Markasaurus

Blog Action Day: go vegetarian to save the earth!

Happy Blog Action Day! This is the day when thousands of people around the world are blogging on environmental topics. I’m going to write about a simple way you can reduce your impact on the Earth.

Everyone knows that some people become vegetarian solely because they care about animals, but how about becoming vegetarian to save the environment? While cars, power plants and industrial emissions all contribute to pollution by putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, going vegetarian is one of the single biggest things a person can do to reduce their own impact on the environment.

From PETA.org: In a groundbreaking 2006 report, the United Nations (U.N.) said that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse gases than all the cars and trucks in the world combined. Senior U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization official Henning Steinfeld reported that the meat industry is “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.”

Bear in mind that PETA didn’t write this report, the United Nations did. Hardly a radical animal rights organization, it’s refreshing to see that they have recognized the startlingly effective impact of cutting meat out of our diets. The efficiency of eating lower on the food chain pays off in lower water use, less methane and carbon dioxide emissions, and less water pollution.

I’ve been vegetarian since I was 16 and I’ve never regretted it. Start small, possibly by reducing the meat in your diet and eating organic and local foods. Or, go “cold turkey” (well, “no cold turkey”) and immediately cut animals out of your diet. Even Burger King has a veggie burger on the menu, so there isn’t any excuse to put your change to a meat-free diet off any longer.

If you want to get a Vegetarian Starter Kit from PETA, click here and fill out their easy online form.

Recycling: one of the most complete studies yet

I read this article while I was at the gym today and was very impressed by the advances that have been made in recycling in recent years. While you often hear that it is inefficient to recycle and that it is actually worse for the environment than not recycling, this study by the Technical University of Denmark and the Danish Topic Centre on Waste refutes these claims by looking at an array of 55 life-cycle analyses and 200 scenarios to compare recycling with other disposal methods. They found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment.

This article also explains how recyclables are sorted when they are all in the same bin and how aluminum is plucked out of the stream of trash despite it’s non-magnetivity. I always wondered about that (click on “read more” at the bottom to find out the secret).

I was thinking about the environment before I went to the gym because Monday is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers around the world have pledged to write about the environment. Now I have to think of another topic for Monday because I couldn’t wait to post this one…
read more | digg story

How to give medicine to a cat

Javier models a plastic E-collar and still manages to look good!

So your cat has been sick and needs to take medicine? No problem. Natasha’s cat Javier recently had surgery and now he needs to take antibiotics every day (twice). This has given me some first-hand experience in feeding pills to cats. You would thing that medicine for cats would come in smaller pills than the pills given to humans, but for some reason this is not the case. In fact, Javier (see above) needs to take one and a half pills to get the correct dose.

The first pill usually isn’t a huge problem if you have two people. One person has to restrain the cat and pry his mouth open (watch those fingers!) and the other person has to put the pill in his mouth and shoot water down his throat to get him to swallow it. Easy enough (ha). After the first pill, the cat has been warned. If you have to feed a second one, or God forbid a half-pill, this is where it gets tricky.

You can try to do what you did the first time, but the cat is usually a lot more resistant. Giving him some tuna between pills is one way to deal with it, but it’s not foolproof. Javier insisted on sticking out his tongue and spitting the half pill onto the floor. After a few minutes of doing this the pill started to dissolve and then he started salivating wildly in an attempt to get the horrible taste out of his mouth. We then put the remaining piece of the pill in his tuna, which he happily ate until he tasted the medicine again and then he wouldn’t stop licking his lips for several minutes as he attempted to get the taste out of his mouth.

Summary:

• Sneak up on the cat and get one pill in when it isn’t expecting it. Use lots of water and rub under the cat’s chin to get it to swallow.
• Give it some sort of food to distract it before trying again.
• Be persistent. At least be more persistent than the cat.
• Sometimes you can trick the cat by putting small bits of medicine in food if there is no other way to get it down.