Happy Cat Family

Con-cat-tulations Samantha, Clementine and Maverick for winning! Meowmy already sent your address for KC, so brace yourselves for some goody goodies! Woohoo! Thanks for participating - aren't you glad you made it? You literally got here in the nick of time!

By the way, have you been to our Auction yet? Furriends, it is on FIRE!! You couldn't expect any less from something KC and Gracie put together though - the items are Great, and there is something for effurybody - check it out!

Hello Furriends, Bugsy Here!
Our Valentines Week Photo Contest has started! Have you seen the pictures yet? Adriana submitted the oh-so-cute picture of her woofie Quattro, playing with his favorite toy, a rubber Chicken!

Marg's Pets submitted of her pets lounging on a nice sunny day, and said: "I Love all my kitties and actually all my animals. They are my entire life and I wish them a very Happy Valentine's Day."

What about you, have you chosen your picture yet, or are you going to kill us with curiosity untill the last minute?
Can't wait to see your pictures!
Below are the contest rules again:
Love is in the air... Send us a photo of what you love the most: It can be of your favorite hooman, your favorite fur-sibling, an activity you love, your favorite thing to eat, your favorite place to sleep, your favorite toy, etc.

• For a donation of $5.00 per photo your name will be put into a drawing. The winner will receive a personalized gift $20.00 for your pet!! (Prize donated by Gracie and paw picked out by KC)
• Make donation through the pay pal button. Put the name of your pet and your blog link.
• Send photo, no smaller than 1000 pixels in jpg to carolina (@) happycatfamily . net
• It would be great if you could tell us what you love when you send us the picture, so we can use it as a caption! Oh, and don't forget to send us a link for your Bloggie with it as well!
  
• You can enter as many times as you want but each photo must have a $5.00 donation.
• Contest Begins at February 13th 11:59pm, and ends February 20th at midnight.
  
• Winner will be announced on February 23th
• Good Luck!!

Hi Furriends, Meowmy Here!
For those who don't know Gracie's story, in summary, we are trying now to adjust her thyroid meds. She came to me on November 1st on what I thought to be a very high dose of Methimazole - 7.5mg 2x a day. She was gaining weight nicely, which she needed, as she was almost skin and bones, and there were very high vet bills with Bugsy and her very unexpected surgery, so I had to wait to take her for a blood T-4 blood test (which her new vet said was ok and safe to wait).
A month/few weeks ago I took her in for a a blood test - sure enough, she was way over medicated... Her new vet immediately lowered her dose to 5mg 2x a day.
Then last Friday I took her in for yet another T-4 test to see how she was adjusting to the new dose. Well, lo and behold, she was still overmedicated. The vet again Lowered her meds to 2.5mg 2x a day.
I am furious with the old vet, that means she was taking at least triple of the dose she was supposed to be taking! At the same time just glad that she is with me and not seen by him anymore. She will have another test in 3 weeks. Aside e from that. our little old lady is doing FANTASTIC!!

Now onto Bugsy:
He continues to have formed poop! After four months of daily diarrhea, many different medications, on their own and combined, LOTs of vet visits, many many tests, a visit to the e-vet, etc, DiaGel, a diarrhea gel recommended by TCS's member Kody's mom (and approved by my vet), finally did it! He was on it a week twice a day, more precisely, 6 1/2 days (we had to stop for 2 1/2 days in the middle to wait for shipping as we froze and there was no shipping to our home). He had a total of 13 doses. 24 hours after the second dose there was a HUGE improvement.
His last dose was five days ago, and so far so good! He does not have solid poop, but it is formed. Warning: I will get graphic now, so if you get grossed out by poop stop here. His poop is rope-shape, but relatively soft. Nothing like diarrhea, but if he steps on it, it will get smashed. If he doesn't it keeps the form. During these four months, the best he ever got was a cow-pile, never formed poop. Whenever we stopped a medication, by the next day he was right back to explosive watery liquid diarrhea. So, this is truly dramatic.
FYI, Bugsy never in his life had solid poop. He always had formed, but soft poop, kind of what he has now. So he is now "at his normal". His stomatitis meds do help a lot with it, but he is out of it until his next liver panel in March, so I can't count with that help now. If his liver numbers are ok then, he will go back on the meds.
In discussing with his vet, all his history, his tests and the fact that he never had solid poop indicate that he might have a very mild form of IBD (which is in line with his other vet's beliefs), but we can control that with Diet, fiber and probiotics like we did in the past, especially since he did not respond to prednizolone.
So, this looooooooong post is to say that........... (unless things change) He is fine and........ finally dismissed of any further treatment until next month when we go in for the liver panel! yey!
Now I will pray things don't change, and that his liver panel comes back normal... He needs to go back into his sotmatitis meds ASAP! For now it is excellent news though!

Hello Furriends, Hope here!
Happy Valentines Day Furriends! We are so excited, our Fun-Raising Valentines Day Photo Contest has Started! Woohoo!! If we were going to submit a picture, it would be this one, what do you think? Yes, aside from Meowmy, the one I love the most in the WHOLE World is Lucky!! She is just my buddy, all the way! What about you? What picture are you entering the contest with?

Contest Rules:
Love is in the air... Send us a photo of what you love the most: It can be of your favorite hooman, your favorite fur-sibling, an activity you love, your favorite thing to eat, your favorite place to sleep, your favorite toy, etc.

• For a donation of $5.00 per photo your name will be put into a drawing. The winner will receive a personalized gift $20.00 for your pet!! (Prize donated by Gracie and paw picked out by KC)
• Make donation through the pay pal button. Put the name of your pet and your blog link.
• Send photo, no smaller than 1000 pixels in jpg to carolina (@) happycatfamily . net
• It would be great if you could tell us what you love when you send us the picture, so we can use it as a caption! Oh, and don't forget to send us a link for your Bloggie with it as well!
  
• You can enter as many times as you want but each photo must have a $5.00 donation.
• Contest Begins at February 13th 11:59pm, and ends February 20th at midnight.
  
• Winner will be announced on February 23th
• Good Luck!!
  

Hi Furriends, Bugsy Here!
Woohoo! We are only one day away from the photo contest! Have you gone through your compooter and chosen a good picture to submit yet? Make sure to choose a good one! This is going to be fun fun fun and exciting! We can't wait to see all the pictures!
Meowmy will not be posting the pictures until the contest dates by the way, until then they will be saved in meowmy's compooter.
To participate in the contest, click on the picture above or in the tab on our header that reads "Photo Contest"! The rules will be posted again in the end of this post :)
Now I will leave you with some pictures of me, taking it easy this weekend! Hope you all are having an easy Sunday too!

Contest Rules:
Love is in the air... Send us a photo of what you love the most: It can be of your favorite hooman, your favorite fur-sibling, an activity you love, your favorite thing to eat, your favorite place to sleep, your favorite toy, etc.

• For a donation of $5.00 per photo your name will be put into a drawing. The winner will receive a personalized gift $20.00 for your pet!! (Prize donated by Gracie and paw picked out by KC)
• Make donation through the pay pal button. Put the name of your pet and your blog link.
• Send photo, no smaller than 1000 pixels in jpg to carolina (@) happycatfamily . net
• It would be great if you could tell us what you love when you send us the picture, so we can use it as a caption! Oh, and don't forget to send us a link for your Bloggie with it as well!
  
• You can enter as many times as you want but each photo must have a $5.00 donation.
• Contest Begins at February 13th 11:59pm, and ends February 20th at midnight.
  
• Winner will be announced on February 23th
• Good Luck!!

Hello Furriends, Gracie Here!
Had a pretty stressful day today... Imagine my surprise when the morning started to go by and there was no food for me! Everybody got fed but me! Then it happened - meowmy's lunch break was doing you know what! yep - taking me to the V-E-T! It was a quick in-and-out trip though; they just had to steal my blood for another thyroid test. Thing is, they had to give me that zoom-zoom gas so I would sleep (I am fierce), so I got really sick on the trip back home... I was drooling all over the place, feeling really nauseous, and to top it off, I pooped myself! Thank goodness the V-E-T is close by because being stuck in the carrier in a pool of drool and covered in poop, dizzy from all that gas is no fun at all! I got home and ate some food but it took me a little while to get better... I am all good now - not to worry!
Results should be in soon - I will keep you all posted. Hopefully soon enough we are going to have my medication dose straighten out.
By the way furriends, we are only two days away from the photo contest! Have you gone through your compooter and chosen a good picture to submit yet? Make sure to choose a good one! This is going to be fun fun fun! We can't wait to see all the pictures!
Meowmy will not be posting the pictures until the contest dates by the way, until then they will be saved in meowmy's compooter.
Here are the rules again:
Contest Rules:
Love is in the air... Send us a photo of what you love the most: It can be of your favorite hooman, your favorite fur-sibling, an activity you love, your favorite thing to eat, your favorite place to sleep, your favorite toy, etc.

• For a donation of $5.00 per photo your name will be put into a drawing. The winner will receive a personalized gift $20.00 for your pet!! (Prize donated by Gracie and paw picked out by KC)
• Make donation through the pay pal button. Put the name of your pet and your blog link.
• Send photo, no smaller than 1000 pixels in jpg to carolina (@) happycatfamily . net
• It would be great if you could tell us what you love when you send us the picture, so we can use it as a caption! Oh, and don't forget to send us a link for your Bloggie with it as well!
  
• You can enter as many times as you want but each photo must have a $5.00 donation.
• Contest Begins at February 13th 11:59pm, and ends February 20th at midnight.
  
• Winner will be announced on February 23th
• Good Luck!!
  

Hello Friends, meowmy here!
We are very excited to announce The Happy Cat Family Fun-Raising Valentine's Day Photo Contest, coming up February 14th!!! The contest launches our fund raising event to help with the vet bills for Gracie and Bugsy. We hope you participate, we are super excited about it!
To participate you can either click here, on the picture above, or on the badge in the sidebar. You can also click on the "Photo Contest" Tab on our header :) Details of all we have been going through is below.
Mark your Calendars, and Good Luck!!
Pee Ess: It would be super fantastic if you could share this with your friends by simply clicking the "Like" Facebook button underneath this post, or the Tweeter

Bugsy's problems started on October 10th, 2010, when he had a bad UTI and was given a 7-day course of Clavamox. At the moment he started on Clavamox, he started having Diarrhea... We have been fighting it now for 120 days. In these four months we had numerous vet visits, tests, specialized blood tests, several different medicine courses and an emergency visit. Bugsy is now on the last attempt with medications before being referred to a specialist. As you saw on the last post, DiaGel seems to work, but we don't know for certain - after 4 months, being off of it for one day is just too soon to tell. His liver has suffered from all the meds, and now this might be another battle we have to fight. He was also taken off of his stomatitis treatment, and if that affects his liver we might face surgery, complete teethe removal in the future.
Gracie is 12 yrs old and has Hyperthyroid. On Dec. 31, she stopped eating, showing signs of pain in her mouth.  She was taken to the dentist immediately where they found out the problem: the tooth was cracked and so diseased that had created a fistula - a hole in between the mouth and the nose. It was also infected. She had a surgery to have the tooth removed, the bone shaved and a small bone implant put in. The hole was left open to drain. She was expected to have a second surgery to close the fistula, but she beat all odds with amazing results from the first surgery and that will no longer be necessary. For a little while, monthly T-4 tests will be needed to adjust her medication.

Hi Furriends, Bugsy here!
You read it right! Today marks 120 days that we are fighting my diarrhea... Can you believe it? 120 days! Whew! That is a lot of soft poop right there! But there are some good news, and I am here to ask you to send some good, special, extra strong purrs my way these next couple of days furriends, because I will need all the vibes I can get!
For the last week my V-E-T has had me take this thing called DiaGel, a natural gel for diarrhea. I was going to start a new steroid treatment last week, but an online furriend of meowmy from The Cat Site told her about DiaGel, and meowmy discussed with the V-E-T. He said it was good for accute diarrhea and he was almost sure it wouldn't work for me, but nonetheless it was worth trying it because if it did work, it would spare me from steroids... DiaGel is usually used in a single dose (and it is very expensive too, $12 a dose!), and sometimes it is used for up to 5 days... The V-E-T decided to do a 7-day course with me, twice a day. Well, lo and behold, it worked! For the last 4-5 days or so, I have had formed poop! Formed poop furriends! Wow!!!
The thing is, my last dose was tonight, and nobody knows what is going to happen... I really need to hold my own without Diagel so I don't need the steroids... Please, please furriends, purr hard for me! Purr really hard for tootsie poopie from now on!
On another note, I am also off of my Stomatitis medication until March when I will have another liver panel to check if my ALT levels have returned to normal. My gums are starting to get bad, so a dental might be in order soon... I don't want that :( After March I will go back into the medication and will run another test after a while to see if that medication affects my liver too - if it does (the V-E-T doubts it, but meowmy wants to be on the safe side), meowmy says she might talk to my dentist about surgery... We will see... I hope not.
Anyways furriends, I will leave you here so you can start purring! Purr for tootsie poopsie! ooommmmm
Thank you furriends,
Bugsy

Hi Furriends, Bugsy here!
Ok, let me just tell you... Time to defrost the land big guy up there! We are all stuck in the house, there is tons of the wet sticky white stuff outside, the windows have been closed since forever, and we are just over it! Well... I gotta say, it was funny today though - The mailman finally showed up to pick up a package (was waiting for him since toosday!), and as soon as meowmy opened the door, Lucky dashes outside... imagine the shock! She was so confused! All the cold and the sticky white stuff on the floor! Meowmy said that she just stood in there, "frozen" like the weather, with a blank look on her face, as though she was asking what in the World is going on here? Where am I?
There you go Lucky... Good lesson for you to not run away like that you silly girl!
Here is a picture of our courtyard... underneath this fluffy white stuff there is a good 2-3" of solid ice... and that is the problem! The roads around our home are closed and meowmy is running out of hooman food... I just hope she doesn't eat our food! Oh nos!

PeeSS: My health continues the same, meaning, I still have the runs... I will give a better update tomorrow... I am ok besides my poop problem though; I just wanted to take a little break from talking about health issues so much...
Hugs,
Bugsy

Hi Furriends, Bugsy here!
Today is Thankful Thursday, so I wanted to make a special post about my bootiful Coogar - Miss Gracie! I am SO thankful she is here with us! Furriends, I don't know what it is about her... I but I think I am in love... truly, madly, deeply in love with her! I know she is much older than me... But hey, if Ashton and Demi are still going strong after all this time.... why not Bugsy and Gracie? Unfortunately she refuses my advances and hisses and hisses whenever I get close... But you know what they say about opposites attracting... I don't know furriends,but I think all this anger might have a touch of love behind it! What do you think? Should I keep going, or just give up on loving my special cougar? Look how beautiful she has become!