Days before we won ourselves a shiny new President, my best friend died of liver cancer. Simone was my feline compadre for the past eight years. Of all my pets, we were the most alike - loving but independent, adventurous but domesticated, vain but sloppy. Our favorite hobbies?

Every year, approximately 20,000 elephants in Africa and Asia are shamefully slaughtered for their ivory tusks but Monday brought great news on this issue: eBay announced it will soon halt the sale of ALL ivory on their websites after a three-month, 11-country investigation by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) called out the site for listing thousands of animal products taken from endangered species.

In a valiant effort to explore both sides of the controversial Proposition 2 in California, Oprah's show yesterday was entitled: "How We Treat the Animals We Eat." With the globe-trotting Lisa Ling by her side, Oprah spoke to folks from the media, the Humane Society of America (sponsors of Prop. 2), industry organizations and chicken/veal/pig farmers - both factory and organic. Valid points were made on both sides of the issue - it was not as black/white as I had imagined.

Cupcakes + a good cause = Fun + yum.

Call it luck, call it a curse, but whatever humans are up to in this world, you can bet we'll drag the animal kingdom along with us. (For example, 57 percent of American pets are overweight or obese.) When the U.S. government announced earlier this month that the U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years (still behind 30 other countries), it was yet another mirror to the lives of our animal friends. The Golden Years have arrived at America's zoos which means unchartered waters for zookeepers.

It might be said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who put antlers on their tiny dog at holiday time, and those who don't.

I tried, oh how I tried, but no specific topic in pet news particularly grabbed me this week. Everything I considered seemed oh-so-same-old-same-old, and that just wouldn't do. The good thing is that while doing some research and grasping for a story that would rock your pet-related world, there are a number of news sources to turn to in the pet blogosphere. So it occurred to me that just this once, those sources - and the blogs I find there - could be the story themselves.

When I was a kid I begged constantly for a dog. Both of my parents worked, and they told me it wasn't possible. "We don't have the time or the energy to give an animal. It wouldn't be fair to it," my mother would say, smartly ignoring my whining and claims that I was the most underprivileged, dogless child in all the land.