Hepcat

Truth! Sadly even the money doesn't prevent the worst all too often.

I just got word back from the vet. The lab reports that the samples from the fluid that built up in Deuce's chest cavity reveal lymphoma, i.e. cancer of the lymph nodes, which is something cats with FIV are five or six times more likely to develop. We can't save his life again like we did in 2007 right after we adopted him since lymphoma in cats is fatal. We're going to lose another friend. Today he's bright and happy but we're going to have to say goodbye within weeks if not days. I won't let him suffer.

When The WOMAN collapsed on the futon in shock after the vet phoned to tell her Styx had expired, Ace came to her side immediately which is a bit out of character for him because he often hangs out somewhere upstairs or in the corner of the kitchen. Deuce then came up from the basement when she started to weep and leaped onto her lap as if to comfort her, and he has never been nearly as much of a lap cat as Styx. In addition he was active and eating selectively on his own. Overall Deuce on Tuesday had his best day since he fell ill. I though Styx's spirit might have come to inhabit Deuce and give him further strength. But yesterday morning The WOMAN noticed Deuce was having trouble breathing! He was already scheduled for a bit of blood work at the vet's to make sure that there wasn't some blood parasite or something involved as well so back she took him to the vet immediately. He fought the blood test initially which the WOMAN thought was a good sign. The vet told her that it wasn't so since he had started bleeding from the nose! The WOMAN said she almost fainted. It turned out that fluid had built up in Deuce's chest cavity thus constricting his lungs by two-thirds. They sedated Deuce, drained the fluid and took the blood sample. The fluid build-up could be one of three things: A. A temporary side effect of the upper respiratory tract infection. B. A recurrence of a condition he came down with in 2007 days after we adopted him from which we barely managed to save him in the ensuing weeks. The vet pronounced him the "miracle" cat at the time. C. Feline Infectious Peritonitis, a viral infection which is 100% fatal in cats. My little grey female Spike died from FIPS in 1991. We're of course hoping for option "A". FIPS is unlikely because it's spread by cat bites and the incubation period is anywhere from a few days to a few weeks and Deuce hasn't been outside since late November. When The WOMAN brought Deuce home late yesterday afternoon, he was absolutely famished and grabbed the baked chicken she offered him! He's been active and eating ever since and you really wouldn't know he was sick from looking at him. The blood work came back an hour ago and it's NEGATIVE, which is good! The results of testing the fluid the vet drew from his chest cavity won't be back until tomorrow. Both The WOMAN and I understand that Styx must have been a very old and feeble cat indeed and that the only way we can honour Styx's memory is to be there for Deuce and the other cats. Deuce

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. Thinking about the sudden events Styx must clearly have been well over twelve years old. He was already walking stiffly like an old man in the summer of 2009 and has not since I've known him been able to run worth a damn. Also he just looked scruffy and old. That's why I made the decision to adopt him despite having three other cats when a neighbour woman got Toronto Animal Control to pick him off our street in 2009 although an elderly lady across the street was feeding him and had provided him with a shelter behind her house. He wasn't cute. Nobody else would have adopted him and Animal Control would have put him down. I couldn't allow that to happen to a cat I knew from the neighbourhood. Moreover The WOMAN and I had both noticed other signs of old age in Styx in the past year. He'd lost most of the weight he'd gained since we got him because he wasn't eating as much and he was content just to lie on a chair in the sun or in our laps the whole day. The vet actually believes that the FIV must have started to kick in for the cold to progress to pneumonia so quickly. Moreover Styx was far sicker than he should have been given the extent of the lung congestion revealed by the chest X-ray. We believe now that strokes were a factor. His hind legs collapsed under him briefly on Sunday. That must have been a mini-stroke even though the vet found nothing wrong with his legs on Monday. The WOMAN thinks that Styx must have had a big stroke at 4:30 AM on Tuesday morning while she held him wrapped in a blanket because that's when he simply collapsed. For reasons of age aggravated by years on the street and perhaps the FIV kicking in, his constitution was very delicate. I suspected he wasn't that strong all along because in the back of my head I never expected Styx to last too many years. There's no other explanation for my having kept an annual count of the Christmases with Styx in our lives (now six). What's difficult for me to bear is that when he started to go down, he didn't hide as most cats do. He came to us for help. And despite being a cat who hardly ever purred or made a sound, he purred or tried to purr in a raspy fashion as his condition worsened. He was asking us to stay with him. And I failed in my efforts to help him. His whimpers of pain/distress on Tuesday morning are going to haunt me for years. At least when his time came he went down quickly. My only hope is that he knew we were doing all we could for him. Deuce and Styx at Grandma's Diner Styx and Ace Styx and Cowboy Worrying about Deuce right now is really the only thing preventing me from dwelling more on Styx's sudden end.

So Deuce somehow came down with pancreaitis in late November which morphed into liver failure/jaundice. He lost an enormous amount of weight from about 14.7 pounds to 9.3 pounds over the course of his illness but has now rallied and is back up over 10.5 pounds. Meanwhile our twelve year old cat Styx whom we had rescued off the street bleeding from a fight with another tom in the summer of 2009 seemed jealous of all the attention we were lavishing on Deuce and early last week took to hanging out on the loveseat in the rec room where Deuce has been convalescing. We were pleased that Styx was keeping Deuce company. As a further complication last Wednesday evening we realized that both Deuce and Styx appeared to have contracted cat colds and took them both to the vet Thursday morning. Styx was quite lively and showed a keen interest in whatever the vet was typing into his computer. As we suspected, upper respiratory track infections was the diagnosis. They were each given an antibiotic shot which we were told might not show an effect immediately but should within three or four days. The shot seemed to help Deuce as by Sunday he no longer seemed stuffy, but of course he was still in a recovery mode from the liver problem. But Sunday evening Styx actually looked worse to me than did Deuce. So we took Styx back the vet yesterday morning. The vet was somewhat concerned as their was a hint of crackling in Styx's lungs but otherwise Styx was alert and active during his re-examination. The vet injected Styx with fluids and prescribed a different antibiotic pill to be administered once per day. By late yesterday evening though I was once again very concerned with the level of lethargy Styx was exhibiting. He just wasn't moving from anywhere we placed him and I was thinking we might have to take him back to the vet this morning. The WOMAN slept on the futon with Styx wrapped in a blanket overnight. At 6:45 this morning while I was taking a shower, The WOMAN told me that I better come down since Styx was dying. I told her to forget about me and take Styx back to the vet who opened at 7:30 immediately. She replied that I better come too because I might not get another chance to see Styx. It was horrible. He was as limp as a rag doll except every few minutes he was giving out a little mewl of distress/pain. The upper respiratory tract infection had morphed into pneumonia. The vet said that Styx's chances were at best 50-50. He put Styx on a heating pad and I brought the humidifier we had been using in the cat's convalescent room to humidify the air to help him breath. I okayed intravenous fluid treatments for Styx with more antibiotics to which I gather he seemed to be responding. I was hoping not to hear from either The WOMAN or the vet for the rest of the day at work. The WOMAN's fears were confirmed though. Styx passed away a few minutes past noon. I'm devastated. I've closed my office door because tears are flowing down my face as I type these words. How could this have happened? From an upper respiratory tract infection (a common cold) on Thursday to this? He'd had extensive blood work for "geriatric" cats done in November and had received a clean bill of health. There was no sign of the FIV he's been carrying all along kicking in to action. Was there something more I could have/should have done? In retrospect we might have been able to save him had we put him on intravenous yesterday, but there didn't seem to be any need. RIP my loving friend. Forgive me if I failed you, because given your absolute trust in me I'm not going to forgive myself. Maybe though it was just your time.

Wow! Bold Yank skipper that one. Very tough title though. Just try asking for Submarine Attack or most other Charlton titles at your local comic store and see if you can get any more than the proverbial dumb look. Actually I think I'll try that this week!

Here are scans of five more of my Felix the Cat comics:

Wow! I didn't even know that Lee Elias had worked for Fiction House before he worked for Harvey.

Thanks to Yossarian for this unholy pairing. Here editor Julius Schwartz rips off another one of his own cover concepts from the previous decade:

Clip the coupon and send it in immediately before it expires then! In the meantime I've forgotten whether I posted this one earlier in this thread or not but since Charltons are so rarely seen in this thread I'll post it again: Does anybody else have any cool Commie bashing Charlton covers to post? P.S. It's funny that in a lot of Silver Age threads I get annoyed seeing nothing but Marvels. In this thread though seeing nothing but page after page of DC comics is doing the same. I want more Atlas and Charlton war covers fellows!

A lot of fellows are like that when it comes to women I understand....

Oh I protect the comic alright. The holder, not so much. In fact not even a little.

No. I'm one of the dwindling few that values the comic and not the label or the holder.

Terrytoon Dells are for only the few, the proud. I count myself among that select group. Here are scans of mine: 1 2 3 4 File copy 5 6 File copy 7 File copy 8 File copy

I can't help you with the riches but these scans of my comics may perhaps cheer you up. First Felix 11 from the DELL run: Then the first eight issues from the Harvey run:

Once a day. once a week, whatever. Just keep this thread going with whatever you want to post. It's what I do.

So to continue my celebration of Canada's Gold medal at the World Junior Hockey Championship yesterday evening, here are scans of some hockey cards I already have in Photobucket: 1958-59 Topps With respect to cards I've found difficult, my holy grail card is the Bobby Hull card from the above set. There are three difficulties for me associated with this card. The first is that demand for it is enormous since he's a superstar and it is his rookie card. The second is that it was the last card in the set and thus as likely as the first card to suffer worn corners from being stuffed in pockets, meaning the destruction factor for the Bobby Hull card was higher than for 64 out of 65 of the remaining cards in the set. Finally, there's something about the paper/cardboard stock used in the production of this set that makes the cards more prone to yellowing/toning than any of the subsequent years. Most of the 1958-59 hockey cards you see are more yellowed than the 1959-60 hockey cards. Whether it was the actual card stock used or whether some yellow dye got into the white paint at some point in the production process, it's tough to find these cards as white as I like them. I'm still not completely satisfied with about a half dozen of mine but admittedly I'm more than a bit of a fanatic on the whiteness requirement. Most annoyingly dealers don't penalize these cards for yellowing. The bastards just shrug. A bright white sharp 1958-59 Bobby Hull card would cost over $3000. My ideal is therefore to find one of these way off center to bring the price down to under $1500 which is admittedly still one hell of a lot of money for a little piece of cardboard. My hunt has consequently been on the backburner for the last few years. 1960-61 Topps 1961-62 York Here are front and back scans of the booklet into which these cards could be glued (Shriek, shriek!): 1963-64 York These 1963-64 York cards may not have been as popular with kids as the 1961-62 issue because they're not as plentiful today. Moreover, the white backs are also very vulnerable to the ravages of time and they're tough to find with nice, bright backs. 1964-65 Topps These cards are even more prized today than other hockey card sets from the mid-sixties. You see the Tall Boy format wasn't popular with kids at the time. The packs were a dime rather than a nickel (albeit you got more cards in each pack)! Moreover they weren't as easy to carry around in your pocket. Because of their added length, they got wrecked more easily in pockets. As a result of these factors, the Tall Boys are much tougher to find in nice shape these days. I have a modest collection of moderns as well. Here are some of my jersey cards which I love because they're so gaudy: 2003-04 Pacific Titanium The last four Giguere cards are patch parallels. The last three Miller cards are patch parallels. And here are a few scans of some hockey coins: 1960-61 Shirriff 1968-69 Shirriff

Fifty years ago over the Xmas holidays in 1965 I saw a James Bond double feature, Dr. No and From Russia with Love, at the Odeon theatre in downtown London, Ontario. It was a very exciting screening for me since I'd not seen either movie previously. Here are scans from my Philly Gum James Bond card sets with the wrappers:

Thank you for joining the forum and sharing your incredible collection. As diverse as it is, I don't see anything that isn't great. Robot Man's got the right idea though. Diversity is the key, regardless of "value"! I'm waiting for him to display some of the toys that he's acquired from his youth, which sounds like it was in the mid to late fifties just a few years before mine.

Happy, happy, joy, joy, joy!

Well we're certainly in accord on the latter point. Sounds good to me! Do you take boarders?

So was there ever a better movie made than When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth? Could Hammer's earlier epic One Million Years B.C. be such a movie?

"Nicely shaped" does not to me equate to really or overly high and round. For many of us a necessary condition of "nicely shaped" is "natural looking". Where there's mass, gravity will have an effect. In the case of breasts, gravity works to make them fuller at the bottom. If they're really full at the top and/or don't flow out to the sides when the lady in question reclines, that's not natural. i.e. they're fake. Here's a helpful article:

Hak, hak, hak, horrrrkkkk!!!! Sorry, hairballs. But Gold you say? BTW, this is the first time I can recall you commenting on any of the diverse topics I've introduced here in this thread over the years....

Another big hit TV show fifty years ago was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It was perhaps my absolute favourite at the time. Here are shots of some of my Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea items: Donruss Gum Cards Aurora Model Kit Milton Bradley Board Game