Cats

Cats

Think You Can't Afford the Vet?

We all know that cats are quite adept at disguising the symptoms of illness until they're practically dead, right? So why is it that we don't take them to the vet as often as dogs?

CatChannel.com posed that very same question. You can give them your own response here. (Look on the left-hand side of the site for the poll; at this writing it was still this one.) These were the results when I took the poll:

• 70.17% said "Not in my budget"
• 12.88% said "Fear of the cat carrier"
• 10.25% said "Do I need to go? I'm an indoor cat."
• 6.70% said "Utter loathing of vet/vet's office"

The economy's been rough, so it's not hard to understand that people may have a problem affording vet fees. But catching a condition or disease early is often far cheaper than letting it develop into a much-more-expensive-to-treat situation. And vaccines not only prevent future expenses for treating the disease, but can even save your cat's life!

Costopedia, a site that gives average costs for pretty much anything, gave these figures for cat procedures at the vet:

• Spaying: $100-$200
• Neutering: $50-$100
• Urinary tract reconstruction, including bladder, urethra & kidney: $1,399
• Rectal cancer treatment (for malignant tumors within the large intestine): $1,011
• Mast cell tumor removal: $497
• Intestinal cancer treatment: $942
• Hyperthyroidism radiation treatment: $920
• Removal of ingested foreign items from stomach: $1,391
• Fibrosarcoma (skin cancer) treatment: $780
• Bladder stones removal: $989
• Acute renal failure treatment: $565

Catching many of these conditions in a regular well-cat checkup at the vet is far preferable to allowing your cat to develop full-blown symptoms and enduring the full cost of treatment. If money is truly a problem the Humane Society of the United States offers a list of financial aid organizations for pet care. Every state has organizations offering free or reduced-cost spay and neuter surgeries, and usually vaccinations, as well.

Now, if you can just overcome that fear of the cat carrier, you'll be set!

Hey, What u lookin at!

Cat Stash

It's Take Your Cat to the Vet Week!

How do you entice your cat into his carrier to go to the vet? Treats? Playing? Trickery and brute force?

Whatever method you use to get your cat in the carrier is only the first step in a dreaded series of tasks involved in getting regular veterinary checkups for your cat. After bandaging your wounds and finding the car keys, there's the yowling in the car, prying the cat out of the carrier at the vet, getting him back into it for the trip home, and the yowling on the drive home, followed by hours of sulking under the bed before things are even close to normal again...and kitty's still looking at you with suspicious glances for days afterward. Those with multiple-cat households have many times the trouble.

The American Veterinary Medical Association now recommends that cats get veterinary check-ups twice a year. This is especially true for senior cats, or those suffering from chronic conditions like diabetes, compromised kidney function, FIV, or FeLV. Yet the CATalyst Council and the American Humane Association have determined that our precious cats are taken to the vet only half as often as dogs! We only seem to take them when they're sick, not for regular preventive care. Perhaps it's all those above-mentioned hassles that deter us from going more often.

But cats tend not to show symptoms of illness until they're just about dead, so neglecting regular checkups can have dire consequences. Heartworms, severe renal failure, and advanced stages of cancer are just a few of the more serious (and expensive) ailments that can result from lack of well-cat veterinary visits.

To turn this trend around, Feline Pine founded Take Your Cat to the Vet Week in 2009. This recent USA Today article discussed how to make the visit less traumatic. Petfinder.com is commemorating the event this year with posts each day this week covering topics like:

• How to get your cat to like his carrier
• How to reduce the stress of traveling with your cat
• How to keep your cat calm at the vet
• How to get the most out of your vet appointment
• Questions to ask at the vet

Petfinder is also posting links to the articles on their Facebook page all week. While they don't expect all of America's 30 million pet cats to get in to see the vet this week, they do hope that people will make appointments this week for a well-cat exam. How about you? Have you taken your cat to the vet recently? Maybe it's time.

About Polish Pottery

OldMaidCatLady.com has recently added several raised cat dishes in lovely, elaborate folk-art designs. They’re a little pricey for cat dishes, and there’s a reason for that. Here’s the story behind these ultra-premium cat dishes:

Due to its plentiful natural clay deposits, the Silesia region of Poland has been known for its pottery and ceramics for centuries, with examples from the early Middle Ages having been uncovered in archaeological digs. Boleslaviec is one of the towns in which ceramic pieces have been made for over a thousand years. There, artisans hand craft pottery among the finest in the world. Potters in the town formed a guild way back in the early 17^th century.

Over 200 years after the original potters’ guild in Boleslaviec, a master potter named Johann Gottlieb Altman developed a method of casting the pieces instead of throwing them on a wheel, as well as a lead-free glaze that opened the door to new designs including the repeating circles, flowers, and dots you see on the pieces available on OldMaidCatLady.com. After his innovations, larger pottery factories employing many artists arose in the town. Most of the area's factories and pottery schools were destroyed during World War II, but were enthusiastically rebuilt afterward to return to their former excellence. One of the oldest and largest factories in Boleslaviec is multi-award-winning Zaklady Ceramiczne Boleslaviec, from which our pieces originate.

The high content of feldspar and silicon, as well as the great density, of the clay in this region put it in a class by itself for making into strong, durable stoneware. Once shaped and fired at very high temperatures (2,246° Farenheit!), it becomes porous and ready for glazing. A second firing sets the glaze in place and makes the pieces watertight. In our modern world, that also makes them microwave-, freezer- and dishwasher-safe. (Although you should avoid going directly from one temperature extreme to another with them, or the glaze may crack. The factory recommends letting a piece that has been in the refrigerator or freezer warm to room temperature before heating it.)

Intricate decoration in predominant colors of cobalt blue and creamy white are one of the distinctive characteristics of today’s Polish pottery. Three artists -- Julius Paul, Hugo Reinhold and Carl Werner -- revolutionized design again around the turn of the last century by using more brilliant colors, stenciling, and different types of finishes. Recurring motifs in contemporary pieces include the classic dots and florals, windmills, speckles and the popular “peacock’s eye”. They are painted onto each piece by hand using sponge stamps and brushes. The artists' punch technique is unique to ceramics made in Boleslaviec. The style of today’s pieces draws from Polish, Czech, and German traditions and is known in German as Bunzlauer Geschirr.

In the Zaklady factory's line, there are four levels of patterns, each a little more elaborate and difficult to create than the one below it. They are "Classic", "Upper Classic" or "Upper Standard", "DU" or "Subtle", and "Artistic" or "Unikat (unique) Signature". The raised cat dishes we feature are from the first three groups. While patterns in the Unikat line are gorgeous, our supplier felt that the cost of them would be prohibitive for most people buying cat dishes, no matter how spoiled their cats are!

People collect Polish pottery all over the world, with many early pieces being shown in museums. There has been great interest among U.S. collectors lately in Polish pottery, and many pieces are created for everyday use as well as collecting. Each dish is still hand crafted, with mugs and cups selling for $20-$40 apiece. Specialty plates can sell for $500 or more! Now, don’t the pieces we have on OldMaidCatLady.com seem like a bargain?

To take a look at the Polish pottery raised cat dishes we offer, follow these links: We have eight Standard and Upper Standard designs of raised cat dishes, as well as three Subtle pattern raised cat dishes with more intricate designs. All are in limited supply, so order quickly for the best selection!

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