13 Bizarre Will Stipulations

Came across a funny (but serious) article over at Mental Floss by Ethan Trex on 13 Bizarre Will Stipulations. Worth the read so you can shake your head in disbelief ... but don't get any ideas!

Such as: T.M. Zink, an Iowa lawyer who died in 1930, must have had some pretty bad experiences with women. When he died he left his daughter a measly five bucks, and his wife got nothing. He stipulated that the rest of his $100,000 estate be put in a trust for 75 years, then used to create the Zink Womanless Library. The library would have no feminine decorations, no books or magazine articles by female authors, and was required to have “No Women Admitted” carved into the stone over the entrance.

or, Heinrich Heine. The German poet left his entire fortune to his wife, but with one catch: she had to remarry “because then there will be at least one man to regret my death.”

and my favorite (kind of gross) S. Sanborn, a 19th-century New England hatter, left a rather macabre bequest to a friend—a pair of drums made from Sanborn’s skin. The friend received further instructions to go to Bunker Hill each June 17th and play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the drums.

Ashes to Portraits ... Not the Mona Lisa .. but still Mom : )

Very interesting concept. Check out Ashes to Portraits. Using some of your loved one's cremated ashes combined with a special mixture involving oil paint, a professional artist will create a one-of-a-kind portrait that will be a beautiful remembrance that willl also be a part of them.

They do people and pets.

Howl about this?

What's that? A collection of 35 pups howling along with the Law & Order theme music? Detective, we have another dead body on our hands. It looks like his heart just gave out.

Coffin Quilts ... Pretty Unique

This is pretty unique. Check out Mary Kenyon's Tattoo & Coffin Quilts! Need a unique gift? Or just looking for something different? Then you want to look at her quilts. They specialize in Custom Quilts.

Know someone graduating from Mortuary School ... this is the gift!

P.S. These quilts are for the living : )

Cat-astropic! Woman Creates and Sells Goth Kittens

Do you believe this? Incredible.

This is absolutely pitiful. Where people get their ideas, I'll never know. But, it does make me mad to even look at this. The stupid little bars look way to heavy fort his kitten's ears.

You know how some people like to dress their pets up like children in cute little sweaters and tshirts; or put antlers on them and pretend they're reindeer during the holidays?

Well, Holly Crawford of Wilkes-Barre, PA found a stray cat last year and decided it would be cool to pierce its ears with barbells; and pierce its neck with a bar. Enter the "Goth Kitten." Then she got the bright idea to sell her animals online for hundreds of dollars a pop. The kittens came equipped with such fabulous features as pierced ears and submission rings implanted into the napes of their necks.

PETA caught wind of her advertisements and sent word to Luzerne County animal rescue people. Her home was subsequently raided and she was charged with animal cruelty. PETA, calls Crawford's methods "barbaric." But Crawford says she took the same precautions with piercing that she would with a human. And since she's a dog groomer by trade, she had no intention of ever hurting the animals.

Some cats were pierced on the backs of their necks; which for cats, the nape of the neck is an especially sensitive area the mother cat will take in her teeth to get her kitten to submit to her -- not an area you'd want to puncture with a 14-gauge bar. I guess by "heal properly", she means she watched the piercing site for pus; because the emotional scars on these animals, which a vet says were "maimed and disfigured", will more than likely never go away.

Even if Crawford didn't intend to hurt the animals, she obviously didn't consider their well-being before going through with these procedures, or know much about a cat's nerves. Any piercer will tell you that correct placement of piercings in humans is essential -- same would go for any animal. And it's highly unlikely these kittens were begging for the needle, or even sat quietly while Crawford was driving a bar through their ears.

She's pleaded innocent and is expected discover her fate this week.

Source: True Crime Report; Care2

When Oscar Comes Calling, Shut the Door Quick!

For the last five years, Oscar the cat has been sniffing out death. Literally.

Dr. David Dosa, who published the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively. Dosa said he hopes his newly released book, "Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat " will put the cat in a more favorable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill.

"After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members," said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University. "I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar's peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and caregivers who have been with him at the end of a life."

Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels.

Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, which cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses.

When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed that he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die.

So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

The Telegraph reports:

The tortoiseshell and white cat spends its days pacing from room to room, rarely spending any time with patients except those with just hours to live. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, Oscar will scratch on the door trying to get in.

When nurses once placed the cat on the bed of a patient they thought close to death, Oscar “charged out” and went to sit beside someone in another room. The cat’s judgment was better than that of the nurses: the second patient died that evening, while the first lived for two more days.

When death is near, Oscar nearly always appears at the last hour or so. Yet he shows no special interest in patients who are simply in poor shape, or even patients who may be dying but who still have a few days. A hop onto the bed, a fastidious lick of the paws, then a snuggle beside a nursing home patient with little time left. Oscar's purr, when keeping close company with the dying, is so intense it is almost a low rumble.

Dosa suggests Oscar’s unique ability could stem from an ability to detect ketones–distinctly odored biochemicals given off by dying cells. This isn’t as crazy as it sounds; after all, some dogs have been trained to sniff out cancer.

Dosa said his main interest was not to delve further into Oscar's abilities but to use Oscar as a vehicle to tell about terminal illness, which is his main area of work. where people go to die."

"The first time I met Oscar he bit me. We have warmed over the years. We have moved into a better place," said Dosa.

"I don't think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don't, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_books_cat ; http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/oscar-cat-with-the-purr-of-death/2007/07/26/1185339167772.html