Hi to everyone and thank you again to all of you who have emailed me personally. My thoughts are with all of you who have sick fuzzies. The last couple weeks have been pretty trying for Casper and I, probably more for him, but I am happy to report that he is doing well. My last update was last Monday. At that point he still wasn't eating, the hairball hadn't moved through and the internal bleeding appeared to be stopping. Tuesday he decided to bite me a couple times - something he has never done. I figured it was because he was so hungry and aggravated. I called my vet and she had me bring him in at 8:30 Wednesday morning. She did another xray and you could see this white spot in his stomach which confirmed our thoughts that this was a blockage. She asked me what I wanted to do, if I wanted to keep trying the "safe" route of Vaseline and petromalt or if I wanted to do surgery. I told her that I thought we had waited long enough and that it was time to do surgery. She agreed and did warn me that even though his blood count was significantly better, he was still a surgery risk due to him being anemic, but would get worse if we waited, since he wasn't eating. She immediately took him in and operated. Now, why do I love my vet? Her waiting room was filled with patients and she had a full schedule all day. She canceled ALL of them through 1:00 so she could do the surgery and keep a close eye on him while he came out of the anesthesia. She had everyone in the waiting room either reschedule or leave their pet until later that day. I really don't know too many vets that would do this! She called me at 11:30 to let me know he came through and was waking up. She removed a HUGE hairball from his intestines/stomach. Despite the fact that I give him hairball remedy during the shedding season, we decided that this will be a weekly thing now. He's home and not real happy. He so wants to eat until bursting and get out to play, but I have to keep him quiet and feed him a softened/liquid diet every two hours until Wednesday this week. I have been letting him get out to wander around a little bit, the "sick" cage is so small that he was ready to stretch out some. Again, thank you to everyone who emailed me. He's doing great, and other than my wallet, so am I! Lisa - The much relieved mother. Casper "Mom would you just PLEASE give me the food bag! I'm starving! Rosco "Hey Mom! MOM! Remember me? The cute, fat, healthy one! Can I GET some attention here!? Gee, you'd think he was sick or something." [Posted in FML issue 3410]