A white tigeress named named Tigrulya gave birth to four tiger cubs in a Yalta zoo on the seventh of May. The newborns are in good health and are being taken care of by staff at the Skazka Zoo in southern Ukraine.

Tigress Tigrulya showing off one of her cubs

The name of the mother tiger, Tigrulya, was chosen to honour the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. A contest is now being held to name the four newborn cubs.

Four beautiful cubs, snug in a wooden basket

It is very rare that four white tigers are born in a single litter and what is more one of the cubs is an albino with no striped markings on his body at all.

Previously (on the 4th August 2010) a litter of rare white tiger cubs were born at a zoo in northern Germany. These events are extremely important as fewer than 250 white tigers exist worldwide, most of them in captivity. It is said that less than one hundred white tigers exist in the wild.

Two beautiful Cheetahs held in captivity at the Kragga Kamma Game Park in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, struck last weekend, and the trip of a lifetime to celebrate a Scottish woman's 60th birthday, turned into a battle of life and death.

The supposedly tame cheetahs attacked Violet D'Mello whilst her husband Archie looked on and, erm, took photos.

Archie remarked afterwards "They seemed to be pretty docile. They said they were hand reared from cubs and were extremely tame and you could stroke them ... and not only that, lay on them and they'll do nothing to you".

The couple had just taken photos with the animals and were still in the petting area when one of the cats grabbed an 8 year old girl by the leg. Violet tried to stop the attack and allowed the girl to run for safety, but both cheetahs then turned on her in a savage attack that lasted for more than three minutes.

Husband Archie kept taking pictures, documenting the horrific scene as the animals bit and scratched his wife's head, legs and stomach.

Violet recounted the story to the Port Elizabeth Herald reporter.

"... my instinct took over while a guide tried to pull the cats off of me. Something inside me just said, Don't move,..don't move at all. Don't react, just play dead"

The 60-year-old lost a lot of blood during the attack and has a lot of stitches on both her thighs and her scalp, her husband said.

Park manager Mike Cantor told the newspaper, "the park had never had any problems with the previously beloved cheetahs". It's not something we've ever really experienced. It's obviously very unfortunate, and we're looking into what may have startled or riled up the cheetahs".

The petting facility is now closed to the public while the park investigates the attack.

Thats cats for you, so wild and unpredictable (they're born hunters after all) and that's why we love em! Glad to hear no one was seriously hurt though, eh Norm. [Ed]

Back Cat awareness day is a day that encourages people to adopt unwanted black cats. It is now to become an annual event, following the massive support it has attracted this year.

Thousands of people backed the UKs first ever Black Cat Awareness Day on 27 October, which drew attention to the hundreds of homeless black cats in Cats Protection’s care. It seems black cats are the cats which are least likely to be adopted by the general public here in th U.K. This has led the charity to introduce it as an annual event in the hope it will continue to raise awareness of unwanted black cats into the future.

A young black stray, spends another evening on the street

Tom Briggs, of Cats Protection’s Publications and Digital Team, said: "Black Cat Awareness Day clearly caught the imagination of the cat-loving public and I’d like to thank everyone for helping us spread the word. We were so overwhelmed with the amount of people who tweeted, posted, tagged, befriended and uploaded photos in support of the day that we would be mad not to make this an annual event!"

The campaign’s Twitter hashtag, #CPBlackCats, was in the top ten trends on Twitter and at one point it was the third most-talked about subject among UK users, temporarily beating Justin Bieber!

Around 26,000 active users visited Cats Protection’s Facebook page, which is twice its daily average, and thousands of black cat photos were uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.

A YouTube video showing campaign mascot Billy Noir-Mates attracted 5,800 views in the lead up to the day and around 1,600 people visited Billy’s Facebook page on the day itself to make friends with him. The campaign also attracted support from celebrity cat-lovers including Twiggy Lawson, Samantha Fox and creator of Simon’s Cat, Simon Tofield.

Black Cat Awareness Day was created because Cats Protection is currently looking after 1,300 unwanted black cats, with each one waiting a week longer than average to find a home. Next year’s Black Cat Awareness Day will take place on Saturday 27 October 2012.

To adopt a black cat, please log on to www.cats.org.uk/black-cats or call the charity’s helpline on 03000 121212.