People who want to advertise missing or found cats and dogs can use the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service new Animal Care site on the World Wide Web.
It wasn't a congressional mandate, but rather a public service idea from the agency's home page designer, veterinarian Jerry DePoyster."People have not really caught on to using the Web for this yet," DePoyster said. "That's one of the ideas behind doing this, to sort of get people keyed into using the Web and also keyed into keeping a picture of the animal."
The page can display pictures scanned from ordinary photographs.
The site will also help research institutions make sure they do not receive lost or stolen animals, he said.
The Animal Care site is at: (http://www.aphis.usda.gov:80/reac)