4C
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
PARTING SHOT FROM JOSHUA BESSEX
A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers
Cars drive along the Astoria Bridge into a fog bank on the Washington state side of the bridge in April.
ODDITY
PURRRRR-FORMANCE ART
starting April 30 and running
for 36 hours, straight through
to May 1. More than 700
dogs, cats, puppies and kit-
tens will be available.
Carillo, loaded up on
allergy meds, is a Kitten
Bowl veteran. We caught
up with her when there was
a slight, er, paws in the
competition.
“Unlike a lot of other pro-
fessional athletes, they kind
of take their sweet time.
All of a sudden in the mid-
dle of a big event there’s a
cat nap,” she smiled. “They
don’t know the rules. They
don’t care. They kind of just
freestyle it at an awful lot of
these events.”
Carillo, too, has dogs,
including Petey Boy, a res-
cue. Despite her allergy, she
once owned an outdoor cat in
Florida and loves them just as
much.
“And they’re actually ter-
ri¿c athletes. Their balance,
their movement, the way they
stalk,” she said.
Paw-thletes
compete in
Hallmark’s
Kitten Summer
Games
By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press
N
EW YORK — What
do the four-legged
footballers of the
Hallmark Channel’s Kitten
Bowl do in the offseason?
They go for the gold in their
own Summer Games, includ-
ing a de-cat-hlon and free-
style wrestling.
And, bonus, the 90 or so
furry Olympians were up for
adoption by the rescue group
North Shore Animal League
America, organizers said this
week at the taping of the TV
special to air August, in time
for the human games in Rio
de Janeiro.
The cuteness quotient was
off the leash as the tiny com-
petitors found their footing on
bite-size playing ¿elds, frol-
icking on scratchable rings at
the gymnastics “venue” and
jumping little hurdles decked
out with delectable feathers
intended to keep competitors
on the move over at track and
¿eld.
Escapees were corralled
by spotters, who ringed the
sets as huge cameras shot the
action.
‘Underdogs’
Beth Stern, North Shore’s
ambassador and wife of shock
jock Howard Stern, was on
hand. She’s a self-proclaimed
crazy cat lady, ¿lling her ,ns-
tagram with the couple’s
Purrrrr-formance
JJ Ignotz/Hallmark Channel via AP
A cat takes part in the long jump event in Hallmark Olympic Stadium this week during the taping of the Hallmark Chan-
nel’s Kitten Summer Games in New York. What do the four-legged footballers of the Hallmark Channel’s Kitten Bowl do
in the offseason? They go for the gold in their own Summer Games, including a de-cat-hlon and freestyle wrestling.
many fosters and six perma-
nent pet cats. She keeps an
eye out for special needs cats,
sheltering two that are blind,
with one that has only three
legs due to arrive soon.
“Those are the under-
dogs,” Stern said. “Those are
the ones that sadly wind up in
shelters for way too long.”
Stern is a magician in
¿nding homes for her fosters,
totaling more than 200 in the
last couple of years.
“We always have a house
full of fosters,” she said from
Tuesday’s sidelines. “But we
are dog people, too. We both
love all animals.”
Hallmark decided to stage
a kitten Olympics special on
the success of its three Super
Bowl-timed Kitten Bowls.
Mary Carillo, an NBC sports
reporter who will be in Rio,
is co-host of the kitty games
despite her allergy to cats.
She was joined by David
Frei, who retired this year
as the longtime host of the
Westminster Kennel Club
show telecast.
And yes, he was seen frat-
ernizing with scandal! a kit-
ten or two.
“, do love cats, but we
have two dogs,” Frei said.
‘Kitten season’
The kitten games, includ-
ing some full-grown cat
“judges” also up for adop-
tion, come during “kitten
season,” the time of year that
homeless female felines give
birth at rapid rates.
“,t’s when the tem-
peratures
are
warmer.
That enhances the mother
cat’s heat cycles,” Stern
explained. “That results in
hundreds upon hundreds of
cats and kittens in so many
shelters right now and they
become overcrowded. Peo-
ple need to learn to spay and
neuter. ,f they see strays in
their yard trap, neuter and
return. Let’s try to solve this
problem.”
,n addition to promoting
adoption through the Kit-
ten Games, North Shore will
hold an adoption marathon
Rio will be her 13th
straight turn as an Olympics
reporter, analyst and com-
mentator. She has already
made a couple of trips to
shoot feature stories. But on
this day, it was all about the
cats.
Was she worried about
purrrrr-formance enhancing
drugs among the furry, Àeet-
footed hopefuls? A couple
of the competitors were bru-
tishly proportioned.
“, tell you what, they’re
not afraid to dip into the cat-
nip? ,’ve noticed that myself,”
Carillo joked. “You’ve gotta
keep an eye on them. They’re
animals, and they’re blood-
thirsty competitors.”
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