Wordless Wednesday

Whazza Yin an' whazza Yang...and is dey NOMMY?

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Mah BIRFDAY Presents!

Since I had so many anipals wishing me a happy FIRST BIRFDAY, I wanted to show you my cool new prezzies: TWO Wand Toys! All MINE! W00t!!

(that's Maxie crashing my PAWTY!)

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PLEASE help us save more animals!

It takes only one minute of your time - and you can vote daily.

A Capella University alumnus who works for our shelter has an opportunity to win $10,000 for Wayside Waifs, Missouri's largest No Kill animal shelter. But in order to win, we need your help!!!

Winners will be chosen first by popular vote on youtube. ONLY the top candidates will be reviewed by Capella before awarding the grant money.

Please go vote - daily!

Here's what to look for:

And here's the link:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CapellaInspires


And...THANK YOU!!!

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Allie, hogging all the Nip

"All About Me" Meme

Wow....we're sooo excited and honored to be tagged by Sebastian to tell you about our furry selves! We've never participated in a Meme before! So without further ado:


1. Where do you like to hang out?

ooh, I got this one! In the bathroom, upside-down, looking up Momma's nose.

But in the winter, I loves hanging out by the fireplace during the day and tucking my head under Momma's chin in bed at night. She sez I'm better than any 'lectric blanket!

The first night I spent in my new home, I curled up right alongside Momma and slept with my head on her pillow, just like Ryker always used to do. And I've never done it since - just that first night. Faraday came to live with us the next day.

 *I* like hanging wif daddy and the remote control. 

And sleeping under the covers wif my feet in Mommy's back all night long. Mommy always knows to worry if I start purring reeeeal loud when I'm under the covers...cuz that means she's about to get nipped!

 I'll hang ANYwhere those bratty boys aren't!

My favorite indoor spot (when the boys are far, far away) is in Dad's lap at the computer. I'm kinda of a Daddy's Girl. *giggle* 

2. Who is your favorite kitty crush?

Maxwell: uh, can I choose Momma?
FaRADaY: I'm too young to have a crush, but any girlcat who wants to bring me food....
Allie: *sniff* silly boys! Me? Well, because of my past, I'm understandably a bit cautious.
You see, I was a young unwed mother. Just a girl myself, really. And I was abandoned - left all alone - *wails* DUMPED at Wayside Waifs' front door on a chilly October morning!
So I'm kind of cautious about my crushes. (Though D'Artagnan Rumbepurr's awfully handsome *bats eyes*)

3. What is your favorite scent?

FaRADaY: mmmmmm, FOOD!
Allie: I go for the more sophisticated scents...NIP for me.
Maxwell: oh I  dunno, my current fave is raw eggs. I think their texture's kinda fun to play with too. All goopy and stuff. I can play with it for hours on the counter, if Momma doesn't catch me....
FaRADaY: Maxie! *eyeroll* that's not a scent! Duhhh....

4. What is your favorite TV show?

We're currently watching Mommy's Wayside Waifs video a lot, cuz we want her to win. Can we insert a shameless plug here to ask you to go vote daily so's Mommy can win a $10,000 grant for her shelter?
Here's the linky:

FaRADaY: An' I just loves watching the Food Network wif Mommy & Daddy on the sofa.All that nommy FOOD....*sigh*
Maxwell: I used to like watching Exercise TV while Mommy worked out with it, but they just took it off the air, so I can't paw at the lady jumping around on the screen any more. Bummer....

5. What is your favorite movie?

Meowzers, Mommy & Daddy have been so busy they haven't watched a single movie since they got us in December! (Mommy's pretty shocked about that actually.) But we loves hanging in their laps while they read. Daddy loves military thrillers and Mommy loves scifi. (shh...or SF-romance. But it's cuz she has a friend who writes them and she sometimes edits them for her.)

6. What is the best piece of feline wisdom?
Give lots and lots of love. And snuggles and cuddles and purrs. We may be pretty young but in our short lives, we've noticed humans can often be pretty fragile and they tend to need a lot of Kitteh TLC.

Wow, now we get to pick three bloggers to answer these questions!

We pick:

JinJin & Pixel Rubinoff
Unca Ryker's Fave girl JazzydaCat
and our fave Grrly, Grrlsquirrel!

Please help our shelter get a $10,000 grant by voting for our video!

Mommy's VIDEO is online! Mommy's VIDEO is online!

oh I so hope it'll win the 10,000 Green Things for my Alma Mater *wringing pink paws* Please please go vote!!

uh... dontcha need to tell them where to go vote first?

Maxie, you're such a sweet boy - yes, we do need to tell everyone where to vote.

Unfortunately, they haven't made it as simple as "click the link" ... once there, you'll have to scroll down to find it, but it only takes a few more seconds of your time to locate our video. And the $10,000 grant is worth it!

Here's the link, hosted by Capella University, the organization donating these grants:

http://www.youtube.com/capellainspires

Once there, scroll down to the "Community Submissions" section, and click on our video.

Here's what our video entry looks like:

You can vote once a day. Please vote as often as you remember.

And THANK you so very much for taking the time to help us get closer to our goal of saving the lives of more animals!

And don't forget! ONE more shopping day before my First Birfday!! (That'd be TOMORROW. Just meowing.)

FARADAY! *slaps pink toenails over face* I'm soooooo mortified....

Birfdays, contests and 10,000 GREEN things!

Today's Public Service Announcement: In case you haven't yet run out to buy me my First Birfday Prezzies, I has it on good authority that Fed Ex delivers OVERNIGHT! Which means you still have TWO MORE SHOPPING DAYS!! (just meowing)

uh, dude...I didn't get any gifts on my first birthday a few weeks ago....

 Maxie...no offense, but you're... well, you, and I'm, well...CUTE.

yeah, well, Momma sez it's not polite to solicit unless it's for a good cause, an' she sez your birthday's NOT one. 

MOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!

 Thanks, Maxwell, you're such a good boy. Faraday, you'll get your party, trust me. And speaking of soliciting...there's only one thing we're here to solicit today...and that's VOTES.

We have an opportunity to win $10,000 for Missouri's largest No Kill animal shelter, Wayside Waifs. But we need everyone's help to win it. 

On September 7, Capella University's Inspire Action Campaign will donate $10,000 to 9 organizations. These winners will be selected from the highest-ranked videos as chosen by popular vote. The voting begins (we hope) on Monday - and you can each vote once a day.

Please help us win $10,000 by checking back to this blog early next week, where the link to vote will be posted.

And vote as often as you can! 

 Please vote! Wayside Waifs is my Alma Mater, a wonderful place that took me in when some awful humans dumped me on their doorstep overnight one chilly day in October. More of those green things will allow them to save more kitties from high kill shelters in the midwest!

We'll post back here as soon as the link goes live.

and...THANK you!

yes, THANK you!

THANK you!

 (to Maxwell: *suck up!*)  Yes, THANK you! And don't forget to buy those presents!! *dodges Maxwell's paw*

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Hey Mommy! Why U not blogging today???

What can YOU do with $14, an X-acto, and some tape?

While Momma wasn't looking, I took over her keyboard and found us some reeeeeally cool hangouts!

Yeah, no offense Mommy, but this TOTALLY beats your wimpy ManCat Cave on laundry day!

We want! We want! Daddy, can you do the MacGyver thingy please? PLEEEEEEASE???

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

 Dat's my current Art Project (it's a work in progress)

Mommy's Big Scare

Mommy had this reeeeally REALLY bad scare a few days ago, an' so we told her she could borrow our blog.

Yeah! I did it cuz I's so nice. Faraday did it cuz Allie was gonna whup his behind if he didn't let her (she's GINORMOUS, you know! *wide eyed look*).

BRATS! Don't make me come over there and pink-slap you! You won't LIKE it if I chip a nail ... *warning look* Besides, I've been delicate lately, so BE NICE!!!

uh, thanks guys. I think. Living with three cats that have such strong personalities (two, actually-Maxie's so mellow, he'd get along with anyone!) is a never ending source of entertainment for Marty and me. They're our babies, which is why last Friday's news was such a shock to us.

Here's what happened:

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I've been traveling a lot lately - in fact I've been in 9 states in just over 6 weeks. My most recent trip overlapped with Marty's travels so we hired a cat sitter to come in and care for our fur-kids. I know any disruption in routine has the potential to affect these guys, so when we returned and noticed Allie coughing we decided to give it a day or two and observe. Was it just a bad hairball? Maybe an upper respiratory infection (URI)? 

A few days passed and she was still coughing, so Friday we decided I should take her in for an exam. What happened sent me into the weekend reeling in shock, combing the internet for answers.

Allie didn't have a URI, our vet didn't think. Her lungs sounded clear and she wasn't running a fever. No passageway obstruction, he said. But she had lost weight. Did we have her on a diet?

No-o-o-ooo...

Then he dropped the bombshell on me: "I want to test her for heartworms."

Heartworms?

My little gray Waif? My husband's very own Daddy's Girl? Allie of the pink mani/pedi and cute girlie manners, has heartworms?

Dogs have heartworms, not cats! Parvo, distemper, heartworms - these are canine diseases. Feline leukemia, FIP, panleukopenia - now those are the things you worry about in cats, not heartworms. Right?

Wrong.

Though cats are not natural hosts, they can be infected, and the number has increased to the point that our family vet has seen more heartworm disease in cats in the past year than he has in dogs. Wow.

Okay, so we do the blood test, then we treat her. Sorry, no go, he said. There is no US-approved heartworm treatment for cats. Studies indicate that the same form of treatment used in dogs would cause about a 70% fatality in cats. You do what you can to alleviate the symptoms and then you wait it out until the worm dies - in 2 or 3 years.

I left the clinic feeling like an absolutely horrible parent. This was preventable but no one had ever told me about it, so Allie had never been given an easily applied, monthly heartworm preventive. 

We drove home, me frantically dialing my husband to tell him the (potentially) bad news, and the minute I hit the door, I started googling.

My first thoughts were, 'but...she's an indoor cat!" Well, okay, mostly indoor. She's only outside for limited periods under our strict supervision. Turns out it didn't matter. As many indoor cats have been diagnosed as outdoor cats. When I mentioned this to a vet tech at the shelter where I volunteer, she just shook her head and said, "It only takes one mosquito. And how often do you see one of those in your house over the summer?" 

Oh, and it wouldn't have mattered if I'd learned about this a month or two ago and started her on the preventive. The average time it takes, from when the mosquito infects the cat to when the parasites settle into the blood vessels of the lungs and start causing distress is about eight months. So if Allie has heartworms, she would have been infected by a mosquito bite last October.

All that time, those nasty little buggers are setting up shop in your precious baby's lungs. And they're growing. 

The American Heartworm Society states that there are two times when an infected cat is most at risk: when the worms begin to mature and at their death. At these times, they can cause acute inflammation and significant lung damage. 

Our vet told us that it can be very hard to diagnose heartworms in a cat (also called HARD, or Heartworm Associated Respiratory Disease).With a cat, there has to be a body of evidence and diagnosis can be tricky. The initial phase is often misdiagnosed as asthma or allergic bronchitis, as symptoms mainly include coughing, asthma-like wheezing, lethargy and weight loss. 

Check, check, and check. No wonder he wanted to test Allie - she had all the symptoms. 

Some infected cats have such severe pulmonary issues that they require oxygen therapy and asthma medications like inhalers (the only source of humor that weekend came from envisioning me holding an inhaler up to Allie's mouth and saying, "okay, now, BREATHE!" Um, not so much....).

Oh, and there's this other little thing.... When the worms die, they shed proteins that can shock your kitty's system into heart failure. 

In all, a very scary disease - which Allie fortunately did not have. We heaved huge sighs of relief when the antibody test came back negative on Monday and shortly after, Allie's coughs eased and she was her perky self again. 

We got lucky. Allie only had a mild URI. 

But I slapped a tube of Revolution heartworm medicine on the backs of all three kitties' necks so fast they didn't know what hit them. I'd been scared enough.

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(There are currently four heartworm preventive products available in the US: two oral and two topical. All require a prescription from your vet but can be purchased from an online pet pharmacy at a discount. WARNING: don't ever give your cat any heartworm product meant for dogs, as this can kill a cat! )