Fun cat video and a reminder to thank your mother for all the times she saved you from your version of the slide. Have a happy friday. Maybe you should forward this video to your Mom with a note of thanks and make it a happy one for her too.
Related: Friday Cat Fun #11: Ninja Cat Stair Climbing – Naturally Curious Children – Treadmill Cats: Friday Cat Fun #3 – Friday Cat Fun #13: Kitten in His Box
Curious cats are the best. This one uses the doorbell to get into the house.
Related: Automatic Cat Feeder – Curious Cat Hat – Friday Fun, Cat Parkour
A nice, fun gadget for your friday. Sphero is the first ever robotic ball which can be controlled just by using your smart phone.
Developed by the Orbotix Team, you can use sphero in various applications. It is controlled using your smartphone (SDK exist for iOS and Android to let you have some fun hacking new ideas. The size is approximately that of a baseball. It has a customizable LED that allows you to change the glow according to your mood. You can check out more of Sphero features.
Use sphero like an remote controlled car but with a twist of boost mode for a more exciting chase with your pet cat. Yes, Sphero has an application specially designed for cats called the Sphero KittyCam app. Let the cat chase the robot and catch all the cat’s movements in video. You can upload it share the wild reactions of your cat.
Invite a friend over to play with sphero using the mixed reality pong. We all know pong and the developers of sphero found a way to incorporate technology with the classic game. Use your smartphones as your virtual paddle and control the sphero, which acts as your pong ball, to win the game.
Sphero is a fun gadget to have and you do activities like golf, racing and many more. If you want to order you can check out this link and fill up the order form.
Related: Friday Fun: Cats and Kids with iPads – Friday Robot Fun: i-SOBOT – Awesome Cat Cam
Graeme, a cat in Melbourne, Australia, walks to the train station with its owner in the morning and then goes off to play (and probably lots of sleep, it is a cat) and then returns in time to meet its owner at the train station after the work day.
When the evening peak comes around, Graeme puts on an encore performance, arriving at the opposite platform in time to greet owner Nicole Weinrich as she returns home from work. “He always seems to know which train carriage I am on and will be sitting there behind the yellow line when the doors open, because he is all about safety,” Ms Weinrich said.
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But sometimes Graeme can take his desire to be close to his fans a bit too far – he has been known to jump on the train and get off a station or two later. “He doesn’t do it often, but we do worry about that,” Ms Weinrich said.
She said Graeme, believed to be about 12, had roughed it on the street before being saved from the RSPCA’s “death row” six years ago, so his love of people is tempered by his survival instincts.
Related: Cat Rids the Bus (without paying) – The Wonderful Life of a Cat – The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer
This is for the cat segment of the blog. There is no real connection to science or engineering. Just a minute of distraction from a busy Monday.
Related: Cat enjoys flushing the toilet, again and again and again – Rabbit Escapes Cat Attack – Cat Lift – Friday Fun: Cats and Kids with iPads
This black cat and owl make very cute friends. They grew up together, follow their antics on the fum and gebra website. Other examples of interspecies fun: Cat and Crow Friends – Bunny and Kittens – Polar Bears and Huskies – Cats Connect with People, and Particularly Women, as Social Partners. Other times the interaction is surprising but not exactly friendly – The Cat and a Black Bear.
Fun video showing a rabbit doing what comes naturally.
Related: Bunny and Kittens: Friday Cat Fun – A Cat Adopts a Squirrel – Friday Fun: Cat Parkour
McMaster University researchers have developed a vaccine which successfully treats people with an allergy to cats. Traditionally, frequent allergy shots have been considered the most effective way to bring relief — other than getting rid of the family pet — for the 8 to 10% of the population allergic to cats.
Both options, may now be avoided thanks to the work of immunologist Mark Larché, professor at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in Allergy & Immune Tolerance.
Building on research he’s conducted for the past 10 years in Canada and Britain, Larché and his research team have developed a vaccine which is effective and safe with almost no side effects. The research is published in a the January 2011 issue of the Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, a leading journal in the allergy field.
The researchers took one protein (molecule) that cats secrete on their fur which causes the majority of allergic problems. Using blood samples from 100 patient volunteers allergic to cats, they deconstructed the molecule and identified short regions within the protein which activate T-cells (helper cells that fight infection) in the immune system.
Using the amino acid code for the whole protein, researchers made synthetic versions of these regions. For the cat allergy vaccine, they found seven peptides (strings of amino acids). “And those synthetic peptides are what we mix together to make the vaccine,” said Larché. “We picked the peptides that would work in as much of the population as possible.”
Known as “peptide immunotherapy,” a low dose of the vaccine is given into the skin. Initially, four to eight doses a year may be required, but the side effects of the traditional allergy shots do not arise, Larché said. The optimal dose will be determined in phase three clinical trials which are getting underway with a much larger group of cat allergy sufferers.
The development of a vaccine to treat people allergic to cats is the first in a line of vaccines developed with Adiga Life Sciences, a company established at McMaster in 2008. It is a joint venture between McMaster University Circassia Ltd., a UK-based biotech company.
Adiga and McMaster are now collaborating on research into the use of peptide immunotherapy for house dust mite, ragweed, grass, birch tree and moulds
Related: MIT Engineers Design New Type of Nanoparticle for Vacines – 10 Questions to Ask Your Vet About Cat Medications – Vaccine For Strep Infections
“Food is often used as a token of affection, and the ways that cats and humans relate to food are similar in nature to the interactions seen between the human caregiver and the pre-verbal infant,” co-author Jon Day, a Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition researcher, told Discovery News. “Both cat and human infant are, at least in part, in control of when and what they are fed!”
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The researchers determined that cats and their owners strongly influenced each other, such that they were each often controlling the other’s behaviors. Extroverted women with young, active cats enjoyed the greatest synchronicity, with cats in these relationships only having to use subtle cues, such as a single upright tail move, to signal desire for friendly contact.
While cats have plenty of male admirers, and vice versa, this study and others reveal that women tend to interact with their cats — be they male or female felines — more than men do.
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Cats also seem to remember kindness and return the favors later. If owners comply with their feline’s wishes to interact, then the cat will often comply with the owner’s wishes at other times. The cat may also “have an edge in this negotiation,” since owners are usually already motivated to establish social contact.
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co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. “A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other’s inclinations and preferences.”
Readers of this blog already know how great cats are, but this is more evidence on how wonderful they are.
Related: The Evolution of House Cats – Cat that takes the bus – Video Cat Cam – Awesome Cat Cam
Photo of a sand cat by Thomas Rabeil of the Sahara Conservation Fund
In March of 2009 we posted about photos of the rare Saharan cheetahs caught on wildlife cameras. Recently more photos have been released by the Sahara Conservation Fund showing a ghostly cheetah and other wild cats and other wildlife, including this wonderful photo of a sand cat.
Elusive Saharan Cheetah Captured in Photos
The elusive Saharan cheetah in Niger, Africa. Sahara Conservation Fund
The photos are part of the Sahara Carnivores Project
More ghostly cheetah photos: blurry and walking away
‘Ghostly’ Saharan cheetah filmed in Niger, Africa
Other posts of animals filmed with remote wildlife monitoring cameras: Sumatran Tiger and Cubs – Jaguars Back in the Southwest USA – Scottish Highland Wildcats – Rare Chinese Mountain Cat
Photos by John Hunter of cheetahs and other animals in Kenya.
When people try to match cats parkour abilities:
Related: Friday Fun: Chimpanzee and Segway – Treadmill Cats – New Yorkers Help Robot Find Its Way in the Big City
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