I was wondering recently about TC and the orange dude. Glad to hear they are doing well. Man, I think I "met" Bev in the early days of TC's life with them over on the cat thread on TableTalk.

Loki snagged his nose on the carrier at the last vet visit and since then has gotten a chapped nose on that spot now and again. So I put vaseline on it, but it never lasts long. But lickylickylicky.

Tommy, your calico tabby tuxie girl is very pretty!

There's a theory I've heard that malnourished tabbies' coats are primarily grey and black, and when their diet and shelter improves, their coats take on brown coloring. I know it was true of TC. He had no brown at all in his coat when we trapped him. Two or three months later, his belly fur was mostly tan and reddish brown.

Yes, sarameg! Cats and Anarachs at TT. Devi and TC must be the same age, roughly.

Dev's gonna be 14 this year. Yikes!

I got Devi at 16 weeks or so, she'd been in the shelter since birth. Not a white undercoat, more milk with coffee, but the grey is grey, not brown. Mister Kitty, I can't speak to, he was probably a couple years old when adopted from a shelter by the owners I know. He did have a rough time of it, got sick within a month (I have the records) that require hospitalization, but he pulled through with the side effect of cloudy eyes.

Loki...well, he was a product of Ms. Louise's caretaker's undfixed girlcat, not her first litter. But he probably had an ok go of it.

But the markings and grey and brown are different enough, I suspect just parentage.

Beverly I have an orange (oz) and a brown (clio) tabby too: [link]

If you want to cheat and see the old versions of the gawker sites, so far commentadmin.io9.com and commentadmin.jezebel.com give you the entire old versions.

For now.

Don't tell anyone I told you.

It's rare, but you CAN bleed to death slowly -- the wife of a friend of mine nearly died from a nosebleed that wouldn't stop

Ack! How long? I get drastic awful nosebleeds all the time, and I'm often home alone when it happens.

I've had a life-threatening nosebleed. None of this slow bleed nonsense, this was quite the gusher. It was post-sinus surgery - they hadn't realised I have a blood vessel tumour up there, and had cut it during the surgery. Way impressive.

How drastic is a drastic nosebleed? Mine are rare, but messy, and don't stop well. How many tissues/towels/bedsheets does it take to staunch a regular nosebleed?

Sue, that picture is so sweet! And your cats are pretty. TC hates all other cats--he has displaced aggression and will attack the closest human, he gets so agitated when he sees another cat. He lives upstairs and Punkin lives downstairs. Punkin doesn't get what all the fuss about. He'd have no problem being buddies and probably snuggling, but TC just won't have it.

I had a gusher as a kid. My dad nearly took me to the ER after I soaked about four tea towels. It eventually stopped, though.

He taught me a trick where I could fold a tiny piece of cardboard and wedge it up under my upper lip. This often cut off the blood flow and stopped even my most severe nosebleeds.

This is only anecdotal, though. Not sure what the medical science is behind it.