Response to "Phil P." <phil@maxshouse.com>:

Good for her!  She was gorgeous and looked really sweet.

I just took two for ya'.

Phat Kat snoozing on the back of the couch aka "one of the few places
safe from Gabby."

http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=phatkat1lx1.jpg

Phat Kat's phat head.  ; )

http://img401.imageshack.us/my.php?image=phatkat2sy3.jpg

NOTE:  Yes, he's been forced into a diet.  Although he bites me to
let me know he disapproves.

And while I have your attention -- when you look at the second one,
do you see anything at all abnormal?

I sometimes think his chin is really big and of course the dirt he
always seems to have around his nose and eyes.  The animal hospital
and my local vet said it was nothing to worry about and that he
doesn't have the "kitty acne."  He doesn't seem to be bothered
either.

Good luck, Annie!

Yay! Another cat saved! Very pretty eyes!

I'm right there with you.  I love my dogs & cats but have absolutely NO
tolerance for bratty misbehaved children.  I don't have kids and never
wanted any.  I believe strongly that a good attitude adjustment via a whack
on the a.s is what a lot of kids are lacking these days.  It never hurt us
any and we all turned out OK.

Celeste

Good on you!  I wanted children, but only two.  You have to have some level
of maturity to know your limits.  BTW, have you seen the promos for the TV
show "The Baby Borrowers"?  It's teens who are going around saying, ooooooo
I think I'd be a good parent, I luuuuuuurve kids.  Then they give them
babies (then toddlers, then teens) for a while to show them what it's
*really* like to have kids 24/7!

Like I said, I don't know why I keep thinking about this lately...  I guess
one reason is the announcement we got at my company (I work for a consulting
firm that helps other companies with their HR stuff like retirement
investments, funding group insurance, compensation packets, etc.).  They are
holding classes for our consultants to teach them how to "counsel clients on
ways to deal with the imminent economic crisis in the US".  That's the
verbiage on the memo, what I'm hearing our investment counselors saying
around the water cooler is "imminent economic collapse".  They're going to
teach clients how to handle massive lay-offs, what to do when investment
firms start going under, how to "offshore" assets that would become
worthless in the US, etc.  You can stop reading here if you're not
interested in world politics, but this is what I've come to understand is
happening...

The US has been playing the bully in the schoolyard ever since the end of
the cold war - threatening others and taking all the toys and lunch money
for itself.  In the past our military technology and massive strike
capabilities have kept anybody else from really standing up to the bully.
However, in the past few decades, the "other kids", 90 pound weaklings that
they are, have started to plot a strategy to take the bully down.  They are
forming alliances (the European Union, OPEC), and baiting the bully in many
different directions to distract him and make him use his resources in lots
of different places.  Funding for our war in Iraq, other military actions,
and militarily policing the rest of the world has come mostly from communist
China!!  We owe over 9 TRILLION dollars in debt that is very shortly going
to be called due.

Since there still isn't any other nation or even combination of nations that
can stand toe to toe with us militarily, they're going to strike at us the
only way they can, economically - partly from without, but mostly from
within.  Europe and the middle east want to see us become the "North
American Union".  This is going to divert even more of our resources when we
start to be responsible for the masses of poor in Mexico while incorporating
the (extremely costly) semi-socialist government of Canada.  Even now, we're
spending billions of dollars for healthcare and education for illegal
immigrants who pay no taxes in return.  There are large sections of the US
where only Spanish is spoken.  [Personally, I think George W. Bush is going
to go down in history as the greatest traitor to his country of all time -
unless you look at it from the "winning" side and then he'll be seen as the
greatest hero of all time.]

The first *publicized* red flag that showed up here was the collapse of the
housing market - mortgage companies going broke and being shut down because
of financial fraud, thousands of home owners evicted.  The next big hit was
gas prices.  In a country that transports more goods cross-country than any
other nation on earth (not even counting what we use for farming and
industry), that is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back.  When
gas prices get to $12/gallon (which is predicted to happen in the not very
distant future), we're going to start seeing bread going for $8 - $10 a
loaf, fresh veggies $15 - $17 per pound.  Combine those prices with the
massive lay-offs that are going to occur as businesses try to keep their
heads above water and you can see that our near future is not going to be a
very nice place to live in.

Anyway, sorry for the depressing rant, but you can see why I'm worried about
what's going to happen to my family - both furry and bare!

Hugs,

CatNipped