Pinning My Hopes on Ponazuril

Had a fun morning at Morgan's Mill (my local coffeeshop), where Jennifer did not laugh too loudly at my unfinished dragon foot. I think I'm going to finish the right leg, move to the left leg, and if the left leg is an improvement, try the right leg again. Did I get any writing done at what is ostensibly a write-in? Maybe a few sentences...

After that, I went to the shelter to pick up the ponazuril that is (fingers crossed!) going to fix the Snack Pack kittens. While I was there, we set up a surgery appointment for the two remaining Vampires. If everything comes together, all my fosters will have returned to the shelter for adoption before I leave town and we won't need to find a vacation foster. I think we have decent odds, but I'm not holding my breath.

Only after I came home did I remember that I wanted to go to the pet store (about half a mile from the shelter) to get a couple new litter boxes and some extra litter — that will make things easier when I'm bleaching everything so the Snack Pack don't reinfect themselves. So... out again to the pet story, and then I stopped at Michael's to get a gel pen for adding extra details to the paintings.

Because, yes, the gel pen is going to fix everything.

(I did set up a hair drier so I could dry things faster, though. Maybe I'm improving?)

Michael's Rant

I know this is going to make me sound like an old person, but... Seriously, Michael's, this whole self-checkout thing you have going IS NOT WORKING. There were three employees assisting customers with "self-checkout", the line was moving really slowly, the registers kept throwing error codes to make the employees log in, and it was just a mess. It would have been at least twice as fast to have those three employees check everyone out.

Training your customers to run your machines is the least efficient solution. Honestly, it's probably losing you business. Who wants to to drop by for a small item if it takes twenty minutes to get through the line?

Okay, rant over. I hate this stupid self-checkout trend.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Look, they're not getting into trouble! Sure, they're sleeping, but it's nice to know that it's possible.

Sloth Day

Sloth Day

I spent the day relaxing, taking naps, and finishing the ARC of Tammie Painter's Scales of Justice (book 6 of the Circus of Unusual Creatures series). Spoiler: the book is a lot of fun and I enjoyed it.

Having "sloth days" is an important thing to build into my schedule. I mean, sure, it's not like I'm all that busy anyhow, but I need days where I just sit around and do nothing and (crucially) don't see people at all. Is this a neurodivergence thing? Ha, I'm a 57-year-old woman, so there is zero chance I would have been diagnosed with anything in grade school so we'll never know!

Important Poop Info

We have preliminary results back on the kittens' fecal examination, and at the very least, they have Cystoisospora, which is a protozoan. It certainly fits with their symptoms, so it's probably not just an incidental finding. The version that cats get isn't transmissible to humans, but I probably should bleach my office this weekend to keep the Snack Pack from reinfecting themselves.

And who knows? Maybe the final report will have more fun things to treat. These are the kittens that had roundworms even after they'd been twice treated with antiparasitics that should have taken care of that. I think these kittens just started off with a very high parasitic load.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

Frito says hello.

(I interrupted her in the middle of grooming. That's why she looks so furtive.)

Glamorous

Fellow foster-mom Jennifer and I often end conversations with "Fostering is so glamorous!" (She's the one that made me dig the 7" tapeworm from the trash and photograph it.)

Today was another of those glamorous days. I spent the morning waiting for Cheese Puff and company to poop so I could get a fresh sample to send off to the lab so we could find out why half of the Snack Pack have had diarrhea for three weeks. Glamorous!

More Fun with Gouache

The problem is that I see short instructional videos on YouTube, and I remember about 20% of the information when I go to recreate it later. (And also that I never wait for things to dry.)

Here are some penguins that are wide. Very wide. I finished this page and then actually looked at it and started laughing. I still like it, though.

Then there's the turn-off-your-brain thing that was fun to make.

And finally, I was trying to shade oranges by using the opposite color on the color wheel. In theory, it should have worked. But I failed to let it dry (shocking, I know), so it didn't quite turn out. But I added a penguin, so the page is a win anyhow.

Will I ever be competent at painting? Very likely not. But I'm having fun with my almost-daily practice.

Obligatory kitten picture

The new girl has a name: Yorkshire Pudding. Her eyes are still pretty inflamed, but she's eating and playing, so I think we're on the right track.

She'll be gorgeous when she's healthy.

Stoned

Stoned

Wednesdays are the day for breakfast and writing at Crepeville with some buddies. I was packing up my things at noon when the foster coordinator called and asked if I could possibly bring the Snack Pack to the shelter for surgery by 1pm. There was a mixup in the mobile surgery bus appointments, and they suddenly had an extra 20 slots to fill.

So I hoofed it back to the parking garage, drove home, grabbed all five kittens, and drove to the shelter with ten minutes to spare. No problem.

They don't actually have room for the kittens to stay in the adoption center (and these guys still have diarrhea), so I picked them up again four hours later and they are back in my office.

They were kinda stoned when I brought them home. It's now 7:30pm and you would never know four of the kittens had major abdominal surgery today. Theoretically, I should be trying to keep them from running, jumping, and climbing, but I'd like someone to explain to me how to get kittens to slow down. It's just not possible.

So Professional

In between ferrying kittens, I found out I had to send an author headshot somewhere. I don't really have an author headshot, so I spent a while trying to make that happen. I am not a person who ever takes pictures of myself. It would never occur to me to go to a photography studio. The idea of doing so makes me want to flee the country. I compromised by taking some selfies outside. They will have to do.

At least our two-weeks-so-far ongoing overcast skies were good for something today.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

As you can see, Frito and Cheese Puff are wrestling resting quietly.

Foster Math

It's day 9 of Holidailies!

Foster Math

There's a phenomenon in the rescue community known as "foster math" and it works like this:

This morning I had 11 foster kittens (5 in the Snack Pack, and 6 Vampires).

I took 4 of the Vampires to the shelter for surgery and adoption.

Now I have 8 kittens.

That's foster math.

Meet the new girl

To be fair, I had 7 kittens for most of the day, but then I got this text: "Hi Theresa! Might you have a spot for this sick girl? She just came in with a fairly severe uri. She’s sweet but snotty and our cat building is full at the moment."

This is her intake photo. Hopefully she'll look a little better after I spend some time soaking off the crusts this evening.

Graduation!

Here are the four Vampires that went back to the shelter and their info:

Bianca is the most independent kitten of her litter. She's friendly, but she's more likely to be off playing with a toy mouse than sitting on your lap — until it's naptime. Then she's all about the cuddles.

Bianca

Marius is the bold adventurer of the litter, though he enjoys snuggling and playing with his siblings. He is obsessed with the feather wand toy.

Marius

Armand is a wonderful himbo of a kitten — just generally happy to be wherever he is. Though he currently resembles a fluffy potato on legs, his glow up is going to be epic.

Armand

Rowan can be a little shy at first, but once she bonds with someone, she will follow them around asking for attention. She's adorable and will purr constantly.

Rowan

My kitten biographies are getting funnier as the year progresses, because I don't think people read them on the shelter website — I no longer feel constrained to keep it professional.

Still Not Dry

During the summer, I forget about how depressing prolonged gray skies can be. (Yes, I live in California. I'm a wimp. I'm amazed I survived an entire year in northern Germany.) Blech. In a perfect world, I would travel to the southern hemisphere every winter.

Anyhow, I played around with gouache again today. The image is totally cheating, by the way. I traced a photo of former foster Gidget on my computer monitor onto a plastic bag with water-based markers, then got the paper wet to transfer the image. It's a technique I picked up from YouTube — perfect for those of us who suck at drawing.

Anyhow, it's a good technique. I'll add that to my arsenal. My attempts at a background failed miserably because I was trying to do it without waiting for the cat to dry. It would have been far better to thin the paints down on the background, but then I would have run the risk of smearing them into the cat. Yep, my impatience caused problems.

Obligatory Kitten Photo

Once again, Frito is highlighting her horrible living conditions. (Cue Sarah McLachlan...) Her only shelter is a cardboard box! For only five dollars a month, you could rescue this poor girl from a life of hardship...

No, It's Not Dry Yet

It's day 7 of Holidailies! (And I heard from Mary/Bozoette, whose Red Nose blog disappeared when Typepad went away. She is on Substack now.)

I've been playing with gouache lately. If you're not familiar with it, it's a paint that you can thin down so it acts like watercolor, but you can also have it be more opaque, so it's a little like acrylics. Either way, I'm pretty terrible at it. (It's a hobby! I'm allowed to be terrible at hobbies!)

One of my main problems is that you really need to have a layer completely dry before adding something new... unless you're trying to mix the layers together, in which case, rock on. I'm usually not trying to mix the layers, but I'm not patient. The combination of those two things means I end up with a lot of muddy messes.

(I dried the base layer today only because I got up to check on something and then completely forgot I had been painting. By the time I remembered, it was three hours later and the base layer was dry. I'm taking it as a win and a sign of my newfound maturity.)

Typical Sunday

The rest of my day was absorbed by kittens and writing. Elisabeth came over to socialize kittens, so the little gremlins slept most of the afternoon. That gave me a chance to clean up my office, which the Snack Pack had toilet papered overnight. That's what I get for leaving a roll of toilet paper on my desk when the kittens are getting big enough to jump up there. (It was leftover from the last group of bottle babies.)

Anyhow, I finished the first of two Patreon digital bonuses for the month — this is another Reddit r/AITA post for the world of Theoretical Magic. It's fun to write those. If I ever start an author YouTube channel, I would read those and make up some comments. Reading AITA posts on YouTube is a thing.

Obligatory Kitten Picture

The Snack Pack steals my chair any time I leave the room. They look so innocent, don't they? Not at all like kittens who spent the night tearing toilet paper into teeny tiny pieces.