Mark McNease

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By Jim Miller

Dear Savvy Senior,

Where can I turn to for caregiving help? I help take care of my 80-year-old father and work too, and it’s wearing me out.

Worn Out Wendy

Dear Wendy,

Taking care of an aging parent over a period of time – especially when juggling work and other family obligations – can be exhausting. But help and resources are available. Here’s what you should know.

Identify Your Needs

To help you determine and prioritize the kinds of help you need, a good first step is to make a detailed list of everything you do as your dad’s caregiver and the amount of time each task takes. Identify the times when you need help the most and which tasks others might be able to do for you.

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So many cat owners put up with behavior problems that could have been prevented with the right knowledge and early intervention. It takes a lot longer to break a bad habit than it does to form one. And once a behavior happens for a prolonged period of time, the habit is activated in memory and considered automatic – neural circuits perform the habit without conscious thought. In other words, your cat may not be choosing to avoid the litter box any more – eliminating outside the box is an automatic action.

About Cat Talk Radio

Cat Talk Radio is all about cats, what makes them do what they do, why they occasionally misbehave and what cat guardians can do to fix it. We educate you on how to modify unwanted cat behavior by providing the proper environment and stimulation, enabling cats to express their natural behaviors in ways that are preferable for both the humans and cats. You will learn how to have fun with your cat, fascinating cat facts and be inspired to try new things, which will lead to a happier relationship and closer bond with your cat. We’ll also call attention to the plight of cats in our country, feel compassion for their challenges and share the message.

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We adopted two older cats several years ago when we lost our others (we’ve had a number of cats, and I had quite a few on my own over the years). Wilma was 3 at the time we got her, and she came from a ‘hoarder home.’ We had no idea what that meant, except that she had trust issues and had spent the first three years of her life uncertain and anxious. Our girl Peanut came from a pet store, via a local animal rescue organization. She was 5, and gorgeous. I saw her in the store window for three months, and I was baffled why someone hadn’t taken her home already. But she was older, and she wasn’t the type of cat to play with everyone who came up to the carrier. We got lucky, and she came home with us.

They’re now approximately 8 and 10+. Peanut has lost weight, and she recently started defecating outside the litter box. I was mystified, and stressed about her health. Then I realized she was constipated, and that constipation is a leading cause of cats doing this. I thought back over the previous week, and realized I had changed her diet to a senior wet food that was very different in its ingredients from the Fancy Feast she’d been eating for years (I give them almost exclusively wet food, except when we go away; then I have a cat person who comes twice a day to feed and care, and we leave dry food down). I got her to a (new) vet and was reassured after a thorough exam that she’s healthy and, once she got past the constipation, happy. All is well again. They make our house a home.

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Tis the season for stockings full of crap

Who doesn’t want to end the year with a Trump-ordered impeachment of President Biden, the man who kicked his ass once and will kick it again?

Who doesn’t want to see Ukraine abandoned in the manger while Jesus, Mary, and the Republican House head off for selfies and sleigh bells?

Who doesn’t look forward to a continuation of all-Trump-all-the-time media coverage of the only man whose obituary I long every day to read?

Who takes comfort in knowing even monsters die?

Me! Me! Me!

Can we stop calling them ‘Supreme’?

Unsurprising, to say the least. The Republican justices (for that’s what they are, not “conservative”) are political hacks through and through. They lie and deceive and live lavish, kingly lives bought and paid for. We can’t do anything about their unaccountable power at this point, but we can stop pretending they deserve the least bit of respect, no matter how they decide. America is so broken, in so many ways. It all appears to have been a very long-lasting fiction that is now threadbare and exposed as the corrupt-from-to-to-bottom smoke and mirrors it always was.

From Dahlia Lithwick in Slate:

“With each new peek behind the curtain, this fantasy becomes more difficult to buy into, even for those desperate to believe. It turns out that the justices—at least five of them on the right—are functionally indistinguishable from cynical partisan lawmakers making deals in the Senate cloakroom. It turns out that abortion rights vanished in America because five conservatives barely tried to hide the fact that they could do that, simply because they could do that. And it turns out that they’re increasingly bad at covering their tracks.”

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Dreamshaping: On Shaping Reality and Living Our Dreams is a feature at LGBTSr on the ways we create our lives.

Mark McNease

Observing the current cultural and political climate, I’m reminded of a scene from the westerns once so popular with American moviegoers. A bartender in a grimy, dusty saloon, says to a weary customer, “Name your poison.” The customer asks for whiskey—they all drank whiskey in the movies, with names like Rot Gut and Dead Eye—and the bartender serves him from a bottle on the shelf. The customer throws back a mouthful from a greasy shot glass, grimaces as it burns its way down his throat, then smiles, slaps the glass on the counter and orders another one. That sure felt good.

Today we have many things to choose from besides whiskey as we name our poisons. We have twenty-four hour cable news channels to make sure we’re alarmed, angry and indignant. We have addictions of a breathtaking variety, from sex to nicotine to apps making us feel special with every little balloon bursting on our smartphone screens, while data miners dig further and further into what remains of our privacy. But like that weary cowboy in that filthy saloon, we like the way it feels going down and we order another one.