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After pressure from PETA and our supporters, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) has announced that it will no longer use homeless cats obtained from Odessa Animal Control in deadly medical training exercises. E-mails from concerned individuals, celebrity support, and rejected newspaper ads have had an effect. Thanks to each and every one of you who took action to help homeless cats escape cruelty at Texas Tech.

Has Texas Tech abandoned the practice of shoving hard, plastic tubes down the throats of cats altogether? We're not completely sure, but documents we've obtained indicate that TTUHSC has not purchased or used cats from any source within the past year. Could it be that officials have finally wised up to recommendations from both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, which endorse the exclusive use of manikins, not live animals, for the kind of training taught at Texas Tech?

While we nail down a definitive answer from Texas Tech officials, please take a moment to speak out against cruel experiments conducted on dogs, cats, rats, rabbits, mice, and other animals obtained from animal shelters by the University of Utah. PETA's successes depend on your support and willingness to take action. Let's keep the momentum going!

Written by Karin Bennett

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"I was like, 'Um, could you make two of those?' And I'd make a cute face, and they'd roll their eyes and give me another falafel."
—Natalie Portman, on how easy Brothers co-star Tobey Maguire, who brought his own vegan chef to the set, made it for the newly vegan starlet to eat humanely.

Jake Gyllenhaal hasn't issued a statement yet, but I'm willing to bet he chowed down with his co-stars on some vegan vittles too. Could you resist food from a personal vegan chef?

Written by Logan Scherer

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After a healthy amount of prodding from PETA, Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri, has announced that it is planning to stop jamming hard plastic tubes down cats' windpipes for intubation training in its Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) course. They are making the switch to state-of-the-art manikins by the end of this month.

Back in June, PETA contacted hospital administrators and urged them to replace the cruel use of cats for intubation training. We wanted them to start using the more effective, humane humanlike simulators that are endorsed by the PALS course's sponsor organization and that are used at nearly every PALS facility in the country. Heartland resisted. But after two months, a USDA complaint from PETA, a letter, a phone call from one of the original developers of the PALS course, and thousands of e-mails from caring PETA supporters, Heartland administrators have had a change of heart.

Switching to manikins is purrfect—cats are spared, and nurses, EMTs, and other emergency caregivers get more accurate and effective training.

What's the holdup, St. Louis Children's Hospital?

Written by Alisa Mullins