Rescued pachyderm gives birth.
Mbali, one of 11 elephants rescued from a Swaziland, Africa, park nearly a decade ago, became a mom for the first time at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo just before Christmas.
Stray kitty is dog’s best friend.
Pwditat seemed to know Terfel could use his help. The cat showed up at Judy Godfrey-Brown's door in Wales four years ago, and headed straight for her 8-year-old dog, who had lost his sight due to cataracts.
"He ignored everybody and went straight for my blind dog and started loving him," Godfrey-Brown told People.
"He realized something was different about the dog” and wanted to help.
The team of trained dogs were on the scene shortly after the devastating shooting.
Ten golden retrievers from the Chicago-based Lutheran Church Charities’ K-9 Parish Comfort Dogs team, who brought much-needed smiles to children in Newtown, Conn., in the immediate aftermath of the school shooting there, will make the 900-mile trip again next week.
The dogs and their handlers plan to leave Chicago early on New Year’s Day to be there when schools open on Tuesday.
“Christmas miracle” for 7 year old.
When a thief unhooked her dog’s leash from outside a Manhattan shop and took off with him on the day before Christmas, little Mia Bendray was devastated. But on Christmas Day, her wish came true, and she was reunited with her beloved cavalier King Charles spaniel, Marley — thanks to a Good Samaritan.
Tina Cohen, a high school teacher, saw a man in a park trying to sell a dog on Christmas Day.
"I said that's not right,” she said.
Group works to get feline cat home for the holidays.
Phoenix resident Tricia Osterman got the best — and most unexpected — Christmas present she could have hoped for. Her cat, Sophia, who’d been missing for seven years, was found in San Diego, 350 miles from home.
Osterman was shocked to get a call from the San Diego Humane Society saying that they’d found Sophia, and located her owner using a microchip.
But Osterman couldn’t afford to get her cat back home.
Despite doomsday, Colo marks major milestone.
Assuming the world doesn’t end today (as predicted by a Mayan prophecy), Ohio’s Columbus Zoo plans to party: It’s celebrating Colo the gorilla’s 56th birthday this weekend.
The first gorilla to be born at a zoo, Colo is the oldest known gorilla in the world. That record was last held by Jenny at the Dallas Zoo, who died at age 55 in 2008.
A catfight in Key West, Fla. comes to a close.
A federal court in the Florida Keys decided that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has the power to regulate the dozens of cats living at the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.
Some 45 cats, many of them descendants of the six-toed cat named Snowball that the legendary author got as a gift in 1935, have had the freedom to roam for decades. But the USDA demanded several years ago that the museum put up fencing to keep the cats inside the compound.
Tampa Zoo welcomes black bear.
Just in time for Christmas, a black bear found abandoned in Montana in April has a new home at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo.
Named Blossom after the Florida state flower, the orange blossom, the 10- to 11-month-old bear, described as small and spirited, spent 30 days in quarantine at the zoo while her exhibit was baby-proofed.
