Sugarcat
Simon's New Site Location
Simon's
site is about Feline Diabetes, I hope to have it back up soon
at approximately 4:00 PM. I remember
thinking, that if we
were at home, since it is 4:00 PM, I'd be doing a Blood Glucose
measurement on Simon, Stranger, and Felix and giving them insulin
injections as called for by their Blood Glucose levels.
Simon had tremendously high blood pressure, which we learned of on December 31, 2003, and we believe he had a stroke and that his kidneys were damaged by the high blood pressure. Simon deteriorated over the next months and on August 18, 2004, he was in very bad shape and I decided to not let him suffer any longer - it was, and I expect it to remain, the hardest decision I will ever have to make. Vets do not routinely measure a cat's blood pressure but it should be as integral a part of an exam for a cat as it is for an exam of a human. Get
your
cat's blood pressure measured at
least twice a year, more frequently if possible. It is as important in
cats as it is in humans.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 - Felix has left us for the Bridge We had Felix, our third diabetic cat, euthanized today. (See euthanasia) Not only was he diabetic but he was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism about three years ago and everything finally got to be too much for him - and he also had to have an eye removed about 4 years ago due to glaucoma. We called him our "Diabetic, Hyperthyroid, One Eyed cat." 
Original, uncropped photo of Felix, for Brendan D. Click on it to see it enlarged
 Felix joined our family on Monday, July 26, 2004. The president of an organization named "Adopt a Stray" posted a message on the diabetic cat message board I was then using, saying that Felix needed a home. When we say that Felix was in the St. Louis area, we immediately contacted her and arranged to add Felix to our family. We were told he was between 8 and 10 years old at the time. He had been diagnosed with diabetes about 9 or 10 months before we adopted him and we are sure that he was diabetic for some months before that. That means that he was between 15 and 17 years old, today, and had been diabetic for very close to eight years. His condition started slipping about 2 or 3 months ago. He lost some weight but then seemed to stabilize but the weight loss picked up a couple of weeks ago. The last time he was weighed, a week ago, he had lost 4 or 4 1/2 pounds in a total of about 3 months. He was down to just over 5 pounds. We took him to the vet and discussed the matter with the vet. We decided that since Felix was still eating well, was active - as active as he ever was, Felix was a very laid back cat - and still interacting with us, we would begin giving him fluids subcutaneously (he was a bit dehydrated) and watch to see how he did. We don't know for sure when he last ate, but we could not get him to eat Monday afternoon through last night. He was very lethargic and just was not doing well. I even offered him some of the "premium" cat foods which he used to nearly inhale but he wasn't at all interested. We decided last night that it was time to let him go. So, at about 3:15 PM, Wednesday, August 3, 2011, Felix Novell died of the fatal injection administered by the vet. He had first been given a strong sedative and was quickly asleep. I know a lot of people who I would gladly "euthanize" instead of one of our cats. I consider it a solid proof of the non existence of god that cats and humans have such different life spans and yet we can become so very attached to cats. No godly creature would have deliberately set things up like that. Either he or she does not exist or he or she is, in no way, an all powerful, all knowing, perfect creature. As a couple, Sharon and I now have 12 GAs at the Rainbow Bridge Cathy started the tradition of referring to a cat as a GA when Cashew died. GA stands for either "Guardian Angel" or "Gone Ahead" - as in gone ahead to the bridge to wait for their human to join them. Our GAs are: Simon, Marco, Tom, Cleo, Thomas, Digby, Taylor, Rusty, Schuster, Stranger, Kalib - and Felix I hope that our GAs are now in a place where their unselfish love for us is being rewarded. I am not religious, at all, and I don't care whether there is an "after life" for me but surely there is a place - call it heaven or whatever you want - where all the special animals go. If it turns out that we will join them there, great, but I simply hope there is a place for them. After eleven years, five months, and eight days, we are out of the diabetic cat business. We began the journey with Feline Diabetes on Saturday, February 26, 2000 at approximately 11:15 AM when the vet said, as she handed Simon back to me - "He's diabetic." That statement marked the beginning of a "interesting" journey with Simon and the other diabetics we adopted over the years - Stranger (with his brother Digby) on April 4, 2001; Felix on July 26, 2004, and Kalib on September 9, 2006. I doubt we will ever have another diabetic cat but we still have a full time job caring for, and loving, our other feline family members. Note - all external links, that is, links to pages that are not on Simon's web site, will open in a new window or tab, depending upon your browser settings. When I have the time, I will implement a way for you to save, with a cookie, your choices on various things on the web site. Among them will be whether you want external links to open in a new window/tab or in the same window - don't hold your breath, it may be a while before I get to it. April 2, 2011 - I said, on March 26, 2010, that I'd have everything fixed up here in a a bit but, obviously I haven't. I've had a lot of other things to take care of, mostly just caring for our other diabetic cat and others with different chronic problems. I promise I will get the new stuff up just as soon as I can. March 26, 2010 - Due to "changes" AT&T, our ISP, made to, as they said "offer you an even better Internet experience." Simon's site went bye-bye. Suffice to say that they dropped support for customer web sites and Simon's site was one of them. Due to very wrong answers I got from AT&T's "technical support" (yeah, right! - "technical support" - NOT!), Simon's web site disappeared weeks before it would have - it should have been possible for it to stay online right up to the deadline, originally March 15, 2010 and later postponed to March 31, 2010. Without the bad advice, I would have been able to add a message to each of Simon's pages telling you the new address of the site. As it is, I can only hope that people find the new site via Goggle or get the new address by "word of mouth." SBC bought AT&T and proceeded to make all sorts of changes - like taking away the ability to make web sites which AT&T had included in their original support when they entered the ISP business in the early 1990's - based solely upon their bottom line - the customer be damned! The New AT&T (which is the Old SBC with its decades of bad customer service) simply deleted hundreds of thousands of AT&T customers' web sites on, or around, March 31, 2010. They offered no alternatives. Customers were left to scramble to find a hosting company and move their web sites before SBC - oops, I mean The New AT&T - deleted them. They gave us about on month's notice to get it done. That is why Simon's site disappeared. The New AT&T's latest "improvement" was to move all AT&T customers to Yahoo email, from AT&T's excellent Worldnet Webmail system. Yahoo email is a giant step backwards, compared to Worldnet Webmail -a which The New AT&T announced with grand flourishes as being a great improvement and step forward in features. Yahoo email sucks, compared to Worldnet Webmail. An Adobe Acrobat PDF containing all of Simon's original site is available for viewing or downloading HERE The PDF is 4.74 MB in size. To download it, click on the link with your right mouse button and select, "Save Link As" or a similar entry in the dropdown menu which will be displayed. If you need the free Adobe Acrobat PDF reader, go to http://get.adobe.com/reader/ The download is 52.13 MB in size. I have removed the PDF copy of Simon's original web site because it is being "served" up by other sites as though it was theirs to do with as they wish. If you would like a copy of the PDF, email me and I'll send you a copy. You can reach me at Bob at this domain (the domain where this page is located - you know, sugarcatsimon.com) A copy of the original web site is now here I have just tonight (well, this morning actually) purchased a month of hosting services at the company we use to register domain names - the company name is Mydomain. If you want to register a domain name at a good price with a company we have never had any problems with, check them out. They also offer Hosting services. I will be putting Simon's original site up when I can fix some problems with the pages that I should never have made. I have some hard coded links for other pages instead of relative links. For example, I coded some links with the URL like http://home.att.net/~sugarcat_simon/email.html when it should have been just email.html. That worked just fine as long as the site was on the AT&T servers but it won't work anywhere else. So, when I get those problems fixed, and fix some format problems, I'll have the site back up. As for the problems - I plead that it was June of 2000, Simon had been diagnosed only five months earlier (and we were still getting used to living with a diabetic cat), and I had never created a web site before. So, what I thought looked good, has become very bad looking when compared to other sites. I expect to have Simon's site up, hopefully, by the end of August - but don't hold your breath, I have much to do and I don't always meet my self imposed deadlines. I have a new version of Simon's site which I have been playing with for a couple of years and I have worked out the mechanics of how I want it to work - it will have some features I really like, such as what I call a "Click and Go Glossary" You can highlight any word or words on any page and then click the Glossary link and the glossary will be searched for the word or phrase you highlighted. I have decided that I will try to work on the site at least two hours a day to get the damn thing finished. (added April 1, 2011 - RIGHT!) If you want to be notified when Simon's site is back up, send a email with Notify in the subject line. You can send it either to Simon (at) SugarCatSimon.com or Bob (at) SugarcatSimon.com. Replace (at) with an @ sign to make up the correct email address. Your email address will only be used to notify you when Simon's site is back up. After sending you one message about that, I will delete your email address from my computer. Photos of Elliott
Here are some of photos of Elliott, a stray we added to the family on March 12, 2005 - he will have his own page on the newer, greater, better site (Dad, this is Simon - I don't think anyone is going to even consider holding their breath. Simon, I will really try to work on it more) I'm putting them here because I was telling someone about him and I wanted them to be able see the photos. Elliott was the filthiest cat we have ever seen or heard of. Here are two photos of him the night we took him in. When we cleaned him up and got him neutered, Sharon exclaimed "My God, I hope we haven't neutered a Grand Champion!"
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