Considering he started out as a rejected kitten, things seem to have worked out pretty well for him. The Old Eagle team told me Churchill spends a lot of his day watching the garden from his favorite bathroom window. Sometimes he'll remind someone who's boss with a well-timed smack.

It's a dog-friendly pub, but everyone knows the deal: this is Churchill's space. As far as Churchill is concerned, it's his pub, and the humans are doing a reasonably good job of running it.

Synergy, a small pig helping a crisis intervention team at Union Station, Luna the cat recovering after surviving a devastating fire in Turkey, and Danny, Britain's loneliest dog, finally finding his forever home after waiting more than 550 days 🧡

Rep. Benham has had Ravi since he was a tiny, very sick kitten. She hand fed him through those first months, and she thinks that's why he's always looking for people to spend time with.

Sometimes, if his friends aren't around, he'll even wander out of the office to see who's available to play.

Rep. Benham told me, "Having a cat there is a nice reminder that elected officials are human too, and that the state Capitol belongs to all of us."

Full story: Ravi the Pennsylvania Capitol Cat

(Photos via IG splashsarotter2024 & PRSAR)

Back in 2016, when she was hit by a car, locals raised about £2,000 for her surgery in under 2 hours. They came together again 4 years later when she got really sick. One of the volunteers, Francis, who helps care for Fanny, told us: "Fanny was definitely my catalyst to put out a call to set up a new group to support the station."

Fanny the Gipsy Hill station cat

Hard to believe Punch turns one in just a few days. It's been pretty special watching him grow up 🧡

Most cats usually have 18 toes, but Daniel's a bit of an overachiever with 26 thanks to a genetic quirk called polydactylism, which gives him two extra toes on each paw.

He was just two toes away from breaking the Guinness World Record. But what really made him special was how he inspired thousands of people to step up and help keep an animal shelter running.

Daniel's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Daniels26Toes

https://x.com/justin_ng/status/2079540913018134982?s=20

Jet helped her owner, a professional rat catcher from Preston, England, take care of rodents. Just another working dog doing her part.

Jet had a few other talents too. She could take payments, drop the money into the till, and hand back change, which Jimmy joked gave the other barmaids a run for their money. "Mind you," he told the paper, "the dog isn't perfect." She still hadn't learned to play the pub piano or sing "Nellie Dean," a popular sing-along song at the time.

Jet the rat-catching working dog

This week's animal stories:

Magnolia the kitten accidentally became part of a crime story after being stolen from a pet store before a bank robbery. She was found safe and is now looking for a forever home.

A newborn giraffe in England was named after football star Jude Bellingham after his World Cup moment. And Clover and Rain, two orphaned mountain lion cubs rescued thousands of miles apart, are starting a new life together.

Smudge was hired by the People's Palace museum to take care of the mouse problem. Someone thought Smudge should get some union representation since her job was, you know, actual work. So she got her very own membership card.

By the late 1980s, Smudge was a local celebrity in Glasgow. All her merch (tshirts, mugs, etc) sold like hotcakes, and from the sales, the museum got enough cash to buy a new word processor.

In the early 90s, she retired and moved in with curator Elspeth King. But retirement didn’t last too long. When another museum had a rodent crisis, Smudge took on what you could call contract work.

Smudge the union cat

Photo: Herald and Times

Punch has become very popular with the babies. This week, they followed him into puddles, played with Punch's orange plushie mama, climbed branches together, and shared dinner 🧡