Missing...Baby Doll

Have you seen this Baby Doll? She's been missing now for a couple weeks........last seen leaving with a 5 year old boy running with her in the vicinity of the backyard, possibly our garage area, but most likely toward our trash cans.

Beautiful warm Fall weather gave me two nice photo opportunities.

Aww, isn't it nice to see the wild beasts getting along? All four of them.

Much nicer to see than THIS!

Beruse Is Off The Juice

"Unbeknownst to me I was making him ill with all my love" by feeding my Beruse dry cat food; a diet more appropriate for a cow than a cat who is a true carnivore. For 14 years, I knew no better. I've found that sometimes life hands you something that initially appears to be an unfortunate event; so that when you can see the bigger picture, you'll find that it was a disguised blessing. When I wrote about Beruse's diabetes a few weeks ago, I never imagined that after only 12 days of diligently following a strict insulin protocol and forever ditching dry cat food that I could say so soon: Beruse is off the Juice. Today is his 16th day of NO INSULIN and counting.

My sweet, affectionate, most tolerant friend never complained through more than a 100 blood tests and I don't want to mention the number of "bloodless" pokes he endured due my incompetency and not wanting to poke a hole clear through his ear (I've done that). His health and my other cat, Katina, are forever changed by this experience: they are healthy young cats again at 14 years old. Their coats look and feel great, they have started grooming themselves again, no more dandruff. They are energetic and social and you won't believe the lack of $hit and Stink in the litter box. Their bodies use what they eat now, so their crap/piss has cut down 75%!! A disgusting, yet nice benefit of wet food.

Since his Diabetes began, I have obviously become more educated about the total inappropriateness of dry cat food. If you are like me, I thought dry had lots of protein and it helps to clean their teeth: Big lie/myth number one and two. Dry is mostly composed of carbohydrates because of the process to make it a dry kibble. Depending on the brand from 20-50%. There is no such thing as a low carb dry. Impossible to create. Cat's lack certain amino acids and enzymes needed to digest the huge amounts of carbs: their diet should have LESS than 10% carbs. Think mouse in a can, as a friend described ideal food. Lie/myth #2 that dry cleans their teeth. Cats mostly eat their food whole. Any crunching is simply cleaning the points of their teeth, not the sides. Next time Fluffy barfs notice the food is almost entirely intact kibble. Those Prescription Dry Diets (includes some canned too) at the vets are not exempt...they are expensive bags/cans of utter carbohydrate money-making crap. Feeding your cat dry is like smoking. It's not good for you at all, yet some people will get severe smoke related illness and some won't. It doesn't change the fact that it's bad...you just never know to whom or when it going to happen.

I took Beruse Monday to his vet to show him off as a poster-child for Tight Regulation of Diabetes and the effects of eliminating dry kittie crack. Apparently he had not read the info articles I have left him because his attitude was at first cynical, but kind, reluctance. He said, "There's a lot of quackery out there." After I explained how TR works and why, the light-bulb went off in his head because it's just common sense to adapt a human diabetic regulation for controlling cats. So he was going to try the protocol on his resident clinic diabetic-we're in the South remember, Bubba the fat cat. The other resident cat has three legs and his name is not Tripod. He pulled out the info articles from Moose's chart, asked me for the list of low carb canned foods since the canned prescription Hill's he sells is too high (16%) in carbs. He was muttering to that he needs to change his cats' at home to wet. Had I choosen to follow my Vet's advice, Beruse would Diabetic for the rest of his shortened life, going to the emergency room because of life threatening low blood sugars, costing a ton of money in vet tests and still dieing a slow debilatating death.

The End of Summer

The last couple weeks have been intense. Beruse was diagnosed with Diabetes and has been undergoing tight regulation of his glucose (more about him in his own post), Canon started school again, and we visited Paris and Carl's beach condo in Duck, NC.

As is the case, it seems every year we visit their condo, there was a tropical storm hitting NC while we are visiting the beach. On the day were we leaving it was just a little rain and wind. Let me say, that many years when the damage isn't beach side, it's effected home 3 hours away in Virginia. Hmmm...let me count the ways: 1996 honeymooning and with my father Hurricane Fran Cat 3 hit just South of Duck with not even a drop of rain at our beach but it clobbered Richmond and no power at home for a week. AAhhh.... Gaston on Aug. 29, 2004. Watching CNN at Duck and on the phone with Mitzi...who can forget the floating cars in downtown Richmond when our flood wall kept the water IN the down town area from Hurricane Gaston. One unique beach experience was last year with my family Kristin, Andrew and their 3 kids, Tropical Storm Ernesto dumped 20 inches of rain overnight causing flooding around the condo. It didn't spawn any Tornadoes, but it did cause the rather large in size and population of toads to start mating. Hundreds and Hundreds of mating frogs. The kids, Juliet and Austin got two for one deals when they started collecting the fist sized frogs refusing to let go of their lovers.

There is always the typical beach fun: sunning, swimming, drinking, eating, boating, fishing, drinking, eating, jet skiing, seashell collecting, sand in your crevices, drinking and eating. But I also love the inevitable weather factor that adds that something special.