Sue

Now I know that this is a really stupid question but I have just got to know because it’s been bugging me for quite a while now. Please keep in mind that my experience with the Anime genre is obviously very limited. Is the movie 47 Ronon based on an Anime by the same name? The name just seems so familiar.

A persistent problem for me is that the newly sprouting plants (tulips, daffodils and crocus) are being eaten by what I am assuming is rabbits that grew up in our back yard. Can anyone suggest some remedy to prevent them from eating the young plants and flowers? I should add that we feed the birds and wild animals in our yard regularly and enjoy them so something that keeps them away from the flowers but doesn’t cause any permanent damage would be good – any suggestions?

I live in Wisconsin (I’m not sure which zone that is for plants and gardens – sorry!). What sort of flower can I get that produces blooms all summer (from May to September)? Is my mother right - is there no such a flower/plant?

I know this sounds a bit weird but I seem to be having a plague of fruit flies or very small flies in our family room. They keep landing on our big screen TV. The strange part is that there is no fruit or food of any kind left in the room so there is nothing for them to eat. Yet, every time I kill them, bunches more show up the next day. What's going on and how can I thoroughly get rid of them?

All of our previous cats lived well into their twenties. I honestly didn’t remember how old they were. One day when I was a kid I came home from school and found 3 tiny orange and white kittens in our living room. Whenever someone asked us how old they were we would just say “twenty something”. When the youngest of the 3 littermates died recently, my aunt said that she remembered the exact date and time they were born since they were her first and only litter of kittens (we were always a dog family on my dad’s side): she said that they were born in May, 1984. That would have made her about 27 years old. Our current cat, Lille, is about 9 and ½. The problem is that she experienced a bad kitten hood compared to our other 3 cats. She was born in my brother’s barn to a semi-feral mother; she had upper respiratory infections when we got her – the only kitten we ever adopted who arrived with her own Meds form the livestock vet. She was also the runt of the litter and abnormally small. She was about the size of a hamster when weaned from her mother. She makes up for this by being very intelligent, precocious, and having a nose for trouble – all qualities we look for in our pets! Our other 3 cats were taken well care of from conception to death by age related diseases. I don’t expect Lille to live that long even though she is very healthy and goes to annual visits to the vet. It goes without saying that she was spayed at sexual maturity. She has had no litters of kittens. She has recurring dandruff and sensitive skin. We tried a lot of sensitive skin foods and giving her fish oil to no avail. She also has cramps in her paws (you can tell because her little toes separate like ours do). She seems to be a bit of an actress, though. She has learned that when she stretches her legs and separates her paws or she sometimes limps a bit up the stairs early in the morning, the family asks what the matter is and is kitty all right. I was going to get her Glucosamine for joints until I saw her almost fly up the stairs, slide across the wood floors on the carpets until they land in a pile in the corner, arch her back like a kitten and run all over the house like a 3 month old! She does these antics more than she limps and the limps seem to get worse when we act concerned. Stinker! My question is: how long can I realistically expect her to live when she is an inside cat who only goes outside to an enclosed porch in the summer?

We have always been dog people but my parents had to get cats to control the mouse problem on the farm they bought after retiring. My dad, who always thought cats were not nearly as worthy pets as big tough dogs such as pit bulls, German Shepherds, and Doberman Pinchers and never allowed me to have one as a kid, fell in love with cats after we got our first 3 mixed breeds.

Since we are newbies to the cat owners’ world and all of the kittens we have are mixed breeds, I was wondering whether or not purebred cats make better pets, are just as good as, or are the same as mixed breed cats?