10 Fantastic Cat Facts

1. Ambidexer-Cat?

You probably never thought about a cat as being either left- or right-pawed, but over 40 percent are either lefties or righties. That means there’s quite a few out there who are ambidextrous. Luckily for them, they can probably operate the can opener with both paws…

2. Warm or Cold?

Food that is. Cats don’t like their food too hot or too cold. They like it just right. And for them, just right is room temperature, just like their prey would be in the wild. Cats are indeed the Goldilocks of the animal world.

3. In Living Color

Cats see in color, so your new paisley frock in orange, purple, and yellow won’t be lost on them. They also have fantastic night vision, and only need one-sixth of the light humans require to see. So don’t go getting your cat night-vision goggles.

4. What’s in a Name?

A group of kittens is called a “kindle” (yes, just like that fancy new electronic book device available now), while a group of adult cats is called a “clowder.”

5. Meow?

We all know the meow sound, whether it’s questioning, scared, happy, or imperiously demanding dinner. Curiously, cats only meow at people, not at other cats.

6. Four-Legged Mood Rings

Cats are highly intuitive creatures, and they are more than able to pick up your mood, especially from your tone of voice. They know when you’re yelling at them (though they often don’t seem to care). If you need your cat to calm down, try speaking to her in a soothing, loving voice. You’ll be amazed.

7. Lofty Beginnings

Ever wonder who invented the cat door? It was Sir Isaac Newton. Perhaps he was vexed by his cat wanting in and out all the time and disturbing his work, so he did something about it–much to the relief of cat lovers everywhere.

8. It’s All in the Fall

Cats really do land on their feet. In fact, they all fall in the same way. First they rotate their head, then twist their spine around, followed by a rear leg alignment and finally they relax into it and arch the back, thus lessening impact. But please, don’t experiment with this at home. Take our word for it.

9. Baby Machines

Unless you want a “clowder” of cats cluttering your home, spay, and neuter your furry feline. Just one pair of cats and their kittens can produce 420,000 (!) offspring in a mere seven years.

10. Individuality

Like human fingerprints, cats have their own built-in unique tag of telling them apart–their nose! The nose pads of cats are all uniquely ridged, meaning no two are the same.

10 things you should know about fragrance

1. Fragrance is protected under trade secret law. That means the industry is not required to reveal what goes into its mixes. In its Cosmetic Labeling Guide the FDA states that fragrance ingredients “may be declared... as "fragrance." Now flip any bottle in your bathroom and peruse that list. Somewhere amidst the unpronounceable words is that familiar “fragrance”—but that alone represents an average of 10 to 20 hidden ingredients. The industry will claim that these protective measures are a necessary bulwark against thieving perfumers—but really? Just because I know what’s in theCaramilk bar, doesn’t mean I can duplicate it. These laws represent a significant deterrent, sure, but any hack can have a perfume analyzed in a lab and get the ingredient list that way. So who should get the protection: the fragrance business, or the consumers? Read on.

2. Fragrance is everywhere. As already mentioned—from your lipstick, to your body lotion, to your scented candle, from your cat’s collar, to your Tide.

3. Many of its ingredients haven’t been tested at all. The industry likes to boast about its scientific review panels and its voluntary safety compliance, but a recent lab analysis of 17 perfumes, colognes, and body sprays done by the EWG and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reveals: “The majority of chemicals found in this report have never been assessed for safety by any publicly accountable agency, or by the cosmetics industry’s self-policing review panels.”

4. Fragrance may be messing with your hormones. Of the ingredients we do know something about, on average, each of the tested products contained four potentially hormone-disrupting chemicals. J-Lo and Halle Berry’s scents were singled out for containing seven. Among most of the products were phthalates (see our previous entry on that subject), that ubiquitous group of chemicals suspected of causing deformed sex organs in baby boys according to this 60 Minutes report. Despite mounting evidence, the fragrance industry has argued for their safety in the past.

5. It may also contain carcinogens. As one example (and there were more), the fragrance compound myrcene was detected in 16 of the 17 products. According to a two-year study conducted by the National Toxicology Program, this substance has shown “clear evidence” of carcinogenic activity in rats. Charming.

6. You could be allergic to it. Twenty-four common allergens were found in the lab results. Sensitizations to fragrance are frequent, varied and, as you can imagine, notoriously difficult to diagnose thanks to the business-friendly laws mentioned above. For the book we spoke to a woman who spent eight years trying to track down the very common but “secret” chemical she was reacting to in fragrance.

7. It’s designed to linger in the air. Yet another major frustration for the sensitized. By design—and those ever-nifty phthalates help with this—fragrance is meant to stick in the air and on our bodies. So no matter who’s wearing it, everyone gets to breathe it—and we’ve all had some unpleasant, if not allergic, department store or elevator experience to substantiate that. The more extreme anti-fragrance lot feels that perfume in public is akin to second-hand smoke (PDF).

8. Moms and babies should avoid it. For obvious reasons already covered (like sons with small penises), expecting mothers should at least avoid using personal care products that contain fragrance on their bodies and in their environment. For starters, read your labels and ditch any cosmetics that feature the f-word. Blacklist nasty air fresheners and the houses of friends who use them.

9. The best smells come from nature. The upshot is that perfume has been around since the beginning of time, distilled from the incredible smells provided in nature. While some essential oils can also be allergenic, these are generally a much safer bet—and truly clean companies will list them as their fragrance source. If you’re very attached to your synthetic perfume, consider wearing it less often and switching out other products to limit exposure.

10. Fragrance is going to the courts. Canadian cities like Halifax had the fragrance industry up in arms back in 2000 over its anti-scent campaign, and Ottawa proposed putting a ban into law in 2006. But it’s a recent lawsuit in Detroit (yep, Detroit) that should really get the fragrance industry nervous. City employee Susan McBride sued Detroit, claiming that she couldn’t work because of a sensitization to a co-worker’s perfume. She won a $100,000 settlement. Are we smelling a precedent?

7 Surprising Uses of Oil

Lipstick

Humans have applied natural cosmetics on their lips, eyes and faces for centuries, but most of today's lipsticks and eye liners derive their visually-pleasing magic from petroleum products or byproducts such as crylates, coal tar colorants, and propylene glycol. Given that foundation, it's little surprise that many women also turn to the petroleum product known as Vaseline (petroleum jelly) as a simple eyeliner remover or base for lipstick.

Solar Panels

Solar panels may help homeowners and businesses usher in renewable energy by harnessing the power of sunlight, but most panels still rely upon petroleum-based resins and plastic components in their photovoltaic cells. That could eventually change as companies have begun rolling out new bio-resins and bioplastics that could replace the petroleum-based components.

Wrinkle-resistant Clothes

Cotton may represent the fabric of our lives, but polyester pants, shirts and other clothing items bring the benefits of wrinkle resistance, durability and shrugging off stains. Those special properties come courtesy of polyester's origin at the oil refinery, where several petroleum products are created to eventually form the synthetic material that helps clothe millions of people. But that's not all bad, because polyester recycling can produce new, high-quality polyester fiber.

Gum

People who enjoy the snap and long-lasting texture of their chewing gum can give a nod of thanks to petroleum-derived polymers. Today's gum bases can consist of both natural latexes and petroleum products such as polyethylene and paraffin wax, which also means most gums are non-biodegradable. But the firstchewing gums typically relied upon the natural latex known as chicle -- still the gum base of choice for some upscale gum brands and certain regional markets.

Crayons

Oil has helped make many fond childhood memories of drawing inside a classroom or a home. Each and every crayon in a child's Crayola box consists of paraffin wax, a waxy solid made from petroleum. Paraffin wax also happens to help make candles, and may even provide the polish on an apple or the glossiness of chocolate.

Aspirin

Aspirin has proven itself one of the safest and most reliable medications over the past decades. People swallow billions of tablets per year for headaches, fever and as a preventative against heart conditions or stroke. The acetylsalicylic acid inaspirin shares the pain relief properties of the chemical salicin in willow bark. Yet most aspirin manufacturing begins with benzene, a hydrocarbon that is typically derived from petroleum products.

Pantyhose

Call them leggings, hosiery, tights or whatever you like. Millions of modern women wear nylon pantyhose for both comfort and fashion, just as women decades ago latched onto the nylon stockings that became popular during World War II. They probably don't pause to consider that nylon represents a petroleum-derived thermoplastic invented in 1935 by Wallace Carothers, a chemist working at the DuPont company. Today, nylons help make products ranging from dish scrubbers to parachutes.

10 Ways to Green Your Home

Build it Green

Trees, in a word, rock. They absorb heat-trapping carbon dioxide, hold soil together to prevent landslides, and provide a rich habitat for diverse plants and animals. Choose furniture made from eco-friendly sources such as sustainably managed forests, bamboo, and reclaimed wood. Buying vintage wherever possible, rather than adding something new into the wastestream, is always in style. Also, look for furniture that is durable and likely long-lived-you'll save money on replacements in the future and prevent more wasted materials from winding up in the landfill.

Go Au Naturale

Our chemical arsenal may be able to exterminate creepy crawlies and polish our countertops, but they're slowly killing us, too. The man-made chemicals we favor are like the obnoxious houseguest who overstays his welcome-an average of 200 industrial compounds, pollutants and other chemicals, for instance, were recently discovered in the umbilical-cord blood of newborns. (These included seven dangerous pesticides, some of which were banned in the U.S. more than 30 years ago.) We're serving ourkids potent chemical cocktails even before they're born-not quite the head start they may have been hoping to get. Pesticides have also been implicated in Parkinson's disease, infertility, brain damage, and cancer. So ditch the poisons and choose natural, non-toxic, and equally effective methods of cleaning and corralling pests. You probably already have what you need in your kitchen to get started. Chowing down on organically grown food will cut out pesticides from your diet, as well.

Slay Energy Vampires

You may not know it, but households across the globe are infested with vampires. Energy vampires, that is. Cleverly disguised as innocuous household appliances (psst, your television is one of them), their nasty pointed teeth plunge deep into your wall socket, draining power all hours of the day and night, even after you've switched them off. (Americans pay $1 billion a year to power our televisions and VCRs while they're turned off.) Other sleeper agents of the electric undead that consume 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, while in standby mode: your toaster, coffeemaker, hair dryer, PC, printer, cable box, and cell phone charger. You don't have to live in a constant state of fear, however, forever checking behind your back for that one appliance you forgot to pull the plug of. Just plug adjacent equipment into power strips with surge protectors, and before you crawl under the safety of your covers-or head out to work-simply flip the switch.

Get Off the Grid

Opt for clean, renewable energy if it's offered in your area. Low-impact sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power reduce our dependence on coal-burning power plants, a major source of greenhouse-gas emissions. And because harnessing the power of renewable "fuels" such as sun and wind are free, your electric bill is likely to scale down because of the reduced price of wholesale electricity.

The 3 Rs

Start rolling those Rs: Reduce, reuse, and recycle-and in that order. Let's face it, we're mired deep in ecological debt because we're consuming more resources than nature can replenish. By gorging on more than our fair share of the world's resources, we're also diverting essentials such as food, clothing, and water from communities in greater need. So let's recap: It's better to reduce your personal consumption than it is to reuse something, and it's less environmentally taxing to reuse a product than to have it recycled. Separating recyclables from your regular trash, which barely takes any effort, is a no-brainer, of course; recycling aluminum, for instance, takes as little as 5 percent of the energy we'd need to manufacture virgin aluminum.

Get Better Mileage

Who knew cauliflower were such globe-trotters? Or that jet-setting tomatoes racked up frequent-flier miles? But it's true: North American produce typically travels a minimum of 1,500 miles. Grapes can clock 2,143 miles cruising from vineyards in Napa Valley to supermarket aisles in Chicago, gobbling up barrels of crude oil and spewing pollutants and greenhouse-gasemissions in their wake. By buying your produce locally, whether it's through the farmers' market or a community-assisted agriculture program, you can reduce your "food miles," otherwise known as the distance your food has to travel to get from the farm to your plate. Now that's fresh.

No Soliciting

Deforestation is responsible for 25 percent of all carbon emissions released into the atmosphere, through the burning and cutting of 34 million acres of trees annually. Save some virgin and old-growth forests by opting out of paper catalogs and browsing online, instead. Why did you think Al Gore invented the Internet? Shed those extra 41 pounds of junk mail the average American packs on each year by removing yourself from direct-mail mailing lists; if you need a tad more help, companies such as GreenDimes and 41pounds.org have got your back.

Paper Nor Plastic

Eschew plastic bags by bringing your own reusable canvas totes the next time you're at the supermarket or store. Because petroleum-based plastic isn't biodegradable, it's certain to outlive you-by about a millennium or so. Each year, thousands of marine animals, including the endangered leatherback turtle, choke to death on plastic trash they mistake for snackable morsels. Our unholy love for plastic disposables has also bred a swirling vortex of plastic trash the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean-not surprising when you consider that Americans run through about 100 billion plastic bags annually, using up an estimated 12 million barrels of oil.

Seeing Stars

The average home can pump out twice as much greenhouse-gas emissions as the average car. Purchasing energy-saving Energy Star-rated appliances, electronics, and lighting can help mitigate that, while slashing a third of your electric bill. (A power guzzler is nobody's friend.) Improving the energy efficiency of yourhome could even earn you tax credits from Uncle Sam.

One Bright Idea

If you're going to do just one thing for the planet, make it the switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Although they cost several times more upfront than regular incandescent light bulbs, they also last about 10 times longer, which means that for every CFL you screw in, you'll be saving eight incandescent light bulbs from landfill purgatory. Plus, you'll save some serious cash in the long run. Because CFLs use 75 percent less energy, swapping one incandescent bulb for a CFL reduces carbon dioxide by 500 pounds a year; replacing 17 has the equivalent effect of taking one car off the road for a year. Just remember to recycle spent bulbs responsibly - CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury, which although isn't enough to be hazardous to you, could pose a problem in landfills when mercury from multiple bulbs leaches into the ground.