ohmidog!

An animal control officer in South Carolina responded to a call about a barking dog behind a Home Depot, and was touched when she discovered what all the noise was about.

“This is one example of why I love my job,” officer Michelle Smith said in her report.

A stray dog was nursing a kitten along North Pointe Creek in Anderson.

On Monday, a caller to animal control reported a dog had been barking in the area along the creek since Saturday, Fox Carolina reported

Smith followed the noise and found the dog and kitten at the bottom of a steep embankment.

She took them both to Anderson County P.A.W.S.

Smith said the dog is taking care of the kitten, cleaning and feeding it.

Animal control is hoping either the dog’s owner or whoever adopts her will agree to bring the cat home, too.

Ace has a new top obsession — a neighbor named Tom, who has taken over the first place spot previously held by a neighbor named Al.

Ace hit it off immediately with Al, an older man who lives about five doors down. When Al started giving Ace treats, his apartment became the first place Ace looked when he went outside. When Al bought a jumbo bag of chicken jerky treats to hand out when Ace went by, the relationship grew even stronger. He loves Al, but he loved those jerky treats the way an addict loves crack.

Since Christmas, though, Ace’s priorities have changed. My next door neighbor got a kitten.

He is a very cute kitten, and very tiny. Ace — and we should point out here that cats are the only species Ace seems more taken with than humans — has met Tom once, sniffing him while his owner held him.

Ever since then, the first thing Ace does when he goes outside — even before peeing — is to run over to the neighbor’s front window to see if the cat is there. He stares up at the window, then he jumps up, putting his paws on the sill. The first time he did that, the cat jumped down and disappeared.

The next time, the cat wasn’t bothered in the least. And now the cat seems to be waiting for him. He’ll gaze at Ace, paw at the window and press his face against it. After a couple of weeks, they both seem to view the visits as a regular part of the day’s schedule, and Ace seems to think checking on the cat is his new job.

If the cat is not in the window, Ace will jump up, peer in, crane his neck, look side to side and get upset. Eventually, the cat will appear, and then they will stare at each other as long as I allow it.

It takes a lot of urging to pull Ace away.

I am 99.999 percent sure Ace does not want to eat the kitten. He has shacked up with cats before, and been enamored with them, though only one we visited seemed to tolerate his interest.

But because the kitten is so young he would only be one swallow, and because the kitten has had some health issues, they’ve yet to hang out together unrestrained and in person.

As for Al, Ace still bolts off when sees him, even though we’ve dropped the chicken jerky treats. They were made in China, and — though I doubt they were responsible for Ace’s recent health issues — both Al and I had read some warnings about them.

I’m 99.99999 percent positive that Ace isn’t looking at Tom as a treat — even if he does sometimes drool a little while staring in his window.

But Ace’s Tom-excitement and his jerky-excitement appear to be two different things. With the jerky, he gets all drooly and subservient. With Tom, his tail and ears perk up. He seems more intent, more studious, less zombie-like, as if it’s more an intellectual hunger than a physical one.

One of these days, they’ll get to spend some time together. Maybe, with all the anticipation behind him, that will make him less obsessed, or then again it could make him more that way. Until then, they’ll continue to relate, three or four times a day, through glass and screen.

Note to neighbor: You might detect some small holes in your screen; I fully (or at least 99.999999 percent) intend to buy you a new one.

The Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) has received another apparent cat abuse case and is seeking help from the community.

Yesterday, the city’s office of Animal Control picked up a 12-week-old kitten who appeared to have been burned. He was found outside of a residence.

The kitten was taken to BARCS where he was  evaluated by a shelter veterinarian. The kitten’s whiskers and eyebrows are singed off, and the tips of his ears are burned.

The cat also smelled of smoke, had brown discoloration throughout his coat and red spots on several areas of his body.  He is receiving hydrotherapy, pain medication, antibiotics and burn cream. 

The kitten, now named Jonah, was picked up in the 4000 block of Oswego Court.

BARCS asks that anyone with information about the cat contact Baltimore City Animal Control at 410-396-4688.

The kitten is being cared for at BARCS, and contributions to his care and that of other sick and injured animals can be made through BARCS Franky Fund.

You can find more information at www.baltimoreanimalshelter.org.

I feel bad for what happened to Snickers the cat. But to be brutally honest, I’m having a hard time working up much sympathy for her owner.

Snickers died last week, shortly after arrival at the Hartford airport aboard Delta Flight 738.

Airline officials had promised Heather Lombardi, who had purchased the cat from a breeder in Utah and was having her delivered, that the cargo hold the cat would travel in was climate controlled.

If you can’t guess what happened next, here’s some additional information:

Snickers was 11 weeks old.

Snickers was a Sphynx, or hairless cat.

It is winter, and a particularly cold one.

Once a plane lands, the cargo area is depressurized, and that climate control stuff doesn’t apply anymore.

Lombardi sent out an email blast to tell the world about “the worst tragedy I have ever personally experienced” — not to gain pity, or money, or, we’d hope, bolster her odds in a lawsuit. Instead, she says, she wanted to inform the world of the dangers of shipping a cat, by air, in winter.

With her two children, Lombardi arrived at the airport and was told to wait in the baggage area. Fifty minutes passed after the flight landed, the delay in unloading baggage being caused at least partly by a cargo hold latch that was stuck, she was told.

“I wasn’t incredibly alarmed … I figured she would be fine as long as she wasn’t outdoors,” wrote Lombardi, who paid $290 to transport Snickers. Outdoors, it was 7 degrees.

Upon being handed the crate, Lombardi opened it and pulled Snickers out:

“The kitten was ICE cold, limp, and unresponsive. I IMMEDIATELY put her into my coat, grabbed my kids by the hands & ran out of the airport to get her into my car & cranked up the heat putting all vents on her as I rubbed her trying to warm her up. She couldn’t lift or control any limbs, her breathing was labored, she had a blank stare in her eyes, and she let out a meow. As if to say help me — please. We rushed her to the emergency vet clinic, but to my utter devastation, on the drive, she let out a blood curdling cry & went completely limp …”

Ten minutes after handing the apparently lifeless cat to the vet, Lombardi was informed that Snickers was indeed dead.

“Her last hour of life was spent frozen & unable to escape. I am so utterly devastated — I cannot express to anyone how this feels. I am so sad for her, her little 11 week life lost for no reason. A tragedy that could have been prevented if the airline had valued her little promising life.”

Delta told her it is investigating, but, she said, “the bottom line is that they can’t bring her back to me or my family, there is nothing they can say or do to make this whole. We don’t want a new kitten; we fell in love with HER. She was our new child & there is nothing that can be done to bring her home to us. Snickers lost her life unnecessarily …  Value life everyone, I have just experienced something I pray no one else has too. Don’t let Snickers lost life be in vain, I pray you guys read this & maybe another animals life won’t be lost to the cold & lonely Delta Cargo holds.”

Reading over her summary of events, what stuns me most is that a customer would even consider having an 11-week-old hairless cat transported by air in the dead of winter. That the breeder would permit it is surprising as well. That Delta signed off on it is equally shocking.

So, much as we regret Snickers’ passing, we, unlike Lombardi, wouldn’t aim our anger solely at Delta. There appear to be plenty of humans to share the blame, including the one who — though her subsequent warning not to ship animals when it’s below 30 degrees is valid — probably should have done a little more research and used a little more common sense before having her new hairless cat placed on a plane.

And we have to wonder a little bit, too — coldhearted as it may be at her time of clearly anguishing loss — why, any allergies aside, someone would opt for a pricey, high-maintenance novelty pet from the other side of the country when hundreds of cats are in the Hartford area’s animal shelters, waiting for homes.

Heather Lombardi responds: 

“… I first wanted to thank you for bringing attention to what happened to Snickers. Knowledge is power & even if you don’t agree with my actions & poor decision, not everyone knows or understands the risks of placing your pets in a climate controlled cargo hold. I myself was guilty of that. I do not place blame solely on Delta, my lack of knowledge & belief that travel was safe for animals in this weather was the obvious reason she was on the flight. It’s why I decided to share her story. She died due to my lack of knowledge & an obvious service failure on Delta’s behalf. I can’t control Delta, their practices or policies, what I can control is how I handle the situation. I choose to raise awareness, and I thank you for helping with that.”

A stray dog in Canada didn’t let getting hit by a car keep her from nursing her litter of five pups.

And one kitten.

Esperanza, as she’s been named (Spanish for “Hope”), was found on a central Alberta reserve by Criss Gerwing, who runs a small animal rescue group. The dog, a white shepherd mix, led Gerwing to her pups, and a kitten that, somehow, ended up nestled in with the rest of the litter.

“I cried because she was in such bad condition with her leg, but she was obviously nursing her puppies and this kitten,” Gerwing said.

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that Gerwing took all the animals to the Edmonton Humane Society, where veterinarians thought they’d have to amputate the mother dog’s bad leg. But a local veterinarian, Dr. Milton Ness, saying she was “a special soul”  volunteered to perform surgery to save her leg.

“She is such a sweet, sweet dog,” Shawna Randolph at the humane society said. “She has such a wonderful personality.”

Ken Wahl has added the 1990 Golden Globe award he received for his starring role in the television series “Wiseguy” to the reward being offered for information leading to the arrest of whoever glued a cat to a southern Minnesota highway.

“Men who pick on cats are sick cowards that have control issues, since cats are half wild and independent,” Wahl told Radar Online. “We’re not just finding a kitten killer, we are preventing this person becoming a serial killer.”

Timothy, a 10-month-old kitten, was found glued to a Minnesota highway last month in freezing temperatures. The kitten had also been struck by a vehicle. Despite attempts to save the cat, he died ten days later.

Wahl’s donation comes on top of more than $12,000 already donated to the reward being offered by Second Chance, an animal rescue organization in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

“Rescue Ink” is also stepping in to try to find the cat killer, according to Wahl, who is retired from acting and living in Arizona.

Cassie the cat and Moses the crow just showed up one day in the yard of Ann and Wallace Collito, a Massachussetts couple, and stayed there.

Their antics, videotaped by the elderly couple, have drawn more than 5 million views on YouTube. The relationship lasted four years, until Moses flew off.

“Maybe he got a girlfriend, we don’t know what happened to the crow,” said Wallace. His wife, Ann, has since passed away, but Wallace still treasures Cassie the cat.

The crow-cat relationship was featured on “Unlikely Animal Friends,” a National Geographic Channel special that aired Saturday night.

Yet another incident of cat abuse has come to light after a witness saw a group of boys swinging a small orange and white cat by his tail.

Baltimore Animal Rescue & Care Shelter (BARCS) reports that the incident took place on the 2600 block of Wilkens Avenue.

The witness reported the boys were swinging the cat in the air, smashing his head on the ground, and also appeared to be trying to throw the cat, by his tail, onto a rooftop.

The woman took the cat and handed it off to another woman who then brought the kitten directly to BARCS. 

The Snyder Foundation for animals is offering a reward of $1,000 for anyone with information leading to an arrest and conviction of the boys responsible.

At BARCS, veterinary technicians determined the three-month-old kitten most likely had a broken jaw.

Using the Franky Fund, the technician sent the kitten to Everhart Animal Hospital, where X-rays showed he will need surgery on his jaw. The surgery is expected to be performed later this week. 

Staff at BARCS gave the cat a name:

Miracle.

Alley Cat Allies, a group that promotes humane care for cats — both those in homes and those on the streets — will conduct free workshops in Baltimore tonight and tomorrow.

Tonight’s session will be at the Maryland SPCA, 3300 Falls Road, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Thursday’s will be at Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS), 301 Stockton Street, also from 7 to 9 p.m.

The sessions are part of the organization’s “Every Kitty-Every City Program,” and is open to anyone interested in learning more about dealing with stray and feral cats.

Feral cats are outdoor cats that are unsocialized to humans and therefore unadoptable as pets. These workshops will provide information on how to best care for feral cat colonies through communication, mediation, and trap-neuter-return practices.