13 Steps for Washing Your Cat

This has nothing to do with anything. I just thought it was funny and copied it from a friends facebook page in the hope that you might enjoy it also. I think it has circulated around the internet for a while so you may have already seen it. I have edited it to suit my style and sense of humor, and hope you enjoy the laugh:


13 Steps for Washing Your Cat

Some people have the misconception that cats never have to be bathed. They believe that, somehow, they "lick" themselves clean.  Well, contrary to popular belief, cats do not have some exotic and mysterious enzyme in their saliva that resembles Tide (with or without bleach).

Cats, like their nemesis the dog, do get dirty and may exude a variety of obnoxious scents. They can go from smelling like the outhouse where you camped last year, to the same odor as your dog's breath. (Remember, your dog will eat anything.)  We all know that cats hate water, and we also all know that giving the cat a sedative to ease the process of bathing is out of the question. Cats do not take pills.

So, the best approach is both sneaky and direct. Remember, this is not the dumb dog who can be led to the tub with lies and a trail of Kibbles and Bits. You are dealing with a cat and although your cat has the advantage of smarts, quickness and total lack of concern for you he is small. You, on the other hand, are large and vulnerable but you do have the ability to wear protective garments. (So you do have this one thing in your favor.)

1. First, dressing for the occasion in a 4-ply rubber wet suit is of the utmost importance -- along with a helmet, metal face mask, safety glasses, golashes and a clean pair of welder’s gloves. If you have any waist-high fisherman's waders that fit snugly, you might try those, also, but they are not absolutely necessary.

2. A Bathtub with a glass enclosure is preferred to one with a shower curtain. A frenzied cat can shred a shower curtain in three point five seconds and thus escape before the bath begins. The enclosed tub is the environment of choice if you expect to complete this task.

3. Place the Kitty Bubbles and a towel in the enclosed bathtub area before hand. (For safety's sake, blow drying the cat after the bath is not recommended -- small electric appliances that may fall into water during a tussle may cause electrical shock, fainting, or fire.)

4. Draw the water and fill the tub half full, making it a little warmer than needed as you still must find the cat. Position everything strategically in the shower, so you can reach it even if you are face down, or prone, in the tub.

5. Find your cat. After locating him/her, using the element of surprise, nonchalantly pick the cat up, as if you were simply carrying him/her to his/her favorite pillow. No need to worry about the cat noticing your strange attire, the cat barely notices you anyway.

6. Once both you and the cat are inside the bathroom, speed is of the essence. In one single liquid motion shut the door to the bathroom, step into the shower, close the sliding doors, and drop the cat into the water. While the cat is still in a state of shock, locate the Kitty Bubbles and squirt whatever part of him is above the water line. You have just begun the wildest 45 seconds of your life.

(Remember that cats have no handles and he will now also have soapy fur. While his state of shock may have worn off, he'll still be madder than a wet hen. The phrase “madder than a wet hen” implies something more than furious. If the hen is mad, your cat is even madder, so the cat is now, in fact, a combination of outraged, livid, and furious – at you.)

7. As best you can (wearing welder's gloves) try to field his body as he catapults through the air back and forth across the tub enclosure, heading toward the ceiling. If possible, give another squirt of Kitty Bubbles while his body is fully exposed and flying by your face.

8. During the five seconds you may be able to grab hold of him, rub vigorously but gently. No need to worry about rinsing. As he attempts to climb the glass enclosure he will naturally slide down the wall and fall back into the tub, thoroughly rinsing himself as he flails in the water.

9. Only attempt the "lather and rinse" process two times. More than this is not usually necessary, recommended, nor possible.  The cat will realize the lack of traction on the glass and tile walls by then and will then make a mad clawing dash up your body.

10. Next, the cat must be dried. By this stage, you are worn out and the cat has just become semi-permanently affixed to some location of your body.  We suggest at this point that you drain the tub and, in full view of your cat, reach for the bottle of Kitty Bubbles.

11. If you have done step 10 correctly, the cat will be off your body, hanging precariously from the edge of your helmet, rapidly clawing your face mask and safety goggles with his hind legs.  Although this view of the cat is disturbing, he will be in a much better position for wrapping the towel around him.

12. Be sure the cat is firmly swaddled in the towel before opening the tub enclosure. Next, step out of the tub, quickly open the bathroom door, and put the towel-wrapped cat on the floor. Rapidly step back into the tub area while hastily closing the glass door behind you. (If possible.) Do not open the tub enclosure again until all you can see is the shredded towel remains scattered about the bath room.

13. In about three hours it will be safe to exit the bath tub enclosure.  Your cat will be sitting out there somewhere, looking like a small hedgehog plotting revenge. It may take a few weeks or months for the cat to forgive you so have plenty of kitty snacks on hand and don’t look him in the eye – you will not be able to handle it.

 Be back soon :)

--Marcia

Great Blood Work Results

Hi,

I am so excited!! I just got the blood work call from my doctor's office and I am so pleased with all the results!! My A1C has gone from 6.0 to 5.5. Wow!!  Dropping the Xylitol out of my life changed everything for the better! I can finally relax about this now. I shall continue eating as I've been doing -- vegetables and meat with an occasional starchy food. That is not permission to go wild -- but it is permission to relax.

My uric acid went from 9.4 to 7.8. This is amazing, too. I had no idea that Xylitol would affect so many areas in my body. This is also real evidence that sugars affect uric acid levels and not protein. The 7.8 was even better than my test before last where it was 8.4 -- so I am really excited.

My fasting glucose was 112 -- this is down from either 147 or 127 I can't remember which. This is still above normal but I'm very happy with 112 at this point in time.

And -- get this -- drum roll please -- my D3 was 61 up from 30!! I feel like my body is now better able to combat infections and that is such a relief.  I have been taking 10,000 units of vitamin D3 every single day in my effort to get that number up to normal, which it now is. I've never had a D3 reading that was this good before. I started taking the D3 when I started seeing my doctor back in April of 2010 and she was the first one to check the levels. I started out just taking 1,000 units and it never brought the number up. A few months later I upped it to 5,000 and that made no dent in the number, either. I very religiously began taking 10,000 units about two months ago and have finally seen good results in  my blood work numbers.

The thing is... now what? Should I continue taking 10,000 or drop it down a little?  I don't want to risk the number dropping but don't want to overdose either.  I guess I should drop it down to 5,000 and see how the next blood check goes in a few months.

I must say that after listening to Kevin Gianni's "Great Health Debate" last week I was nearly worn out -- but have come to a better conclusion about what I am "supposed" to eat. Right now I am doing lots of veggies and a little animal protein and once in a while a starch. I think that should keep me on track and settled now. I really liked the comment on his blog that said why must we call them "cheats" like we were doing something wrong? It really is OK to have a treat once in while!!

Thank you dear Lord for your help and healing!! Praise the Lord!!

I am hungry. Going to make a salad.

Be back soon

--Marcia

Eat Real Food

Hi,

I just got back from visiting a friend who had been in a car accident last Wednesday. She called and told me about it on Saturday and hearing about it felt so shocking to me. I am so glad she was not injured more than she has had to deal with. Her leg is hurting her and her neck and shoulders, too. I took a little food and she and her two grand daughters and I had dinner together and talked and shared. I am so grateful to God that He spared her life this time. It really shows you just how precious life is and that we have only been granted so much time on Earth. That being true, puts things into a whole different perspective. God, family, and friends become so much more important.

I have been listening to "The Great Health Debate" which was eight days of one-hour health interviews of at least 16 different healthy living teachers covering the spectrum from vegan, meaning eating no meat or animal products of any kind, to the polar opposite which is those who eat meat for health. Wow. I have got to tell you this was really amazing to me to listen to such informed people and to find out why they do what they do. The most important thing to come from it all is this: what am I going to do with this information? We are all in that boat. What are you going to do in your life with the information you have.

Sean Croxton ( www.undergroundwellness.com ) one of today's experts said: "We are all different. We have something called biochemical individuality. The thing that works for me, may not work for the next person. Just eat real food. What I teach people is to listen to their body "language." Do what works for you."  He also said, again, "Just eat real foods. Just eat foods that came out of the ground, eat foods that came (from) animals. Get rid of all the processed junk. Get rid of all the "new" foods. Be very wary of grains and legumes, and dairy products as well -- for a lot of people -- because of what they may do to the gut and the anti-nutrient properties that they can have. I try to keep it really simple for people so I tell them to eat real food." He also described going with the starting place of half of your plate animal food and the other half primarily vegetables. Once you try that then make the adjustments that your body tells you to make.

He talked about keeping it old school -- eating the same meat, fish, vegetables that we have eaten forever. He said that he does not believe that an old food will cause a new disease. Makes sense to me. He talked about our human genes having been around for thousands and thousands of years and there is food out there that has not been around for even twenty years. Shy away from that stuff. Keep it simple (without a lot of sauces and exotic concoctions). Keep it real (actual food, not chemically altered). Get rid of the processed food (manufactured food stuff) and eat real food. I am still going to cook my meat but the veggies should be raw. And I would add for us diabetics to get rid of all sugars. You can get along without them. High blood sugar comes from eating sugar and things that turn into sugar in the gut (grains, starchy foods, starchy vegetables).

Sean also quoted this statement: "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first." It is an odd statement but there is some truth in it. I chuckled when he said it because I felt like I knew exactly what he was talking about. You cannot change your whole diet and be successful in just one day, it takes practice, it takes trial and error -- and if you are willing to start off doing it poorly, then you will continue until you do it better -- or you find a better way to do it. Who knows, one day you could end up being an "expert" but no one starts out there. Sometimes people are not willing to do things poorly, but in reality that is where every one is when you start. No one is perfect, even when they get to be experts, there is always something to work on.

After listening this week to the debate airings I am feeling relieved. I had been feeling down and discouraged because I just do not seem to be able to stick to a vegan diet, which I had felt was the right thing to do for my health. I felt that my "giving in" and starting to eat meat again was somehow a failure on my part, but the truth is, to fail means to quit and I have not quit, I am just continually making adjustments. I have had to change my mind and approach often, to keep up with the reality of my own life. Who is to say that being a vegan is the right thing for me to do? It works for some, but it surely won't work if you cannot stay on it.

I think it all boils down to mindful eating which Mike Adams ( http://www.naturalnews.com/index.html ) talked about. He talked about simply paying attention to what you are eating and thinking about it. He pointed out that most American and Europeans eat "mindlessly" -- using that word as a technical term meaning eating without thinking about what you are eating.

I know for  myself, when I am eating things that I want to eat but know will harm my body in some way I have to turn off what my mind is saying about it. That is mindless eating. That is responding to feelings of some kind without responding to health or consequences.

For me, mindful eating would be choosing lots of fresh raw vegetables and also choosing healthy meat to eat. The thing is... that is what the Lord told me a long time ago. I have known that is the best solution for me all along, but, if not for the "30 Day Diabetes Cure" by Dr Ripich and Jim Healthy, I would not have started the journey to get close to my own ideal.

I know that I need to stay away from all sugars, including artificial or "new" sugars, like xylitol. It was trial and error that revealed the problems for my body with eating xylitol. I tried it. I erred. I corrected. I no longer eat that.  I know that I should avoid all grains, too, but what I actually do is limit them. I do eat some food, occasionally, that is made from grain or flour. The ideal is "never" -- the practical ideal is "rarely." But even that is not where I live. Where I have a problem is with this "mindless" eating thing. Eating as if I have no mind. Purposefully making wrong choices for myself.... out of habit.... out of desire... out of some compulsion that I have. I would love to learn how to conquer that!!

This is a personal journey of discovery. As I was assembling my trash for disposal today the empty cracker boxes from last Wednesday when I bought some "healthy" crackers and ate them with either cottage cheese or avocado dip came rushing back into my consciousness. I also remembered the stomach cramps I got after having eaten them. The empty pizza box from Sat night slapped my face with remembrance, too. It is the mindless eating that I want to conquer. Looking for a solution to that.


I have noticed something about the mindless eating episodes that I had not noticed before. When I am doing that, there is a pressure inside of me. The last couple of times I did that, I noticed that when I got near the end of the food, way past full but still eating, I was in such a state that I was acting as if I was completely compelled. I was rushing. I was working hard. I was in a state of pressure. It was like being in an eating marathon with me as the only contestant -- but I was completely and devastatingly in earnest. When I noticed this, I allowed me to relax, to breathe, and come down. Don't know what to say about that for anyone else -- but for me that was a discovery.

I am praying and asking God to guide me on this one. I want to conquer it and know I need His help. Thank you Lord, I know you will show me the way out of this.

Be back soon

--Marcia

The Eating Philosophy That Works for You!

Hi,

I have been continuing to listen to "The Great Health Debate" that has been going on this week at http://www.renegadehealth.com/ghd/blog/ -- I believe that today is the last day and you can still listen to last night's program today for free. Kevin Gianni, the organizer and host, has made the interviews available during the debate for free for twenty-four hours but after that if you want to listen you have to buy the DVD's.  Being low on cash I have been listening every afternoon to the tapes that were made the night before. I think that the tape for tonight and tomorrow is the last one and I also think it is a "recap" with two experts who will try to guide folks on what to conclude from all of this information.

I, for one, am glad to have had the opportunity to hear these experts in this way. There is such a wealth of information about eating food, in general. I think the take away from all of this is that each individual is unique and needs to find the eating program that works for them. The hard part is that in order to do this you have to do a lot of "trial and error" and what if you try out the wrong thing and end up worse off than when you started?

I actually did that during the nineties. I have related before in the blog about how I followed the McDougal high carbohydrate/low fat diet during the nineties and I lost a lot of weight but that was when my feet and ankles started swelling up every day. I think the only way you can make any kind of an educated guess about where to begin or which program to follow (vegetarian, vegan, carnivore, omnivore) will depend on your particular health needs. There is a lot of philosophy associated with each type of program, too.

Beliefs often have a strong pull for some people. If they abhor being cruel to animals they may likely choose veganism. But human history does not bear out that this is a good way to go. Many of the folks on the program have pointed out that simply being "vegan" covers a very wide range of individual diets. The strictest sense of the word vegan is that animal products are avoided -- but a diet of Twinkies is a vegan diet and that cannot be good. So there has to be some kind of a middle ground.

If you eat too much fruit you can ruin your teeth. If you are a diabetic or getting close to diabetes type II then a lot of fruit will help to push you fully into type two diabetes. If you are not insulin resistant then fruit will be a healthy choice for you, but it certainly will not work for everyone.

I am tending to lean toward the omnivore diet which means a person who eats both meat or animal products plus lots of healthy vegetables (minus the fruit for me). I still think that grain is not good, even though on the McDougal program I did lose weight eating grains. That swelling was a huge indicator that something was wrong in that program for me. I still don't know the mechanism behind the swelling but do know that when I tried Atkins very high fat/ high protein diet for a time the swelling went away.

I have been attempting, not too very successfully, to do the raw food diet. I say not very successfully because I simply crave starches on the program that I have been following which makes it hard for me to follow -- which, in itself, is discouraging. I also keep dropping out the exercise -- which, by the way, I have started to do again.

I really like the fact that I now consume a whole lot more raw vegetables (a variety of lettuces, tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli sprouts, radishes, zucchini, spinach, celery, green peppers, avocado, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, etc.) and only a very minimal amount of grains (only when I binge eat, and I even try to avoid grains when I am pushed by my cravings). I think that has got to be good for my health.

I am going to see the doctor again on Tuesday and have no real idea what my blood work will show this time. I am hoping that my A1c will have begun to come down again, and the uric acid, too. I took the 30 days worth of alopurinol (sp?) for the uric acid but am leary of filling the prescription again since my brother told me his doctor refused to prescribe that for him because in the end it actually causes high uric acid levels. I have been taking the milk thistle that he said his doctor recommended. I am also taking hawthorne berry for the HBP. I just measured my BP and it is 148/87 -- still lower than it was and higher than normal. A range that is not too bad, I think. I would like it lower but have not been able to accomplish that, yet. The hawthorne berry seems to keep me at the same level that the Losartin did and it is a lot cheaper -- even with the copay. I consider that a success.

My blood sugar is 114 after having eaten a very large salad, a hard boiled egg, and two small 1/2 cups of sunflower seeds mixed with almonds and walnuts to which I have added some spices but no longer am adding olive oil. The big change I have made in the last couple of days is to drop out the olive oil for a time from both  my salad dressing and the nut mixture I was eating.

As I listened to the health debate I heard one of the people say that oil is a processed food, by definition. That one struck me as very true. I began to think and realized that a bottle of oil has been processed in some way to extract the oil out of the food in which it was originally contained. Some manufacturers cold press it, some heat process it, but before it gets to my table it has been sitting on a grocery shelf, and in storage and where ever else it has been. It is definitely not a "whole food." It could be many weeks old or even many months old when I purchase it. So maybe it is better to get my olive oil from the olives but where would I get fresh olives to do that? I can get oil in the nuts I eat and in avocados and also from animal sources. Eggs have some fat. Meat has fat. Our bodies do need fat. Saturated fat has lost its stigma in my mind from the new research that has been done. Dr Atkins used to point out that the heart is a muscle that needs saturated fat for its health! This can be gotten from coconut oil or butter. Our bodies need some saturated fat.

I am still kind of stuck on the idea of salad dressing for my salad but have replaced the olive oil in my recipe with plain water. It is not as thick as it was, but the flavor is still good. I make it from either apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar that has been infused with pomegranite -- and yes I realize this is a processed food, but it is a fermented food and my doctor has actually prescribed that I take in two tablespoons per day. To the vinegar/water solution I add some prepared brown mustard and some liquid aminos. This adds a real punch of flavor because it is both spicy and salty. Who knows I may have to put an end to that at some point but right now, I'm only dropping out the olive oil, just to see what happens for me.

One of the authors (Dr. Alan Goldhamer of www.healthpromoting.com) who promotes a vegan lifestyle for health and healing also spoke about his book called "The Pleasure Trap" which deals with cravings. I am interested in reading this book because I have such a problem with cravings. I'd love to try out his program where you can go and stay at their facility for a certain amount of time and go through water fasts to let your body heal and then they reintroduce you to a vegan diet. The two things that keep me from trying it out is the $139 per night cost and the idea of "vegan." I am not sure I am sold on vegan any more.

All the information is so conflicting. How can you balance the fact that Eskimos eat only high fat, high protein animal foods and are perfectly healthy and Peruvian natives live mostly on thirty varieties of potatoes and are also perfectly healthy. Maybe it is not the food!

It seems that all you can do is try out the information you have been given and see what happens for you. It really helps to have doctor who is willing to test your blood so you can actually monitor your health reactions. You really  have to make it work for yourself. If it does not work for you, you won't do it. At some point you will abandon your experiment and return to the standard American diet -- at least that is common -- if your program does not really work for you or is too hard to follow.

One thing for sure is that you have to find what works for you. Something you can do without stressing yourself out about it. Something that makes sense, promotes your own health and that you will and can stick to. I am still searching and trying.

Hope all is well for you,

Be back soon

--Marcia

Vegan, Vegetarian or Carnivore? None of the above.

Hi,

It's been a while since I posted here and I think it has finally dawned on me what is going on with me. I've been feeling discouraged. As I traveled along my food journey I have been trying out different approaches and making adjustments to what I eat. Some of the changes I have made have brought about improvements and some of them have not. The most recent change I had made was to begin eating with a more and more "vegan" approach but I am beginning to think that may not be the right way for me to go.

I have been listening to "The Great Health Debate" put on by Kevin Gianni and last night he had on a man named Daniel Vitalis along with David Wolfe. I love to listen to David Wolfe but I was really intrigued by what Daniel Vitalis had to say. I'm not sure I can relate everything accurately that he said so I will just share my take on it.

I think what he is saying, in a nut shell, is that whether we should be vegetarian, vegan, or carnnivores is not really the right question to be asking ourselves. If we are interested in health and if we believe that we should be doing what our ancient ancestors did in order to have good health, then we would learn a lot from the archaeological record of the ancestors eating habits. Including studying fossilized fecal matter from them which will reveal precisely what they were eating. Daniel believes, from his own personal investigation of the ancient evidence, that we were always omnivores (eating both plants and animals). He says that we foraged for veggies, nuts and berries, and caught animals which we cooked and ate as our food. We ate wild foods.

As I listened I knew he was using the usual anthropological terms and times to name the ancestors but the evidence that was investigated bore out his theory that there has never been a time in human history that large groups or even small groups of people were vegans. There is simply no evidence of it. There are even some groups who ate almost entirely meat -- and they had bigger brains and stronger skeletal structures than we do, and they were not eating manufactured foods at all. They had fire and were cooking their food but they did not make hamburgers and french fries. They made soup or roasted meat and ate raw vegetables and even cooked vegetables along with it.

He points out that the change that has taken place in "domesticating" our food is where the actual change from "health" to "unhealth" has taken place. Our ancestors did not need to have their teeth straightened -- the straight even teeth that they had is real evidence that what they were eating is different from what we are eating. We seem not to be increasing in longevity but decreasing. We have chronic diseases that our ancestors did not have, aside from arthritis, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes and he believes this comes from domesticated food.

DV shared his own personal history of having been a vegetarian and a vegan for about 15 years (I think) and he ended up with lots of cravings and never felt satisfied so he was eating copious amounts of food trying to get what his body needed. He mentioned eating 50 oranges at a sitting, whole bags of cashew nuts, and whole boxes of bananas because he was hungry. His body was never satisfied.

He made the change back to eating meat when someone gave him a copy of Weston A. Price's book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration."  He says that this book is the one that changed his perspective and helped him figure out that being a vegan was not so good for him. Here is a link to the Weston A. Price Foundation web site if you are interested: http://www.westonaprice.org/

You may be able to listen for a few more hours yet at: http://www.renegadehealth.com/ghd/blog/ -- I am not sure when they are going to turn it off. I assume sometime this evening around  7 or 8 p.m. EST.  DV is on the second half. He also has a web site at: http://www.danielvitalis.com/  His religious philosophy is also demonstrated on his site. It is not one that I agree with, but we are all free to choose.

What has been occurring to me is that I have seen a similar physical reaction in me. Eating only raw veggies is good but there are occasions when it simply does not fill me up and I get cravings and need more other food. Today it dawned on me that I had stopped putting the hard boiled eggs in my salads and I think I need to go back to that. I need the animal protein, I think, to satisfy my physical needs. One thing DV said was that he was one of the chubby ones when he was a kid. Me too. Even now he is a thick bodied man but not obese. He looks healthy. Of course young people tend to look "healthy" to us.

I've also noticed that when I eat only veggies I seem to get cold easier. This is a new one for me. I have always been hot bodied. When I was working I always (always) had a fan blowing under my desk. Now I often wear slipper boots and a long robe even over my street clothes when I am in the house. Of course it is winter (in Georgia!) and I put my thermostat on 69 to keep the costs lower but this being cold is a new thing. I have also noticed that when I binge eat and do high carbs the old hot body comes back again for an hour or so. This seems to be evidence of the effect that high carbs have on my personal body temperature.

Anyway. I bought some mostly grass fed beef at Whole Foods yesterday (the butcher said they were grass fed but for the last third of their lives they were grain fed) and am planning on adding some meat and animal protein back into my diet to see if that fills me up better. I will still do my daily large salad that I portion off during the day but I am going to be adding minimal amounts of animal protein back in. Not grains. Not starches. I still need to be concerned with my blood sugar. My weight is hovering around the 18 pounds loss mark which means I fluctuate up and down (as I always have) but I am not going to worry about that. It only makes me crazy to worry about that. I can do good at any weight or any age -- Praise the Lord!!

So that is where I am today.

Hope all is well with you

Be back soon

--Marcia