The catwalk really was a catwalk Thursday. Show cats dressed in everything from an Elvis costume to a sequined satin dress strutted their stuff at New York’s Algonquin Hotel.
The feline fashion show unfolded in the dining room where Dorothy Parker presided over famously catty Round Table literary luncheons in the 1920s.
Thursday’s show benefited an animal welfare group and honored Matilda, the Algonquin’s resident cat, who just turned 13.
She is the hotel’s ninth cat since the tradition started in the ’30s, when actor John Barrymore dubbed a bedraggled stray Hamlet.
Earlier in the day, Matilda, a pedigreed ragdoll breed with long, silky, cream-colored hair, held court on a chaise longue by the entrance.
In her honor, cocktails with names like Purr-tini and Pink Pussycat were being served at $20 apiece to guests including representatives of the nonprofit North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, on Long Island. The adoption shelter, which was to receive the proceeds of the benefit, offered more than a dozen homeless cats for adoption.
The Westchester Feline Club supplied the show-quality cats, with fashions created by New Jersey pet fashion company Meow Wear.
Matilda has become an Algonquin celebrity, with her birthday celebrated every year. She also receives about 30 e-mails a month, which are answered by longtime Algonquin employee Alice De Almeida.
“We from Stuttgart in Germany are really your fans,” says one such missive. “We’ve read about you in our newspaper und about the very fine lodge in which you live.”
It’s signed, in German, “Miau.”
Forensic experts checking foot against a national registry of missing people
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Swedish police said they have found a human foot inside a shoe, which washed up on a beach near one of the country’s most popular tourist resorts.
Police said the discovery was made Tuesday in Tylosand near Halmstad on the southwest coast. Police spokesman Christer Harplinger said it included a shoe “containing a sock, with a foot inside it.”
Forensic experts in southern Sweden are checking the foot against a national registry of missing people.
In Canada, several running shoes containing human feet have been found on island shorelines along the Strait of Georgia. Canadian authorities say they haven’t reached any conclusions about the origin of the feet.
We’ve all been there. You’re walking along, enjoying a nice walk, when all of the sudden you’re confronted by an alcoholic bum who would like some cash. They want to make you think they will use the money for food or gas or something useful, but you know they are just going to go buy some booze.
Well, I think that this is an occasion where giving the bum some counterfeit money is ok.
Think about it. Let’s say he gets caught. Will he be any worse off? Probably not. At least he would get a place to stay for the night and possibly a meal. On the flip side - what if he can pass the phony money as real money? Well, then he’ll get some real cash, which will only hurt dumb business owners. Win, win, win.
I’m tellin you - passing fake money to bums is a GOOD idea…take it for what it’s worth.
~CheesePlay
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An estimated 12 million angry honeybees threw traffic into chaos on Canada’s arterial national highway on Monday.
Known as Trans-Canada Highway, the 7,800-km highway runs from the east coast to the west coast of the country, passing through all the 10 provinces.
The incident happened near St Leonard city in the province of New Brunswick early morning when a tractor-trailer loaded with 330 crates of honey-bees overturned.
As the truck-trailer rolled over its side, many crates broke open under the impact of the crash, causing honeybees to fly out. Each crate carried four hives of honeybees.
Police, emergency crews, paramedics and agriculture experts rushed to the spot as a large number of onlookers gathered to have a look the bizarre scene on the busy national highway.
The four-lane highway was closed as seven bee experts tried to bring the honeybees back to their hives.
Police said many onlookers were stung by the agitated bees. These included a television journalist who was stung about a dozen times when she tried to catch some bee noises on her microphone.
The authorities said the disoriented and agitated bees were sprayed with mist to calm them.
The bees were being transported back to Ontario province after being used to pollinate blueberry crops (which come into blossom in June) in the province of New Brunswick that has a shortage of honey bees.
‘911 green, 911 green’ referred to numbers and call button on Blackberry
GUTHRIE, Okla. - A 3-year-old girl used a simple song her mom made up to teach her how to call 911 to summon help when mom fainted.
When the 24-year-old and 3-months-pregnant Jessica Eaves fainted, daughter Madelyn used the song “911 Green” to dial for help on her mother’s BlackBerry phone, punching in 911, then the green send button to place the call as she had been taught just a week before.
The girl was connected to a dispatcher. In recently released transcripts of her May 27 911 call, Madelyn was able to answer questions about her house and cars outside, leading emergency workers to the home.
This isn’t the first time Madelyn has used a cell phone to call for help for her mother.
A year ago, Eaves first learned she had a condition that can cause frequent fainting and made up a simple song around the lyrics “green, green, green.” When Eaves lost consciousness back then, Madelyn picked up a cell phone and pressed the green button, which called the last person Eaves had called and that person called for help.
So Eaves revised the words to “911 green, 911 green,” referring to the color of the send button on most cell phones.
Stranded after fall, plucky climber attracts lumberjacks with undergarment
BERLIN - An American hiker stranded in the Bavarian Alps for nearly three days was rescued after using her sports bra as a signal, police in southern Germany said Monday.
Berchtesgaden police officer Lorenz Rasp said that he helped lift 24-year-old Jessica Bruinsma of Colorado to safety by helicopter on Thursday after she attracted the attention of lumberjacks by attaching her sports bra to a cable used to move timber down the mountain.
“She’s a very smart girl, and she acted very resourcefully,” said Rasp. “She kept her shirt and jacket for warmth, but thought the sports bra could work as a signal.”
An Alpine rescue team, including five helicopters and 80 emergency workers, had been searching for Bruinsma since she went missing June 16 after losing her way in bad weather while hiking with a friend near the Austrian border.
Repairman sees bra
She fell about 15 feet to a rocky overhang, where she spent the next 70 hours on the narrow ledge, sustained by water that she found by breaking into a supply box on the ledge.
She badly bruised a leg and dislocated a shoulder in the fall, and the cliff was too isolated for her to climb free, Rasp said.
Rasp said the cable was only within reach because the timber transport system was out of service. When a repairman restored the line on Thursday, the cable car started moving up the mountain and Bruinsma’s bra reached the worker at the base. He knew of the missing hiker and immediately called police.
Woman waves to rescuers
Rasp said his team followed the cable line up the cliffside in a helicopter and found Bruinsma standing on the ledge, waving with her good arm. After circling once, they lowered a winch to Bruinsma and lifted her aboard.
“She did so well because she is in very good shape,” Rasp said. “She has been training for a marathon — her goal is to finish in 3 hours and 10 minutes.”
Bruinsma told Rasp that she has scrapped plans to stay in Berchtesgaden to learn German and plans to return home to Colorado Springs with her parents. He said she still plans to run the marathon, if she recovers in time to keep training.
NEWBURGH, N.Y. - Police say a New York man cut a hole in a woman’s couch and hid in the carved-out space until she came home. Newburgh police said the woman sat on the couch Wednesday evening, felt a bump and then saw it move within the cushions.
She jumped up and David Joe Limones emerged from his hiding place, knocking a cell phone out of her hand.
The woman was on the phone with a friend when she entered her apartment because she had filed an earlier complaint against Limones and was worried he might be there. Police said she had asked the friend to stay on the line and call police if something went wrong.
When officers arrived, they found Limones and the 22-year-old woman arguing on the apartment’s balcony.
Limones, 27, faces burglary and other charges. He is being held on $20,000 bail.
County officials, including those at the public defenders office and the sheriff’s department, were unable to provide the name of Limones’ lawyer.
Austria tops Germany 10-5 in match between topless women’s teams
VIENNA, Austria - Whether it has any bearing on Monday’s crunch Euro 2008 match between the two countries is debatable but Austria drew first blood on Sunday when their topless women’s soccer team beat Germany 10-5.
The traditional swapping of shirts afterwards was not an option as the six-a-side teams wore nothing but thongs, with the national colors painted on to their bare skin.
The football may not have been of the highest quality but that did not temper the enthusiasm of a mostly male crowd boosted by a sizeable media presence only too happy to desert Euro 2008 training for an hour or two.
The match was organized by a chat room web site.
Austria were delighted with a victory they hoped would be a morale-booster for their male counterparts but was not without its serious side.
“I hope our men will take heart from that tomorrow. We played pretty hard, we even had some injuries, like I for example broke my toe nail,” 29-year-old bank employee Doris Fastenmeir told Reuters.
The Germans took defeat sportingly and joined their opponents for alcopops and dancing at a beach club alongside the Danube.
“I was supposed to hold the balls but I really have no idea how to do that,” said German keeper Jana Bach.
“Maybe it is because I am not all that much into soccer. I am more into shoes to be honest.”
The verdict of the onlookers?
“They might have to work on their technique a bit but it was definitely a rather pleasant game to watch and a very nice version of the ‘beautiful game’,” said Rolf Hansen from Berlin.
