I’m glad Cyrano recovered. Kitty 2 is prone to urinary tract/kidney issues. He’s permanently on a special cat food that he doesn’t like but the other cats adore. He (and his brother Kitty 1) are 11.5 too.

I’m so sorry about Minuit, Veronica. )-: It did help to write about it, but it’s still very difficult seeing his brother struggling for playmates and passing areas of the house where Copernicat was fond of perching.

I’m practically in tears reading this and looking at the gorgeous photos of your felines. I didn’t realize you were also a cat person. I know the horrible sinking feeling when one of your fur persons is ill. When we first moved to Thailand, our (then) three year old male tabby Cyrano had a urinary tract blockage that turned into a serious infection. He was hospitalized for three weeks – three of the worst weeks in my life. Fortunately he finally recovered (though he lost a lot of weight) and hasn’t had a recurrence.

Male cats tend to be more delicate than females. We’re grateful that both Cyrano and his housemate Esmeralda (black, gorgeous, ex-feral) are still doing well at eleven and a half. They love Thailand, too. I would have thought that if one was covered with fur, regular temps in the eighties and nineties would be oppressive, but they both seem to prefer that to air conditioning.

Once again – I’m so sorry about Copernicat. I know what you’re feeling.

If I want to see a PhD thesis from the Open University library, I have to know its title or author in order to make a request of the librarian. The problem with that approach is that you first need to know just which thesis you want to look at, but all that is in the electronic file is the title and the author, not what method of research was used, and as every author and topic is different, what is interesting is finding *how* the research was done and how it was written up. That means you’ve got to skim read a number of PhD thesis, and you can’t do that when they’re all kept behind the doors for access only with author and title.