Attack of the Poop

We have nicknames for almost all of our animals. Veronica also answers to 'Poop!' One of these days I'll have to have the boy video one of my exchanges with Veronica, which is probably only entertaining to me. It goes along the lines of:

"Poop!"

"Meow?"

"Poop!"

"Mrrow!"

"Poop!"

"Mmruw?"

"Poop!"

"Mow?"

On and on pretty endlessly. I only really want to document it in case anyone tries to attribute any sort of decorum or fussy propriety to me. I'm a kites-with-pictures-of-my-goats-with-wings-on-them, chocolate-cake-smeared-on-one-cheek kind of gal.

Just sayin'.

Not that it's ever likely to be an issue.

But I'll be watching, so you better not do anything too toward in my name out there.

Veronica originally got the nickname 'Poop' because I thought her coloration is reminiscent of bird poop. I'm also a fan of Winnie the Pooh, and therefore I'm perfectly happy with silly, somewhat inappropriate cutesy names for things. I know, I know, blame the innocent Pooh for my weirdness--how gauche. But there you have it.

Anyway, the Poop is spoiled rotten. She gets away with all kinds of stuff.

Brian is so sweet and patient.

Plus, he's a total attention hog, so as long as he's getting his pets, he doesn't care.

Monday Updates

Some wild weather lately. We had another extremely windy day, so I'm glad I didn't get the parts for my wind-busted greenhouse yet. It would have just gotten busted up again.

I'm working through House of Goats again, this time adding things I thought of belatedly and wanted to insert in, and looking specifically for emotional highs and lows that I missed the first go-through. This is a bit of a new process for me. I usually get in almost everything I want on the first go-through. I'm liking it a lot. When I mentioned this to a group of writers I know from a class, another one piped up with the fact that she writes in a similar way. Since she's a published author and I rather admire her writing, I felt better about doing it this way.

Even if no one else wrote this way, though, I'd still do it. I write every book in a slightly different way. Part of that is due to the fact that I'm learning to be a better writer, but I think a great deal of it has to do with the fact that every book is different. Some are very different. In fact, I'd be very surprised if I wrote a hard SF book exactly the same way that I'd write something literary.

In other news, Veronica will be going to the vet to get spayed at the end of the week. Wish her luck! It's a very common surgery and I trust our vets, but surgery is surgery and because she's a wee little girl it will be an internal surgery rather than a boy's easier snip snip sort. I'll try not to pass my anxiety on to her as we near the day, but I'm already worrying.

Stories out: 29

Currently working on: House of Goats (novel)

Short stories written last week: 1

Bad Agent Sydney Awards Treats to Veronica

Weather has kept me indoors and writing. I'm almost done with House of Goats! I'm especially excited about this because I have another book I desperately want to work on. I still might get the post-finished-first-draft blues, but I'll stay busy.

In other news, Veronica has made it onto Bad Agent Sydney's Blog. See the post here. Veronica got a treat, of course!

Bad Agent Sydney T. Cat revels in bad agent practices. I recommend Sydney's posts to anyone who'd like to get an idea of the kinds of things agents can do (and have done) that might not be in a writer's best interest. There certainly are great agents out there, but there are also bad agents like Sydney. Sometimes the only way to tell them apart in advance if you're hunting for an agent is to educate yourself and watch for red flags. Most people know to watch out for agents that ask for up-front money like reading fees or who refer writers to editing services, but there's lots of other iffy things agents (both scam and legitimate) do that are much harder to spot. Writer beware!

Springtime Pics

The garden, she is blooming! We won't be in full awesome mode until summer, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying some much-needed color outside my window.

Red currant (with my house in the background.)

I love my daffodils. I have a couple hundred of various colors.

#escapefail

(BTW she got out of there fine on her own--she went in head first and turned around into this position before leaving.)

More Sweet Kittehs

In honor of Moody Minstrel's potential future litter, we haz more kitteh pics starring Carey and Veronica, aka the Fluff and the Little Bird Poop (affectionately, mostly due to her colors but partially because she's still a little stinky thing.)

All Animals All the Time

It seems like it's all animals, all the time around here lately.

Veronica had her first bath. (That's Veronica in the pic, but from last night, not today's bath.) She's exhausted from teh clean and fluffiness.

What actually got us started on the whole cat bath thing, though, was Lucky. He's gone into frequent grand mal seizure mode, as in last night he had four, and he's had at least one or two a day for about the past week to ten (out of the blue--this hasn't been building over time.) This up from having one once a month or so. He's on anti-seizure meds now twice a day. If his liver panel comes back eh then we'll have to reduce his dose, but for now we just want to halt the foaming at the mouth and spasms that last for a couple of minutes at a time. The poor kitty has been having some while standing up, too, and sometimes he recovers in that position, and others he flops over after a while.

All sadness.

But the good news is that he's otherwise healthy.

JR Bunny has something going on with his ears in the form of weird scabs. The vets were baffled. He got a Revolution top spot in case it's some sort of parasite they weren't able to find (no lice, no mites, no fleas ... nada!) and they sent him home with no real answers (though two vets and a couple of nurses all checked him out and scratched their heads and looked at lots of slides of samples taken from his quite clean though scabby earses.)

And then I decided it was well overdue time to worm (because it's been so warm!) the goaties and trim their hooveses. Trimming goat hooves actually isn't that bad, but it takes two people, so my much-suffering DH held heads while I trimmed feet. The goats I'm sure will be walking funny for a while until they figure out their balance points on their feet has shifted to better posture. It must be a lot like learning to stand and sit up straight after months of slouching. Doesn't hurt, but doesn't quite feel natural, either.

And then the DH and I jacked up the front porch a bit and put some fresh gravel up front for good measure. Where do the animals fit into this? Why, we had to do that because the big white floofy poopies (Brian and Finn) collapsed the porch's front corner by digging, and in the process brought the joys of mud to the normally graveled front entry.

It's not fixed, but it looks better, and it's not as dangerous getting up and down those steps. Still a bit dangerous, mind you, but if there was no danger, it wouldn't feel like home.

Aw Kittehs

we haz cuteness u r slaves now

Teh housework, it was full of ick, but it's all better now. I wasn't able to put away the hand towels, though, because the kitties ... well, you can see for yourself. Their cuteness grows daily. Soon they will rule the house! I have a long video of Carey (the gray fluff) grooming Veronica (litt'l white kitteh.) It goes on a bit so it's one of those things that only a kitty mommy could love, so I probably won't post it on You Tube (ha, see how I act as if I know how to do that?) but I'm sure you can imagine.

Add purring to both this image and the unseen video and you have a pretty complete pic.

I haven't had two cats get along this well since, well, Chi Chi (the first) and Missy. Chi Chi was also a gray kitteh, and fluffy, found as a stray kitten. My father put his foot down. Absolutely no kittehs in the house. My mom let her in during the day while he was at work and fed her. One day she hid, and he came home, and she crawled up onto his chest, purring like mad ... and we ended up with our very first cat ever. Chi Chi was already a middle-aged kitteh when we adopted Missy, a short-haired gray and white thing. Something similar to the pic above was the result.

I love these sweet memories and moments.

On UR Computer

I am on ur Computr.

I haz ur filez.

Another Writerly Day

Just a quick post to say that I'm writing like crazy, and that Veronica is doing great.

The House of Goats project is really ripping along. I wrote about 10,000 words yesterday and the prior evening. Don't know how many of those words I'll keep, but I'm encouraged that the writing and revision of this book will be swift and full of awesome.

I've also, as of yesterday, got twenty two short stories floating around out in the big, wide world. With a bit of luck, someone will love one (or more!) of them enough to want to put them in print.

On the gardening front, I sprouted (inside, in a jar) a few snow peas and fava beans. The soil temperature is most likely going to be too cold for them to do much but shiver after I've planted them, but if not, that'll be a nice head start to the year. The danger of frost is still very high, but both of these species are cold-tolerant plants. They may survive a bit of nippiness. If they get frost-killed, I'll have only lost a few cents worth of seeds. But if they survive ... mwa ha ha! I'll have a potential for a very early harvest.

I'll be sprouting another group in about two weeks, onward through March, at which point I'll be able to start more than these two plants that laugh in the face of bitter cold. Those plants will probably stay inside until April or June, though.

I think I like early gardening. It's kinda fun, like gambling with food.

Must Write Faster, One More Mouth to Feed

I know, I never call and I never write.

Actually, I write a lot, but I haven't had time lately to post. I've been working on House of Goats. A couple of times today I had a crisis moment, thinking this couldn't possibly interest anyone outside of our family, but then I'd start giggling about what happens next ....

Several hours later I then have another long moment of doubt ....

We also have a new kitten. It's not my fault! Okay, it's totally my fault. A friend of my son's called. Their cats weren't getting along with the new kitten, and they absolutely couldn't keep it, and they couldn't find a new home for it (cue violin music) and it's a little siamese sort of thing except it's sort of calico, and it's about six weeks old (yowza, too young!) and and and

and I said (totally lying to myself) that we could take her in, at least for a while, and if nothing else we'd find a new home for her.

Well.

She was older than six weeks, thank goodness, but she was pretty tiny compared to our cats. And she was decidedly not cute. My DH wasn't impressed either. Quote: That is the ugliest cat I've ever seen.

I don't know about the ugliest. True, it looks like her head was put away wet in a dark place until mold took hold. But oh, what lovely blue eyes. More to the point, she was quite ill. We're talking blood in the eliminants, both sorts, obvious signs of worms and fleas, lackluster appetite, overly sleepy, etc. We isolated her from the rest of the cats and I had my son call his friend back. Where did this cat come from? A friend of her mom's. Can we get this friend's phone number? Her mom doesn't have a phone number or any contact information. (Wow, must be a really good friend. ?!) Has the cat had any shots, and has it been tested for FIV or feline leukemia? No idea. I'm not sure she even knew those were issues.

So I made an appointment for the morning and wondered if the poor thing would make it through the night. She did, and she did exactly what I wanted her to. She fought like a crazy demon thing. They couldn't get a temperature on her, and it took three people holding her down to draw blood for the test.

She had strength and a will to live.

The stress from the tests and exam and worming and de-fleaing and change of environment took its toll, though. About an hour after we got her home, she got really wobbly and her gums turned pale. I fed her a mixture of 1/4 tsp of karo syrup with a few drops of heavy whipping cream, by the vet's order after a frantic phone call. She perked up, and after a good meal and a long night's rest cuddled up under the blankets in the master bed (we're such suckers for sad cases) she bounced back higher than she'd fallen. Now all she has to worry about is finding her spot in the kitty pecking order.

I'd better get back to writing. We have another mouth to feed!

New kitten specs:

Name: Veronica

Approximately 3 months old--I've decided she's a Halloween baby.

Weight: 3 pounds

FIV and feline leukemia free!

Likes long slinks through the living room, playing with socks, sitting or sleeping on shoulders while owners are typing (she's totally a writing cat) attacking toes under blankets, and sleeping under blankets--sleeping on top of blankets with no people to snuggle against is for cats who fail at life. She is on premium Iams kitten food, which often gets poached by the other kitties. Does not like the big white puppies, but Dakota is okay.