Megacolon can be congenital but I think it sometimes just develops later in life with some kitties. There may be a genetic predisposition to it. Topping off the water bowl is fascinating for cats. They'll drink more that way. Many kitties are attracted to moving water like dripping from a tap or one of those store bought kitty water fountains that keeps the water flowing. Get one of those little laser lights to get him to run and chase after the light dot. Our cats **LOVE** when that little red dot appears on the wall. Rani and Daisy love it too! LOL! If the colon is stretched because it is full of poop that causes pain and that may trigger a stress response of increased blood glucose. There may be a weakness of the nerves that tell the intestines to move or perhaps just a weakness of the intestines themselves and the peristaltic waves don't occur or they are not coordinated as they should be to move the intestinal contents farther down the tube. The colon doesn't release fluid. It draws fluid out so the final product is a formed poop. If the contents sit there longer than needed ... there's more fluid drawn out and the poop can become hard as gravel from a parking lot. There's NO WAY that can be passed without help from the outside, as it were. :-) Once all that hard huge impacted stuff is removed, if the colon is still kinda OK, the diameter may reduce to near normal and poop will be able to come out. If the disease is more advanced, the diameter of the colon will remain as though stretched and whatever contents enter will just accumulate like they did before. Kinda like the difference between splicing a hose with a slightly larger diameter between sections of your normal garden hose or splicing the ends of a lawn garbage bag between. Stuff will flow through the different sized hoses but tend to pool in the huge garbage bag section. If the colon is huge, then there needs to be either surgery to remove the dilated section or scheduled de-pooping under anesthesia every month. Some kitties will eat pumpkin. Some won't. It isn't a guarantee that it would work either.

WF - No LAFFING! Ok - I'm grinning too, but NO LAFFING. It's really NOT FUNNY. I'm trying to be serious here. . . .STOP IT. ..(grin) I get these STUPID calls this time of year - from friends that went shopping - and didn't have ANY form of protection. . . .I just want to hand them my credit card and tell them to throw the machine out the window. I'm serious. . .tis the season. That and the "what should I buy" stuff with those ads - every freakin' ad that comes out in some da*mn newspaper. . .trying to explain to someone NOT to purchase anything with a celeron - an athalon is fine - watch out for this, that and 15 other things. I go into a complete psychosis at this time of year! No laughing! Comonnnnnnnnnn. . . .(grin) I just wanna play in the dirt! Leave me alone! Buy a set of crayons and write your order! (very sarcastic grin) Speaking of . . .I have to go in tomorrow and fix a corrupted profile from someone who can't stop surfin' . .jeez I'd like to slap some people. . . .and then re-write an app that is misbehaving. . .the users won't use the command buttons right so I have to "disable" some of those in the application. Ya know, how many times do you have to tell people not to "crash" out of a shared database? Want me to draw PICTURES FOR YOU?!?!?! I'm gonna disable the red X. Stopped the corruption in the other ones when I disabled it. No laughing - this time of year stinks for some of us. LOL. . .(sigh!)

If the Dell is still under warranty, he can call Dell tech support and they will completely walk him through reformatting his computer. I have reformatted with Dell's assistance numerous times, ending up with a 'just like new zippy' computer. I bought the extended warranty on my Dell which covered up to 5 years on the hardware, and now no longer have to pay for any warranty, but have life time coverage for tech support. The extended warranty was not very cheap, but since my computer is 7 1/2 years old now, and I've not 'had' to spend a cent on it, I feel the warranty cost was well worth it. I did recently have a local computer repair person install a new drive, and reformat the computer, and he got all the updates and installed all necessary programs. He only charged $50, so I thought that was well worth it for me to not have to spend a lot of time getting all the updates and everything, since my ISP speed is not very fast. I would not feel very comfortable with trying to attempt to reformat without tech support walking me through everything.

Lynn if you are happy with McAfee then keep it, I in fact have McAfee on one of my windows computers because I too get it free with my Verizon fios, when I get tired of it or if something goes wacky with it I know I can always just start using one of the free ones like Avast, would not use the new AVG8. There have in the past been problems with McAfee, they have sent out some updates that caused problems on some computers, but they were pretty quick to fix them. I do not use their firewall I use an older version of zonealarm pro. Site advisor has nothing to do with your McAFee suite it is an add on for your browser, you download it from the site I provided in the other thread and simply select which browser you are using and use the download for that browser, Since you are currently using IE get the one that says for Ie, when you decide to get firefox then go and get the one that says for firefox it will then add it to firefox also. it is super simple to do basically one click. It is free for everyone. as to your husbands laptop that would be totally up to you or him. IF he wants to pay for trend micro it is a good program however I think there are free versions that can handle the job like the Avast free. I would probably do that instead of putting AOL on there if he does not need it, AOL is bad about digging into the innards of the pc and when not needed I don't advise putting it on. Now to your daughters pc are you sure you have the McAfee suite actually installed on that pc? I would try logging in with your name since it is under your subscription often times the main user has to do that to enable subscriptions. IF you can not get it to work then make sure you completely remove it from the pc before you install any other antivirus program that goes for any of the computers always completely remove the prior antivirus, you do not want more than one on a pc. McAfee has a detailed directions page on how to uninstall their products. this is the directions you may want to print and keep available. 1. Uninstall all McAfee programs through "Add or Remove Programs" in Windows "Control Panel". 2. Use the MCPR tool, see this article: How to remove supported McAfee consumer products using the McAfee Consumer Products Removal tool (MCPR.exe). This will remove all McAfee remnants from your computer. (you must have Windows Vista, XP or 2000 SP4 to use this tool) 3. Launch Windows Explorer and delete all McAfee files in "Program Files" but especially in "C:\Document and Settings\\Application Data" and "C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Application Data". You have to set Windows Explorer to show all hidden files and folders (Tools > Folder Options > View tab). Just delete the McAfee folders even if they are empty in all the "Application Data" folders. Can be more than one! In Vista: C:\Program Files, C:\ProgramData and C:\Users\yourname\AppData\Roaming 4. Reboot and redownload/reinstall your McAfee products directly from your account at the McAfee web site or your ISP, NOT from any CD that you may have. How to remove supported McAfee consumer products using the McAfee Consumer Products Removal tool (MCPR.exe).