Jessica Lewis planned to bug out of her apartment and head to her parents' home in Atlanta before Hurricane Irma hit. She asked permission to bring her dog Luna to Dr. Kennedy's class on Thursday, so she could leave straight from there. Buttering up the professor didn't work.

So Luna went to a political science class, and yes, she was a good girl. A dog in the class had to be good for students axious about the hurricane.

“She was pretty well-behaved in class, She went straight to whoever was talking for the most part, like if someone was answering or asking a question. Just walked around and got pets from everyone and made friends. The really funny part was that every time the professor stopped and asked if anyone had questions or comments, she whined loudly like she was responding. It was hilarious.”

You can see the entire album of images from the story at imgur. -via Boing Boing

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Dogs can be whiny, barky and growly little jerks when they want to be, and they often overreact to situations when they're anxious, but nobody acts out the overdramatic reaction like cats.

They put their whole body into freaking out, and the expression on their face when something scary is going down will never cease to crack us up.

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It's honestly a good thing we have cats around to warn us when something we thought was totally normal is actually crazy scary, so we can run and hide alongside our "fierce" feline family members.

See 10+ Over Dramatic Cats Who Deserve An Oscar here

Aaron Franks built a doghouse on his deck. That's a bit of an understatement. This is not ordinary doghouse! It's a three-level dog dreamland featuring stairs, three entrances, cubbyholes, beds, a pool, three swings, an umbrella, tunnels, a pirate wheel, a potty pit (complete with fire hydrant), and a water dispenser.

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Franks also has a monitor in his bedroom so he can watch his four pit bulls enjoy their doggy mansion. His wife didn't realize the scope of the project, as he worked on it for two years. He may add more in the future.  -via Tastefully Offensive

When our pets have a new experience, their reactions can be awesome. The title for the cat picture above is "We forgot to tell our cat that we had a baby." Yeah, she is surprised, to say the least. In the sequence below, the guy bought and used a vacuum cleaner of the first time. You have to wonder how much cat hair he had to clean up by then.

It's not just cats. Dogs can surprise us with their reactions, too, like this dog who had never seen kittens before, but then suddenly was confronted by four of the infernal fluff balls.



Bored Panda presents another mega-post, with the reactions of cats, dogs, and some other critters reacting to a new experience. There are over 200 submitted images, ranked by votes. -via Metafilter

(Care For Your Pets by Legendary Phoenix)

Pets are magnificent and part of the thing that makes them so great is that no two pets are exactly alike. And in fact, some animals are just plain weird. Over on our Facebook, we recently asked our readers what the weirdest thing their pet ever did was and the answers were as delightfully fun as you might expect. A few examples:

My cat got in the bathroom and took a dump on the toilet like those trained cats we see on YouTube. In the end he sit at the door and looked at me like saying "no one will believe in you"

Or:

My cat opens the freezer and sits in it. When we aren't home, stuff thaws because he doesn't close it when he leaves! He will also sit on the bottom shelf of the fridge and we've accidentally locked him in...

Or:

Tried to use all the remotes in the house to hide his poop. I mean all of them bedroom remote, tv, Dvd, and the Xbox remotes were pushed on top of the pile.

You can read all the great comments here, or add your own weird pet story in the comments on this post.

As Hurricane Irma bears down on Florida, expected to hit the keys hard, many people are wondering about the Hemingway cats. The Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West has 54 cats on the property, most of them polydactyls, descended from Hemingway's favorite cat Snow White. General manager Jacque Sands says have all been brought inside. They, along with about ten employees of the museum, are staying put through the storm.

Transporting the cats in stop-and-go traffic, in 90-degree heat, was not an option, Sands said.

Forecasters think Irma will make landfall in Florida as a Category 4 with 140 mph peak winds.

But Sands said she, the approximately 50 cats and the other employees will be OK.

“I’ve been in this house in a (Category) 4. ... It’s one of the most fortified buildings on this island,” she said.

The home has been boarded up, and all the cats have been accounted for. You can follow their preparations at Facebook.

A baby bear crashed the party, and everyone else had to move indoors. As expected, mama bear wasn't too far behind! If you an adult, you may feel a little nervous at how much noise all these kids are making in front of the bears. Baby bear was a little disappointed no one wanted to play with him, until he saw the pink flamingo-shaped pool float. That's what he'll play with!

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Everyone inside was just waiting to see the flamingo deflate, but mama bear was in a hurry to leave, so baby bear just took it with him. -via Digg

Simon Tofield and Nicky Treverrow are back with another lesson on cats. This one is about adopting a kitten. They have special needs, compared to a older cats. 

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After all, you can never have too many cats! Especially when shelters are full of kittens (and older cats) who need homes. Get your kittens spayed or neutered when your veterinarian says it's time. As  usual, this video is folowed up with a Simon's Cat cartoon.

Malkia Park Rescue Station in Orechová Potôň, Slovakia, takes in exotic animals from circuses and private homes. The lioness here is named Malkia, too. She is a product of circus breeding, and was raised by humans. A rescue park is the only place that is safe for her to live, although I wouldn't trust it to be as safe for humans as this woman does.

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The park welcomes visitors, and will even let you pet some of the animals -but not the lions! -via Digg

Do you ever feel like someone's watching you? For most people, that's just a pointless paranoia but in the case of Lauren Birney, she's pretty much always right. Lauren's two-year old bull mastiff, Cyprus, suffers from separation anxiety and never lets her leave his line of sight. 

Wherever Lauren goes, Cyprus is sure to follow, whether that means going to the bathroom with her, peering at her from behind the couch or poking his head under the blinds.

Cyprus has earned himself the nickname of "convicted creeper" in his household. "Sometimes I have no idea that he is creeping on me until I get up off a seat or look around the room and find he will be standing behind an object with his head sticking out staring at me," she said. 

See more pictures of Cyprus here

In Brisbane, Queensland, recently, a possum was spotted eating the plants for sale in a hardware store. From the YouTube page:

"While wandering through the garden section of a hardware store, I was surprised to see a very special animal customer eating the tomato and strawberry seedlings. A native Australian brush-tail possum, which is usually nocturnal must have felt a bit hungry. He didn't appear to be frightened and seemed to relish the attention! Protected by law they can't move him more than 30 meters away from where he is found."

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This video contrasts the many differences between the U.S. and Australia. First off, this is a possum, and he's cute. In America, our possums have an "o" in front of them, and they are ugly as sin. Second, no store owner here would put up with any critter eating the merchandise, but in Australia, they appear to be tolerated, and even cooed over. Third, it is autumn in America, and all the plants are gone from the stores. -via Tastefully Offensive

Farmers and ranchers should be careful about what kind of music they play around their pregnant cows, or else they might end up with a herd that's part of the KISS Army.

This cute little KISS fan was born on July 28th on a ranch in Kerrville, Texas, and she was named Genie since her genes clearly modeled her facial markings after The Demon of KISS, Gene Simmons.

She likes to stick her tongue out like Gene too, and hopefully Genie will keep rockin' out to KISS even if her Demon face paint changes with age.

-Via Dangerous Minds

YouTuber DEOKHEE KIM watched a cat at a busy city intersection in South Korea. The cat patiently waited until the crosswalk light turned green, and then proceeded to cross. What a clever cat!  

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It must be a born-and-bred urban cat to learn to read a crosswalk sign. However, I have a suspicion that the cat merely waited for all the cars to stop, which is not obvious from the framing of the video. It's still a clever cat, which is the only kind that roams city streets as an adult. What do you think? -via Tastefully Offensive

Chickens are constantly getting eaten by foxes, wolves, coyotes, cougars and other predators, but you don't hear about roosters getting eaten quite as often- because they can be scary tough.

Most predators are lazy and try to avoid harm when out hunting for their meals, and roosters will put up a fight with flailing claws and flashing beak capable of causing some serious damage, so predators tend to steer clear of roosters.

But what is a predator like the cobra to do when a rooster decides to beat them to the punch and gobble them up first?

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-Via Dangerous Minds

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Animals don't have any use for our human rules, and unless obedience equals food they won't always heel and obey like a good pet- because their wild side tells them they can do whatever they want and they'll get away with it.

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It doesn't matter how long we spend training them, yelling at them or trying to convince them we're their masters, our pets are gonna do whatever the hell they wanna do whenever the hell they want to- and boy are they ever gonna rub it in.

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And when they finally decide to wholesale take our homes from us and turn us into their pets things are going to get really weird, as our new masters take to standing on tables and barking orders.

("I sent my dog outside as punishment for standing on the dining room table, this was his response"-Image Link)

See 10+ Badass Animals Who Don't Care About Your Stupid Rules here