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Even if you have had years of experience with adult cats, taking care of a kitten is a whole new world. Kittens eat differently, sleep differently, and need time to adjust to changes both inside their bodies and in the outside world. Learn about a kitten’s basic needs and how to help your kitten grow into a happy, healthy adult cat.

Make Your Home Kitten-Proof

What, exactly, does kitten-proofing entail? Particularly if you already have older cats, what more do you need to do?

For one thing, kittens are much more active and curious than older cats. Like human babies, they often satisfy their curiosity by chewing everything in site. For this reason, you should purchase all-natural cat litter and not the clumping clay variety that is commonly used with older cats.

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In times past, copywriters typically wrote for niches with a high need and heavy respect for copywriters. The obvious places to look for work were direct marketing agencies, corporate marcom (marketing communications) departments, and publishers, to name a few.

But today, work opportunities for copywriters have expanded greatly. That’s because clients became tired of unaccountable general advertising and pushed their agencies to do more direct response. Over time direct marketing became mainstream and shed its image as the “ugly step sister” of image advertising.

And while there’s still a tendency to look to traditional markets for work - insurance and banking, technology and publishing, non-profit and health - it really pays to think out the box.

For instance, one of my students is blending her literary talents with her copywriting skills to offer a unique solution to a market we’ve dubbed “the passion marketers.” This group of marketers can use her considerable ability to craft stories that sell.

Another coaching student lives in Belgium, speaks several languages, and has a rich understanding of cultures. For him, we’re developing a target list of multi-national corporations that will value his unique ability to write copy that’s “localized” to different cultures and countries.

Each of my students niches into a market that will value their unique talents, backgrounds, education, knowledge, and/or experience. Sometimes that experience leads us to a “traditional” niche rather than one we create ourselves. In this case, my students often niche “deeper” into the niche in order to make the connection between their unique talents and the needs of the potential client.

A great example is David A., who recently finished my coaching program. David came to me with the desire to build a copywriting career that would allow him to pursue his passions for fine wines, cultural foods and European travel.

David’s copywriting style and philosophy made him an excellent candidate for niching into the publications world. However, there are an incredible number of publications treating as many subjects. By looking at David’s unique interests, talents, and background, we determined that he should niche more deeply than just “publications.”

Today David is building a unique business as the copywriter for publishers, marketers, and organizations that sell fine foods, wines, and entertaining.

When new coaching students come to me they often think they must pull from past experience when determining the right niche market for them. This is only partly true. Some of my students loathe the idea of using skills and knowledge from previous careers because that’s what they want to get away from.

I explain that we can pull from three areas of their life to structure a profitable niche market: their past work experience, their passions, and their copywriting talents.

For instance, Gary C. wanted to niche into the diet aids and nutritional supplements markets. For him, we focused on a special copywriting talent this niche would value highly: that of being able to get and use extremely powerful testimonials.

Another past student didn’t want to use her advertising background, so she decided to follow a passion: that of quilting (she’s a fifth generation quilter). Although I’m not sure if she continued her path, we did determine that the quilting market is very large, and we also agreed that she could very well be the only copywriter in the entire world serving that niche.

Niching into a desirable market not only allows the copywriter to position him or herself as an expert, and therefore gain better clients at higher pay, but it also provides that thing that so many crave, but that so few have: meaningful work that fuels the imagination and feeds the soul…while also growing the bank account.

Winter can be an absolute nightmare month for our hair and skin. The cold, blustery winds and the extremely cold temperatures can really play havoc with our bodies if they are not fully protected.

We all know that winter can bring dry, flaky skin, but what many of us do not know, is that there is actually a condition called Winters Itch, which obviously only occurs in the winter. It is a condition which causes an itchy, red rash and incredibly dry skin.

Winters Itch and its Causes

There are many reasons why we may develop Winters Itch, and one of those reasons is the heating. With the extremely cold temperatures outside, and the heating turned up full inside, our skin often ends up drying out. So, the first thing you can do to stop this from happening is to turn the heating down even if it is only a little bit, and perhaps even purchase a humidifier which will really help keep the rooms in your house filtered.

Another cause of Winters Itch could be chemical agents. These include detergents and also, when the weather starts getting colder we cover up our skin a lot more. This can cause friction as heavy clothing rubs against the skin, and it can cause the symptoms of Winters Itch.

The amount of hot water you use on your skin also has an effect. The same as hot, dry air robs the skin of its moisture, hot water also does the same thing. This is because hot water strips the skin of its natural essential oils, and that in turn leaves the skin extremely dry. Bathing in cool luke warm water is essential in winter, even if you do want to make it as hot as possible because of the cold weather!

The condition can affect absolutely all ages, whether you are working outdoors in the Winter weather, or weather you are older, or an housewife who has the heating turned up all day. Whoever you are, if you have skin, you are at risk of developing Winters Itch!

Treatment and Prevention of Winters Itch

If you do have Winters Itch, or you simply want to prevent it from happening, there are certain things you can do. These include:

Make Sure The Skin is Well Lubricated

It is important that you keep your skin as moisturized as you can. After every single bath or shower that you take, you really need to start applying a moisturizer to the whole body, in order to keep any moisture locked into the skin. As mentioned earlier, moisture is often lost whilst bathing, so it is always a good idea to moisturize.

The main thing to remember is that you do not have to buy the most expensive moisturizer on the market. The cheaper products such as Petroleum jelly or mineral oil often make the best moisturizers and they are a lot cheaper than other products!

Take Care When Drying The Skin

Rubbing the skin too much can cause it to become dry. Patting the skin dry is always the best way to go about it, and ideally you should only pat it until it is damp, and then apply moisturizer. Surprisingly moisturizer works better when the skin is damp, than if the skin was completely dry. So the next time you bathe, afterwards pat the skin damp and apply moisturizer!

Avoid Harsh Products

Many people make the mistake of washing themselves with harsh soaps and shower gels. You may not even realize that your shower gel or soap is harsh, but if you look on the ingredients list, you should see that it contains alcohol, and that has an extremely damaging effect on dry skin.

Overall you need to take care of Winters Itch the same as you would with any dry skin condition. Keep the skin well moisturized, pat the skin dry, and try and get hold of a humidifier. If the condition does not clear up you really should consult your doctor. They will be able to give you a proper diagnosis and tell you what treatments you should be using. Winters Itch is treatable and it should disappear with time.

It will soon be a new year and we are almost a quarter of the way into the first decade of the new century. Where are we heading now? What will happen to the human race? Will it overcome its shadow side and migrate to the stars, a vision of Star Trek, or will it annihilate itself, the way the Roman empire, the greatest empire on earth, the pride of the ancient world, whose brilliant legislature, political organization, unrivalled military might, grand architecture, innovative engineering and artistic achievements have now been relegated to dusty archives?

The future of humanity depends on awareness of its plight. Without awareness, extinction is highly possible. With awareness, a critical mass for change can happen.

At no time in the last ten thousand years since the Ice Age have we exhibited such astonishing genius or such abominable disregard for sentient life. Somehow we have arrived here in this new century despite the worldwide suffering and traumatic events of the past one.

The greatest peril facing our species may be the overpopulation of our planet. Our very success with science and technology to improve the survival of all human life may be our downfall. The current rate of growth is about 1.9 percent a year. This may not sound like an alarming figure but it means that the population doubles every forty years. Right now it is around 6 billion. By the end of this century it will be around 40 billion. By then, it will be too late to do anything. That is the current lifetime left for humanity unless we become sophisticated enough to migrate to the stars.

It seems that in the last century of the last millennium everything changed for humanity.

Sigmund Freud exposed our dark human instincts. Evil men dominated whole nations and slaughtered millions. Conquering people began to coexist with those that they had once subjugated. Economic power shifted from one part of the globe to another. And the rate of knowledge expanded at a bewildering pace. Never before had humankind experienced so much, learned so much, and been exposed to so much raw power that it had learned to harness from nature.

In this new century we find ourselves experiencing an expansion of the cultural and global patterns we created earlier, and our greatest strength, our raw power and unsurpassed intelligence, can also turn out be our greatest weakness.

What will happen to humanity? Will the currently existing outbreaks of war expand to become an Armageddon? Will political, economic, military, industrial, and religious rivalry outweigh any common sense? Will we simply overpopulate and pollute ourselves to death? Will the accelerating economic inequality and exploitation of natural resources create its own brand of chaos? Will prevailing human helplessness at the size of our global problems overshadow us or will we choose to become more aware, educated, cooperative and communicative?

Humanity’s future has become extreme: it faces either an apocalypse or evolution to a species that will live in space-stations and travel in star-ships. Everything hangs in the balance based on what we do this century. We have survived the past, but if the same naive patterns continue into the future, we will not make it.

Ultimately, even if we can overcome our individual and collective shadows, even if human decency can outweigh primitive aggression, even if human collaboration is finally possible and human genius is allowed full self-expression, we have one last hurdle to overcome, otherwise the past millennium will have been the last one for our species. Each decade, the stakes are rising. The warning of futurists has fallen on deaf ears. The probability of perishing in the coming millennium is no longer science fiction, it is becoming observable fact to even the most indifferent and ill-informed people.

A time will come when we will need a new home. No force on earth can stop over-population other than widespread devastation due to belligerence or the depletion of limited resources. Our only possible hope is to become star travelers.

Will we be ready to make the new leap to the stars or will the light of human genius, hindered by territorial animal disputes, fail to rise to a level that will save our race from oblivion?

Instant communication and rapid travel has shrunk the world. Can we now use our global brain, the Internet, to communicate in a meaningful way to create a collective change in the consciousness of humanity? We owe this not to ourselves but to generations yet to come. Positive action has to happen this century, a critical mass of awareness has to be reached, otherwise the resulting chaos will be beyond control.

In the past, according to the literature of various traditions, avatars would show up to guide us to wisdom, but we persecuted them. As witnessed by the atrocities of the past century, our shallow intentions and brute instincts are still with us. The only hope for humanity is a collective renaissance of awareness, because only the birth of a widespread intelligence will prevent catastrophe. An expansion of mind and heart has to happen at a critical mass.

The future can no longer be a revalidation of the past. There is too much at stake. Intelligence has evolved us from the apes, but the lack of it’s positive application may also be our nemesis. Alone as individuals, we will not have much of a chance of saving our planet, but collectively, there is no limit to human genius. Can we evolve to a species that colonizes space or will we perish before we get there?

The antidote to apathy and withdrawal is awareness.

Humanities emerging power of numbers, economic expansion, scientific exploration, and technological advances will be used for extinction not evolution. We have already grossly abused the power that we possess. Our power in all areas is expanding as our knowledge expands. Military toys are becoming deadlier; viruses are adapting to our most potent antibiotics and becoming unstoppably virulent; and ideological fanaticism is reaching a point where nuclear proliferation is not possible to contain. Awareness right now is our only hope. Unless, through awareness, humanity as a whole is willing to give up its conscious and unconscious hostilities, disaster is inevitable.

We can use the Internet to spread these ideas to every home and corporation and government in the world. Only 6 degrees of separation lie between us and anyone else in the world.

Without awareness, positive change is not possible. We owe it to generations yet unborn to spread awareness. This is the meme that will save our species. Awareness can blossom into knowledge and knowledge into positive action; but without awareness; through mere blind, reflexive living, chaos will erupt as surely as night follows day, or one century follows the next.

Please send this article to one or more people or post it somewhere. In a strange way, the fate of the world may have something to do with us. Let us act, each in our own small way, on an impulse, no matter how faint, to help the greater good.

Although many of us do not constantly think about our hands, they are permanently on show and everyone can see their condition. Usually one of the most neglected parts of the body, the nails often suffer from being bitten, ripped off and they are rarely cleaned out.

So it is no wonder that they can often cause problems. So what is it that we should be doing? Besides a little general hygiene, there is something else we can do to keep our hands and nails spotless, and that is to have a manicure.

Why Manicures Are Not Just For the Rich and Famous:

When you mention the word manicure, often we think of rich, famous, fake or spoilt women. However, a manicure can really help to keep our hands clean and healthy.

Techniques which are used vary from salon to salon and a manicure can either treat your nails, your hands, or both together. A standard manicure generally consists of the nails being filed, shaped and colored. A French manicure may also be offered, and if you choose to treat your hands they will usually be soaked in a softening substance, followed by an application of hand lotion.

You can even have more luxurious hand manicures known as Paraffin Treatments. This includes dipping your hand into either melted paraffin or wax. The heat is supposed to relax the skin and make it easier for hand lotion to absorb into the skin which is sometimes applied before the hand is dipped into the paraffin. Often the hand is dipped into the melted substance more than once in order to build up a thicker layer of wax which makes coating stay warmer for longer and less likely to tear or break. After the manicurist has finished dipping your hands into the melted substance, they will wrap your hand in either tin foil or plastic and then they are covered in cloth in order to keep the warmth in.

Manicures are not just for women either and many men get a hot oil manicure. This involves cleaning and neatening the cuticles, and softening them with oil.

Whilst manicures might be good for the hands, there is a chance that you could get an infection from the equipment used. This only usually happen if you have not had the treatment done at a professional salon by a qualified person. All manicurists have to be licensed as they are manipulating the hands and trimming them and the risk of infection is recognized.

So, in order to receive the best possible manicure, it is important that you choose a manicurist who is relevantly qualified.

How to Give Yourself a Home Manicure:

Giving yourself a manicure at home is fairly easy once you know how. However, you should ideally make sure that you give yourself plenty of time for one as the average manicure lasts around 45 minutes. If you have ensured that you have got enough time, here are some tips which will help you to give yourself the perfect home manicure:

First Prepare the Hands and Nails

It is essential that you prepare and clean the hands and nails before the manicure. To do this you should wash them thoroughly and then use a double sided emery board to file the nails down in gentle strokes. Try and avoid the corners of the nails as you could weaken them, and then once finished start on shaping them. The most common shape used is the oval but you should choose whichever shape suits your hands better. Once you have finished that, to see how effectively you have done it try and run your nail over something such as pantyhose, and see if the nail snags. If not, you have done a good job!

Now Move to The Cuticles

After preparing the hands, you should now be ready to make a start on the cuticles. First, apply some softener to the cuticles and allow it to absorb for a couple of minutes. Next, place your hands in a bowl of warm water and soak them for another few minutes. Now it is time to push back the cuticles.

When you are pushing back the cuticles it should not hurt. If it does, try and soak them for a little while longer. If there are any hangnails visible, be sure to clip them off. Next it is time to apply hand lotion and start to massage the palm of your hand with your thumb on your opposite hand. This really does help to circulate the blood. Be sure to continue doing this around the rest of the hand and then switch hands, making sure that you use the same amount of time on the opposite hand.

Clean and Polish the Nail

Before any color is applied to the nails, they first need to be cleaned. The easiest way to do this is to use an orange stick wrapped with cotton and dip it into nail polish remover before rubbing it over the surface of the nails.

Next use only a little color on the end of your brush, and paint one stroke down the centre of the nail. If done properly, the brush should have just had enough color to do this. Next brush the other two sides of the nail and you should be finished. It should never take more than three strokes to finish the nail. Now make sure that the polish has a few minutes to set before applying a second coat. After the second coat has dried, apply a top coat which will help to seal the color and keep it looking good for longer.

After you have finished, it is important to sanitize all of the equipment to minimize the risk of infection the next time you use them.

Overall a manicure really can help you to relax, as well as keeping your hands really clean and healthy. Anybody can give themselves one at home as long as they follow the above steps.

Some call it a food group. It just means that much and tastes that good.

While it’s not the healthiest food in some ways there are many health benefits to eating chocolate too.

Dark chocolate is of course the best, as it has the most cocoa and therefore the flavonoids, which provide the benefits. The flavonoids have antioxidant properties, which have the potential to help prevent cancer, heart disease, and stroke.

Natural cocoa powders are the best, and when you’re shopping for chocolate you can get the best benefit from chocolates with the highest cocoa content. In addition, milk chocolate has more fat and calories due to the milk content than darker chocolates do.

The benefits aren’t extreme and unfortunately not worth overindulging in chocolate. They do give a delightful bonus to one of life’s little pleasures. The occasional dark chocolate is about as good for you as the occasional glass of red wine, which also contains flavonoids.

A new potential benefit has been discovered by Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. They’ve found that chocolate can help with diarrhea by limiting the production of fluids. The flavonoids appear to bind to a protein called CFTR, and then inhibit them. This discovery is promising for its potential to be developed as a cheap treatment with few or no side effects. Only time will tell on that possibility, of course.

Some worry about the stearic acid found in chocolate. Stearic acid is a saturated fat, but some say it’s a neutral so far as risk to the heart while others say it has been shown to be a problem. As with many health topics it can be very hard to decide what to believe.

You can call chocolate addictive but it isn’t really, or at least there’s no evidence that it is. It’s just a delight to eat. It contains a variety of chemicals that can improve your mood but in very small quantities.

The absolute best way to indulge in chocolate is to use cocoa powder in recipes that have other healthy ingredients. You can substitute cocoa powder for baking chocolate in some recipes to decrease the fat content. To make many baked goods even better for you, use just egg whites rather than the entire egg and replace butter and oil with unsweetened applesauce.

To finish this article off, I’d like to include a favorite recipe for chocolate meringue. There’s a lot of sugar in this recipe, so it’s not 100% healthy but they’re quite decadent without a lot of calories.

2 egg whites

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Beat the egg whites in a large bowl at high speed until peaks start to foam. Slowly add sugar as you continue to beat. Keeping beating until stiff peaks form.

Mix in vanilla and cocoa powder while beating at a lower speed. Mix chocolate chips in by hand.

Cover a baking sheet in foil or parchment paper. Drop spoonfuls of meringue about an inch apart.

Bake for one hour. Turn off oven and leave meringues in the cooling oven for at least two more hours to allow the meringues to completely dry. Store in an airtight container.

I have a friend that has to stay indoors, specifically in her bed during the first day of her period every single month. The pain she experiences and the fact that she cannot move without anguish have caused a number of problem in her social and business life over the years. But my friend is not alone. In fact, according to researchers, it is estimated that between 50 and 70 percent of women endure some degree of period pain and cramping. Of those women, approximately ten percent experience contractions of such extreme levels that are one and a half times more powerful than labor pains. This is a pretty bad deal, right?

Most women, from the time they were teenagers to the time their period stops, have to encounter every single month a number of symptoms and overcome pain associated with the time their periods come. But the unfortunate thing is that for some women the pain can be so debilitating that they are forced to take time off work, just like my friend, or can only get through their periods by dosing themselves with painkillers. Everyone remembers from early childhood that pain is normally considered to be a message produced by the human body in order to signal that something is wrong and that an investigation should follow to remedy the uncomfortable situation. However, painful periods are viewed somewhat differently by the medical profession and a lot of women, who complain of period pains, are advised to take a painkiller and endure the pain until their periods are over. But this should not be the case. Every individual has a different pain threshold and thus, it is important for women that suffer during their monthly periods to investigate their specific case.

Every one of us has a different pain threshold, so it is impossible to imagine what another person might be experiencing while in pain. Only the one enduring such a situation knows whether or not period pains are unacceptably high and if the pain is affecting the quality of her life. If this is the case, then it is time to do something about it. Visiting a specialized doctor, performing a number of tests and taking some kind of medicine, can be some of the first tactics a woman suffering from dysmenorrhoea can perform. But, it is important during those medical sessions to explain and describe the symptoms, their duration and frequency. Some of the most common symptoms women have reported during their periods are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, fainting, dizziness, headaches, exhaustion and lethargy. In addition, it is important to know that pain varies from case to case and women might experience a constant low back ache like a dull ache, which is called “congestive dysmenorrhoea” and/or cramping pains like contractions, which are named “spasmodic dysmenorrhoea.”

However, period pains can be unusual and there may actually be nothing medically wrong with the suffering woman. These pains are considered simply an abnormal functioning of the woman’s body around the time of a period. Since this is the simpler and most common explanation, women tend to think that a painkiller will bring balance back into their lives, as long as they are able to get rid of the pain and prevent it from returning. But this is just a temporary solution. The results can last longer and the situation improved considerably, if women consult an expert and then follow a healthy lifestyle that will treat the condition and not simply mask the pain or ruin their cycle.

Pregnancy is sometimes planned and sometimes just happens, but all of us want to know about it as soon as possible. Here are a few early pregnancy sign symptoms, which may help you know or at least suspect that you might be pregnant.

Know Your Body

We are all very different even if general rules do apply. Thus, what may be evident in some may not show at all in you. Knowing your body is very important, as you are the only one who will feel the change occur, probably within a few days of conception. However, here a few tips that hopefully will guide you to recognize them better.

Fatigue is a very common early pregnancy sign symptom, especially if you are the energetic type. You will be able to detect right away a need to rest, and shortness of breath for almost no reason at all.

Higher body temperature for no apparent reason is yet another early pregnancy sign symptom which is common as well. So, if you have a body temperature that is about 10 to 15 times higher than it usually is, it is time you took that pregnancy test.

Other early pregnancy sign symptoms are lower abdomen craps, occasional bleeding of one of two drops for no reason and sometimes breast tenderness. However, these symptoms are often confused with the usual PMS symptoms.

Confirm Your Doubts

If you are faced with any early pregnancy sign symptoms, the only way to find out one way or the other is to conduct a pregnancy test. Today fortunately there are a number of pregnancy tests available. Unfortunately there is only one that can confirm an early pregnancy and that is a blood test, which needs to be conducted at the hospital.

However, if you are not too curious you can wait for at least a week after you have missed your period. You can then conduct a urine test at home, which is accurate as well.

Helpful Tip

If you have been trying to get pregnant your doctor may provide you with more information on early pregnancy sign symptoms which may be applicable to you. Therefore, it is important to consult your doctor and if necessary conduct the blood test in order to confirm whether you are pregnant or not.

Pregnancy is a wonderful time in a couple’s life, especially when you have planned it for a while. The sooner you know about its existence, the sooner you will be able to start taking care of your baby and yourself.

The dawn of the Information Age has given us more labor saving devices than any other period in history. Along with this knowledge we have settled into a more sedentary lifestyle.

Taking a little trip back in time can really open our eyes. A typical day for your great grandmother began long before the sunrise. She was usually the first to awaken so she could have a hearty breakfast on the table for the rest of the family.

She would probably stoke her range with wood brought in the previous evening. Unless one of the children was old enough to be charged with the task, she would put on her coat, scarf and gloves and trek out to the barn to milk the cow, stopping on her way back to gather eggs from the chicken coop, home-cured ham and sausage from the smoke house, cheese (that she had made herself) butter (that she churned) and potatoes from the cold storage cellar.

Returning to her kitchen with her collection in tow, she would prepare a breakfast that most likely consisted of ham, sausage and eggs fried in lard she had rendered, biscuits, gravy made from the leavings in the frying pan, flapjacks, whole milk and strong coffee.

That picture can pretty much turn your veins to instant concrete!

Bear in mind that after her pre-dawn preparations she would spend the remainder of her day, sweeping, dusting, polishing, scrubbing clothing using hot water that she boiled herself, hanging the laundry out to dry, tending her vegetable garden and often toiling in the fields with the men.

The comparison between your great grandparents is not so much what they ate, as how they used the calories they consumed. Life was hard. Normal physical activity usually burned off the calories they consumed. They worked hard and ate hearty and, yes they did have a shorter life expectancy.

Today we eat foods that are processed and contain more fat and chemicals than nutrition. To top it off, we also live sedentary lives. Unlike grandmas hearty breakfast we are more likely to grab a cup of coffee on the run. We rush to an office, only to spend the next 8 hours sitting in front of a computer screen, just as you are doing now.

Getting a handle on your diet is just the first step toward losing weight and living a healthier lifestyle. In order to tame the weight loss beast, you MUST change your physical habits as well as your eating habits.

You do not necessarily have to exert yourself as if you were training for the Olympics, but you definitely need to learn how to burn off more calories than you consume. Once you have accomplished that, you can step in to a regimen to maintain your ideal weight.

But the bottom line is that you still need to burn more calories than you consume if you wish to lose those extra pounds.