Cougar Mountain Zoo, Issaquah, Washington, October, 2011, Taj, a 370-lb. Bengal Tiger responds to toddler pressing her hands on the glass of his cage with obvious feline gestures of affection.

At zoos, one sometimes sees a side of large, dangerous animals which is essentially identical to the behavior of your pet at home. One day, at the Chicago Zoo, I watched with amazement as a White Rhino the size of a delivery van manifested recognizable ecstacy while a teenage zookeeper stroked her back with a large push broom.

Via Fred Lapides.

From Bookworm via Karen L. Myers.

Best comment: if you move them to the southern hemisphere do they spin the other direction?

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Hat tip to Barbara Mackintosh.

The stories he could tell. (click on picture for larger image)

From Oleg Sandro-Panfilov via Viktorija Ruškulienė (at Facebook).

Brazilian commercial for Flying Horse energy drink.

The photograph seems to come from Go Moose via Theo.

The cat Frida Kahlo and her owner says she beats the shell game two times out of three.

Russian says: “How do you wean a cat away from smoking?”

Hat tip to Tristyn Bloom.

Via My Ear Trumpet.

Law.com has today a really splendid example of preposterous litigation for the Water Olson collection.

Pretty cut and dry. I mean, I think we can all agree that the yellow cat clearly preferred the odor of Clorox’s Fresh Step over Arm & Hammer’s Super Scoop, right?

But in a lawsuit that I predict will lead one or more of the lawyers involved in the case to consider a career change, Arm & Hammer has filed a federal lawsuit against Clorox alleging false claims that cats prefer Fresh Step over Super Scoop. Arm & Hammer says “independently conducted research” proves otherwise.

Specifically, the Arm & Hammer complaint charges that

“The Clorox advertisements are unambiguous that the judges of whether Fresh Step is superior at eliminating odors are cats, not people,” the suit says.

“But cats do not talk, and it is widely understood in the scientific community that cat perception of malodor is materially different than human perception,” the company argues. “It is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance.”

Arm & Hammer adds that “cats will not reject Super Scoop to any meaningful degree and will do so no more frequently than they will reject Fresh Step.”