*air guitar solo*

Ok I put this on FB but it can't hurt to put here too. We need help with Fantine!

Dog location: Northeast Georgia, just outside metro Atlanta and near the NC/TN/SC borders. TL;DR: Really sweet stray dog has ringworm; current foster is immune compromised; need someone to help by housing her for the duration of her treatment. Only need a short-term foster (approximately a month is the estimate for ringworm treatment? up to six weeks, I guess) and we can help find a permanent placement for her when her treatment is complete.

Details: Fantine is a stray dog we have been fostering for about the last month, she has a wonderful temperament (very sweet and trusting with people, quite resilient, friendly to all the dogs she has met) and is about a year and a half old. She has had all her vaccines and flea/tick/heartworm treatment and was spayed almost three weeks ago. and is healing up from it really well.

She's also ringworm positive, and I have some serious immune-related health conditions. The vet who diagnosed her was worried about her staying in the house with me even though she has been in quarantined in the laundry room and we are being very cautious about biosecurity.

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

As for the study itself, the 360 day follow up on stage 3 kidney failure kitties showed that the control had a survival rate of about 20%, while the test group had a survival rate of 80%

I once had a roommate who invited a roach infestation from hell. Multiple fumigations failed to get rid of them all. I took matters into my own hands. My apartment has been roach-free for years. Every now and then - maybe once or twice a year - one comes in from outside and I take swift action to make sure it dies quickly, as painlessly as possible, and without children that can reproduce. This shit works.

You need two things:

A fast-acting poison, to get rid of as many current adults as possible (or just. a shoe, if it's one freak arrival)

Insect growth regulator, to prevent eggs from maturing to reproduce

Do the usual thing with the fast-acting poison. Spray areas of high activity, try and find and spray any nests you find, spray around things that give off heat, keep it away from food and food prep areas and just keep those as clean as possible, everything that it says on the bottle or any reputable "how to get rid of bugs" guide.

Next, do a wide treatment of insect growth regulator. The main brand that sells it is Gentrol; it comes in foam spray and stick-up diffuser form. I find that the diffusers work best in general, but the spray makes a great extra boost. Does nothing to vertebrates, so you can use it pretty much anywhere...unless you have pet bugs or something, in which case you probably need to look up more specialized advice for pest bug infestations anyway, and...if you are a pet bug owner and you didn't think of that before then let me urge you to now because I would not want anything bad to happen to your pets because you wanted to get rid of the health hazard that is loose roaches.

If you see bugs shortly afterward with weirdly-shaped wings, that means the bad news is, step 1 didn't kill all the eggs, but the good news is, step 2 is working and these ones will not reproduce! The end is in sight!

Another thing that really helps is using Pine-Sol for regular cleaning. I find that most household pests HATE that shit, and it is just a really good general purpose cleaner. Of course, keep your space as clear of food trash as possible, but...this works even in an Oops! All ADHD! household. The extra step of IGR makes it a lot more forgiving than you may fear.

And there you have it! You'll be roach-free in no time!

This isn't to say that I think there's an objectively right answer to this; if you voted you'd rather have the guy because you're just that comfortable dealing with people in weird situations, even if they involve your home, I applaud you and we need more people like you in the world. Or, hell, I know in some particularly sparsely populated areas in some particularly inhospitable climates, "some guy got lost on a hike and so fucked up by the elements he had to live in my shed/cabin for a few days; well, that's why it's furnished and unlocked!" is just a thing that happens once in a blue moon and I think that's pretty cool.

the Midnight Ginkgo pattern is now available in the shop! :)

along with a bunch of restocks and new things!