Our two black cats, Lois and Clark, both failed ECG tests last autumn. Clark's follow-up echocardiogram showed mild left-sided cardiomyopathy. Lois just went in for her echocariogram yesterday. I'm so happy. The results came back normal. So no more aspirin therapy for Lois.

Clark's therapy includes a 12.5mg dose of Atenelol dailiy and one enteric-coated baby aspirin twice a week, on Monday and Thursday. He'll continue to have followup echos to see if his disease process is stablizing or changing and getting worse.

In case you are wondering, aspirin can be toxic in cats, so don't give them any except under the advice of a vet. Apparently, they metabolize aspirin very slowly. One baby aspirin has a half-life of 72 hours in a cat. Hence the three day interval between dosing.

These pair of black cats, brother and sister, are approaching their 10th birthday in March. I adpoted them from the The Humane Society of St. Louis in May of 1997. Technology for animals has improved greatly in the last ten years.

A small piece of unsolicited advice: think about getting baseline ECGs for your little beasts. The test is inexpensive and it captures a baseline from which comparisons can be made if problems occur later. I think our vet charges seventeen bucks per cat. They do a great job prescreening for heart problems in cats.

I thought I stumbled into a genuine miracle with these Pill Pockets. But as of today, officially, Teep informed me that no matter how tasty the Pill Pockets are, she will not eat another as long as there is anti-biotic powder mixed in.

I can't say I blame her. Unfortunately, I can't explain that to her either. I have tried. But the little beasts are much better at communicating with me than I am with them. I tried to explain that I didn't choose the medicine, the vet did. Stil, I had to scruff her and pill her by hand with the wet, partially chewed, uneaten bits of antibiotic-laden Pill Pocket.

I respect and admire our vet. She's worked through some really difficult issues with our little beasts over the years. But, as with human doctors, vets don't always see beyond the treatment or the issues the treatments create. For example, sometimes we have to isolate one cat from the others, sometimes we have to feed them different food for long periods of time, sometimes we have to sprinkle noxious, horrible-tasting powder into their food and pretend it's a treat.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why these things are requested. I also understand, from a scientific, medical and troubleshooting perspective, why they are sometimes necessary. But sometimes, it's too much. Unlike, a vet, we don't get to practice veterinary procedures often enough to carry them out well. If I could give a cat a pill easily, I wouldn't have to trick her and hide it in her food.

These things create stress for us and stress for the animals. I would like veterinary schools to teach more about options and alternatives to create healing and wellness without creating new stress related issues. I would like all doctors, MDs and Vets, to remember that the patient's needs often go beyond that of the specific illness or treatment at hand.

In the case of Teep Teep, the risk of a bad outcome is non-compliance with an anti-biotic. Not such a good thing. I guess I'm going to have to call and have a chat to see what our options are. I've looked up Clindamycin in Clinical Pharmacology, and sure enough, it does not come in a pill (tablet) form, only in a capsule (with powder) or liquid. Maybe the vet is strapped with few options at this point as well.

One last bit to vent about. Where is the pharmacuetical industry in all of this? Surely there's a pretty penney to be made formulating tiny pet-mouthed sized pills? Granted some of the pills happen to be small enough. But right now, cutting an aspirin sized tablet into fourths accurately is quite a task.

Either I get it right or the pill crumbles and I've wasted a third of the prescription. I'd pay double to get four small pills in the correct dosage for a given weight. I'm practically throwing away that much now in wasted, crumbling tablets. We spend billions of dollars on our pets each year. Surely there's a market for pet pharmacueticals?

Hello Glaxo-Smith-Kline, you're in my freakin' back yard! Be a good capitalist, help me consume. I'm begging you.

Teep-Teep received her diagnosis last night. Although we originally thought she had a bad case of feline acne, it was something else. Feline acne often shows up on the chin and looks like little crusty dirt; which is exactly what her chin looked like. When she began to exhibit malaise and lethargy, we realized something else was going on. The vet ordered blood work and took skin scrapings revealing a Malassezia infection, a kind of yeast infection. Unfortunately, the treatment for a fungal infection takes a long time to work.

The vet prescribed Clindamycin, an anti-biotic, and Ketoconazole, an anti-fungal. Teep has to take the anti-biotic for a month and the anti-fungal for three months. This presents a bit of a problem with travel plans spousy and I made months ago. Some good friends of ours participate in a little cat care co-op with us. We each watch each other's cats when we travel; except of course when we travel together, but that's a different problem and story. Anyway, as we learned with our recent trip to Tulsa, despite most parents' best efforts, it's probably easier for strangers to give candy to children than it is for friends to give cats treats.

Our male cat, Clark, affectionately known by family and friends as "Big Kitty," takes Atenelol for mild, left-sided cardiomyopathy. Because of a miracle product, Pill Pockets, it's been relatively easy to administer medication to the little beasts. As it turns out, even though Clark happily takes his pill when it's hidden in a Pill Pocket, he's only willing to take it from me.

When we were in Tulsa, our friends called us fretting because they couldn't get Big Kitty to take his medicine. They tried a number of sure-fire schemes; shaking the snack bag, calling out the words, "snack time," but nothing worked. We talked it over and decided on a far-fetched, last ditch effort using a speakerphone. They called me using our house speakerphone. They placed it in the center of the room with Big Kitty.� I was then supposed to talk to Big Kitty as though I were right there and entice him into eating his treat.

So there I was in the spare room of spousy's mom's house hundreds of miles away talking into my tiny cell phone using my best falsetto kitty voice trying to coax Big Kitty to eat one little gooey snack.

It worked. Actually it worked frighteningly well.

Although he resisted my friend's attempts to feed him for almost twenty minutes, it took less than two minutes of me screeching on a speakerphone tp convince him the snack was being genuinely offered.

I would be flattered but this adds another level of complexity to increasingly difficult cat care. Now Teep joins in the mix. Teep makes the issues with Big Kitty seem relatively simple. To illustrate, the statement, "Teep is a difficult cat to handle" would easily win a national understatement of the year competition. Teep can be difficult for most people to pet let alone feed or pill.

Spousy and I sometimes imagine moving to another city. One of those places is Tucson, Arizona. The last time we vacationed there, we heard stories of large predatory birds that swoop down, seemingly from out of nowhere, and steal beloved little desert-lawn pets for dessert. The mere idea horrifies me almost to the point of scratching Tucson off the "acceptable places to live" list - almost. But even so, I must admit, that if I had to bet on the outcome of a battle between Teep and a large predatory bird, I'd take odds on Teep any day. I might even feel a bit sorry for the bird. That would be one hell of a chicken dinner for Teep. And she doesn't even like chicken.

But once again, Pill Pockets comes to the rescue. I should point out that I do not work for Pill Pockets, own stock in Pill Pockets, or have any other special interest in Pill Pockets beyond the simple fact that they work. They are little soft treats with a hole in them. They feel like Play-Doh. You pop the pill in and squeeze the top of the pocket sealing the pill in.

They come in two flavors, well for me, smells; bad and bad. If they taste as strong as they smell, it probably explains why the cats like them so much. On a day when everyone gets medicine I end up handling them quite a lot which requires a little handwashing afterwards. It's not a smell you want lingering on your hands for long. Here's the Pill Pocket routine in action.

For Teep, the Ketoconazole is just a quarter of a tablet. That works great with the Pill Pockets. Plop the quarter pill in and squeeze. But the anti-biotic is a capsule filled with powder. Not so easy. The vet wanted me to "sprinkle" an opened capsule onto some wet food to entice her to take her medicine. Unfortunately, 1) Teep doesn't like wet food, and 2) She really doesn't like wet food that has anti-biotic powder sprinkled all over it. I never realized how much powder is in one of those capsules, by the way. But I think I've found a method to cope with this.

I opened one capsule to try to fill a pill pocket and there was no way all the powder would fit in a single pocket. Instead, I smashed two pockets together and flattened them into a little pancake in my hand. I sprinkled the powder over the pancake and then kneaded the pancake along with the medicine like I was making a tiny loaf of bread. Once the medicine was incorporated, I broke the dough into four little snack size pieces. Teep ate them, not without hesitation, but ate them nonetheless.

Now how to get all the beasts to take candy from strangers. Difficult.

Teep-Teep is not having such a good Valentine's Day. Teep (aka Clara) has been feeling dreadful for a few weeks but not exhibiting any specific symptoms. How do I know that, you ask? Well sometimes you just know these things. They don't call me Dr. Doolittle for nothing. Actually no one calls me that, thank goodness. And don't you start, because I too can think of at least a dozen jokes based on the idea.

(Spousy calls me St. Francis sometimes. That's very sweet. He's knows what I sucker I am for all the little beasties.)

So poor Teep. She's been eating and drinking ok and using her catbox but just not acting like her usual feisty self. She acts like she needs a little kitty Prozac. Actually, Prozac is so passe these days. I guess she really needs the drug de jour, Lexapro.

We already have one cat who takes Atenelol, a human beta channel blocker, for mild left-sided cardiomyopathy. And now poor Teep is sick to the tune of one hundred sixty-five bucks American. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind spending the money, I just want the treatments to work.

We just dropped a couple hundred smackers a couple of months ago on her for almost the same problem. She seems to develop a rash around her face and then becomes lethargic and mopes about. I guess if my face was breaking out all the time and I didn't feel well, I'd be depressed and mopy too.

Oh wait. I have experienced that, or at least something similar. I was fourteen. Hmmm. I even got to take "special" medication for that. No. I mean in addition to multiple rounds of dermatology prescribed Eurythromycin. Except back then, about three milliseconds after the big bang of psychological pharmacology, the drug to treat such woes was called Sinequan. Take a peak at that in the Wikipedia.

I don't recall it helping, unless of course feeling endlessly groggy and dizzy is at all helpful. But it was good of my folks to have tried. Plus, I'm sure they paid more than two hundred American all-in-all. Well, since Teep (or Lois) is as close to a daughter as I'm ever gonna get, it's the least I can do.

Happy Valentine's Day Teep. Don't worry. Drugs are on the way soon.

Love,

Pappa. (Er, uh, I mean Mamma.)

We watched the Prairie Home Companion movie a week or so ago hoping it would give us a glimpse into the real show which we have tickets to see on January 20th. Although spousey was a little annoyed and bored with it, he watched it like a trooper. I, of course, really liked it.

Garrison Keeler's sense of humor presses my funny bone in just the right ways. His humor is sublime. Later that night I went to his website and discovered a section where you can submit your very own joke. So, I typed in the only structured joke I've ever made up and submitted it.

It's really terrible. You have been warned. Nonethess, I looked yesterday and discovered it's now in their database! It's in the geek jokes section, of course, and goes like this:

A potter tells his student, You should try using this white clay called porcelain. It not only throws well, but it softens your hands while you make the dishes.

Well if you are somewhere between the ages of about 30 to 127, you probably recognize the reference and are moaning in pain. If you are any younger or don't get the reference then take a look here. Garrison has lots of jokes of all sorts on his site so even if you hated that one there's plenty more to choose from.

Update! We saw A Prairie Home Companion live when they were here in St. Louis, January 20th. It was very fun. I was surprised at how well the movie portrays the real show. Had I known, I wouldn't have seen the movie first! (It was kind of like watching a movie and then reading the book. But it was still very fun.

It was also quite surreal to watch a live radio broadcast. I don't how long Garrison will be around or how long he'll do the show. It's worth seeing for the sake of seeing something so odd and temporally displaced, if nothing else. I think you'll find it funny as well. Spousy even liked the live version and if you had heard him after we saw the movie, you would understand that is saying something.

Well, it's ben a loooong time since I've put together a web site. A lot has changed in the last ten years. It looks like I have some serious catching up to do.

I need to get this site in order for a couple of reasons. 1) I think keeping all my reference material in one place online is a good idea and 2) I have a really geeky infrastructure project that needs a target site. I'm building a multiple camera cat surviellance system for the house.

The goal of the project is to place multiple cameras at the most popular of my cats' house hangouts and have the pics uploaded here in both still format and also as little time-lapse movies. That way when I'm at work or travelling, I can keep any eye of the little beasts.
Why would I waste good time and money doing such a thing?

Well, mostly it's because I'm insane about the cats but also it just sounds fun. I placed an order with x10.com and my cameras, video receiver, and other misc gear is on the way. Now I need to get to work on the server that's going to make all this happen. I have an old Pentium II which can be upgraded to a Pentium III for about seventeen bucks these days.

So, I'll buy a processor for it and install Linux on it. Using Perl along with the X10 control modules from CPAN, I'll have a dedicated machine to control the cameras, generate the videos and upload everything to this site. Once it is all working, I'll put a full description of the process and parts in the Technology section of the site.