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MEWSLETTER 47: June 11 2006 (Issue 5) Hi there and a very warm head butt and purrs to all the new subscribers who hurtled through the cat flap since the last issue. You are all extremely welcome and please feel free to forward this Mewsletter to your feline family members or friends. Before I get on with the Mews business, I need to let you all have some rather unpleasant news. Some of you may already know that I had a bone marrow test a couple of weeks ago. Well, this week I had the results and it seems that I have got something called ACUTE MYELOID LEUKAEMIA (AML) and as a result of that, I will be embarking on an aggressive course of chemotherapy for the next six months. I will have to go back to the clinic next Tuesday, 13th, to have more blood tests done, and a Hickman line put in, and then I will be going into hospital to begin the first course of chemotherapy towards the end of next week, or early week beginning 20th June. Each course of chemo lasts a month and I will have to spend the entire time in hospital, only being allowed home for a couple of days at the end of it – for a bit of psychological respite. A friend will come to live in my house for the six months to look after the cats for me, so that’s one worry less. The website will maintained by a couple of friends and it will still be possible for you to submit your anecdotes for the Cat Chat section, funnies for the A’mews’ment Arcade, poetry for the Purrfect Poetry section, and tributes to the Napping on a Sunbeam section. Stacy Mantle (in the US) will receive the items for submission and you can send them to her here: stacymantle@gmail.com She has a great website which you can check out (and subscribe to) www.petsweekly.com Stacy will send the completed articles to Jeff in the UK who will update the site. Jeff will also send out the Mewsletter, which Stacy will put together. So please encourage them and be nice to them, as you are to me!!! I have three requests – if I may be so bold; one – please don’t unsubscribe! You are all valuable to me and precious and I will miss you if you leave!!!! Two, a good number of you have me on your mailing lists and send me all manner of forwards. Please, please, please DO NOT send me any more forwards because I won’t be here to clear up my inbox and it will flood and cause problems. If you don’t mind, would you remove me from your lists so that you don’t accidentally send me something. I may not be in a position to check my email each time I come home from hospital and in 6 months times, I don’t want to log on and find my entire system has crashed because people have continued to send me forwards. And three, I know a number of you are tremendous prayer warriors – so I would appreciate all the prayers you can muster for me. I have already spoken to some of you and you’ve asked what you can do to help me – the greatest gift you can give me is PRAYER – because it works!!! A number of you have sent me books to review which I will take into hospital with me to do just that, and hopefully I’ll be able to get the reviews sent to Stacy so that she can add them to future issues of the Mewsletter – and maybe even start the promised ‘Review Section’ which will cover books and other products. If any of you want to write to me either at my home address or the hospital, please let me know and I’ll give you the details. Thank you all for your great love and understanding. Now, let’s get to the Mews’ business!!!! When I began to write this towards the end of May, it was pouring with rain outside and I had read in my newspaper that May had been the wettest May on record since keeping weather records began. The last wettest May was 1773 when 6 inches of rain fell! It’s ironic really then, that we here in the South Eastern corner of the UK having spent the month dodging torrential rain, gales, high winds etc, have had insult added to injury by the imposition of a hose pipe ban. I finally received TWO water butts a few days ago (we’re now in June) because of a mix up!! The weather now is scorching hot (for us blue-skinned people with rusty tinges) in the UK and I had been saving every scrap of water I could in various receptacles to use it for watering the tubs and hanging baskets. Typically, the Turkish Van cat is reputedly the only cat that really does like swimming. If you thought that most cats didn’t like water, you’d be forgiven for that assumption unless you had you seen Ollie prancing around in the garden while hailstones and rain were coming down in torrents. He came in (eventually) through the cat flap, his fur plastered to his body rendering him a quarter of his original size, swearing ferociously in Felinese about the weather and then stood on the table waiting to be dried off with an old towel. When he emerged after a few moments of brisk rubbing with the towel, he was plumped up and raring to go but needed a sit down and a thorough wash to restore his equilibrium first. Speaking of rain (which is something we here in the UK can often spend hours doing!) I received a very funny email recently from Cat Turner in the UK who accompanies her cat Tushtots out in the garden on a harness. Cat has written a series of very funny books under the banner of Willi Whizkas based on her own three cats, and I’ll be reviewing the first one in a short while. You can read her account here and I’ll bet there will be several of you nodding your heads in agreement while you read it! http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/rainwithtushtots.htm Do any of your cats enjoy the rainy weather or do they sit on the windowsills looking out wistfully waiting for the sunshine to return so that they can go back out to continue the business of being a cat? Let me know. Hopefully, the glitches and blips that beset the website last month are now a thing of the past as my Angel from Southampton (UK) spent a lot of time working his way through my website and restoring every single page manually – a mammoth task that I found far too intimidating! Three purrs and a head butt to Jeff – thank you for all your hard work! *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* A’mews’ment Arcade: Rules to train your cats Cat Chat: lots of things! Charity profile: RSPCA Hillingdon, Middlesex Cudell Street Cats by Laura Dumm *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Check out your cat’s purrsonality in this Purina quiz: http://www.catchow.com/quiz/quiz.aspx Thanks to Valarie in Florida for the link! *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* In my haste in April to get the Mewsletter written I totally forgot to give you the answers to March’s book quiz and the intrepid souls who entered. The answers: Cat Behaviour by Roger Tabor Feng Shui For You and Your Cat by Alison Daniels Know Your Cat by Bruce Fogle. And the winners were: Mary Bradley in Houston, Texas, USA Jared Kline, Belgium Caroline Clark in North Carolina, USA The answers to Garfield’s Easter Quiz last month are: Who wrote the Owl and the Pussy Cat? Edward Lear Antonio Banderas lends his voice to the cat in Shrek 2 A group of kittens is called a kindle Ailurophile is someone who loves cats Thank you to the following folk whose cats entered the quiz: Laura Jowalski, PA, USA – congratulations are also in order because Laura had a wonderful little baby boy in March. Mary Bradley, Houston, Texas, USA Jared Kline, Belgium – Tin-Tin was the expert this time. Dana Beaton, Scotland, UK, whose cat Garfield submitted the answers. Prizes have been sent. BOOK QUIZ: In view of the fact that it is going to be quite some time before I’ll be able to respond to a book quiz, I’ve decided to forgo it this time. I hope you understand. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* This month has been a very sad month. I’ve heard of 4 cats that have passed away, two of the cats I knew personally, and two I knew through the Mewsletter. My sincere condolences to Trudi and her Mum on the sudden death of Snookie on 4th May. He was 14 months old and wrote about the use of sunscreen in the Feline Fitness section, as he was a predominantly white cat. Filet was the 12-year-old cat of Jena and Sean in Texas who had a heart problem, which suddenly reached a point where no medical intervention would help. Penny was the 20-year-old cat of a dear friend of mine who lives one street away. Penny had had a few brushes with cancer in recent years and she had to be put to sleep on 21st May as the tumour in her stomach was pressing on all her internal organs. Finally, Homer, a very fine ginger and white cat, moved from a house just opposite mine to a quieter road in February. He was knocked down and died in my friend’s arms on the way to the vet on 23rd May. Each time I heard about these wonderful felines, my heart felt very heavy with sorrow, and I know in each case, the humans are totally devastated. Please keep them all in your prayers. For those of you who are grieving the loss of a much-loved pet, please contact me if you would like someone to talk to about your feelings. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* My thanks to all of you who periodically write to ask how Garfield is doing. The vision in his right eye is deteriorating and all he can see are blurry shapes. As I AM a blurry shape, he’s perfectly all right with me! What had alerted me to the fact that his eyesight was deteriorating was I noticed the food from all the cats’ bowls would be all over the kitchen when I’d get up in the mornings. I wondered whether the others had been fighting during the night, or perhaps chasing a mouse and in their exuberance had knocked their bowls over. Then I saw my beloved Garfield walking through each food bowl on the way to his own bowl. I also noticed that he hugged the left hand side of the wall as he walked anywhere – and Kevin, our vet, revealed that the vision in Garfield’s right eye was impaired. As long as I don’t move things around too much Garfield manages very well. It also answers another question as to why Timmy would often guide him from place to place – obviously because Timmy cottoned on long before I did that Garfield needed help. (This is actually verified in Billy Roberts’ book ‘The Healing Paw: Not all angels have wings’ which I will be reviewing some time soon and which you can click on at the bottom of the Home Page and on the Book Picks page.) Garfield hasn’t had a particularly good weekend and if he seems no better tomorrow, (Monday), I’ll ring our vet, Kevin, to come and see him – please keep Garfie in your prayers, thank you. It has been a particularly hot few days and all the cats have been ploffing (a new word I made up!) themselves down lethargically on the coolest surfaces they can find. I’m hoping it’s just heat-related, although he doesn’t spend time in the garden sunbathing like he used to. IN THE MEWS Recently I was interviewed because I have joined the newly formed International Animal Writers and Illustrators Association (IAWIA) and if you’d like to see the interview, please follow this link: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=26314&id=21963 If you are a writer or illustrator of animal stories, poems and books, and you’d like to join IAWIA please go to this website where a friendly greeting awaits you: www.iawia.net (You’ll be in excellent company <myself – of course – preening>, Laura Dumm our brilliant cartoonist, Ed Kostro who is a regular writer for this website, and Stacy Mantle whose brainchild it is and a host of other wonderful writers and artists.) A'MEWS'MENT ARCADE Seema, in India, sent the following item about training your cats. It’s very funny, but also she owns up to the fact that it failed miserably on her own two cats, Mani and Diana. I guess we all know that cats train their humans – not the other way around! http://www.thedailymews.com/amewsments/rulestotraincats.htm CAT CHAT A huge number of you responded to the poll on cats’ ages and for the longest time it looked like Garfield was going to be the winner, but I had a ‘late entrant’ and he has been pipped to the post by a feisty female, called Bob who has her own driver’s licence to prove that she is 21. Her 21st birthday was also in March 2006 when Garfield was 20. So well done to Bob – you are the winner of the ‘Oldest Cat’ poll. You can read about Bob and her driver’s licence here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/bob21.htm Sometimes a cat will form quite close relationships with other species and the one I often read about is good friendships with dogs. In a Letter to Shiloh, Seti asks his friend lots of questions that are bothering him. You can read it here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/lettertoshiloh.htm For quite some time now, on the Home Page, I’ve had a link to a book by Billy Roberts, called ‘The Healing Paw: Not all angels have wings.’ I have also had this book on my bookshelf and recently I read it and it truly opened up my eyes to animal behaviour and the healing abilities of most animals, not just for themselves, but for us humans as well. I often write about Timmy caring for Garfield but now I realise that Timmy has that innate sense that all animals have of knowing when one of their own needs healing and that is why he spends so much time with Garfield. It also explains why all the cats gather around me when I’m not feeling well because their purring vibrations help my body get back to where it needs to be. If you haven’t already read Billy’s book, may I suggest that you get yourselves a copy – you will truly be amazed at some of the stories you’ll read. And now, knowing the healing power that animals have, I was totally delighted when I heard the wonderful story about Lucas, an elderly cat who lives in a residential home for elderly people. Lucas’ mission in life is to stay with them for the final days of their lives and he guides them on their journey onward. This next story is remarkable in that Christine Davis who’s Mother was in the home, had never seen Lucas before, but a few days before she passed away, Lucas spent every moment with her. If you have any stories like this one please send them to Stacy for submission to the CAT CHAT section. http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/lucas.htm Most people enjoy barbecues when the weather warms up. The sound of children laughing, bird song on a balmy evening, the sound of Uncle Fred snoring in his cider, and the sound of Dad screaming as his nether regions are scorched by a piece of sizzling fat that spits out and gets him! A Warm Summer Evening sets the scene for a little kitten’s first barbecue spent in idyllic Wiltshire, in the South West of England. You can read it here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/summersevening.htm Have you ever tried to do something different with your cat watching you? You look up at them to see the disdain on their faces and they walk off with a superior swagger as if to say ‘Tsk, you humans just KILL me!’ Yoga with my cat, by Dena Harris, paints an image that I’m sure we’ll all be able to identify with. It’s very funny and I know you’ll enjoy reading it; here is the link: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/yogawithmycat.htm CHARITY AND RESCUE CENTRES The RSPCA in Hillingdon, Middlesex (UK) has launched a Safe Haven sponsorship scheme and people are able to view some of their current feline residents by visiting their 24-hour webcam. They can visit by going to: Their website address is: www.rspcahillingdonclinic.org.uk - be sure to visit! If you’d like to donate any money or items of need to the RSPCA, then please contact Paula Matthews at this address: fundraiser@rspcahillingdonclinic.org.uk CUDELL STREET CATS Bogart, Laura Dumm’s latest little ginger fur ball, is being groomed to maturity by each member of the Cudell Street Gang who are taking it upon themselves to teach him a vital lesson. Here is his latest lesson with Mr. Gray: http://www.thedailymews.com/Cudellstreetcats/bogartslessonsmrgray.htm WILLI WHIZKAS I’m proud (so proud – I’m busting my pants!) to have a new writer on site. You have already met her writing style in the Cat Chat section with her story about Walking in the Rain with Tushtots. She has just had a wonderful book (which I’m still reading) called: Willi Whizkas: Tall Tales and Lost Lives, and you’ll love Cat Turner’s stories that will be featured every so often on the site. To get to know her, please read her bio here: http://www.thedailymews.com/Williwhizkas/introwilliwhizkas.htm I couldn’t wait until next time to add another of her wonderful anecdotes of life at Tom Cat Towers, so here is another glimpse inside. What arrangements do you make for your cats when you get ready for work in the mornings? Early Morning Routine will tell you just how far Cat and her husband John go to ensure that Tushtots has everything he needs within paw’s reach. http://www.thedailymews.com/Williwhizkas/morningroutine.htm Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Kathy Pippig Harris who wrote that amazing story about the soul of a house (http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/soulsearching.htm ) has just had her new book ‘Spirit of the Soul’ published. You can check it out on this link at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/141379145X/sr=8-3/qid=1147374673/ref=sr_1_3/104-9844422-0453561?%5Fencoding=UTF8 Good luck with the sales Kathy! I’m sorry that there are fewer items posted to the website this time and I crave your understanding. I hope the few that have been posted will be of interest to you and if any of you want to contact me before I go into hospital you can reach me on the usual email address: p.dewberry@ntlworld.com for the next week – but please don’t use it after this time. It remains now for me to wish you all, humans, and felines, and the occasional canine who grace your lives, a very happy and healthy summer. God willing, you’ll be hearing from me some months hence. Until then, take care and God bless you all. Your friend, Pauline Editor and Pet Psychologist Garfield Chief Technical Advisor and Editorial Assistant Billy and Timmy Product Reviewer and Care of the Elderly respectively Sam Ethnic Minority advisor Ricky Health Guru and Yoga Instructor Ollie Rain Cat Extraordinaire! BACK TO THE MEWSLETTER Archive Index
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