1. Having worked in TV studios I can imagine that a cat would find it very pleasant under the warm lights and if it could find a nice soft prop to curl up on, even better!

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2. There was a cat in Milwaukee on a weather show, before Spunky came along, but he was a puppet, so it wasn’t a real cat. At least with Spunky they didn’t actually put clothes on him. They used a picture of Spunky. Weather people need gimmicks like that to distract from the fact they are often wrong on their forecasts.

   In Van Dyne, where Jeff worked at a feed mill before we were married, the local radio station used cows to predict the weather. There is an old wives’ tale that if all the cows are standing up in a field it will be sunny, if all the cows are lying down it will rain. Chances of rain or sun can be calculated based on percentages of cows standing and cows lying down. The radio DJ would look out the window at cows in a nearby farmer’s field and predict the weather based on the cows behavior. He was right the exact same amount of the time as the conventional weather people– about 70% of the time, but not on exactly the same days. I have personally found the cow method of predicting rain to be pretty accurate, but it is very local. They are obviously only interested in the weather in their particular cow pasture. Van Dyne is a very small town, so I don’t think that mattered.

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3. I was trying to find a link to a news story about a cat that does the weather in some rural area of the US. They show the weather graphics with the cat, instead of any human, sitting with a green screen behind him. I’ll have to keep looking, but I found this one about Bob the weather cat. His owner dresses him up and they show the pix during the weather. I know I’m not real popular around here because of my views on cute stuff, but I would watch this. Beats the heck out of what we have now:

   http://web.archive.org/web/20140101232734/http://www.platypuscomix.net:80/fpo/history/weathercat.html

   BTW: I watch BBC World news more often than I do any of our own National News sources. What’s the point. They are all slanted one way or the other and local news is so full of fluff and frill that it makes me queasy.

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   • I like the idea of introducing a cat into a weather program. Makes it more cosy and friendly. There is a loose connection between cats and weather. Cats can predict earthquakes it is said.

     This is a first hand experience of a cat predicting an earthquake:

     https://pictures-of-cats.org/my-cat-sensed-forthcoming-illinois-earthquake.html

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4. There was a weatherman in Milwaukee who brought his dog to work with him every day. They made the dog part of the morning news show, which lasts three hours. Some weather segments would feature Spunky out on the weather deck with his human Scott, who was doing the weather. Often Spunky wasn’t all that Spunky– they would show him sleeping in his little dog bed in an out of the way place on the set. Later they added a feature called “What’s Spunky Sporting?” They would show a cartoon graphic of Spunky dressed appropriately for the day’s weather. If it was cold Spunky would have on a coat or he might have his umbrella with him. It was for kids, but I always got a kick out of both the live Spunky segments and Spunky’s “wardrobe.” Scott and Spunky would make public appearances now and then and I got to meet Spunky a couple of times. And Scott the weatherman. Scott could never have drawn the crowds or following he did without Spunky. You could buy Spunky T-shirts that said something like “My mom dresses me funny because of Spunky the Weather Dog.” Only in Milwaukee! Spunky died at the ripe old age of 15, I think, quite a few years ago now. He is missed.

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