After learning that his mother’s home in a Hammonds Plains, NS, subdivision was being evacuated on Monday due to the wildfire raging nearby, Darian Savoie’s top priority was making sure her two cats got out OK. His mother is out of town for a couple of weeks, so he sent a family friend who lives in the area to retrieve the cats, Callie and Maya. Callie the calico made it back home after being reunited with Darian Savoie. (Submitted by Darian Savoie) The family friend was able to find Maya but Callie was hiding and had to be left behind…

Fifty years ago, my first article arguing that it is wrong to treat animals as we did appeared in the New York Review of Books. Two years later my book “Animal Liberation” was published, after which it is credited with triggering the modern animal rights movement. Similar ethical perspectives are now supported by many philosophers. But the factual descriptions in that book of what we do to animals have long ceased to capture current conditions accurately. In updating the book, I could not avoid the question: Have we made progress in our attitudes toward animals and our treatment of them…

Sunshine, and plenty of it, is in BC’s forecast for the next week. And few things beat traveling the province during warm weather. However, if you have pets, having them inside your vehicle is the safest place for them. That’s according to the BC SPCA and the BC Highway Patrol, who say seeing dogs in the back of pickup trucks is thankfully becoming a thing of the past but it’s still concerning. 5:28 Spring safety guide for traveling with your pets “It’s not a common call now, but they do happen,” Cpl. Mike Moore of the BCHP said of dogs…