Nepeta is one of the most carefree long blooming plants there is. I think it's worth a try. I have two cats, and used to have another. None of them took any interest in my nepeta at all, even when I stuck it under their noses. We have ferrel cats in our neighborhood too and I have never seen one around my nepeta. If you do happen to have a cat in the neighborhood that wants to eat it or lay in it, at least it probably won't want to poop there too. Nepeta is easy to propagate. If you carefully pull a stem away from the base, it will already have itty bitty roots attached to it and can grow into a good size plant in one season. Just stick the new starts in a shady place for awhile until they get established. It should be very easy to get nepeta in a plant trade or make your own starts if you purchase a plant. Then if you do happen to have new cats hanging around, you won't have spent much and can rip it all out. I don't think you'll need to. In fact there may be some places in your garden where you can use nepeta as a ground cover instead of loose mulch where I suspect you're finding kitty poo. Cats like to scratch in loose soil, sand, or mulch. They're not likely to poop on top of a plant.

I've tried them all, and the jewelers tags work the best for me. I use a pencil to mark the pollen parent on the tags, pens and markers don't work as well. When I harvest the pods the tags go into the envelope with the seeds. I liked the wires, but, I would have to keep the key handy when I transfered the seed from the paper envelopes to the ziplocs. Then later they all need to be straightened, and sorted for the next use. The other problem I ran into was when a cross didn't take and the old bloom fell off sometimes the wire went with it and I was continually picking them up while weeding and putting down new mulch. The bread tags are ok, but on some plants they are hard to put on, and I broke off some flowers I had just pollinated while trying to put them on. You can reuse them if you use a pencil, or a grease or china marker. I use a damp cloth to get the pencil off, and some vegetable oil or a cloth with some WD40 on it to clean off the china marker, you have to scrub harder with the veggie oil. I still use a few of these for crosses involving seedling with long pedigrees. They all work well, but in my wifes eyes, the garden looks like a tag sale when I use the tags.

Your a better person than me. I wouldn't be thinking what he did as honorable at all. He did the right thing admitting he did a terrible thing. Owning up to it in the long run and being a better person is a whole nother matter. I've seen it, been there, put it all out of my life many years ago. I sure hope your sisinlaw can put all the terrible thoughts he put in her head somewhere else and look forward to a future that is sane and happy. He will be honorable in my mind when he acts appropriately for good. He needs to help himself with his mental problems before he can interact with her in a normal way. I guess it's a start, but only the tip of the iceburg, so its understandable why she is keeping her distance from you too. After all you are a direct connection to the person she needs to be away from. The less you know, the less he knows, might be her way of thinking. It's good your her ali but don't feel to bad if she doesn't embrace your friendship.

Spark people was a huge help to me in learning how to get the weight off. I have hypothyroidism so it is doubly hard. I'm not using them now, but I do keep a food diary. That is the most consistent thing you are going to here from people who have lost weight: they keep a food diary. Just knowing you have to write it down when you swallow it is a huge help. and you need to be willing to write it down immediately too, not at the end of the day. Too many things get forgotten that way. I have a food diary that goes back to last July. I print it out every month. I don't even expect it will ever get read by anyone. Here is a sample: 3-17-09: [165.1] 9am: 2 oranges. 10:30am 6 oz. baked ckn, 4 oz baked sweet potato, 6 oz steamed cabbage. Like others, I'm became a complete sugar/empty carb/ white flour addict when I quit smoking. I just changed addictions. So that is an all-or-nothing thing with me, and I had to go with 'nothing'. I don't have it in the house. I also don't use any sugar substitutes because they are worse than sugar (most of them) and ALL of them set up the same chain reaction in your body that sugar does. What is surprising is that you really can get used to having a life of no sweetener except what is naturally found in fruits & veggies. I second the comment about how your cloths fit. Muscle is heavier than fat and is a boon to good metabolism, so you have the hardest part under control. I WISH I could exercise like that. Half is won't, half is can't. Between worn out knees and weak wrists, and general age & wear, there is a lot of exercising I just can't do. Even more that I won't lol. Go to sparkpeople.com. It's free and is the greatest place on the web for all kinds of support and education. Another good site is radiantrecovery.com (I think. Google it if not) where they can help you detox from sugar. Don't give up, you've got more than half the battle licked, being as active as you are. j