss orcherstrated by a master mog? Are we dealing with feline felony here?

And it's not just cats that like to travel! In related news, Hike the Border Collie became estranged from his owner when he caught a bus for a 20 mile trip to the seaside. One local resident quipped: "He must be barking mad to take the number 11 bus. He should have used a taxi."

Spending all day at the seaside sounds like a dog's life to us!

The purr-plexing love of cats for car engines

Animal News is well aware that cats love to travel - but just why they choose to do it inside bonnets of cars, encased in their engines, is a veritable moggy mystery.

Take Beamer, who suffered horrific burns after spending three days being driven around West Sussex in a BMW. Or misfortunate Mina, who travelled for 30 miles "clinging to the inside of a car bonnet" before being discovered alongside the engine's spark plugs.


Bad luck befell Black Jack, a seven-month old cat who sustained abdominal injuries, a severed Achilles' tendon and a significant loss of muscle tissue after becoming trapped in the fan belt of her neighbour's car. Black Jack required 80 stitches, several operations and eight days in intensive care - but fortunately survived. A fan belt injury also occurred in Rutland, where Lucky

lost much of the skin from the side of his stomach and needed to have a leg amputated after it became trapped in the fan belt.

Halloumi and Mele suffered similar ordeals, as did Maisy - who was discovered when her legs were seen dangling beneath the car. It is said that Maisy

was still deeply traumatised, but was improving.

"Maisy survived a four-mile journey from Abermule to Newtown after becoming trapped in a car engine," she said.

"After the journey her back legs didn't seem to work, but they're back to normal now. She is still deeply traumatised and it's going to be a slow, long journey with lots of tender loving care.

Charlie spent three hours in a car engine journeying from Hull to Norfolk, while in Aberdeen a ginger kitten named Gingi was discovered trapped inside a bonnet after driving for several miles - when the car's owner noticed the engine sounding an unusual purr. Nacho hitched a ride in a car engine all the way from Bristol to Liverpool. But perhaps the most impressive cat-hop was stowaway stray Lucky who, in an act reminiscent of a feline Phileas Fogg, managed to travel all the way from France to England in a car engine, in a journey lasting three days.

But a close second is probably Luna, who survived 300 miles over the course of a week in Austria, trapped inside the bonnet of a Mercedes-Benz - narrowly avoiding a cat-astrophy.

The popularity of engine-dwelling is not limited to cars. Cats have also survived journies trapped inside the engines of a van (in Hampshire), a coach and even a fire service lorry.

It would seem that vehicle engines are simply the purr-fect mode of cat travel! But as this adventurous lifestyle often leaves our feline friends just a whisker from death, it certainly is fortunate that they have nine lives.

Hedgehog update

Two hedgehog news nuggets:

A hedgehog has lived to see another day after accidentally undergoing a 40 degrees spin cycle in a washing machine. The aptly named 'Lucky' is now recovering from her ordeal before being returned to the wild. On the upside, Lucky has never been cleaner!



Fellow hedgehog George is probably the fattest hedgehog in the country - weighing in at a whopping 2.2 kg! In fact, George is so overweight that he has now been placed on the Atkins diet. High protein, low carbs - that's the way to do it George!

Nice Jug!

Check out Robbie the Raccoon, get himself in a spot of bother. A lucky escape we think!

Damp Donk!

Emulating the stupid chinese water buffalo that AAN reported on recently, stupid donkey Eeyore (real name), fell down a well recently, prompting yet another deployment of our emergency services to rescue a helpless and hapless creature.

Click here for a chance to see recently rescued and thoroughly depressed Eeyore moping around his paddock.

Bouncing Bears!!

Take one tree, one bear, a tranquilizer dart and a trampoline and what do you have? A Bouncing Bear of course!

What a load of Bull

Charlie the Charolais bull had a lucky escape recently when he found himself stranded on a Cornwall Cliff. A full scale operation involving the Royal Navy, RSPCA and Coast guard was put into action, and £10 000 later the brave bovine beast was winched to safety!

Scaredy Cat

From the National Geographic:

Perhaps not since the Cowardly Lion has an animal's appearance been so at odds with its attitude. On June 4 a black bear wandered into a West Milford, New Jersey, back yard, was confronted by a 15-pound (7-kilogram) tabby cat … and fled up a neighbor's tree. Hissing at the base of the tree, Jack the clawless cat kept the bear at bay for about 15 minutes, then ran him up another tree after an attempted escape.....

Full-grown black bears weigh between 200 and 600 pounds (90 and 270 kilograms) and measure as much as 6 feet (1.8 meters) long. Their diets can include fruits, honey, insects, acorns and animals as big as moose calves—a fact apparently lost on Jack.

Well Lucky

A water buffalo in Liuzhou, China had a lucky escape recently after its obsession with the very thing it's named after got out of hand, and he fell down a well. Villagers who winched the hapless bovine beast back up using the well's rope said that while it was an unfortunate incident, the animal's plight pails into insignificance compared with the most recent animal disaster on their collective when 3 wart hogs got stuck in a chimney.

Pigeon drug smuggling ring busted in Bosnia

It is often said that pigeons are the crime masterminds of the animal world - and there has certainly been no shortage of pigeon crime reported by Animal News (see here).

In the latest twist of this feathered crime wave, a pigeon drug baron is now behind bars after being caught smuggling heroin into a Bosnian prison.

The Brisbane Times quotes Zenica prison official Josip Pojavnik:

"The guards suspected the animal might be involved in drug smuggling once they noticed four prisoners visibly intoxicated shortly after the pigeon landed on a prison window... We do not know what to do with the pigeon, but for the time being it will remain behind bars."

The drugs are suspected to originate in the town Tuzla, a location some 70 km from Zenica prison. But with the suspected pigeon offender behind bars, it would seem that animal crime really doesn't pay.

Get Shorty

Firefighters in Hampshire were baffled earlier this year when they were called out to rescue a horse stuck knee-deep in mud. Eleven firefighters, two fire engines, a multi-role vehicle, a rural officer and a fire officer turned up to help with the rescue in Redbridge, Southampton, only to discover that it was a pony with short legs.

Read more from the UK's leaders in Rural Reportage, Horse and Hound.

a purr-fect vacation

A ditzy Bradford woman made a cat-astrophic error when she went on holiday - having accidentally packed her kitten with her luggage. According to the Yorkshire Post:

Three-month-old kitten Beauty had secretly crept inside owner Helen Wilmore's suitcase as she packed it for the trip to visit her cousin....

Despite rigorous security checks at Leeds-Bradford and Schiphol airports, the evasive black kitten remained undetected.

Shocked Helen, 36, from Bradford, said: "We'd been travelling for about 21 hours when I finally got round to opening my suitcase and out popped the cat.

"I couldn't believe it and I still can't take it in now how she managed to survive being stuck in there all that time - she must have used up quite a few of her nine lives."

Shocking sexual attack on penguin by seal

From BBC news:

An Antarctic fur seal has been observed trying to have sex with a king penguin.

The South African-based scientists who witnessed the incident say it is the most unusual case of mammal mating behaviour yet known....

Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal....

"At first glimpse, we thought the seal was killing the penguin," says Nico de Bruyn, of the Mammal Research Institute at the University of Pretoria, South Africa....

De Bruyn and a colleague were on Trypot beach at Marion Island to study elephant seals when they noticed a young, adult male Antarctic fur seal, in good condition, attempting to copulate with an adult king penguin of unknown sex.

The 100kg seal first subdued the 15kg penguin by lying on it.

The penguin flapped its flippers and attempted to stand and escape - but to no avail.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin, and thrusting its pelvis, trying to insert itself, unsuccessfully.

After 45 minutes the seal gave up, swam into the water and then completely ignored the bird it had just assaulted, the scientists report.

Why a fur seal would indulge in such extreme sexual behaviour is unclear....

But this is thought to be the first recorded example of a mammal trying to have sex with a member of another class of vertebrate, such as a bird, fish, reptile, or amphibian....

Marion Island is the only place in the world where Antarctic fur seals are known to hunt king penguins on land, so the idea that the fur seal was trying to eat the object of its attention made sense.

"But then we realised that the seal's intentions were rather more amorous."

The researchers speculate that the male seal was too young to win access to female seals, and in a state of sexual excitement, looked elsewhere....

The penguin did not appear to have been injured by the seal, the scientists report.

Silly filly

Is there foal play at work in the animal world? Poor old filly Gracie was found making odd noises and her head stuck in a tree.

Owner Jason Harschbarger siad:

'I looked up and all I could see was her belly. I ran up to see her and she looked in a lot of trouble. She was hanging there by the back of her jaws. I ran back down to my vehicle and got a chainsaw and ratchet strap.

'I don't know what possessed me to get the camera as well.'

Is this filly really that silly or is this a sick new trend??