Pat, I am very concerned about all of this.  I am happy that you are going
to be able to buy a home, but there are other factors that raise questions
about how you will be able to take care of your cats.  You said when you
first talked about Abelard's tail that you only had $50.00 for the rest of
the month, yet you are now discussing the purchase of a home and a line of
credit that you do not want to disturb because you want to use that for a
cat containment fence.  Several people from this group donated funds for
Abelard's care when you said you only had $50.00 for the remainder of the
month, and some of them are people who can ill afford to make donations.  At
that point, Abelard was "missing," so you took Baby Eyes.  I'm glad Baby
Eyes received treatment, but that still left Abelard without treatment (and
you had then used at least part of the money that had been donated for
Abelard).  You have also talked about the poor living conditions you have
had to live in, yet you talked in another message about hoping that a "cat
loving" tenant would move in so you could leave Eli with the new tenant.
Several people gave helpful advice about the problem with Eli, but you have
not updated that situation at all.  I have been through the process of
saving money for a down payment and trying to balance that with regular (and
emergency) expenditures.  However, I hope you will be more cautious in the
future about placing people on this group in a position where they make
donations to someone who may actually have more liquid assets than they
have.  I have made a number of donations to people on the NG for cat care,
so I do recognize that there are emergencies where donations are both needed
and legitimate -- but I do believe we should all be careful not to solicit
funds (even inadvertendly) in routine situations.

MaryL