The San Francisco Zoo announced today that Leanne, the 230-pound Sumatran tiger, is now caring for three newborn cubs. The SF Zoo, which came under scrutiny after last year's tiger-related mauling death of 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr., says that this is the first birth of Sumatran tiger for the zoo since 1956. It turns out Leanne had three of the cubs over a week ago, but kept them accidentally hidden from view of zoo......

What? Come on, cats are %100 swell. (Crazy cat lady syndrome be damned!) In fact, felines kicking it in windowsills should have its own site as far as we're concerned. Very SF. This image was taken in Nob Hill. And the added touches of graffiti and cheap Levelor horizontal blinds (in Nob Hill!) make it that more melancholic. Image credit: SFist's Leanne Maxwell......

The sexy cats over at ValleyWag have the fresh MySpace office shots that you want. Or not. Formerly the home of LookSmart, the new space will be able to call other fresh, hip, cutting edge, perpetually hungover, youth-oriented spots like Current TV, SF Weekly, Wired, Chronicle Books, Sammy Hagar's place to do body shots, that abnormally chic pet store, Happy Donut, Nova, and even the flophouse that also known as SFist as their neighbors.......

-- Red Meat: God bless the Rickshaw Stop. And if (s)he existed, he totally would. Why? For many reasons. Take, for example, the fact that they often have extraordinary talent gracing the stage on Monday nights. (Mondays are, after all, the new Fridays.) Red Meat blends honky-tonk, bluegrass, country, and western swing with hints of gospel harmony. Mmm. Eilen Jewell (read more about her here), Axton Kincaid, and DJ Lenny & Squiggy (hee) also......

So are we! Since this is the perfect time of the year to make a donation, we thought we'd help out those animal lovers among us by providing a list of local animal-related charities and nonprofits that can use a little (or alotta) support. PAWS (Pets are Wonderful Support) - Donate or volunteer for this fabulous organization which helps low-income persons with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses keep and take care of their companion animals. Rocket......

-- Cabaret for Humanity: Cabaret isn't just about getting drunk while telling self-centered stories about your life. Sometimes they give back. One of the city's best venues is getting all benefitt-y on our asses. This evening (and tomorrow night) they host an all-star lineup of local talent including, Tony Koester Kim Kuzma, Irene Soderberg, Veronica Klaus, Paul Elia, Basic Black & the Rob Evans Quartet, Joe Collins, Meg Mackay, Ethyl Merman, Mark Miller, Mercedez......

We got word today from an anonymous source that two residents of Bernal Heights -- including a former President of Golden Gate Audubon Society -- spotted a burrowing owl a block from their house on the southeastern side of the hill. The (sub?)species was confirmed by another Audubon-er. So, why does this matter? Because at the moment there is construction going on in the same area (i.e., landscaping improvements such as steps, etcetera) where......

-- Bay Area firefighters wait and wait and wait for SoCal assignments. [SFGate] -- Curbed SF: traumatizing one daughter at a time. Beasts! [Curbed SF] -- Bay Area stock soar today. [Examiner] -- But What Would Harvey Do? [SFBG] -- What not to wear...on Halloween. [SF Weekly] -- Laugh-Out-Loud Cats, the comic strip. [Laughing Squid]......

More blotter-type news today -- sorry they're kind of downers. First up, remember May Zhou, the Stanford graduate student who was found dead in her car trunk in Santa Rosa? Well, her father remains convinced it was not a suicide, and cites a private autopsy report he's commissioned that shows blunt force trauma injuries. The offical police report, by contrast, showed no trauma injuries but did indicate toxic levels of Benadryl in her system. Zhou's......

-- Dreamgirls: Jennifer Hudson's performance as Effie White won her an Academy Award, and her end of Act I nervous breakdown ("And I Am Telling You") blew audiences to the back wall of the theatre. . She is the reason to see this movie. It also features Anika Noni Rose, a former A.C.T. student. Check out this musical loosely based on the rise of the Supremes tonight at 7 p.m. at the Castro Theatre,......

The SFPD arrested the guy who murdered the anti-crime activist in the Haight, Joe Konopka, in an S&M session gone wrong. They believe Konopka, who was found handcuffed, choked to death on plastic covering his face. After Konopka died, the murderer took his laptop, jewelry, and cell phone before fleeing the scene. Does anyone know what happened at 16th and South Van Ness Wednesday night? We walked by there around 9 p.m. and there were......

Campus tree residency news! At Cal, it turns out those people living in the trees to protest the UC's plan to cut them down themselves did significant damage to the trees in question by cutting off the tops of the trees to put in their sleeping platforms. Ah, the sweet smell of irony. Meanwhile, at rival Stanford, they've finally evicted a veteran who's been living in the tree grove off Palm Drive for almost 10......

Yes, that's genuine North China Leopard fur on display over in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. These big cats are now so rare that the museum is mostly where you see 'em. The new exhibition Nan Kempner: American Chic at the de Young Museum is proving popular. You've probably missed the vintage couture sale of part of her wardrobe in New York but you can still see the best stuff of the original social X-ray......

Submit your Bay Area finds to found at sfist dot com or tag them as sfist on Flickr! Let us know where and when you found the item and any other interesting info. SFist Christopher passed along this precious child's chalk drawing of a cat, who is none other than Hitler. On a sidewalk in Emeryville, the cautionary tale of Sr Kitty Hitler is told: "Sr. Kitty Hitler He was one of the evilest......

As discussed in the SFist Contributes tips page, what people heard in Ingleside Heights early yesterday morning was a mysterious car explosion. Witnesses saw a man park a car, get out of the car and into someone else's, and then the parked car burst into flames. Around 7:00 a.m, another car mysteriously exploded, this time in the Tenderloin at Ellis and Taylor. The two incidents aren't thought to be related -- but how weird. Gimmi......

Week Around The -Ists...

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

SFist Jenna has your low-cost Friday and weekend covered! Whether you're expecting a tax refund or if you had to cough up a pocket-full of dough to the IRS, we've compiled a list of things to do in the city on a budget, all for the cost of a movie – or less! Tonight: Jeffrey Brown at GRSF. Eager to get an early-bird preview of the Alternate Press Expo? Head over to 618 Shrader, where......

Official friend of SFist Irene McGee-- ex dj at Free FM (KIFR 106.9) and, yes, "Real World" alum and recipient of "the Slap Heard 'Round the World"-- is having a benefit tonight at the Red Devil lounge to raise money for her after she lost pretty much everything (including one of her cats) in a fire. To help her raise money, she has some fairly heavy weights to help her out-- Exene Cervenka formerly of X and Ben Fong-Torres and Kitten on the Keys will be your emcee for the night. Show starts at 8 and tickets are $15. ...

Here's a roundup of today's news...

Traffic was terrible on our way to the Asian-Am Film Fest due to the St. Patrick's Day parade -- either Chris Daly's running for District 6 again or they're giving out green beads for celebrants. We were on our way to see The Cats of Mirkitani, or, as we've been calling it all week, "Ross Mirkarimi's cats." (N.B.: Ross Mirkarimi is not Japanese.) What started out as a project about the drawings of homeless SoHo......

-The Bay Bridge will be even costlier and will take longer to build, all due to issues around Yerba Buena Island. -In an attempt to hold onto the 49ers, San Francisco is asking the Navy to hand over the Hunters Point Shipyard so the city can do an Extreme Makeover on it to get it ready to build a new stadium -It's going to be a lot harder to recruit and train new cops......

Oh you lucky devil. You've always wanted -- yearned -- to subscribe to a feed of SFist's weekly popular posts, and now, by God, you can. Gothamist's awesome tech cabal has hooked us up with RSS feeds the week's most popular stories and also the month's most popular stories. Pitch 'em into your favorite feed reader and then sigh in post-coital bliss. RSS, for those of you unfamiliar with the technology, is a relatively......

Before we start our daily roundup of news items, we would like to talk about an issue of utmost importance-- SFist MattyMattt needs help choosing which glasses he should wear. So please, please, go to his site and help him choose. Matt and SFist thank you. -It's c-c-c-c-old out there. -San Mateo resident doesn't get voted off the island, wins the prize on "Survivor." -Grinch steals solar powered Christmas Tree from Union Square and......

-Warriors lose to the Suns giving the Suns their 13th straight win. The Warriors missed their first thirteen shots to fall behind early and never recovered. It's the Warriors sixth consecutive road loss....

Well, it's Friday and the weekend and as wel know, we're all working for the weekend so we got a little cuteness to throw your way before you head on home. It's a web cam for the SPCA Holiday Window display at Macy's. We've mentioned this before and we've even shown a picture of people looking at the puppies and the kitties, but the SPCA has set up web cams so you can look in and see the cute puppy action action....

If the Chillin' show at the Mezzanine was any indication of how busy this years crop of Craft shows is going to be, we're in for a great December. With about 60 designers, several DJ's and what seemed like thousands of people, Saturday's show was one big, bumpin' party. At times it got a little too crowded for our tastes, making it hard for people to get to tables and actually see what designers were selling. But most of the designers seemed pretty happy, and really, it was just the beginning for many of them. ...

Where's Rakim to cut Aaron Peskin's single? The progressively-aligned District 3 representative is widely expected to win another term as the president of the Board of Supervisors in the wake of Newsom's Election Day defeat at the polls (whether Newson chooses to see it as such or not). Even the moderate members of the board agree -- Bevan Dufty thinks Peskin's doing a great job, and even the most-moderate supe Sean Elsbernd (until Ed......

Tonight, our friends at Hyphen Magazine are having a party at 111 Minna (111 Minna at 2nd), celebrating their newest issue (#10--The Music Issue) with some of their favorite local Asian American musicians: native guns, marque, mud and lovelikefire, and DJs, kero one, politik and modest mark. (9p - 2a) Saturday, it's that time again - time for Miss Trannyshack Pageant 2006 at the Regency Center (1300 Van Ness at Sutter) with performances by......

Election-free edition! --Are the A's moving to Fremont? --Ken Garcia enjoyed Borat. --They're going to start Translink (the one pass that works on all Bay Area public transportation systems) soon! BART, Muni, and Caltrain are expected to start accepting Translink in 2007. --Google's going to start buying ads in newspapers. Cute -- they call it "offline media." --YouTube wins Time Magazine's Invention of the Year award, beating out the cervical cancer vaccine and hypoallergenic cats.......