SoHo's full of all kinds of interesting creatures going shopping on a Saturday afternoon: celebrities, locals, foreign tourists. Competition for their patronage is stiff. But now, John Varvatos can lay claim to the awesome, hot new clientele in town: raccoons!

Molly, the heroic cow who escaped a Queens slaughterhouse yesterday, is now living with hippies who run a farm upstate where she can munch on "organic hay," reports City Room.

Breaking police radio news: "Queens. Loose cow. 103 Precinct. 109 Avenue. E.S.U. reporting a loose cow at the location." Call the horse cops!

The Way We Live Now: Fleeing the police, on foot. Who can afford cars? Let them all go bankrupt. All we need for our ATM robberies are a crowbar and a laid-off blesbok, for distraction.

Twitter has already spawned a deal for an appropriately meta book, so you knew that Tumblr couldn't be far behind. Tumblr's is all about animals, because people don't read "words" any more.

The Obamas picked a dog! And they had Robert Gibbs deliver a press release to the assembled White House press corps announcing that... no, wait, the First Lady just talked to People.

Sandra Herold, owner of Travis the chimp (Travis ripped a woman's face off after writing the stimulus bill), went on The Today Show because it seemed like a great idea in her current mental state.

Retarded but well-meaning lettuce group PETA doesn't even make ads to actually run on TV; they make ads to be rejected by TV networks, which gets them lots of sweet free publicity, like this.

The internet took over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, and her Youtube account, and the video evidence (cats! everywhere!) will shock you.

Some people really hate PETA: for fighting monkey ads, using dead people for PR, and, sometimes, being as dumb as their animal friends. We want to like them! For example, they're nice to fish:

Are you one of those people who eats squirrel not because of poverty or comical sitcom hillbillyism, but for the delicious taste? England has a product for you!

We have good news and bad news from the Obama transition team. The cutest Clintonite of all is on board, but perhaps not for long.

First, it was packs of wild dogs roaming Moscow, then the Shiba puppycam, and now... wild boars have invaded Berlin, reports the WSJ. They're causing problems... unless they're wild-boar babies, in which case they're adorable!

President-elect Barack Obama famously promised his daughters—and the nation!—a puppy, once the election was over. Well, Mr. President-elect, the election is over. Where is the puppy?

So the other day, Alaska Senator Sarah Palin staged her traditional "pardoning a turkey" photo-op standing directly in front of a man engaged in slaughtering turkeys, because, hey, a team of mavericks won't always agree on where to hold the easiest photo-op of any politician's career. Maybe she can stage the ribbon-cutting of an orphanage at an abortion clinic next time? (Haha as if Alaska had any of those.) Then, because life isn't bizarre enough these days, shouty MSNBC political pundit Keith Olbermann discussed the issue with daytime TV's soft-spoken criminal mastermind Martha Stewart. Martha was not happy. "That was an especially gruesome scene back there," she says. Why is Keith Olbermann in Martha Stewart's cozy stage kitchen wearing a comfortable black sweater, maybe pretending to cook something? We don't know! Though Inside Edition, America's Best Peabody-Award-Winning(?) Syndicated News-Resembling Program, tracked down the guy who actually slaughtered the turkeys, back there behind Sarah Palin, for a heartwarming Thanksgiving tale of redemption and Man's Dominion of the Earth.

President-elect Barack Obama's first press conference happened the day the nation shed yet more jobs, it began a half-hour late, and the subject was mostly the miserable economy. Obama looked tired, and lapsed occasionally back into campaign boilerplate when discussing the pressing issues he'll have to address the second he's sworn in. As he reminded us, again and again, "there's only one President at a time." But with one question from Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet, Obama immediately won over the audience, and America. He's getting his little girls a puppy! "With respect to the dog," President-elect Obama said, "this is a major issue." Slipping into deadpan mock seriousness, Obama discussed the crux of the problem—the dog should be a hypoallergenic breed, but they wanted to rescue a shelter dog. "Obviously," Obama said, "a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me." Even Fox is being nice to our new President now.

New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser is that degraded newspaper's usual voice of outrage, which is why she usually looks like this. But from now on we will use this photo of Peyser, in cat ears, cuddling with little "Barack Obama" at the CFA-Iams Cat Show this week. How could this be the same woman who wrote FELONIOUS BALL OF FUR DESERVED EVERY BLOW just last month? [MSG.com, Photo: Chad Batka]

"The New York Times has an article about me calling columnist Heather Mallick a pig," blogs Greta van Susteren via Foxnews.com. "Yes, I called a columnist—in a calm, cool voice—a pig for saying that the nominee for Vice President looks like a porn star." Well, Greta: you can be "happier than a pig in shit" or you can be a "thoughtless little pig," like Alec Baldwin called his daughter via voicemail. You can even be a capitalist pig. We've discussed the lexicon of contemporary vulgarities before, but never have we explored the history of farmyard abuse in politics. Like manure, it is a very rich and fertile ground.There have been entire dissertations written about the "gendered" nature of insults, especially animal epithets. (One paper discusses how Camilla Parker-Bowles was often compared to a cow in the British media, even a "puppy.") Previously, we thought the "pig" insult was aimed at men. But recently we've learned it can be used towards women, too! Like Obama's alleged "lipstick on a pig" gaffe that wasn't aimed at Sarah Palin, Alec Baldwin's 11-year-old, and Greta's pundit-on-columnist insult action. "Pig" as an insult has both religious and farmyard roots. (Some) Jews and Muslims avoid pork because Leviticus 11:17 called it an "unclean" animal. Pigs are scavengers in the wild—like dogs—and they'll eat anything, even cannibalize or eat human corpses. See, they have no morals! (Because they're animals.) So if you're a pig, you're not only a.) dirty, but b.) lazy, and c.) immoral. In a country rooted in hard-working Puritanism, this is a very bad combination. However, as they're factory-farmed today, pigs are not dirty at all. Today's domesticated pig is fed mainly a diet of grain as they're fattened up for the kill, preparing them for the day in which they will be delivered to Americans' plates—and TV sets, and enlightened political debate. Get ready, little guys. You're next.

This video basically sums up everything you missed in St. Paul this week. Liz Glover, DC-based videographer to the internet stars, sneaks into the CNN Grill while Sarah Palin's rant against community organizing distracts everyone. She tries to interview John Oliver but apparently he needs "approval" from "Comedy Central" or something. Then she meets a dog. The dog's name is "Sarah" and it is "panting" over all the "red meat" while literally attacking the media. McCain/Dog '08!!! [Wonkette]

Barack Obama promised his adorable daughters that he would get them a puppy if he won the presidency (they would surely mention this fact more often if they really wanted to win). The American Kennel Club had a poll to decide what sort of dog Obama should get. (Of course, Obama should rescue a dog from a shelter and not select an expensive purebred, but whatevs.) The winner? A poodle. A little fucking girly elitist poodle! Who's responsible for this? The fatcats at the AKC won't say!