Posts tagged "Purina"

The luckiest of pet lovers find a way to turn their love of animals into a career. Sometimes, the path is clear -- many veterinarians, trainers and (ahem) writers feel the call to work in the animal field from early on. But sometimes, an exciting new path appears out of the blue, like the Purina Cat Chow correspondent position!

Purina is searching across the country for its first-ever Purina Cat Chow correspondent, who will travel the nation, connecting with other cat owners and sharing his or her experiences on catchow.com and Purina Cat Chow's social media channels.

This person will also earn $50,000 for the year -- and won't be asked to give up his or her day job. Score!

We're quite used to seeing cats in front of the cameras, but Friskies Cat Food has created the "Cat Diaries," which it describes as the first movie ever filmed by cats. The selected rePURRters, as they were called, wore specially designed portable video cameras around their necks to capture footage for five days. Here's what they came up with.

Rachael Ray has become a heavy hitter in the pet industry. Not only does she have her own line of dog food, Nutrish (from which all proceeds benefit animals in need), but she uses her celebrity status to promote animal advocacy, and to bring positive attention to homeless animals and the rescues that help them through Rachael's Rescue.

Ray received the "Excellence in Journalism and Outstanding Contributions to the Pet Industry Award" for her efforts on March 26 by the American Pet Products Association and Pet Industry Distributors Association. The event was sponsored by Nestlé Purina (who also made a generous donation in Ray's honor to North Shore Animal League America).

Paw Nation had a chance to chat with Ray and asked her how she recommended people get involved with pet rescue when they're short on time and money. Her answer? "Just do it! Like the Nike campaign!"

"It's not the amount of time you spend. It's more about the quality," she told us, adding, "Fostering is a great and easy way to make a big impact."

Ray also suggested taking a local approach. "Make food. Drop off homemade treats [at a local rescue]," she said. She recalled a small grocery store she frequents that always has boxes at the check-out line for the local rescue. "Put out boxes with a picture of one of the dogs so people can easily donate food or blankets. You'd be surprised at how much gets dropped off!"

Move over, James Bond. The latest secret agent is a cat -- actually, 50 of them.

Purina Friskies recently undertook a brilliant study to find out what cats do all day when they're home alone. They fitted 50 indoor cats with collar cameras to get a cat's eye view of the world.

The digital cat-cams snapped a still photo every 15 minutes. By combing through the piles of photos, Purina animal behavior scientist Dr. Jill Villarreal was able to draw some surprising new conclusions about how our kitties fare when they're left to their own devices.
(You can see the photos here.)

Before the study, most of the cat's owners expected lots of pictures of beds, Villarreal told Paw Nation. After all, cats sleep all day, right? Think again. "Although they do spend 8 to 16 hours [per day] asleep, when they're active and up, they're active and up -- and seeking out sensory stimuli within the home," Villarreal said.

That wasn't the only myth that the undercover kitties debunked. "There's still that belief out there that cats are asocial and prefer to be solitary," Villarreal said. "What the cat-cam study showed was they actually have active social lives."