Anne-Marie, first let me say how proud I am of you using this tragic situation with Picasso to learn so much about his illness, its management, and its potential causes. I have always believed that the best way to honor and validate the lives of our loved ones is to learn as much from the circumstances of their lives as possible. My first cat who I believe died of CRF was Tempest, the cat who raised me. Because she was so terrified of trips to the vet, I opted not to take her in when she fell ill. I allowed my precious Tempie to suffer here at home until the day I had to take her in to be euthanized - all for the misguided sake of sparing her the stress of a vet visit. That was a particularly harsh and guilt-ridden lesson to learn, but learn it I did. As a result of the horrible mistake I made with Tempest, Pea received much better care when she was diagnosed with acute kidney failure, though I made some very serious mistakes with her, as well. I did, though, learn a tremendous amount about CRF while trying to manage Pea's illness and associated symptoms. Bitsy received the benefit of my CRF educations from both Tempest and Pea, and he presented me with even more symptoms and lessons about CRF. I took those lessons to heart and will apply them as necessary to Billy, who is the first cat to present me with CRF and HyperT simultaneously. More lessons to learn. Now to address your post. Yes, it is certainly preferable to feed a CRF cat canned food - better yet when the food is mixed into a gruel with additional water. Ideally, the cat will eat one of the prescription canned renal veterinary diets ... if only the cat will agree to do so (which mine NEVER have). Above all, though, is the golden rule of CRF cat management - FEED THEM WHAT THEY WILL EAT. CRF cats often become inappetant or at least extremely picky about what they will eat. In Billy's case, he has always been a picky eater, and his pickiness has become progressively worse with his illness. Until recently, he was eating canned food quite well, though he would cycle through the "acceptable flavors" quite quickly. For a long while, all he wanted to eat were seafood flavors. Then suddenly he wanted nothing to do with seafood at all and would eat flavors which contained liver (something he has never tolerated before). Right now he has lost almost all interest in canned food and wants only dry, so I have been researching dry foods that are as close to "CRF-acceptable" as possible while still being palatable and appealing to him. Here are links to two sites that do both dry and canned cat food comparisons relative to the issues most critical to CRF cats (protein, phosphorous, fat, etc.): dry cat food comparisons another site with dry cat food comparisons Read the pages carefully so you will understand how these comparisons are made. You will also find links on both pages to their canned food comparison pages. It is my personal belief that, particularly for cats in the beginning and moderate stages of CRF, low phosphorous is more critical than low protein, so I tend to give more consideration to the phos than the protein. As you noted, phosphorous is in just about everything, so when the cat's phos blood level goes above normal range, the only option is to use phos binder to prevent the phos from being metabolized by the cat's body. Anyhow, you'll understand more about how the various foods compare once you read the pages linked above. Yep, it's confusing! Laurie

There is so many people that do it both ways that I don't think it really matters! If someone has a username that doesn't have an obvious first name in it then I usually look at their page to see if it is listed. I am also curious to see if any are male...not sure why that is of any interest to me LOL Maybe it is because I get the impression that not too many males make mosaics. The boards including the MAO seems to consist of mainly women! I wonder if it is that way with stain glass.....although when I did visit a stain glass store yesterday, out of the two customers that walked in one was a male. Not a very large sample to judge by :0) ann

DH got some great brownie points by installing my post panels today. It's turning out to be a much bigger job than I thought after the installation. Now I am touching up all of the places we had wedi washers and regular washers, used at least 5 per panel. and no idea WHY i didn't consider the sides of the panels, but i didn't so those all need to be tiled and need to just blend them all together so they look seemless. Spend this afternoon until it got dark starting the work. i've been using thinset and it is so messy for this work, but I couldn't think of anything else that will hold the tess when they are vertical. here you go. also did a grout test, you can see it on my flickr site Here is a link that might be useful: Chez Fleur De Mer installed

I know this is very old, but I found it b/c I just received my second damaged acrylic tub and was searching the internet to see if I should cut bait on this type of tub. Apparently, these tubs are notorious for getting damaged during shipping. I think it's almost impossible to know "who" is responsible and also I'm not even sure damage is always caused by someone doing something wrong. From what I'm hearing, it's sort of like having rain on your wedding day. Not really anyone's fault. Just sort of bad luck. BUT the real lesson is to inspect it soon after delivery b/c both times it has been caught b/c my contractor sent someone over to inspect it as soon as I let him know it had been delivered. He did this b/c of his experience with this problem.