Live Smart Daily | A Smart Take on Daily Life

The day Obama stated his interest in adopting a dog from the shelter was a slightly brighter one for the approximately 7 million adoptable dogs & cats killed each year in this country. The staggering reality is that for each one sold at a pet store or by a breeder, another perfectly worthy one is killed.  Our nations shelters are filled to capacity with all kinds of amazing adoptable animals including, as Obama put it, “Mutts like me.” On the heels of Obama’s comment, I got a call from Pia Salk, an animal advocate who works with North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website, Adopt-a-Pet.com. Pia simply asked if I might be willing to collaborate on a way to have my art help these animals.
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If you’re not sure what that means, don’t worry, neither did we. And I think it’s safe to assume that Banksy invented it! And that the Banksy buzz is spreading fast. At the exhibit, you can find such run of the mill things as chicken nuggets eating BBQ sauce, a rabbit putting lipstick on, swimming breaded fish, and hot dogs moving under heat lamps. It’s the first time Banksy has used animatronics. One thing that might surprise you is that you can find a live leopard in the store front window. Starting the moment you read this, until October 31st (Halloween), Banksy’s pet store is officially open each and every daily from 10am until midnight. One piece of advice – Bring a video camera as still images don’t do the place justice!

The SCRATCH LOUNGE will last far longer than other scratchers because of the reversible super-dense honeycomb construction of the pads. The design is so unique, it was issued a U.S. utility patent. SCRATCH LOUNGE even prevents cats from damaging furniture. They enjoy the SCRATCH LOUNGE one hundred times longer than any conventional one-sided scratcher. Cats spend more than half of their lives lounging, and would prefer not to do so on an old-fashioned scratcher. A portion of profits go to animal rescue, including free spay and neuter clinics.

Animals aren’t known for their subtlety.  When one of  mine wants to go outside, the process begins with prancing and running back and forth to the door, which quickly escalates to muttering, growling, slobbering, whining, followed by full scale barking and jumping. When none of that works, I get the “freeze”, the pose that says, “I’m gonna’ do it right here, right now”. So we have a system, and I get their point. But for those of you with more “reserved” animals (go ahead, you can say “smarter”, “better trained”), there’s the Smart Pet Doorbell.