You've probably heard of Oscar the cat by now

but if not...

There's the original essay that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (It requires a .pdf reader such as Adobe Acrobat Reader.)

Here's one of the news stories about Oscar.

In the same issue of NEJM, by the way, there was an interesting article on 'The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years'. Looking at relationships between spouses, families, and friends, the researches discovered that ties to an obese person increased chances of becoming obese as well. Here are some facts to the study:

• A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese.
  
• Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling became obese, the chance that the other would become obese increased by 40%.
  
• If one spouse became obese, the likelihood that the other spouse would become obese increased by 37%.
  
• Persons of the same sex had relatively greater influence on each other than those of the opposite sex--most particularly for males. A man had a 100% increase in the chance of becoming obese if his male friend became obese. It wasn't as significant among women.