I HAVE TO SCREAM TO THE HEAVENS ABOUT WONDERFUL STRESS BALLS FROM PURRS!!!!

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

The whole of Napoleons story from start to finish is in the Rainbow Bridge section and its very long but you will see his name easily. I think its worth a read for a number of reasons but its very sad and has many highs and lows and crosses my transfer of him from my original vets to the ones I use now.

Both vets were very good but the current ones are 24/7 and the former used a company called Vets Now and Napoleon would have died much sooner but for the change of vets.

I have since lost his brother Ducha in August last year and from renal failure and both are very are very dear to my heart and I really cant say more than what is in their threads and Ducha particularily breaks my heart and I know I would have lost him eventually but feel it would not have been then.

Its funny cos have only just seen your post and was thinking of Napoleon today, maybe cos my subconcious knew I was going to have to go past the vets this afternoon.

[PersianCatLover]

Oh, Gil,
So sorry to hear about your Napoleon. May I ask what was wrong with him, or is it still too fresh to bear to talk about?  I only ask as I am fairly new to the cat world and I try to learn from every experience I can.  I feel that if we share these things with each other, we all learn and it is good for the teller as well because you can rant and rave and we all understand (at least I hope so).  I know I shall rant and rave when Bubbles the saluki goes over the rainbow bridge and I know that since she has cancer and has had 3 ops for it and is pushing 14 it won't be nearly long enough away for me.

It was wonderful of your vet to reduce the price somewhat for you.  I wish that attitude would rub off on vets in this area.  The problem is that the ones that do it have lousy facilities, no extras like ultrasound and don't seem to like animals very much.

I know about the raise in insurance.  I'm thought perhaps it was caused by Ali the salukis diagnosis of thyroid problems requiring daily meds at about £35.00 per month plus frequent blood tests, but maybe we all just got hit because all the insurance companies thought they weren't making enough money!

When I came to England I was really in for a big shock.  In  the US I was used to paying under $20.00 for a visit and I could buy my vaccines by mail order (except for rabies which you CAN buy, but if you are not a vet it doesn't count if the dog bites someone). Can you imagine I could vaccinate for everything for less than £2.00??????

Oh, well, live and learn.  I wouldn't take a million bucks for any of my fur-faced kids, so I guess I just have to bite the bullet if I want them healthy and happy, which I do!

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

I so agree about the need for insurance and have just paid out £2000 over 20 months for my late Napoleons surgery and the attempt to get him better. The bill was a fraction under £3000 but my lovely vet reduced it as much as he could.

My three which include one mad baby birman! cost about £45 a month but the insurance company increased the amount massively last Oct.

I love your cats and the dilute persian is   

[PersianCatLover]

 
How wonderful to make new rescue Persian friends! Hugs to every one of you!  Yes, our girl Widget is very special.  The picture below of her with our Saluki *also a rescue* was taken about three days after Widget arrived.  Both of our saluki girls were pikie owned before we got them and were used for courseing...but they have never done a thing but welcome cats into our home!  Bubbles even alogrooms them!  And Widget is a wonder at cleaning saluki foot feathers with her tongue, not to mention sorting out ears and kissing eyes.  Ali likes to cuddle them

I am posting pictures of our red girl Gizmo, who also ended up costing close to £300.00 to have her ear polyps removed, here eyes checked while under to see if she had blocked tear ducts (she didn't...she has none)...and ear mite treatment, flea treatment, worm treatment you name it.  She weighed in at 1 pound at 1 year of age.  She is a "miniature" so I was told...I think she was more than likely a "starved cat", but still she now only weighs about 2 kilos and isn't nearly as tall and long as Widget is...who weighs 4 kilos now and is solid as a rock and has muscles and everything!
It took about 36 hours for the cats to accept the salukis...the salukis were happy to see them but the cats needed time to get used to big, tall, sometimes clumsy (yes salukis can be clumsy believe it or not) dogs.  Within a few days we were about to snap pictures of them cuddleing up...go figure.  I think it has a lot to do with how layed back persians are in general.  I'm not sure if I had been picked by foreign breeds like the siamese if things would have gone so easily.

Still I get so angry when I see people post that cats and sighthounds can not get along together....it's pure rubbish.  I must admit though that I have over 40 years experience with salukis so it might be that I read their body language very well.  I did breed salukis and exhibit them when I lived in the states and have judged the breed over here.  I made up 17 champions of my own breeding owner handled, but only bred a total of 17 salukis in three litters over 30 years time.  I didn't like breeding...wel, I loved the pups but was way too wary of prospective puppy buyers and in fact kept all the pups in my last two litters lol.  Lucky there were only 5 in total in the two litters.  When I came to England (by then all of my line had died, mostly at the age of 16 or 17! and knew that there were too many salukis and not enough homes, so began helping with Saluki rescue, thus we now only have the two resident salukis, one is 13 and the other near enough 9.

As for insurance...get it if you can afford it.  In fact get it even if you have to eat oatmeal for dinner a couple of nights a week.  When our pets get sick they need help now, and too often it is the choice between a needle in the leg or whatever surgery they need to have.  For instance (hold on to your hats, three days after Widget's surgery, Ali went from healthy girl to dying girl in the space of about 30 minutes.  She was immediately admitted to hospital and had surgery the next day.  The total price for her trip to the vet was £1,080.00.  Now add the almost £300.00 for Widget and most people would have made the choice for euthanazia because who can come up with that kind of money?  Well, we had to pay cash for Widget's surgery, but it cost only £80.00 for Ali as she was insured.  The insurance covered every penny over that.  Insurance is a godsend.  We have Pet-Line insurance.  Bubbles is no longer insured as she has had 3 cancer ops and at her age if something went wrong we know we would not opt to put her through another invasive proceedure...so for our two cats and Ali we pay $57.00 per mo, but they are lifetime insurance policies.  The excess for the cats is £70.00 and for the dogs £80.00 but they pay up to £10,000.  per illness which is much more than petplan.

Anyway, thanks for all the nice comments and here are some pictures of all the girls...

[Dawn F]

what a lovely girl, if you are allowed to have a favourite colour then blue cream is mine!

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

She is so beautiful 

So pleased you took her on and have had her all sorted out, long live Widget and want to see her with her stress ball and also your red persian 

[Tiggy's Mum]

What a beautiful girl, I just love her colouring  How soon was the cat/dog pic taken? She looks so relaxed next to her new friend, especially if she's never met dogs before 

[bunglycat]

Hi 
From one Persian cat lover to another.
Widget is absolutely stunning , love to see a picture of your red one too sometime.
So glad she found you and got all the treatment she needed.
I had a blue and cream girl , but sadly lost her to liver cancer just over two years ago .
I now still have 5 rescue Persians and just adore them . They are spoilt rotten of course , but would be tempted to have more if i was better off , vet bills are the worst . I still have to get my two young boys insured .
Pandora is and Winston and FiFi too old now at almost 15 .

[Sam (Fussy_Furball)]

There's no such thing as a FREE cat lol!!  But having seen the pictures of your beautiful girl I think we can all understand why you took her on and have opened your heart, home and wallet to this little soul. 

[PersianCatLover]

Hi All!
If you haven't tried the stress balls available from the Purrs shop get busy and order a dozen or two!

We FINALLY found the perfect cat to fit into our household with our darling Gizmo, our red Persian rescue girl. She is a blue cream Persian about 5 years old and a real sweetheart!  However, no good deed goes unpunished, and though I knew when she was delivered to us by her former owner that her ear mite infestation was a dramatic one.  The ears were stiff with scar tissue and of course, there was the typical black gunk filling both ear canals.  Still I thought to myself, this is easily cured.  WRONG. This was just the beginning.  She didn't just have ear mites, she had fractured teeth, a lung infection, had had a litter of kittens so was never spayed or microchipped.  She arrived at our house on December 8th and was duly insured for life and then packed off to the vets to get rid of her ear baggage.  No one noticed the teeth, but we booked her in to be spayed on January 3rd and got to work with insure cat spot on and daily cleaning with the stuff the vet sent home.  By the time the 3rd rolled around she had a slight cough that was not a distress cough but she sounded as though she might have a bit of something stuck behind her palate.  I asked the vet to check this out when she was under anesthetic. He did.  I was called as soon as she was under and John told me that she had two really badly shattered teeth and he thought that was what might be causing the cough.  She was also pretty thin.  Not dead thin, but had no muscle and on a big framed cat as she is it was pretty noticeable , she needed to have the groceries poured in and to have those teeth out.  We opted to have them pulled at the same time as she was spayed since she was already under the anesthetic and we all worry about having to put cats out any more than we have to.  Of course with no course of antibiotics pre extraction she developed a mighty abscess which required a full month of antibiotics.  It eventually burst on its own.  Oh, forgot to mention that she was put on antibiotics the day she was spayed as John reported that when he extubated her there was a lot of gunk on the tube...yuck.  I do go on but there is a point to this.  Well a couple.  Number one is if a cat rescue charges you £150.00 to adopt a cat, don't complain.  Widget cost us almost £300.00 in vet bills, all not covered by insurance of course as it was pre-existing!!!  She was a "free cat".  Yea, right lol
ANYWAY you can imagine how stressed our Widget was.  Here she was dumped in a new home.  She had never met a dog and we have the two salukis (who love cats, but you know...) we immediately start digging in her ears, lugging her back and forth to the vets, she gets put to sleep only to wake up with a sore mouth, a sore side...She took it all well, but when I looked in her eyes there was quite a bit of confusion and stress there.

SO I BOUGHT WIDGET A STRESS BALL FROM PURRS!!! You'd have thought I'd bought her an entire new wardrobe, 500 pairs of shoes, and a tiara!  She was in bliss.  She packs that ball around with her, bunny kicks it, cuddles it, rubs her face on it, hides it.  Gizmo does not get this ball,oh, no.  Now we have three great big lovely climbing frames, two baskets of cat toys (big ones!) three de-lux litter boxes and nothing impressed her until THE BALL arrived.

So A BIG THANK YOU TO PURRS IN OUR HEARTS SHOP AND THE LOVELY PEOPLE WHO RUN IT!!!! Do not walk!  RUN :wow:to the shop and get yours before I decide to buy their whole stock.  Your cat will love you for it.

Oh, and here's a picture of our Widget, who had to be shaved last year according to her previous owner, cough and her new coat that is coming in a treat.  Did I mention she now weighs 4 kilos???