What to do with your leftover pumpkins

After Halloween, Big Cat Rescue, a non profit educational sanctuary in Tampa, FL, gets pumpkins from local businesses and gives them to the sanctuary cats to play with. It's wonderful to see these majestic creatures, some of whom have been been abused, abandoned, bred to be pets, retired from performing acts, or saved from being slaughtered for fur coats, having a wonderful time exercising with and eating their pumpkins. You can see what great health and spirits the staff at BCR keeps the cats in, and you get a chance to see that the same play stalking behaviour your house cat engages in is alive and well in even the largest felines. Meanwhile, BCR attract a human audience they can educate about these animals and the issues facing them in captivity and in the wild.



To find out more BCR, check out their website or Facebook page

Fun with dog training

I can't resist putting up this amazing video by OK GO featuring dozens of dog training behaviors in one take.



According to Roland Sonnenburg, the person from Talented Animals that coordinated this, "We had 12 trainers, two furniture movers, 12 dogs, one goat, 38 buckets, and a bunch of furniture, all of which needed to move around and be in the right place at the right time without anyone stepping in front of camera."

One of the keys to the success of the filming was that the dogs actually started to have fun doing their behaviors. It's a wonderful example of people and animals communicating and working together with time, caring and patience. See the Gizmodo article for more photos and interviews about how the video was made.