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.

MeyerMike, generally we get normal high temps by by averaging the temps. But low and high temp swings are part of normal as long as there are not too many records broke. I know the fustration, but the Northeast is suppose to get these little cool/cold snaps or we would just keep heating up. As you drive southward down the east coast the cold snap reduces its intensity and duration. Yes, I agree last year was abnormally cool for us which made it worst for northern areas I figured. Last year things were way cooler and slower here in metro New York. Everything has a head start this year like TZ said, what is unusual is that everything is blooming/opening at once and not in stages. We also keep getting days in the 70s which I like, but they just happen and are not forecast very well - like Thurday in suddenly going to be warm.

Thanks all, I was watching the temps last night and we actually hit 4 at 11 pm last night so it's not like it would have been just a few hours at the low or so so I'm glad I moved everyone. No frost though so I guess my garden plants will live another day! Thanks Laura! Yep that's a Meyer with my first fruit ever on. There are actually 4 honkers on there, one got hit with the hail but the hail mark never seemed to spread or try to rot the fruit so I have been watching the fruit and decided to leave it on to fully ripen. It's killing me though it's taking forever!! The one beside it to the right is a eureka lemon and it has 4 good sized lemons on it too... Also my first ever!! So excited for those, but no sign of ripening yet. There was 5 but the hail got one.... Thanks Steve the garage is transitional until I put my trees in my grow room permanently. It faces south so I just open the doors and they get full sun. You remember my grow room with the HO T5s? I will post a pic when they go in there. Thanks Cory, yes the wether here can be cruel. But we got a super early spring so I can't complain much. You are so right about the occasional lows and then back to seasonal... That always happens here too! This entire week looks kind of nasty though so who knows what this season will bring. Good for you for getting started on your set up! Its terrible having to do it all in a panic like I did last night! Thanks dev I hope your season continues as long as possible. This is quite early even for us. I wanted to supplement my grow room too, I even just ordered a new bank of T5s but my electrician is tied up on another job. He better hurry up, running out of time!!

Nancy, Hooray for blooms on the tomatoes. Today's max wind gusts weren't as bad as yesterday's---in fact, 4 mph lower, so the wind wasn't as bad, but we were two degrees hotter so it still felt warm/windy and sort of miserable. I am sorry to hear that you and GDW have been through the wringer this week. That must have been very scary. My dad and I both reacted very badly to anesthesia. I hope I never have to have it again for any reason. Amy, Congrats on the score! I love it when a gift I've selected for someone else is an obvious hit so I know how you're feeling about that. I hope y'all's Mother's Day gathering with your mom was wonderful. Rebecca, I agree about just how bad this early heat is. I cannot ever remember a year when May was hot and then June turned back cooler, so I'm not expecting it to happen this year. I hate to say I've already lost hope, weather-wise, but I sort of have. Usually, at least we have May, you know? The cold of April is gone, our usual May weather is nice, we might have some severe storm days but we have plenty of other nice gardening days. We work ourselves to death in the garden in May because we know the June heat is coming and this is our last good month to really spend all the time we want in the garden, right? So, to have May feeling more like June or even early July is very discouraging. I'm already working around the heat like I normally do from late June onward. This isn't good. It is bad that your TV meteorologists already are comparing this year to 2011 and 2012.....it was okay when I was doing it because I'm not an official anything...but they are official....so we have to take them seriously. Hailey, Begonias are ridiculously easy and so pretty---I just love them. They are very forgiving of dry spells too---surprisingly so. With the Wave petunias, they are hybrids so any seed you save is not necessarily going to give you identical plants next year--they might give you some plants that look like this year's plants, or they might give you something entirely different. They might give you a similar color, but most people who have tried to grow F-2 Wave or Tidal Wave petunia seeds have gotten a whole range of colors. You might get the color, but not the same growth rate or disease tolerance or whatever. It depends on how the genes resort themselves in the F-2 generation (the plants you have now are the F-1 generation). So, if you want to get an exact color of Wave petunia or an exact growth habit, you'd be better off purchasing F-1 seed than saving F-2 seed from F-1 plants. Even if you have to buy the F-1 seed, it still is a lot less expensive than buying the plants. Petunias are surprisingly easy from seeds. We'd better have a fall! Mother Nature owes us a very nice, beautiful, mild, prolonged autumn to make it up to us for taking us straight from winter to summer with no spring. Actually, that's not a fair statement. At my location in southern OK, this is how the seasons have gone: January & February: Winter, March Spring, April Winter, May Summer. It isn't fair, though, to have Spring followed by a return to Winter. It sure confused all the plants. I blame it all on the convergence of Easter with April Fool's Day. I just knew something horrible would happen as a result, and the April cold is the horrible thing that happened. The whole month of April was one big April Fool's Joke, but then there's May. Who is to blame for May being so summery? I love liquid seaweed. It works great. Tips? Never use it indoors because it is stinky, and that's doubly true of liquid fish fertilizer. Both of them will attract cats and coons, and sometimes vultures, so keep that in mind. Are you rural or semi-rural? Every time I use blood meal or bone meal, I have vultures circling above the garden for days. Also, all of these can attract dogs and cats....I cannot let dogs come into the garden with me or they'll try to dig up the bone meal. You can use liquid seaweed either to drench the ground beneath the ground or as a foliar feeding. It seems to work fine either way (just like compost tea or manure tea). Since the NPK on liquid seaweed is low, you probably could use it weekly if you wish. Jen, Plants always do that. When there's something I really want to take to the SF, those volunteers never sprout until after the SF. Your comment about the doctors in Tulsa is not the first such comment I've seen or heard. When we moved here, we just kept using our Texas doctors because we were so comfortable with them. Nancy, I'm glad your blooms are beginning to appear. It is about time! I still feel like not enough is in bloom yet, but we do have lots of blooms in our garden-just not as many as usual. The wildflowers in the fields are the same way---some didn't bloom at all, some haven't shown up yet but I still have some hope we'll see them, and others are blooming either very or somewhat early---there's no rhyme or reason to it. Blame the weather. The weeds are indeed growing like weeds with many new ones sprouting daily. I weeded most of the asparagus bed today as it is the only one that didn't get weeded during the week, and it looks so much more normal and under control now. Rebecca, Those tomato plants were born in a cabbage plant....no, wait, that is Cabbage Patch kids. Hmmm. Well, it all starts out with one tomato blossom that has anthers and pistils.......hmmm. That might be too boring. Well, where did they come from? Did they fall off the turnip truck? Follow you home wagging their tails behind them like little stray puppies? If you do not know where your tomato plants came from, how are we supposed to know? Let's ask the squirrels what they think. I bet they'll know. Hailey, The bottles of liquid fertilizer ought to have directions right there on the bottles. So, it hit 89 degrees here today and it didn't feel quite as bad as some days earlier in the week, but it was no picnic either. I worked in the garden this afternoon while Tim mowed. I weeded, planted a few things, water those things in well with a watering can, etc. and harvested some more tomatoes---this time Early Girls. I also ate Sungolds while working in the garden---they are a natural form of gardener's Gatorade. Tim broke some sort of belt on the riding mower and didn't want to push the push mower around in the heat, so his workday outdoors ended early. He came and offered to help in the garden and I sent him to the house. I felt like he needed some free time that didn't involve working on anything. Mosquitoes are horrible, horrible, horrible here now. Now, I'm off to bed because I hope to get into the garden early for a couple of hours of work before the day gets too busy. Dawn