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ABOUT USING THIS SITE
JAVA SCRIPT AND THIS WEB SITE
This web site uses javascript ONLY to enhance the visitor’s surfing and navigation experience. The use of javascript here takes the form of enhancing the Navigation Menu buttons.
If you have javascript installed and enabled, when you hover your mouse over any menu item in the left hand side, any existing next level Menu available from that button’s page will also be displayed, allowing you so skip over some intermediate pages if you wish to.
For example, if you hover your mouse over the Adoption Photos button, an additional menu will fly out allowing you to skip the page about Adoptions and its relevant intermediate information, and allow you to proceed directly to the Cats or Dogs areas of the site.
For those who do not have javascript installed, or have it turned off, you simply will not see the extra fly out menues; instead of going directly to the Cats, say, you’ll first have to go the the interim Acceptable page, and there click on the link for the Cats. Or Dogs, as the case may be.
NAVIGATION HINTS FOR THIS SITE
Each left side Menu Button on the left side of the Home Page will open the following page in a new window. Thus, you can go to any other area of the site and it will be in a new window you can simply close to get back to the Home Page menues and notices.
The downside of this design approach is that, should you click the links to bring you back to the Home Page instead of just closing the window, there are places where you may end up with multiple open windows to the same Home Page. This can work FOR you should you accidentally close the Home Page, but against you if you always use the links to return to the Main Page as it will leave you with more than one Home Page window to close when your visit is over.
BROWSER COMPATIBILITY
I have tried to design this site so it is reasonably viewable in most any browser. If you have problems when you visit this site, you may notify me of same and I will see if I can accommodate your browser.
Without FULL and detailed descriptions however, please realize that I may not be able to help you at all. I will need any and all information you can give me about your browser and the problems you encounter.
ADA COMPLIANCE
To a degree I have done my meager best to accommodate ADA requirements, at least in the areas of visual problems, especially color perception issues.
If you cannot read certain pages of this web site due to the chosen color schemes, I would appreciate your input w/r to what you have problems with and what I might be able to do to accommodate your problems.
As far as I know, speech generators etc., work OK with the site. One area where I do not have speech is the codes to enter for sending Forms. If this is a problem, I’d appreciate hearing about it, too. I am currently looking at methods to speak the codes, but so far without success.
UPDATE: July 2008
For those who experienced problems with reading the Captcha code in order to send us e-mail, that method has been dropped and replaced with a much simpler and easier to read set of metrics. Format of text and radio buttons, etc. have been set to be more easily understood by screen readers also.
HAS THAT PAGE BEEN CHANGED?
Most users will have noticed that the colors of links to web sites changes when they use them. Usually in most browsers, never visited links are blue/underlined and visited links will be violet/underlined, although those can be changed. But there will nearly always be some indication if you have visited a particular page in the past.
In most browsers where this feature has not been customized, you can use that feature to tell whether a web page has been changed since your last visit. For instance, if you visited the Choosing a Pet link last week, and this week that link still shows as violet/underlined, chances are very good that the page has NOT changed.
But, if you know you visited that page last week, but it is showing as not having been visited (blue/underlined), then the page HAS changed since your last visit.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with Menues such as the left column of menues on the Home Page; it only works on direct links of the color/underline types.
It’s not as handy but there is one more way you can tell. At the top of each page of the web site is a “Last Updated” statement followed by a date. That tells you when this particular page was last changed by the date of the change. So if you’re looking at photos of the dogs and that date is more current than the date of your last visit, then very likely the photos have also been added to, edited, or something removed. The date is automatically generated so it cannot be forgotten.
DO CATS SULK?
Well, I’m sure there are many who will disagree with this, but apparently, NO, they do not sulk. What they are really doing is avoiding the situation that caused what appears to be sulking after being disciplined or whatever activity made them feel threatened or outcast. In particular they need to avoid eye contact, a stare being sure invitation to fight in the animal realm! If you disciplined them, you probably made steady, direct eye contact with them and they are going to do what they can to avoid that situation happening again.
So, they aren’t really sulking; rather, they are allowing you to be the dominant one by turning away from you. This can cause further confusion for the cat since, as their provider and safe-keeper, they know they need you for food, comfort, petting, nice words and so on, but won’t be sure how to go about getting it back. Thus it may be up to you, their owner, to reassure the cat that everything is fine and he/she needs not fear you. Whatever their indiscretion was is long forgotten, but not so for their feeling of insecurity.
We have one cat like that; submissive and seemingly very tender, getting hurt feelings easily. She’ll go and hide in her little “apartment” on a shelf in the tub room and won’t associate with us anymore except for food and water, until WE make the first move to welcome her back into our laps.
So, it might feel like we’re the ones that always have to apologize, but really, what we’re doing by that is reassuring the cat that they still have a valued place in the home and are welcome there.
- Tom Rivet; site mgr
CATS’ TAILS or CATS’ TALES?
Lots of people tell tales. Often if their tongue is wagging, they’re telling tales of one sort of another. With cats, it’s the other end that tells tales! You might even say the “Tales are in the Tails”.
Cats are big on body language, just like people are. And like people, those who pay attention and research a little bit can often figure out what a cat’s tail is telling those around it. Oh, they aren’t really telling “tales”, but they are projecting their attitudes and emotions via their overall body language and the tail is probably the most easily seen by people in general.
I love it when I see one of our cats trotting through the living room, high on its toes, tail straight up but with a forward facing hook at the very end of it. That’s a very secure, satisfied and happy cat! His tail says so!
There are always exceptions and a lot of overlaps, but here are some of the things I’ve noticed, and researched, about cats’ tails:
Tail Standing up and quivering: That’s a cat happily excited by some very recent event.
You came home after being away, or he came into the room hoping to find you there, and has some “lap time” in mind, or maybe they heard the can opener running and they’re hungry, but know food is immediately forthcoming, one of their favorite food!
The cat is telling you about the happiness or excitement it feels.
Rapidly Swishing Tails: One source I found gives the explanation that the cat is swishing its tail from side to side in an effort to illicit a small movement in its intended prey. Cats cannot do not easily see still objects and thus their tail movement is an instinctual movement designed to get the prey to move slightly as it watches the tail, thereby enabling the cat to pinpoint its exact location.
Gentle, side to side swishing and sitting quietly is said to mean the cat is concentrating intently on something, trying to figure out what it is or what the cat wants to do with/about it. I have observed this in cats when they play, in fact, in the cat laying in wait to “attack” another one playfully.
Vigorous, strong lashing back and forth tail: This is Anger, annoyance, in a very upset cat. If a cat does this while you’re petting or playing with them, stop! They are telling you they have had enough and it’s not a good feeling any longer.
We have a cat like this; his name, appropriately enough, is Major Buzzer. He loves to have you pet his head, scratch his ears, even rub his belly; for a SHORT period of time. But he doesn’t need, nor allow, more than he wants of it. Soon the purring will stop and the tail will start. At that time, if the “offender” doesn’t stop in time, they’re going to get first a gentle, painless love-bite, followed by a reasonably painful pinching bite. We don’t make him mad enough to see what would come next <grin> because we think we know, based on his reactions to other cats in the household when they preen each other. He’s not a fighter; he’ll leave a situation rather than fight, but he makes his displeasure known in no uncertain terms as far as he’s concerned!
A cat’s tail can tell you when they’re trying to make a decision, too. It swishes, sort of half heartedly, but definitely a swishing. It’s a little harder to spot this one based solely on the tail because it’s sort of in between a couple of other descriptions given above, but it’s there once you learn how to recognize it.
We’ve seen it in our cats when they cant’ decide which bowl to eat from, or which of two other cats it’s watching and getting ready to play with, and even when you toss two catnip toys on the floor, spread out so she has to pick one first, over the other. It’s easy to miss this one though as the swishing stops the second the cat makes its decision over what it’s going to do, in which case the swishing becomes different or stops entirely.
And lastly, when a cat walks into the same room or space you are in, you’ll sometimes notice the tail will give some quick, upward movements on occasion. It’ll happen when they meet other cats they like too. It seems to be a greeting, or welcome, to whoever the object of its attention may be.
5-16-08: 
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