Highlights of Stories in the News Compiled by Glenda Moore of CatStuff Please do not copy or redistribute this article.
	A man who fell out of his wheelchair says his cat apparently called 911 for help.  Rosheisen said he got the cat 3 years ago and tried to train him to call 911, but was unsure if the training ever stuck.  When police arrived, Tommy the cat was lying on the floor next to the phone. A cat was reunited with his owner after six years.  Colin, a tomcat, disappeared from Emma Phillips' home in Barkingside, Essex, in 1999, and lived as a stray until a woman handed him to pet rescue charity PDSA.  He was identified by the microchip embedded in his neck. Czech Airlines had to fly a cat home on an empty plane after the animal escaped from the cargo hold.  When workers couldn't find the cat, officials decided it was imprudent to allow the passengers back on board, so the plane had to fly back to Prague.  It was then dismantled, Airlines spokeswoman Jitka Novotna said, and the cat was finally removed. Cats helped to search for survivors in the World Trade Center destruction. A suspected burglar was caught in Egypt after stepping on the tail of a pet cat as he sneaked away.  The cat's screech awoke his owner, who went after the burglar.  The home owner was stabbed in the chest, but was able to phone the police, and the burglar was eventually arrested. A 10-week-old kitten survived 17 days without food or water after stowing away in a lorry travelling from Israel, a 2,000-mile trip.  A cat called Schimmy refuses to eat anything but Chinese take-out.  His owner, who eats Chinese take-out 5 days a week, had started giving Schimmy a small bowl of leftover shrimp or chicken chow mein each night, and Schimmy now refuses to eat anything else.  Dr Freda Scott-Park of the British Veterinary Association told The Sun: "It is strange but not at all harmful to him".  A cat survived a 120-mile drive through Belgium stuck under the hood of a car.  The cat had crawled underneath the hood and got stuck in the engine compartment.  A tortoiseshell kitten, named Flowerpot after the contents of the crate she was trapped in, survived for more than a month inside a crate on a ship travelling from Malaysia to the UK.  A Canadian cat that was lost was found by a woman 4,000 miles from home.  The woman who found the cat was able to call his owners from the information on the cat's id tag. Boris, a cat, almost managed to order 450 cans of its favourite food on an internet shopping site while its owner wasn't looking.  His owner had ordered 6 cans - apparently Boris didn't think that was enough. A Siamese cat named Musya took over the mothering of two 2-week-old wolf cubs from a Russian zoo after their own mother failed to produce enough milk.  Bonnie the cat, upon discovering that two men were stealing pet food from her owner's Derbyshire warehouse, attacked them.  The burglars were scared off, after loading just a few bags of food into their vehicle.  A cat, named Felix by his RSPCA rescuers, survived a several-week journey from the Middle East to Britain inside a shipping container by lapping condensation from the walls. A pet cat in Wisconsin survived being tumble dried for 10 minutes.  The cat's tail needed to be amputated,  sustained badly burned ears and fluid on his lungs. He had crept into the dryer unseen.  In Gulfport, Mississippi, a cat was blown onto the roof of a shop, then fell 60 feet into an oak tree during Hurricane Georges in 1998.  In an interview in May 2001, Ron Roland, Big Boy's caretaker, said Big Boy has never left the tree - he eats, sleeps, and eliminates in the tree.  He climbs from limb to limb for exercise.  Two cats saved their owner in Switzerland after scratching at his bedroom door until he woke up.  When the man got out of bed to see what was going on,  the living room was already filled with smoke and the TV and curtains were on fire. Firefighters were able to save the home.  A UK couple was reunited with their beloved tabby after recognizing its picture in a local newspaper.  Oliver disappeared when owners Diana and Roger Gerry moved in 1993; they were reunited in 2001, when Mrs. Gerry saw a picture of the cat, who had recently been rescued by the RSPCA after being found on a doorstep, in her local newspaper.  Cats and dogs did the digging at a groundbreaking ceremony to start improvements at The Humane Society's Boulder, Colorado animal shelter. (March) An intruder was forced to flee a house in Malaysia after the owner was alerted to his presence by her cat.  The cat had seen the man crouching on wooden roof beams, and raised the alarm by staring at her owner, then the roof, three times.  A starving cat survived on water for a month after being locked in an empty house. It had survived by drinking water from a leaking tap.  He was rescued by an RSPCA inspector who broke into the boarded-up house. A cat in England survived a seven-mile journey trapped beside the engine of a car. A Canadian cat which hitched a lift on a truck ended up 600 miles from home. The driver turned Petey over to animal humane society members who managed to track down his owners and later flew him home. A motorist in the United States found a cat frozen inside a block of ice.  Roberta Johnson was driving by a large ice chunk on a road in Minnesota when she spotted a feline face inside.  Thinking it was dead, she was startled to hear a meow.  She apparently took the cat to a vet, and the only damage the cat suffered was frostbitten ears.  She named him Car Cat, and took him home with her to live. Simba, seven months old, went out as usual one night, but didn't return.  A month later, his owners received a phone call from a pub 200 miles away - Simba had just walked in.  It was believed he had climbed into the engine of a car and got out when the car stopped.  A cat in Germany survived for 26 days trapped between two walls without food or water.  Anthony lost five and a half pounds but apart from the weight loss is only suffering from dehydration.  How he was trapped, and why it took so long for him to be rescued is unknown.  A cat saved her owners from an arsonist-set blaze at their home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Jessie jumped up and down on owner Margaret Hayward's bed to wake her.  A spokesman said: "There is no doubt they were saved by the cat because there was no smoke alarm and they were all sleeping." A UK kitten survived a 300-mile journey stuck under the hood  of a car.  The driver of the car heard the the 10 week-old grey tabby meowing after he had driven from York  to Carlisle and back, via Manchester.  A 60 foot hydraulic crane had to be called in to rescue a cat in America which had spent 11 days at the top of a tree, ignoring all efforts to lure her down to earth. A three-man crew used the crane's bucket to pluck the black and white cat from the top of the 70 foot tree at Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin.  A kitten had the drive of her life when a nap in the warmth of a car engine landed her 400 miles from home.  The six-month-old black and white cat, who has been named Megan, was found curled up next to the engine of the Peugeot 406 by its new owner.  Apart from being slightly shocked, the kitten did not seem harmed by the journey. A Chinese man says his cat can clearly pronounce his own name.  Mr Sun, from Beijing, says two-year-old Agui says his name when he gets frightened.  The Fangzhuang Pet Hospital has filmed Agui saying his name when Mr Sun pretended to give him a bath. A hospital spokesman said repeatedly hearing his own name would have made an impression on Agui which comes out under stress. A cat and a mouse have become unlikely best friends in China.  The City Evening News said the mouse played with the cat continually, climbing onto its back and sitting on its head, while owner Chen was being interviewed. A pet cat in China adopted a rat which she nursed alongside her four kittens. Sun Shujun, of Yantai City, said the rat had been living with her cat since the kittens were born. Edith Schonberg, 67, from Rosdorf in Schleswig Holstein, Germany, mailed a birthday parcel without noticing her Felix had crawled inside for a catnap. The mistake was spotted when a postman at the central sorting office realised there was an animal inside the parcel and called police. A cat set up home in a bird's nest in Norfolk. The cat only leaves the cherry tree to ask for food at Wendy Hobbs' back door, then climbs back up the tree. A cat adopted a bird which hurt itself when it fell out of its nest in Brazil and cannot fly. The cat, called Chiquita, has reportedly raised the bird as if it was its mother in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The cat's owner, named the cat Chiquita and the bird Pitico. Mrs Souza said: "Pitico has even started to eat meat, because the two of them only eat together.  "But Chiquita uses Pitico to help her catch other birds, it is really unbelievable!" A farmhouse cat has adopted a chicken after she became the only survivor of a fox attack.  Tiny chick Gladys was brought into the house by its owners when many of its nest-mates were killed by a fox.  Snowy the cat took over the job of looking after the traumatised chicken and now the pair are inseparable. A cat has been reunited with its owner after six years. Colin the tomcat vanished from Emma Phillips' home in Barkingside, Essex, in 1999.  Colin lived as a stray until a woman handed him to pet rescue charity the PDSA. A Birmingham woman has been reunited with her missing cat - after nine years.  Gilly Delaney was distraught after hearing her beloved pet Dixie had been killed by a car in 1999. So it came as a big surprise when RSPCA officers turned up on Mrs Delaney's doorstep with Dixie 9 years later. The officers, who scanned Dixie's microchip, returned her after they found her wandering less than half-a-mile away. A woman whose cat had gone missing a few hours earlier was astonished find out that it had made an impromptu appearance on a weekly live UK political debate program. That week "Question Time" was being recorded at a community college in Newquay, close to where owner Jackie Ellery lives. She was wondering where Tango the cat had got to when he walked unnoticed into shot behind the host and his panel of MPs. "My friend phoned me to say, 'Have you seen your cat on the telly?' And there he was," said Ellery. Central Illinois mechanic Dana Underwood spent 90 minutes tearing apart the dashboard of a van belonging to an animal shelter before finding a kitten. Shelter workers tried on their own to reach the kitten for more than a day before calling on Underwood. And the good luck didn't end there for the kitten, now named Dash. Someone at the dealership adopted him on the spot.