HELPFUL HINTS

Why helpful hints here at the Clarion Call?  These things have helped my life to be easier and I want to share them with you.

You ever get glue left on a product after to scrape off the label?  There is a product that helps remove it 98% of the time.  It is called De-Solv-It.  I scrape as much paper off the label as I can, spray some of the De-Solv-It on a rag, and wipe the rest off.

By the way, I bought a product that had a horrible giant label on it.  I scraped and scraped and scraped at it.  I wrote a letter to the company telling them how awful it was and they sent me a whole new one of the product for free!  That leads into my next hint.

It is worth it to write a letter of complaint to a company that provided you with bad service or a bad product.

Probably 80% of the time you will receive a response.  More than half of those will be a satisfactory response where you feel like they actually listened to what you were saying and will correct the problem.  Sometimes you even get something from the company for the time you spent like free coupons or free products.

Be receptive to how God prompts you.  Perhaps you will be the catalyst that prevents anyone else from suffering through that problem.  Perhaps the company doesn't even know there is a problem.

Sometimes you can contact a company through a web site or email.  What you need to focus on is not cooking them to a crisp using your anger.  State facts only.  Give suggestions if you have any.  Give them your name, address, and phone number.  Then re-read your letter until God gives you the OK to send it.  You may have to take out some things or re-word them.  Angry words don't go as far as just stating the facts.

Hopefully you will have collected names of people you spoke with as well as dates and times of your phone calls.

If your fingernail breaks down into the tender part of your finger you can create a temporary fix until the nail grows in.  You need a tea bag and some kind of quick drying glue like Crazy Glue.  Cut open the tea bag and throw away the tea.  Tear off a piece of the bag and glue it to your fingernail.  Repeat that until you have two or three layers of glued bag on the tear in your fingernail.  Save the rest of the bag in case you have to re-do it.  You can use a fingernail file and smooth off the repair.

I used to use Simple Green on my laundry until I discovered that some brands of grease remover that you find in the automotive department do the same thing and are much cheaper.

Instead of using rocks or broken pottery in the bottom of your plants use small pieces of styrofoam.  That makes the pot less heavy!

I had brought my cat home from the veterinary hospital with three different liquid medicines and one pill.  The hospital did not give me any helpful hints on how to get the medicines in my cat.  I looked online and kept coming up with nothing but a joke.

I had two cats at the time and the other, older, cat had been taking a liquid medicine once a day.  I gave it to him before he ate his breakfast so the food would take the taste out of his mouth.  Plus, he didn't run and hide because he knew he would get to eat afterwards.

I had to experiment with different ways to get the liquid into his mouth.  I found that the easiest way to give it to him was to kneel down and pull his rear up against my leg so he couldn't back up.  Being right-handed, I put my left hand on the left side of his face so he couldn't turn to the left and I tipped his head back with my left fingers under his chin.  I put the palm of my right hand against the right side of his head to keep his head from turning right and use my thumb and forefinger to squeeze in the drops.  I just pressed the dropper against his lip until he opened his mouth and in it went.  Occasionally we ended up with some of the sticky medicine not making it into his mouth, but most of the time it was a pretty neat and clean way to do it.

My other cat refused to open his mouth.  The hospital gave me the plastic portion of syringes for needles to use as droppers.  The had a flat, sharp edge on them.  I think they had cut up his gums trying to get him to open his mouth because he had a hard time eating when he came home.

Fortunately I had been saving the droppers from my older cat's medicine because I didn't need to open a new one every time.  They had rounded tips.  So, the first thing I suggest is you make sure you get droppers with rounded tips.  I had to re-mark them because the rounded droppers were marked by mg's and the syringes were by ml's.  I just measured out the right amount of water in the syringe, put it in a small container, sucked it back up in the dropper, and drew a line with a permanent marker to show the right amount.

When I tried the same method as with my older cat I had to push his gums with the dropper to get him to open his mouth.  He flicked his tongue with the liquid medicine on it and the medicine went EVERYWHERE.  So I came up with a different way to do it.

I tipped his head up, keeping him from backing up like I did with my older cat, and slowly dribbled the liquid over his clenched teeth.  I kept my fingers along both sides of his mouth because the liquid would sit there until it seeped through his teeth. My fingers kind of dammed it up so it stayed on top of his teeth.  I pushed his lips up and ran the dropper across his front teeth and kind of poked behind his eye tooth, all the while trying to keep the medicine from dripping down his chin.  Eventually I could feel him swallow with my left hand that was partially under his chin.  It took a while, but most of the liquid went down his throat and neither he nor I were stressed out.

I had a warm, wet washcloth handy to clean up under his chin because some would inevitably  dribble down.  Then I gave him a special treat.

To get him to take a pill I tried two different things.  I didn't want to force his mouth open at first because his gums were sore.  So I got a pill crusher and crushed the pill into as fine a powder as I could.  I mixed it with as little water as it would take to dissolve it.  The less water the better because it takes less time to get the cat to take it.  I would then give it to him the same way as the liquid medicines using a dropper.

To get him to take the pill whole I backed him up against me so he couldn't go anywhere, like I did when giving the liquid.  I pushed on his teeth with my left index finger and pressed against the right side of his teeth using the pill held in my right hand.  When he finally opened his mouth I put my index finger between his teeth so he couldn't close his mouth.

Watch out here.  Your cat might chomp down.  Mine didn't.  If yours wants to chomp you will have to stick something else between his teeth that won't hurt him.  Perhaps a piece of plastic of some kind would work.

I dropped the pill on top of his tongue into the opening way back in his throat.  The pill went right down.  If I put it under his tongue, however, he could fling it pretty far!  Occasionally I slipped up and didn't get the pill into the back of his throat and had to retrieve it and try again.

Perhaps you can use these ideas and modify them for your cat.  It isn't easy being a cat-nurse!

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