DON'T TRASH THAT FLEA COLLAR

According to Woman's Day, April 1, 2010:

Flea treatments and collars cannot be thrown in the regular garbage. They must be disposed of at garbage collection sites - you know, those places that accept toxic and hazardous waste.

So, if this is what you are using on your companion animals, think again. I know there are natural alternatives to this poison, you just have to research it. I didn't use a thing for twenty years/12 cats. All I did was comb, comb, comb - and I never had a flea problem. I even had large area rugs. After their dinner meal, I would get each one and 1, 2, 3 comb under their arms, groin, neck, belly, behind ears, tail. Once a week I gave them a thorough combing. I grabbed the fleas stuck in the comb with a tissue and tossed in toilet, where the fleas, what few there were, drowned. They were indoor cats, but I did have one outdoor cat that came in and brought some fleas in, no doubt. When I finally got my outdoor cat to stay in without spraying, the fleas eventually disappeard.

The reason I stopped using toxic chemicals on my cats over twenty years ago was when my third cat was around 4 months, I washed him with a flea soap and he went into convulsions. That was the first and last time I ever used something like that and he never had another convulsion.

To be honest, there were a few times during those years I had to use drugs to get rid of tape worms, which did come from fleas, but I felt that was safer than continued use of flea collars, etc.

GLASS JARS VS PLASTIC CONTAINERS

I will never buy plastic storage containers ever again. I love storing food in glass jars. The best are wide-mouth jars from salsa. I also like the small horseradish jars with the white lid. I pretty much save all my jars until I run out of space to store them. I get a pretty good collection of salsa and spaghetti sauce jars, so I can always recycle some. If you can't get rid of the odor from the lid, you can soak in soapy water for awhile. I find that eventually the odor goes away and does not affect the food stored - even pickle jars - which are great. They are better than plastic containers because you can see through them and don't have to play guessing games. Plus you don't have to worry about bad plastic leaching into your food. I am not sure if you can microwave the glass jars - I haven't tried it. I would venture to say it is probably ok to do so.