Some news of a Florida cat who keeps bringing his special human cool gifts:A scientist's cat shot to fame last year for his role in the discovery of the United States' first-known jeilongvirus.

[riley@toot.cat]

Some news of a Florida cat who keeps bringing his special human cool gifts:

A scientist's cat shot to fame last year for his role in the discovery of the United States' first-known jeilongvirus. Now, the feline has replicated his success by fetching yet another animal containing a never-before-seen bug.

The newfound virus was found in a dead Everglades short-tailed shrew (Blarina peninsulae), which Pepper the cat brought home following a successful hunting trip near his home in Gainesville, Florida. John Lednicky, Pepper's owner and a virologist at the University of Florida, retrieved his pet's catch and took it to the lab for testing.

The results revealed that the shrew carried a never-before-seen strain of Orthoreovirus — a poorly understood viral genus that's known to infect birds and various mammals, including humans, white-tailed deer and bats. Lednicky and his colleagues published their findings June 10 in the journal Microbiology Resource Announcements.

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