Life, Kitty News and a new book announcement

It's been a slightly insane couple of months. The house I'm in is going on the market, so it's been a frantic scramble to unclutter and clean up, which is lot easier said than done when you have two humans, 3 1/2 cats (Odin is going strong and still appears for breakfast every morning) and a hell of a lot of art stuff and books.

The next chore is finding someplace to live again, and I'm kind of despondent about that. Low income and a lot of stuff do not a happy combo make. It's frankly terrifying. I'm back to the rat again, and not enjoying it. On the bright side, stress and lack of money to buy sugary junk food means I've slid back through a size 10 and heading for the land of size 8, which I haven't seen in ten years or so. The downside of that is that my favourite jeans no longer fit (they're starting to look like a cross between those gangster-wanna-be styles and a full diaper, and if I sneeze without wearing a belt I'm likely to be arrested) and my inner bean-counter took one look at the price for a new pair and giggled hysterically before force-marching me out of the shops last week. For that price, the damn things should be giving me a daily back-rub and making me coffee in the morning.

The cats are insane in new and interesting ways. Hathor has decided that dangling upside down from the curtain railing is her new joy in life, Bast has starting introducing his kleptomania to my undie drawer (and you haven't lived until you see a cat trying to look innocent with a pair of knickers draped fetchingly over his ears) and Sheba has starting wrapping herself in my duvet and swaying to some inner music only she can hear. When the last one happened at 3 a.m., the human in the room almost tested the water-proofing on the mattress. There were yellow eyes, okay? Ahem.
Odin has figured out that hammering repeatedly on the door will get me downstairs eventually, and headed for coffee and his breakfast.

Anyway, I post a lot of kitty dialogue on my FB page, and I've had a fair amount of private messages asking about a book. Not just an ebook. A book book, with pages you turn and hey, what about some illustrations?

I'm happy to oblige, however book books cost more money to make than ebooks. Illustrations do interesting things to formatting in tree books, so I'd need to hire someone on that end. I can't do a graphic novel, because I'd still be working on it in 5 years - time is not my friend - but illustrations I can handle, so I've saved the cost of an artist. (My inner artist is sulking, btw. She likes being paid.) And I'd need an editor.

And the PMs came back and they said: Fundraise, you idiot.


So. I've got a GoFundMe page set up, with little snippets and pictures and videos if I can ever figure that part out - tech and I are still not quite buddies. I still intend to release an ebook - too many folks who prefer them to tree books nowadays - but if I get enough funding to do a good job on the physical book, I think it'll be pretty cool.

The link is here, if you'd like to be a part of it. Anything and everything is appreciated. I'll love you. The cats will give you cool, sardonic cat acknowledgements. And you'll have a nifty book to play with.

Blessings: Kitty update

A couple of weeks ago, Bast threw up in the lounge. A pool of white froth, it was startling mainly because he doesn't throw up; unlike Sheba, who does so at least three times a week.

Then he galloped around like his usual self. Cats throw up. It's one of the things you learn to live with if you have a cat.

That was a Sunday. Tuesday he came downstairs and threw up in front of Stace while I was at work. She called the vet and took him in, because he wasn't being his normal self: no appetite, no running around, and his sides were shrunken.

The vet put him on a drip because he was seriously dehydrated and kept him in overnight. Multiple x-rays followed. There was some sort of blockage in a lung. Possible heart damage. They didn't think he'd make it.

The next couple of days were a blur of vet updates and cold, hard fear. Fear is a funny thing. It's one of the most physical emotions, and it settles into your stomach and heart and mind and squeezes until your lips go numb and you struggle to think past it. It's the third time this year I've had that experience, and I'd sincerely like it to never happen again.

The vet had no clue what was causing the blockage. Stace and I scoured the house looking for something the boy might have eaten. Nothing. Nada. Zip. We've tried to make the house pretty much cat-proof - no poisonous plants, no sharp objects left lying around - but still, a house collects objects and he could've swallowed anything from cardboard to cinnamon sticks.

The vet took something like 700 ml of liquid off of his lung, and sent it off for analysis. Every time the phone went we expected the conversation to start with "I'm sorry, but..."

More tests and x-rays. More phone calls. Had he fallen? (Unknown) Been hit by a car? (Definitely not.)


In the meantime, Sheba and Hathor searched everywhere for him. In the cupboards. Under the pillows on the bed. Behind the couches. Eventually Hathor retreated to his favourite sleeping spots in turn, curled up and withdrawn. Sheba sat down on the stairs and howled.

The last set of scans after the fluid had been reduced showed something out of a horror story: Bast had a hole in his diaphragm. His stomach had navigated up and into his left lung. His heart was thankfully undamaged.

Bast was transferred to the vet school in Bearsden, and Stace and I rushed over to meet the surgeons. It was operable. Barring severe complications, and provided he made it through the op, we'd get our boy back.

We went home to wait.


They phoned the next morning to let us know he'd sailed through the op. He'd ended up with both his stomach and several feet of his small intestine in his chest cavity and lung; trauma usually only seen in car accident survivors. There is a chance it was a birth defect, or possible caused by the abuse they suffered as kittens. How he survived so long without it coming to a head before is unknown.

We picked him up on the Sunday morning, and he purred and cuddled up to us all the home through his carrier.

Three paws, his neck and his belly were shaved down from the frantic efforts to save him as well as the op itself.

He was stapled down the length of his chest and belly, which annoyed him because he kept wanting his belly rubbed and we wouldn't touch him there. So he'd walk sedately around the house after us and hurl himself to the ground if we looked at him, then complain bitterly because tummy rubs weren't on the menu.

We were given vials of oral painkiller that had to be squirted onto his gums, (after the first attempt ended up with painkiller on the ceiling, up my nose, and along Stace's sleeve, we stuck him in the carrier with his head sticking out and lifted his lip to squirt the stuff in. I'm fairly sure we were more traumatised by the process than he was.)  and a tablet that was crushed into his food for the next week.

This Wednesday the staples came out. He's eating and playing and back to being our usual happy boy. Hathor and Sheba are much happier as well. Christmas was definitely good; the best present was getting Bast back safe and sound.

Here he is in all his shaved-down, post-staple glory. You know Bast is happy because he gets a smile on his face.

I hope your Christmas was just as good.

Kitty Update

So. It's been awhile, but since the last kitten post, Bast turned out to be a boy. We ended up with a calico male, which is very, very rare. In everyone's defence (including the vet), the area under his tail is pitch black, and so were the  pertinent bits.

Hathor went into heat 2 weeks before Bast was due to get the snip. It took us a while to figure it out because she's still quite young and doesn't actually miaow. She chirrups, chirps, and squeaks, but there isn't a miaow in sight. Bast is the same.
It took three days of noises like a demented canary before I clicked, and that was only because I caught them trying (and yes, I mean trying. Let's just say Bast has no clue which end to aim at.) to have sex on the stairs. I also caught them in the missionary position a day later, which is disturbing on so many levels.

We appear to be pregnancy free, mainly because Bast often dealt with the increasing demands by biting Hathor on neck while leaning against the wall, and looking at us as if wondering what the hell was supposed to happen next. He'd escape by climbing into the bath and hiding away from her.

Bast got snipped last week; Hathor is due the end of the month. He still limps as soon as he sees the treat packet.

Two weeks ago I saw a message from a friend about a cat that desperately needed a home.  You can guess the rest. Part of me was thinking WHAT ARE YOU DOING. It was drowned out by the part that went KITTY!!!

So Sheba is currently living under my bed. She is black shot with slivers of copper and gold, and slow-blinking yellow eyes.
She's eight, and she's lost her human and her home and the poor old girl is heart-broken. She loves being stroked, hates the vet with an almighty passion, and has Bast infatuated.

He keeps offering her his favourite toys. Then he climbs under the bed and chirps at her. As soon as my light goes off for the night, she wiggles out and romps through the house with the other two. I think she'll be just fine.

Hathor, playing with her mouse.

Bast - King of the Cupboards

Buy a new cupboard, make your cat happy...

New year, new books

I've been burrowed under trying to build a website for the past few weeks. For anyone who knows me, or reads this blog on a regular basis, the fact that I haven't inadvertently blown up the internet is a surprise. Ahem.


Anyway, it's almost ready to go live. *squeak* After fighting with it for some time, I've decided to keep this blog separate. I like it here. If I get brave enough, I'll do a couple of video blogs for the site.

To add to the fun, there are two new books out. Shine is a short story collection, and includes a brand new Blue Moon Detectives story. Fur Thing is the latest full length Blue Moon book, so Billy fans should be quite happy.

Speaking of Billy - I'm coming to the inescapable conclusion that Bast is somehow channeling my favourite character. I've met accident-prone cats before, but this one takes the biscuit. In addition to bitch-slapping the water fountain because it wasn't full enough, he has managed to get blue dye on his paws (no clue), fallen off the bookcase, and spent a good two hours wandering around with a large blue sequin stuck to his furry butt. Hathor tends to eye-roll him a lot, which I can understand; grace and dignity do not apply. Can't imagine where he gets it from.
Hathor, on the other hand, has a fetish about drinking glasses and mugs. Anything put within reach gets investigated, sniffed, and drunk if you aren't fast enough. So far I've had to rescue several cups of coffee, wine, eggnog, and water. She doesn't seem to like whiskey, though. I'm taking this as a good thing.

 Until next time - have a fantastic year, everyone!

Bruises and Emergency Room Visits and Kitties - weekly roundup

Monday I got off the tube, and some little man rammed me on his way past. I didn't think much of it apart from saying a rude word; in London, the Good Manners Fairy got gagged and duct-taped and thrown to the Gods of Public Transport some time ago, and I've been knocked harder than that. But by the time I got to the office my ribs on the left side where he'd knocked me were throbbing and tender, and it got worse as the day went on.
Just after lunch I checked my side in the bathroom mirror. What I saw was a tracery of broken blood vessels extending from just below my armpit to just above my navel, and a raised lump of tender flesh over a couple of ribs.
I left work late to avoid rush hour. By this time I was sore enough that anyone shoving me would have been punched and I'd like to avoid an assault charge. Since I couldn't face the stairs at the tube I got the bus to the main train terminal, and by the time I home I was struggling to walk and not cry from pain.

Tuesday I worked from home, hoping things would improve. By Wednesday morning it hurt to breath, speak or move at all, so I headed off to the emergency centre. I was anticipating a diagnosis of bruised ribs, but wanted to make sure nothing was fractured. Instead, I had a doctor telling me I might have a ruptured spleen and bruised kidney. This was not a fun moment.

On to the first scan, which was ultrasound, followed by oral morphine (gag) and a CT scan, which was strangely pleasant apart from the 10 seconds where I thought my toes were going to catch fire and a taste in my mouth like I'd just downed a very strong shooter. The final diagnosis came back as massive bruising around the liver, kidney and ribs. Sheer relief, and the immediate desire to go home, right up until they took my blood pressure and all that jazz and discovered my temperature was high and my heartbeat was 118. It didn't help that when they told me I had to stay over night the damn heart rate shot up to 122. I've never seen an emergency doc look so horrified while trying not to laugh.

Anyway, I learnt that the emergency room has their own overnight ward for cases like me (apparently sending you home to have a possible heart attack is considered bad) and I was promptly deposited into it, given food that looked horrifying on every possible level, and dosed up with both codeine and oral morphine again, which tasted worse the second time around. As a result, by the time Stace got there with my p.j.'s, I was cataclysmically stoned. Morphine has a time distorting effect on me, and I tend to hallucinate on it. I also don't remember much of what happens, but apparently having a conversation with me is interesting.

Breakfast was edible - cornflakes and coffee. They offered me more morphine (no thanks. If I'm in excruciating pain I'll take it, but given a choice, I'll take anything else rather than that stuff.) Several hours later, I was allowed to leave, on condition that I take it easy for a few days and come back if the pain gets worse. Since I really, really don't want to go back, taking it easy is the way to go.

My cousin came and met me to make sure I got home alright. We were on the bus when we saw the sign outside a charity shop advertising abandoned kittens for adoption. I've wanted a cat again for a long time; I've missed having an animal in my life, and so has Stace. She looked at the sign and said wistfully, "Oh! I want a kitty."
And I thought 'Life is short.' and I told her to push the buzzer to stop the bus. We both needed to eat, anyway, and there was a coffee shop right next to the charity place.

So we met Maria, who runs Little Darlings and rescues animals and places them, and she showed us a picture of two starving kittens that had been stuffed into a filthy carrier, tied up in a black plastic bag, and dumped outside her shop. I would give a great deal to have 5 minutes alone with the person who did this to them, I truly would.

That night, Maria brought them over, and my life is now filled with miaows and chirps and the delicate thunder of kitten paws stampeding across the floor at 2 a.m.

We have Hathor Freya, who seems to be training to be a ninja and hides in the most amazing places, and Bast Sekhmet, who likes to be able to see at least one human and know where her sister is, and will now eat out of my hand. They're still twitchy, and a bit nervous, but they're playing and eating and getting used to the fact that they are now in a safe place.

So yeah, although I'd prefer a non-painful way off the universe giving me directions, if I hadn't spent the night in the hospital I wouldn't have these cats in my life, and I'd be the poorer for it. But I'd really like a hospital-free life from now onwards; this is getting a bit annoying.