Cheetah gets loose on Delta flight

A Delta baggage worker got a bit of a fright when she opened a jetliner's cargo door and found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage.

Delta spokeswoman Betsy Talton said Friday that two cheetahs were being flown in the cargo area of a passenger flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta a day earlier when one escaped from its cage.

Talton said the airline summoned help from an Atlanta zoo. Experts rushed to a closed airport hangar and tranquilized both animals and took them back to the zoo...

--MSNBC

Kitten survived in crate from Singapore to Ohio

A scrawny, black and white female kitten has apparently survived a trip across the Pacific Ocean and North America inside a shipping crate.

Cleveland Animal Protective League Executive Director Sharon Harvey says a Cleveland company that received the crate of spooled steel coil Friday found the kitten inside one the spools.

Harvey says the mother cat and other kittens found in the crate were dead. The crate came to Samsel Supply Co. from Singapore. It was sealed Feb. 4 and shipped three days later...

--USA Today

South Koreans clone cats that glow in the dark

South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.

In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.

A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.

"It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement.

"The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans," it added...

--Yahoo! News

Awakened man wrestles leopard out of his bed

A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.

"This kind of thing doesn't happen every day," said 49-year-old Arthur Du Mosch, a nature guide. "I don't know why I did it. I wasn't thinking, I just acted."

Raviv Shapira, who heads the southern district of the Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority, said a half dozen leopards have been spotted recently near Du Mosch's small community of Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert in southern Israel, although they rarely threaten humans.

Shapira said it was probably food that lured the big cat. Leopards living near humans are usually too old to hunt in the wild and resort to chasing down domestic dogs and cats for food, he added...

--CNN

Cat survives trip from China to N.C. in crate

After Eric Congdon opened a crate from China and discovered a cat inside, coming up with a name for the furry stowaway was easy.

China the cat had chewed through one of the boxes before it left Shanghai on April 3 and spent at least 35 days on a ship inside the container filled with motorcycle gear.

"I saw something in the container move," Congdon said. "I turned up the headlights on the fork lift to get a better look."

That was when he saw the cat cowering in a corner, weak but still alive. Congdon, owner of Olympia Moto Sports in Hendersonville, said he and a co-worker called the county's animal services when the cat would not let them near...

--USA Today

Canada Post cowed by "very threatening cat"

Canada's postal system has stopped delivering mail to a home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, after a mail carrier was scared away by a "very threatening cat," the Winnipeg Free Press said on Friday.

A Canada Post spokeswoman said the agency was concerned about the safety of its carriers, although it hoped for an amicable solution to its dispute with cat-owner John Samborski.

"The letter carrier who delivers mail there ... was brought up on a farm, she is very comfortable with animals," spokewoman Kathi Neal told the newspaper. "Apparently this is a very threatening cat"...

--Reuters

Mystery cat takes regular bus to the shops

Bus drivers have nicknamed a white cat Macavity after it has started using the No 331 several mornings a week.

The feline, which has a purple collar, gets onto the busy Walsall to Wolverhampton bus at the same stop most mornings - he then jumps off at the next stop 400m down the road, near a fish and chip shop.

The cat was nicknamed Macavity after the mystery cat in T.S Elliot's poem. He gets on the bus in front of a row of 1950s semi-detached houses and jumps off at a row of shops down the road which include a fish and chip shop...

--Daily Mail

Stray cats enter home, attack women, boy

NORTH PLATTE, Neb. - Two stray cats attacked three people after they got into a house in North Platte. "I thought I had seen it all, but I have never seen anything like this," Chief of Police Martin Gutschenritter said Tuesday. A call for help Monday took animal control officer John Pettit to the home of Melissa Breva, Gutschenritter said. Breva told Pettit she had captured two cats in a bedroom.

"She said the cats had gotten into the house when the front door was open," Gutschenritter said, then attacked two women who were visiting Breva.

One, Wendy Holliday, suffered scratches, the chief said, and she was bitten on both ankles, both knees and on her left calf.

"She told the officer it happened when the two cats entered the residence and attacked her for no reason," Gutschenritter said...

--Yahoo News

Missouri man shares golf cart with bobcat

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. Mar 9, 2007 (AP)— It's best not to get between a predator and its prey especially when they're in the passenger seat of your golf cart.

Water plant worker Mitch Walter would offer that bit of advice and bears the scratches of one who speaks from experience.

As Walter was inspecting the Cape Rock Water Treatment Plant property Tuesday night, a rabbit leaped into his golf cart followed by a 25-pound bobcat. The rabbit then jumped back out, leaving Walter alone with a large, frightened feline...

--ABC News