The "Otis & Carol Star On The Cover Of The Intel" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the Thursday, May 3, 2007 "Lifestyle" section of Lancaster Newspaper's Intelligencer Journal.   The headline of the story I was reading was titled "FDA may put end to flavoring pet medications."  The story told about drug compounding to add flavoring to drugs to make them taste better for adults and children as well as animals.  But, the Food and Drug Administration warned some compounding pharmacies that they cannot sell reformulated medicines for pets or people.  Our veterinarian, Dr. George Nyland, orders compounded drugs for kittens, puppies small dogs and animals who are difficult to give a pill to such as cats.  He said it would be a problem if he can't get compounded medicines for his customers.  Many other vets also commented for the article telling of the hardships that will be created without the use of compounded drugs.  Most pet owners see compounding drugs as a necessity.  What will happen if vets can't create compounded drugs.  Perhaps the FDA will allow vets and those pharmacies that make pet medicines to continue to make compounded medicines.  This article I recently found was dated 14 years ago and I assume that compounding of pet medicines still exists so the FDA must have changed their mind on the topic.  In the article that I had found, a few local pet owners were asked to give comments about how they would handle giving their pet medicines if they could not be flavored or made into smaller pills.  One pet owner was Phyllis Bath who has to give her 14-year-old cat high blood pressure pills.  She hated them, so the vet made them into a liquid and now the cat has no problem taking them.  

A second cat owner who was interviewed was my wife Carol, who is holding our cat Otis for a photograph.  She told the newspaper that Otis takes a compounded fish flavored liquid that she squirts directly into his mouth.  Without the compounded liquid I'm not sure what we would have done.  Otis and Carol had their photograph taken for the story, which was part of the article, in black and white and then we realized that their color photograph happened to be on page 1, dead center at the top, with a headline that read "Pet meds."  

Front page of the daily newspaper in Lancaster, PA.
Carol and Otis are featured on the cover!

Both photographs were taken by my friend Dan Marscha who is one of the photographers for the newspaper.  Wasn't long before the calls began to flood our phone which was followed by envelopes that contained both photographs from the newspaper.  Pretty neat to have a cat as the star of a newspaper article.  Otis is no longer with us, but he will never be forgotten due to his photograph being on both the cover as well as in the article in the Lifestyle section.  I suspect his handsome face may have something to do with both photographs being part of the story.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.