|
MEWSLETTER 59 September 12 2007 Hi, and a very warm welcome and head butts and purrs to everyone, including the New Subscribers who rolled through the cat flap since the last issue. Please feel free to pass this Mewsletter along to any of your cat loving family members and friends. I keep forgetting to say this but people with AOL will need to copy and paste the links into their browsers. Here in the UK our summer hasn’t really begun and June, July and August are set to go down on record as the wettest months since record keeping began in the 1700’s. We’re now in early September and at last we’ve been having some sunny weather – which makes everyone smile. Talking of smiles. September is Pet Smile Month and 100’s of participating vets throughout the UK will check your cat or dog’s teeth for free. Log on to www.petsmile.org and type in your post code to find a vet near you. Although I did a search for veterinary practices throughout the US and the rest of the world, I couldn’t find anything, so I think this must just relate to the UK. It’s estimated that thousands of cats and dogs are suffering needlessly with dental and dental-related disease. Dental disease not only causes bad breath, discomfort, pain, bleeding gums and infected teeth, it can also affect the entire body, particularly the heart valves and the kidneys, as bacteria spreads from the mouth into the pet’s blood stream. It is thought that 80% of pets over three years of age need some form of dental treatment. September 13th sees the start of the Jewish New Year and Ramadan, and on the theme of the Jewish New Year, I’m very excited to announce that we are showcasing the wonderful literary talents of Lynn Schiffhorst this month. Lynn will be writing a new feline story for the Daily Mews Readers and Subscribers over the coming months, and I can promise you a veritable feast – stay tuned. The first story featured is called The Cake That Meowed and is centred on the Jewish New Year. I’ll give you the link to it later in the Mewsletter. I am also really pleased to bring another writer to your attention. Marjorie Dorfman, is another great friend of mine from the US who has several websites to her credit. The Daily Mews has featured a couple of her other works in the past and Marjorie has kindly agreed to write cat-related articles/stories on a regular basis for the Daily Mews’ Readers and Subscribers. Stacy Mantle, who was kind enough to manage the Daily Mews while I was in hospital, alerted me (via her own weekly newsletter) to a disgracefully shocking story about Australian author of children’s stories, Kay Kessing, who served cooked cat as part of a food competition. Miss Kessing is of the opinion that because aborigines eat wild and stray animals, that she could do the same. She regularly takes stray and feral cats off the streets and cooks and eats them. There is a petition to be signed in a bid to have this woman’s books boycotted and if you click on the link you’ll be able to sign it. You will receive a confirmation email which will have a ‘letter’ which you can copy and paste and send out to all your contacts. The more signatures that are received, hopefully this woman will be ostracised and publicly shamed for her reprehensible behaviour. Here is a link to a radio broadcast she gave where she discussed the way she cooked the cat: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s2016936.htm Now please sign the petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/kessing Thanks to all those of you who have already done so. Stray and feral cats have a vital part to play in the ecology of the local wildlife system. If you remove the strays, then the rodent population explodes, which causes even more health risks including rabies. Read Jared Kline’s account of the cats on duty with NATO here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/catsondutywithnato.htm On the subject of rabies, it was World Rabies Day on September 8th and Stacy has a very good article on her website written by Elisabeth Lawaczeck DVM which you can read at your leisure. Click on the link below to get to it. This article does not appear on the Daily Mews website. http://petsweekly.com/World_Rabies_Day.htm Stacy’s own website has undergone a huge face lift recently – a mammoth task which would strike fear in any webmaster’s heart at the sheer volume of pages to sort out – and if you like ALL animals, please click here: www.petsweekly.com. For those of you who entered the Webbox competition some months ago, both Stacy and I had a hard job finding out from the organisers of the competition who actually won but eventually persistence paid off and the winner was a non-Daily Mews subscriber called Freda Winstanley from the UK. Personally speaking, I feel that the organisers of this competition used my website to gain free publicity in order to reach a bigger targeted audience so I’m not best pleased. For the time being, therefore, we’ll just have the Book Quiz and you know that you’ll receive your prizes within a week or so of entry. Hoarding cats seems to be something that’s on the increase. Click on the link below to see 130 cats in ONE ROOM of a Russian woman’s house. I don’t have any more information on this story other than the video clip – if any one has any further information, please let me know. Thanks to Laura and Stephanie who both sent me this story. In the last issue of the Mewsletter, I mentioned that I use an old rubber glove to remove cat hairs from furniture and asked if anyone had any tips regarding removing cat hairs (or anything else). Sue Tanida from the US wrote to say that she uses pantyhose (tights) to remove hair. She writes: ‘My hair removal tip is used pantyhose. Once your pantyhose has runs in it, give it one last wash and once it's clean rub on upholstery and it both groups cat hair to pick off and picks some up itself in the fine mesh.’ Thanks for that tip, Sue, and if anyone else has any tips relating to cats, please contact me in the usual way and I’ll include them next time. For those of you who like all animals, I found a really great website called www.noahsarkgardens.co.uk where you can buy all sorts of lovely items to help all the creatures and wildlife that inhabit our gardens. I was also pleasantly surprised at the excellent service I got a week or so back from a company called www.seapets.co.uk when I ordered some Hairball remedy and some Bob Martin’s cat conditioning tablets. I received my order within two days – which was amazing – I thought. Although the company has a .co.uk address, they will ship to anywhere in the world so if you’re looking for something specific (as I was) give them a try. Billy still enjoys his cuddles and comes up to me several times a day and stares at me until I ask him if he’d like a cuddle. Then he rushes up, sits on my lap and starts dribbling furiously. At this point I haven’t even begun the cuddle routine! He often puts his paw around my finger like babies do and he purrs even louder! Sam has certain times in the day when he comes up for a chat. It’s often one-sided with Sam doing all the talking and me doing all the listening – he does go on, sometimes! But I feel very special that he should want to come and discuss the minutiae of his day with me. Timmy still spends a lot of time lying alongside me when I’m resting on the sofa and when he needs to go off-duty he enlists Sam’s help to take over while he’s absent from his post. Sam uses this time to continue perhaps an earlier conversation we were enjoying and very often he’ll carry on from where he left off: ‘… so I was saying …’ Ollie has started waking me up between 5.00 and 7.00 in the morning by crying LOUDLY at the front door. At first I thought the meows – very plaintiff – were coming from the back bedroom window where he still climbs up (Tom Cruise style) and asks to be let in but after sleepily checking behind the curtains, I realised that he was, in fact, crying at the front door. So, wearily, I’d go downstairs, pick the key up from the living room and unlock the door – with Ollie protesting loudly and vehemently on the outside. He rushes through the door meowing like crazy muttering under his breath ‘I lost my key’ before waiting at the dining room door to be let in to the dining room. Then he’d jump onto the table where he takes his meals on a tablemat and waits for a top up of his supper and I – like an idiot – give him some more. Noticing the other bowls are also empty I top up everyone else’s and although they’re all asleep in their little beds at this moment in time and pretend not to notice that I’m there, in the morning when I get up ‘properly’ all the food bowls are empty again. Why do I get the feeling that Ollie is behaving like a rebellious teenager???? *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Articles Book and Product Reviews Cat Chat Charity profile: Good Mews in Atlanta, Georgia, USA Ed Kostro Feline Fitness Mewsletter Archives: Updated Napping on a Sunbeam Quiz Willi Whizkas *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* A hilarious and addictive game for you to play!!!! http://upchucky.com/games/hairball-bowling.html *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* BOOK QUIZ: The answers to last month’s Book Quiz are as follows:- 1. Enough to make a cat laugh by Deric Longden 2. You can take the cat out of Slough by Chris Pascoe 3. Stuff on my cat by Marlo Garza And the winners are: Laura Jowalski, from PA, USA Judy Goldin, from Israel Jared Kline, from Belgium Dana Beaton and her cat Garfield, from Scotland. I want the author to the book titles below and if you have a website you can nominate it, or you can nominate a favourite site (apart from the Daily Mews!) A modest prize will be given for the first respondent so hurry up and don’t miss out! Who wrote the following: 1. Malcolm and Me 2. Paws in the Proceedings 3. Do Cats Think? Send your answers to p.dewberry@ntlworld.com *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* ARTICLES The Cake that Meowed is a heart-warming story for Rosh Hashanah written by our new ‘talent’ Lynn Schiffhorst. http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/cakethatmeowed.htm The Cat in Proverb and Thought by Marjorie Dorfman has an answer to that age-old question of where did the term ‘to play like cat and mouse’ come from. Click here to read more: http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/catinproverbandthought.htm BOOK AND PRODUCT REVIEWS James Herriot was a vet in Yorkshire, England, and he wrote the most delightful books about his experiences. He is obviously a great cat lover because in his writings, he really empathises with all things feline. I was fortunate enough to receive his wonderful book, Cat Stories, as a recent birthday present – what a delightful read. Click here to read the review: http://www.thedailymews.com/bookproductreviews/catstories.htm Stacy has reviewed the Smart Cat Box which is the latest in high tech low maintenance for cat owners. You can see it for yourself on Stacy’s website and eventually I will be putting it in the Book and Product Review section on the Daily Mews site. If anyone has a Smart Cat Box, please write to me at the usual address to let me know what you think of it. Thanks. http://petsweekly.com/Smart_Cat_Box.htm CAT CHARITIES AND RESCUE CENTRES: A number of celebrities have donated their ‘paw prints’ to help raise money for Cats’ Protection which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Click on the link below to read the media release: http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/celebritypawprintsCP.htm Our featured cat charity this month is the brilliant Good Mews Cat rescue centre, which is situated in Atlanta, Georgia. They have a wonderful website which I spent ages looking around to get the information for this short piece on their good work. If you’d like to help them in any way, click on the link below, or go directly to their website: www.goodmews.org and click on the donate button. http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/goodmewscatrescuecentre.htm I’m always happy to feature animal charities but would ask that you do the leg work for me as I don’t have a lot of energy (at the moment) to do the research. If you nominate a website please give me some information to go with it otherwise it may not get featured. CAT CHAT Jimmy, the Daily Mews resident Feline Columnist, has written yet another thought-provoking piece which will have you scratching your heads and heading out to the self-help section of the local library. Your cats, meanwhile, will be giving it high fives that finally their Feline Spokes Cat has hit the nail on the head – as usual. Cats have far more intelligence and wisdom than we, lowly humans, will ever fathom. Best get used to it! Click here to read Jimmy’s latest piece: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/lifeismessage.htm Octavia was given a second chance in life after being used in a laboratory for experimentation. She lived a further 15 years with her new loving family after an anonymous woman left her sitting in the driveway of the ‘cat lady’. Read Octavia’s story here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/octavia.htm We all know that cats that have access to the great outdoors will bring their two-legged companions something ‘special’ now and again because they think that we’re hopeless hunters. What are these strange creatures that come from a can? Maia in Canada has written about the havoc that her cat Sacha caused when he came face to face with a skunk. http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/survivingthemightyhunter.htm And while Maia’s other feline companions crunched their way through freshly caught mice at a neighbour’s barbecue, Tootsie, on the other paw, has ‘open house’ when her people are asleep and invites all the neighbourhood mice in for a party. Read her exploits here: http://www.thedailymews.com/catchat/tootsie.htm ED KOSTRO When we live in multi-cat households, we can’t expect all the cats to get on with each other all the time. Different personalities, different characteristics, different backgrounds etc make it impossible for there to be peace, perfect peace, all the time. But two of Ed’s cats, Fat Louie and Flower, a Katrina rescue cat, have fallen madly in love with each other. In true Ed Kostro style, he’s written a fantastic poem celebrating feline attraction. Read it here: http://www.thedailymews.com/poems/epicoldwestlovestory.htm FELINE FITNESS My New Zealand vet friend, Brett (Brett the Vet!) has written another informative piece about cats that get diabetes and the treatment available. Garfield got diabetes when he was just over 18 and at first I had to give him two insulin injections a day, which then went down to just one a day. I fed him small meals every couple of hours instead of letting him go long periods between meals and within 7 or 8 months his pancreas had started making insulin again. According to Brett, only 15% of cats with diabetes actually recover. And in an older cat, it’s virtually unheard of that the pancreas would start working again. Garfield had ‘Higher Medication’ though! I used to pray for him and we all know that prayer works! Click on the link to read Brett’s article: http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/diabeticpets.htm It’s a staggering fact that almost 1 in 4 cats throughout the world are overweight, or obese. It’s also amazing that about 90% of owners are in denial about their cat’s weight problems. Read the article below to get the facts: http://www.thedailymews.com/articles/obesity.htm MEWSLETTER ARCHIVES The Mewsletter Archives are now up to date so if you’ve missed any issues or have just recently subscribed and want to know what’s happened before, please click on the Mewsletter Archives link in the navigation bar on the left hand side of the Home Page, or click on this link: http://www.thedailymews.com/MewsletterArchives/mewsletterarchivesintro.htm NAPPING ON A SUNBEAM We all know how hard it is to deal with the overwhelming tide of emotions that rush at us when we lose a beloved pet that has spent most of its life with us. And there are times when no words are sufficient to describe that feeling of grief. But Jack Stewart, Jimmy’s servant, sent me a wonderful piece when I wrote to let him know about losing Ricky back in July. It’s written by John Stevens about his border collie called Sarah. The fact that it’s about a dog shouldn’t put you off – grief is grief no matter which breed or specie you are crying for. Here’s the link: http://www.thedailymews.com/NAPPINGONASUNBEAM/mirrorofdeath.htm There is an email address at the end of the article where you can write to him. I’m sure he’d appreciate your comments. WILLI WHIZKAS Tushtots was in a pitiful state as an unloved Persian cat until Willi Whizkas’ owner saw him and fell in love with him. Read his wonderful story here: http://www.thedailymews.com/Williwhizkas/tushtotstale.htm Tushtots writes his own account of his collision with a van and how he survived. Read it here: http://www.thedailymews.com/Williwhizkas/dontgoout.htm I think that about covers it for this month. Remember that I welcome feedback to anything that has been written in the Mewsletter or the articles and if there is anything you’d like to see in future issues of the Mewsletter, or on the website, please let me know. For those who are celebrating Rosh Hashanah or Ramadan, Happy New Year and I wish you all a year of good health, prosperity, happiness and love. Until the next time Your friend Pauline – editor Billy – Mr Cuddle King Timmy – Still Velcroed to my side Sam – Mr Chatterbox Ollie – Rebellious Teenager BACK TO THE MEWSLETTER Archive Index
|
|
|
Copyright 2001-2006 by TheDailyMews.com. All rights reserved.
Hosted by http://www.supanames.co.uk |
