Purple Skies

It's day 10 of Horrordailies! Today's picture is just random stuff I put together. It has a bat; ergo, it's spooktacular.

Gaussian blur was my friend.

Foster Kitten Updates, or Why I Am So Tired Today

Warning: The sarcastic "Fostering is so glamorous!" applies here.

The semi-feral mom has been eating a ton of food, but her poop has been somewhat unformed. And late last night when I was scooping, I found this long tapeworm in the mess. So then (of course) I mentioned this to my fellow foster-parent Jennifer, and she wanted a picture. (I love that my friends are the type that hear stuff like this and immediately demand pictures.)

This is what gloves are for.

Anyhow, I found the tapeworm, rinsed it off, and then photographed it next to a tape measure. It was over seven inches! Disgusting, yet fascinating!

Today I mixed anti-parasitics that treat tapeworms into mom cat's food and she ate it, so hopefully there will be no new gross surprises.

Mom has occasionally been hissing and swatting at the babies, and I'm not sure if it's because they are nursing with teeth or if she's got mastitis. There's really no way for me to safely get close enough to check. One baby hasn't gained weight, so I'm keeping a close eye on their weights. Hopefully I'm being paranoid, but I don't think I am. 

Things I've Read Recently

I finished listening to Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. It's a murder mystery about a herd of Irish sheep, translated from the German. It's delightfully weird, but I didn't like the ending. Or, put another way, it was a very German ending, and I can say that as someone who has a minor in German literature.

Endings are a theme here — I also finished A Feast of Phantoms (Book one of Lingua Magika) by Kat Ross and I really enjoyed it. The genre is sort of steampunk fantasy western? There are different grades of demon-like creatures that can be harnessed to do things. Each type is commanded in a different language, so the powerful people are the ones who can speak multiple languages. My only real complaints are

1)  One character I thought was somewhere in the 40-60 year-old range is revealed to be 24 years old at the end — I think he's being set up as a possible love interest, so that threw me off. I was picking up mentor/father-figure vibes. (The age confusion could be lazy reading on my part, but I think I just interpreted vague clues differently than I was meant to.) 

2) The book just sort of ends. I guess it wraps up some things, but the main quest isn't resolved. Far be it from me to tell other people how to structure books, but it felt unfinished. Then again... all three books in the series are published and they're in Kobo Plus, so I can treat this as the first third of the story.

I already have the next book loaded on my ereader.