Tag Siege of Leningrad

Saddest Kitty Picture Ever

By Brian Filed in Life, Links, Misc Tagged with animals, Furry Murray, kitties, Life, Reddit.com, Siege of Leningrad July 30th, 2010 @ 12:29 pm

So I noticed a bunch of hits from Reddit.com this morning and followed the referrer back to a thread that has this heartbreaking picture. Most of the thread is the usual Reddit nonsense, but the discussion somehow eventually turned around to the subject of the Siege of Leningrad, and somebody Googled up my post about the cats of Leningrad who were hailed as heroes for keeping the rodent population in check during the siege.

I have no idea what the actual provenance of that photo is, and the Reddit thread had nothing of substance to offer, but it’s too easy to imagine something terrible, particularly given the numbers of cats and kittens who needlessly suffer from human neglect. We’ve been having such a wonderful time with our new kitten, Furry Murray, so this picture was a small reminder to me that for many cats, including shelter animals, the realities are pretty bleak.

The shelter where we got Murray still has lots of kittens and cats available. In fact, they’ve had to put intakes on hold because they can’t place out animals fast enough. Many of their cats and kittens are abandoned animals who would likely end up like the kitty in this picture without the shelter’s aid. If you yourself aren’t looking to adopt a cat, maybe you’d consider making a donation to a shelter in your area. Or do I have to make you look at another sad picture?

In Soviet Russia…Oh, You Know The Joke

By Brian Filed in Links Tagged with kitties, Russia, Siege of Leningrad February 5th, 2010 @ 10:58 am

The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and costliest battles in history, lasting 872 days and resulting in 1.5 million Russian casualties and an additional 1.5 million evacuees. The failure of the Germans to take the city marked a significant turning point in the war, and to this day it remains an important part of Russian national identity. The underlying cause of most of the deaths in Leningrad was not military action but starvation, as the stalemated Germans changed tactics to simply starve out the entire population. This first-hand account talks about tens of thousands of people dying month after month from hunger and deprivation.

Though the people of Leningrad were forced to eat their pets and any other animals they could catch just to survive, this English Russia post honors the cats of Leningrad who are memorialized by statues all over the city (once again called St. Petersburg, of course). The cats who were lucky enough not to become food themselves were crucial to the city to keep the exploding rat population in check. Indeed, the post points out that 5000 cats were gathered up from all over Russia and sent to Leningrad to aid in rodent control. Sadly, it’s safe to assume that the cats also ended up aiding the starving citizens, but at least one cat outlasted the blockade and became a national hero:

On The Side

Only 159 Shopping Days Left!
July 19, 2010 | 11:12 am

The BBC reports that the British department store Selfridge’s will officially roll out its Christmas shopping season this year on AUGUST 2. But American retail chain Toys R Us has them beat with a “Christmas In July” sale that runs this week. (although, as far as I can tell, that’s just a sale and not [...]

Anti-Social
June 14, 2010 | 11:32 am

On Friday, I decided to stop having Facebook scrape and post my blog feed. I just don’t feel like blog posts fit the very ephemeral vibe of FB, and, frankly, it irritates the living crap out of me when people post comments about the blog posts on FB instead of posting them here. I am [...]

Tag, You’re It!
April 21, 2010 | 11:43 am

In my copious spare time, usually whilst sitting in the waiting area at Charlotte’s karate studio, I have been making slow but steady progress toward adding tags to all the posts on this site. As of right now, I have completed tagging all the way back to April 1, 2008. The current archive of this [...]

Follow-up: World’s Shortest Man
March 16, 2010 | 1:49 pm

Just the other day I posted about a young man from Nepal who was trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records as the shortest man in the world. He’s only 22 inches tall, compared to the 29-inch tall He Pingping of China, who is the current record holder. Well, WAS the current [...]

Top Ten Overdone Stories Of The Week
March 11, 2010 | 11:26 am

boobcheese tickle fights child actor suicides Betty White Zombie Farrah Fawcett Canadian pissing habits that milkaholic Lindsay ChatRoulette whatever half-assed thing Google did this week out-of-control Toyotas

Observe The Snow, It Fornicates
February 23, 2010 | 1:33 pm

Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]

Follow-up: I’ll Take Menhaden
February 10, 2010 | 11:14 am

I recently posted about the use of menhaden in making fish oil dietary supplements and the potential risk that poses to the entire Atlantic Ocean ecosystem. One of the alternatives to using menhaden for omega-3 supplements is algae oil, because algae is the primary diet of the menhaden and is actually the source of all [...]

iCan’t Take Anymore
February 1, 2010 | 1:41 pm

It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]

New Year, Same Old Nonsense
January 1, 2010 | 4:31 pm

Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright
December 3, 2009 | 9:58 am

This week Barack Obama committed the United States to at least two more years of war, 30,000 troops in harm’s way for no other reason than saving face, and umpteen billions of dollars wasted FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER and we are inundated with: Tiger Woods proving he knows how to put it in the [...]