Hi Krazyaboutkatz, thanks for your reply!

As I mentioned to Freedom, I didn't want to jump in on conversations, as a newbie, sounding like an opinionated know-it-all. I'm glad there is knowledge and/or willingness to learn about the better care of cats amongst the members here, and that the forum isn't just about all the cute things to do with our pets.

Thanks for the compliments on my album. I love to take pictures, I drive many of my friends nuts because I've almost always got my camera in one of my hands and take all kinds of pictures. Since "the girls" ,as I lovingly refer to my kitties, are always around, I get a lot of pictures of them, especially on days when they are in the living room and we have good light coming in so I don't need to use the flash.

I don't think I'll spend any time in the dog house! I don't like controversy but I will explain both de-clawing and diet to folks who ask.

I wish I'd have learned to be an indoor-only cat parent many years ago and not waited til 2005! All my previous kitties would've been gone by now anyway, but hopefully they would've lived much longer lives than they did. I vowed after our Sunshine, the only one to die of natural old-age causes, passed in 1998, that any future kitties would be indoors only, if I didn't want to deal with a litter box 24/7/365, I wouldn't get cats again. Alas, now I have 4 with 6 boxes! We were catless between 1998 and 2005...our intentions were to let our then-aging Jack Russell Terrier live her last years as Queen of the House before adopting/acquiring another cat, but alas, Philly showed up crying in the woods across from our house in 1005, about 2 years before our JRT's end.

I did a lot of research on foods in conjunction with urinary issues trying to keep Tiger Lily healthy...but since her cystitis was being caused by stress, and the stress was the other cats, diet wasn't a lot of help. She'd be okay for a few months, but then the cystitis would recur. It just wasn't fair to try to keep her with us because WE wanted to, it was needed for her health and complete healthiness, to find her an only-pet home. Thank goodness it didn't take long to find one and she did not sit in the adoption center for a lengthy time. She went to an adoption center where she would've lived her whole life if the right folks for her didn't come along, so even if she hadn't been adopted, she was in excellent hands and would not have been euthanized. But the one thing I learned is that cats with urinary issues do need to be on canned/wet food.