Welcome to May/June 2012 edition of the Happy Cat Ezine ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS 1. New Cat Gallery Photos This Month 2. Competition 3. Byron and Shelley's Latest Diary Entry 4. Cat Poem - I Looked For You 5.. Article - Prevent cat sunburn and skin cancer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1.New Cat Gallery Pages Lots more of your beautiful cats have been submitted to our cat photo gallery to see more visit the cat gallery . Enjoy. Don't forget to submit your cat to the cat gallery so that others can enjoy your cat as well. Click on their pictures to find out more about them Marley Luckypants Manzey Romeo Lucky Kaalo Riley Molly ----------------------------------------- 2. Competition Number May / June 12 Here is the new Caption Competition. All you have to do is write a caption for this picture. . Simply send us your caption to go with this picture. Click here to submit Caption The deadline for this competition is June 25th. The best caption will be chosen and the winners name and caption will be posted on the www.our-happy-cat.com competition page.     This month the prize for the competition is a copy of the book "10 Spritual Lessons You Can Learn From Your Cat" GOOD Luck           -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Byron and Shelley's Latest Diary Entry Well after nearly a year Byron our black and white cat has finally returned to sleeping in his favourite chair. The reason for the chairs lack of kitty love for the past year is simply. Byron blamed it for being ill and having to go to the hospital. Yes you read right, it was all the chairs fault apparently. Many of you may remember that both of our cats were dangerously ill last year with the Calici Virus and at one point we thought we was going to lose them both. Read more here I will be adding regular updates about them on the web site so keep an eye on your RSS feeds for those. Here is their page -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Cat Stories and Poems we like to encourage our visitors to the site to share their cat story or poetry with us here. we certainly enjoy reading your tales of rescue, joy and sadness too. So if you have a story or poem to tell us please let us know HERE This month I am posting a wonderful poem which was sent in to comemorate the passing of a beloved cat. I Looked For You - A Cat poem by Emma Louise Dickenson (Spain) I looked for you in all your usual places today but you weren't there, I checked your spot in the garden and looked on your favourite chair, I emptied your food bowl and washed it all clean, Gave away your food and toys so they didn't have to be seen, Without your conversation the morning was not the same, I told myself you were just a cat but still the tears came, The pawprints on the worktop that I would normally wipe away, Looked more beautiful than ever, so I left them there today, I thought that if I left them and kept everything the same, It would mean you hadn't really gone, that it was just a hiding game, So I looked for you in the garden and in your favourite chair, In all the usual places, I looked but you weren't there.   Read more stories and poems here   ______________________________________________ 5.. Article - Prevent cat sunburn and skin cancer. Cat summer care is something to take seriously. Yes, cats get sunburn too - and skin cancer! Just as we humans are advised to protect ourselves from too much sun to help reduce our risk of developing skin cancer, so it can apply to your beloved pet too! This is especially the case with white cats and those with white ears (just as fair skinned people are more at risk as well). The fur on the ears tends to be much thinner than on the rest of a cats body and this, combined with a pale colouring means there is very little protection from the sun. And the fact that so many cats just love to sun bathe all day long means the risk of cat skin cancer is even greater. Learn From Our Little Mo! Our happy cat Mo is a complete sun worshiper and one summer she got sunburnt on both her ears. It didn't look too bad, but it went a bit scabby and very slowly a lump started to develop on her left ear. We took her to the vet who took a biopsy. This proved that the lump was not malignant (cancerous) but we were told to bring her back if it got any worse because it could still develop into cat skin cancer. Well, it did keep growing and when Mo had a scratch, she would catch the lump with her claws and make it bleed. So the decision was made to remove the lump and unfortunately most of her ear with it. So what could we to prevent this from happening to her other ear? Read the rest of this article here