The following are some of the better Christmas freebies, such as printable graphics, craft ideas, activities, and more, including a series of projects for cat lovers.
Christmas-Projects.com offers a broad array of Christmas freebies, including Christmas writing paper, gift tags, Christmas cards, Christmas verses, winter printables for kids (such as puzzles, games, and mazes), gift box patterns, colouring books, paper doll crafts, Christmas backgrounds, 3D Santa house kits, stained glass ornament patterns, reindeer masks, clip art, items for scrapbooking, Christmas banners, activity books, recipe cards, computer crafts, paper wreaths, instructions for making artificial snow, party invitations, Christmas dinner menu templates, and more. The site also has links to crafts for kids; adult crochet, knitting, and cross-stitch projects; fabric crafts; Christmas decorating and gift-wrapping ideas; wood crafts; tree ornaments; Christmas carols; scrapbook layouts; and more.
Christmas Craft Ideas
More Christmas craft ideas can be found at Crafts.Kaboose.com, including a wide variety of 3-dimensional Christmas cards, a candy sleigh, holiday pillowcases, pet stockings, theme wreaths, and many more.
Make Your Own Gift Bags, Boxes, and Christmas Cards
CraftandFabricLinks.com offers instructions for a number of Christmas crafts, including easy gift bags and boxes, painted glass candy jars, and gift tags, as well as free Christmas graphics for use in arts and crafts projects.
Christmas Crafts for Cat Lovers
For cat lovers, here are links to a few feline-related projects:
Here are some relatively recent statistics on worldwide domestic cat populations:
Number of cats in the world: 200 million
Number of cats in the USA: 75 million
Number of cats in China: 46.8 million
Number of cats in Russia: 12.5 million
Number of cats in France: 8.7 million
Number of cats in Britain: 7.5 million
Number of cats in Italy: 7 million
Number of cats in Germany: 6.5 million
Number of cats in Poland: 5.4 million
Number of cats in Canada: 4.5 million
Number of cats in India: 3.9 million
Number of cats in Spain: 2.8 million
Number of cats in the Netherlands: 2.3 million
Ratios of Cats to People
Here are some cat-to-human ratios for a number of locations:
World – 1:34
Austria – 1:1
Europe, USA – 1:4
Canada, the Netherlands 1:7
Britain – 1:10
China – 1:28
India and Taiwan – 1:500
These statistics were obtained and/or extrapolated from Cats:500 Questions Answered by Dr. David Sands, various CIA publications containing population figures, and Statistics Canada.
The Caring Consumer online guide provides lists of companies that test on animals and those that don’t, as well a search function to look up individual companies.
Companies included on the cruelty list conduct unnecessary tests on animals for household products, cosmetics and other personal care products. Given the large number of companies producing these products without cruelty, it is obvious that there is absolutely no need to test them on animals.
The lists are updated weekly to ensure that companies that have ceased animal testing are moved to the cruelty-free list, whereas cruelty-free companies that have been purchased by companies that engage in animal testing get moved to the cruelty list.
While many people feel that other options should be explored for the testing of medical/pharmaceutical products, companies are still required by law to test these products on animals. Companies that test on animals only when required by law are not included on the list.
To get the laws changed regarding mandatory use of animals for pharmaceutical and other chemical testing, the regulatory agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration) must be encouraged to allow other types of testing that provide equally valid results. PETA is working to fund the development of more cruelty-free testing options for such products.
Many cruelty-free alternatives have been developed, including vegetable-based artificial skin, animal and human cell cultures grown in laboratories, living bacterial cultures, and predictive mathematical models and computer simulations.
Cruelty toward animals is a problem with wider implications. Abuse of animals is associated with cruelty toward humans. Also, the failure to aggressively tackle the problem of animal testing has created a situation in which Class B (random source) animal dealers steal pets from people’s backyards and sell them for research and other purposes.
There are also a number of cat breeds not recognized by the CFA, including:
Aegean Cat
American Ringtail
Asian Semi-Longhair/Tiffanie
Australian Mist (formerly Spotted Mist)
Brazilian Shorthair/Pelo Curto Brasileiro
British Semi-Longhair
Burmilla (cross between Chinchilla Persian and Burmese)
California Spangled Cat
Chantilly/Tiffany Cat
Dragon Li
European Shorthair
German Rex
Munchkin (a mutation that causes short legs)
Nebelung
Ojos Azules
Peterbald
Pixie-Bob
Russian White, Black, and Tabby
Snowhoe (cross-breed of Siamese and American Shorthair)
Sokoke
Ukrainian Levkoy
These lists don’t include hybrid cats that resulted from cross-breeding between domestic and wild cats, such as the Bengal, Chausie, Cheetoh, Layanese, and others.
