Story #1:
http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/art...tunt14-ON.html
Cat's 50-foot leap at circus called cruelty advertisement
Toshi Maeda, Bryan Virasami and Merle English
Newsday
Jul. 14, 2004 02:50 PM
NEW YORK - What's good for the circus may not necessarily be good for the cat.
That's what some animal experts said this week about a Cole Brothers Circus cat that makes a death-defying 50-foot leap onto a hand-held pillow every day.
Rincon, the brave Siamese cat also known as Supercat, may be well-trained, but critics such as state Sen. Carl Kruger have rapped the circus, saying the jump is feline cruelty that shouldn't be allowed on city property.
"I think if you ask the cat, I think the cat is going to say 'I don't like jumping in a circus. I don't like the circus.' " said Dr. Javier Ramos, a veterinarian at the Riverside Animal Clinic in Manhattan.
He said just one slip can be dangerous; the cat could land on its head instead of its feet. And even if Supercat likes to jump, Ramos said repetitive jumps can lead to pain.
"He's going to have arthritis; he's going to have problems in the joints," Ramos said. "It's OK to do it once in a while, but if you do it every time, like a football player, you're going to have problems in the joints."
A circus spokesman defended the act, saying Supercat has never missed his mark in about 1,400 performances over three years.
Some circus fans who attended an afternoon show Monday said the cat, rescued from the streets of Brazil, is nothing but cool.
Iris Fishman, a Marine Park resident who took three of her grandchildren to the show, called the jump "amazing, surprising and very brave."
She said Kruger is wrong.
"There's always somebody out there who objects to anything," she said. "It was not harmful to the cat; the cat likes it."
Rodney West, a circus spokesman, called on Kruger to see the cat leap for himself, since he didn't watch it when he went to the circus on Sunday.
"I would encourage the senator to come see the show and see the kids and animals," he said.
Despite the cheers for the cat, some experts say it scratched them the wrong way.
"If I were a cat, I don't think I would want to be doing that," said Joseph Pentangelo, an enforcement agent at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
He said that while the act itself is not considered animal cruelty, the organization doesn't condone such things.
Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
Story #2 coming up...
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