Jessica

When I was a young teen, about fifteen years ago, I borrowed a book from the library which was a collection of scifi shorts by various authors. One of the stories was Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw. The book also contained an odd story about an Earth which had been stolen away from the Sun by another, much colder star -- a young woman leads a solitary life going onto the surface and collecting buckets of frozen oxygen from the ground which she then evaporates in front of a fire in order to survive.

First person to find me the name of this collection gets the ten points. Thanks! :)

One of my babies is polydactyl and I was wondering if there are any particular rules for claw care that I should be aware of? It seems that on some of the extra toes he can't retract his claws all the way, although he doesn't seem to be experiencing any particular discomfort. I would like to pre-empt any potential conditions if I can. Does anyone have any ideas?

My friend has two cats and one of them has a problem where he pees everywhere all the time. He is fixed, and litter trained, but he's been peeing all over the place for the past couple of years. The vet has told her that some cats just exhibit this behaviour and there's nothing that can be done about it. She insists that the tray is always clean - and the other cat has never had this problem.

It's gotten to the stage where they are having to shut both cats in the kitchen to stop the one from peeing all over, and her husband is saying he will give the cat to a shelter as it's gone on far too long.

Does anyone have any last-ditch ideas what she can do to avoid having to get rid of the cat? She's so upset and it breaks my heart to think of the poor guy sent away because of something he can't help.

I love cream cheese frosting but I have found it difficult to make at home; the very common problem of it going runny. I have heard a ton of suggestions on how to remedy the problem - add the sugar slowly, or beat if thoroughly, or beat it very little, or use cold butter and cream cheese, or use room temp butter and cream cheese... I've even seen recipes with some weird things added... argh!

Does anyone have the quintessential cream cheese recipe? I live in the UK and have even wondered if the very consistency of the butter we sell over here might affect the frosting. Any advice?

I love my kittens (one boy, one girl) very, very much but there is no question in my mind about getting them fixed - not the least of which is that, with one of each sex, they will start making kittens of their own as soon as they get big enough! There is enough of a problem with unwanted cats in shelters without me contributing to it!

The only thing is, I am having some anxiety over the procedures. My boy Jack is booked in for neutering in a few weeks (at a little less than six months old) and they've asked me to bring him in at 09:00 and pick him up at 16:00. I'm so worried about him going under general anaesthetic, and then waking up hours later in a strange cage, in pain from the op, not knowing where he is or what all the smells are and where his mum is. :(

Another worry I have is that his personality might change after the op. At the moment he is in the perfect kitty for me; our personalities mesh really well and we are very affectionate, and I would hate to lose that bond with him after the castration.

I know it's a massively common procedure and I am being irrational but can those of you who have neutered their cats just let me know how the whole thing went down and what I can expect?

I have two 18-week old kittens who recently have started pulling up the carpet, just outside our bedroom. I understand why they are doing it; they only do it when the door is closed and only very early in the morning, when the sun comes up (currently around 5am) and they want feeding. We've tried spraying them which scares them off but as soon as we shut the door again they come back. We've tried ignoring them but it takes more patience than I have to ignore that noise at 5am -.-

We've tried duct-taping the carpet around there to minimize the damage and also make the surface less appealing to them but it doesn't seem to deter them. I tried sprinkling pepper down but again they were still there this morning. I tried spraying lemon juice on the area but as soon as it dried they were there.

I'm reaching the end of my tether! De-clawing is NOT an option as it is illegal in the UK. They are doing it to get our attention, not for want of scratching surfaces as they have a scratching post that they use during the day.

Please help us!