(First Published on Tenerife Tattle)

Okay, we all know that there are cat people and there are dog people and when it comes to their favourite four legged friend never the twain shall meet. But there are those who love both – the cog or the dat people depending on which kind of furry friend was first in their household.

Much as I love dogs, I have always had cats. Even my very first feline friend gave birth to her kits in my bed when I was only three years old.

I arrived in Tenerife in 2000 from Thailand already kitted out (boom boom) with two furry friends that I brought with me. The venerable Boodle (originally Kitten Caboodle) who lived to a ripe old 22 years and Chokdi, whose name meant Lucky in Thai, but who was one of the unluckiest creatures I have ever come across.

Chokdi and her littermates had been thrown from a three storey window on to the roof of the outside cludgie of my Bangkok local, ‘Cheap Charlie’s’. Chokdi was perhaps the least appealing because no one had wanted her and while all the others had been spirited away by CC regulars, Chokdi was left in a cardboard box behind the bar. I took the little scrap home.

In the first week it turned out that she had in-turned eyelashes (ouch!) and a fracture in a back leg – not that it seemed to slow her down any. She got stuck behind the oven and stranded mewling at the top of the curtains on a regular basis. At first very scared and nervous, over time she became a loud and bossy family member with a short, bright tortoiseshell coat and long legs.

When we went on holiday, the cats went into the care of a local vet. Apart from being mightily pee’d off with us for leaving her there, Boods was fine, Fergus just as fat and contented but poor Chokdi had been struck by a dreadful flesh-eating type disease. Her beautiful soft fur was peeling off in long, raw tatters, her ears had begun to disintegrate and she was covered in gentian violet. Had we been much longer the vet would have put Chokdi down.

At home with us she recovered slowly although it took a long time and her ears never looked right again.

The two cats settled into Tenerife very quickly and neither were phased by the addition of a puppy boxer a couple of months later. Everything was great for a year or so until the night Chokdi picked up poison outside. She went into convulsion and died in pain shortly after. My poor soi baby had been through a lot in her short life but she had known love, a full belly and a warm bed which is more than many get in this life so maybe she wasn’t so unlucky after all.

You might be wondering about the different colored links on Four Legged Friends?

The purple links are part of the sites internal/external navigation – in other words -  just ordinary web links.

The red links are part of a  pay-per-click advertising  program called Infolinks. If you hover your mouse over them you will see a small dialog box containing advertisements related to the text marked. You can choose to either move the mouse away and go on with your browsing, or to press on the box and go to the related information or products.

For example on a dog training page, the purple links will  take you to more articles on-site related to dog training while the red links will be advertising related to dog training.

At least that is how it is supposed to work.

I like the Infolinks system.

• It is extremely easy to set up
• Less obtrusive than standard advertising
• Infolinks also boasts one of the highest revenues to advertisers in the business.
• Customizable
• Compatible with Google Adsense.

What do you think? Do the links bother you? Should I blend the color of the Infolinks to match the navigation links?

Those sly marketeers are not satisfied with blackmailing parents by  ‘enhancing’ the checkout of the local store with colorful candy and kids’ comic books.  No, now if you go out shopping and happen to take the dog, not only will you have the kids whining for sweets, you’ll have the dog whining to change his brand of food.

Introducing the new smell-o-vision ads for Wagg – scent enhanced billboards for dogs.  Whether you think this is clever marketing or a scentsless (ouch) marketing ploy you might, if you live in the UK, be more interested in the Wagg competition – one year supply of dog food for free for answering three simple questions.  Go to it!

If you are a Tweeter you can Twitter a Critter and help save a pet’s life. How cool is that? Just go to Twitter a Critter on the Adopt a Pet site, use the search tool to find a pet, choose the pet you want to help and click Tweet.

What a great idea!

© sonya etchison – Fotolia.com

For those who share their lives with one or more four legged friend a house just is not a home unless you are brushing cat hair off your business suit or tumbleweeds of blown coat off your kitchen floor.

For as long as records have been kept there are references to animals not only as hunters or draught animals but as companions and friends.

Ask just about anyone you meet – even those who do not have pets – and they will more likely have a story about a beloved family or neighborhood pet from years gone by.

Whether you are a dog person or a cat person, a horse lover or a rabbit fan, sharing your life with animals is known today to be a healthy option. Children raised in a household which includes one or more pets are shown to have fewer allergies while stroking a dog or cat lowers blood pressure and anxiety levels. At the other end of the spectrum, not many activities can be as exhilarating and spirit lifting as cantering across a grassy field on your very own horse.

So, this website is for those of us who share our lives with animals and for all our four-legged friends. Beyond that though, this site is in recognition of all those who dedicate their time, their lives and quite often their money to helping the dogs, cats, horses and all other animals who have been, for whatever reason, abandoned, neglected, lost or maltreated.

When reading through the breed description pages, please do consider contacting the rescue organizations you will find listed there and consider adopting your next four legged friend from there.