kiya

Slick, aka Facecat, aka Licky Slicky, aka Editorial Assistant Cat, aka My Obnoxious Freaky Boy, aka The Creature, collapsed suddenly yesterday afternoon with what appeared to be catastrophic asthmatic pneumonia. (He has had the not-uncommon chronic feline sniffle for some time.) He was a good boy and came to his humans when he noticed things were badly wrong, and we got him to the hospital, but he declined abruptly around 3am. I got the kids up so we could troop over to the hospital to say goodbye. The younger two remained in the ICU while we eased the inevitable.

Slick is survived by his full sister Lilybelle and his adopted brother and sparring partner, Robin, as well as his shellshocked human family.

He was a good boy. Every time I talked to the vets, they said what a good boy he was. He loved getting up in my business and poking me in the face. He didn't know how to sit on laps so he would stand on people and rearrange frequently. Sometimes he would sort of crouch on my lap so that he could lick my fingers while I was typing and try to chew on my knuckles. He got on top of all kinds of furniture. When we were away for a week the catsitter called partway through in a panic saying he hadn't been seen, and we found him chilling on top of some shelving in the basement storage all "What? You know I don't like strangers." He had finally started chilling out and letting people who don't live here see and even pet him. He loved halves of plastic Easter eggs and would sing about them and play cat hockey with him. He was the best cat at understanding English. I could tell him "Timmy is not in the well" and he would stop yelling at me. He sounded, as KJ would say, like a squeaky door hinge. He used to spend a lot of time in the basement ceiling, and it's possible that old insulation up there is why he was asthmatic. The other cats would beg for protein scraps when people were making dinner (well, Robin begged; Lil would steal whatever Robin got) but his response to such things was, "What do you think I am, an animal?" Sometimes he did an adequate job of pretending to have a dignity, even though it was a lie. His belly was not a trap; he denied all existence of bellies. He had a white Superman-shield shaped shirtfront and two white stripes on his front right toe.

He was a good boy.

The Despair Boxes are on the move.

I had Slick snuggling me obnoxiously (he is Opaque, and it is effortful to get him to lie down on my chest rather than stand on it, but I had managed it mostly).

He sat up on my breastbone.

He made a sort of quacking noise at my right eyeball (always mildly alarming because suddenly the formless, alarmed void has FANGS).

He took a lock of hair in his teeth and gave it a vigorous shake, like a terrier with a recently-murdered rag toy.

He quacked into my eye again.

And then he flopped back down to cuddle.

WTF, Slicky. WTF.

artan has made a cat tree.

I have taken pictures of a cat in this cat tree, since Dame Lily happened to come upstairs right when we were finished putting it in the window.

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Three things make a post.

1) We have been approved to adopt catlings. It's about six months since we lost Len, and we decided it was time to start looking. We will be bringing home a pair of black youngsters, and we are trying to decide if we are also going to adopt a Holstein cat as well.

2) I have made formal plans for next ink.

3) The BIG IMPORTANT THING:

My short story, "Delayed Exchange Deferred", will be appearing in the Zombies Need Brains, LLC anthology, The Death Of All Things. The TOC will be coming out real soon now, so I don't know who all I'm sharing pages with yet, but the company website says "It will include short stories by multi-award winning and NYT-bestselling authors Stephen Blackmore, Aliette de Boddard, Christie Golden, Jim C. Hines, Jason Hough, Faith Hunter, and Fran Wilde."

So, you know, if you're just dying to read my take on playing chess with Death (and yes, they are playing the Ruy Lopez opening, that is not a spoiler), that's where you can go to get you some of that stuff.

The book can be preordered here.

You guys, this is my first professional sale. (ZNB hits the payment benchmark for professional sale for SFWA though I don't think they're officially recognised as a qualifying market from a quick glance at the site.) Also: also. Also! I did the thing! rasfc folks, y'all know I've been wanting to do the thing! I did the thing!

Goodbye to the sweetest, most loving, stupid charming cat I've ever known.

I'll write more later.



artan_eter and KJ are going out to dig his grave.

Grave goods include catnip, a handful of kibble, and the red twisty off the top of a gallon of milk.

He shed on me one last time.

Vet called me at about quarter of nine to say the Arthing had eaten all the food they left him overnight. (He sounded a bit impressed.)

I'm going by the hospital in a bit to visit the invalid.


ETA Apparently they syringe-fed him a little this morning and his reaction was roughly "Well if you're going to be that way about it let me at my food dish, sheesh."

KJ: Myow.
Cat: Mew.
KJ: Myow.
Cat: Mew.
KJ: Meah, myeah, myow myow.
Cat: Mrrr.
KJ: Myoww.
Me: What are you and Arthur talking about?
KJ: Meow!

The funniest thing about the cat storage unit (containing the sheepskin kviri and staralshain gave us after it was rejected by their boys) is the way that Arthur grooms there.

He has white feet, you see, so he sort of drifts off to the side because the sheepskin is also white.

And then he grooms the sheep.

And then his tongue gets stuck.

So I have this tub of blue hair dye that my hair is too dark to hold (and bleaching my hair is an experiment that Will Not Be Repeated).

And for a long, long time I have contemplated the tub of blue hair dye and the bright white portions of the cat. And resisted this urge.

Just now ... a blue pen leaked mightily. I spent a while going, 'Wait, why is the tip of my finger nail blue?' then moved my hand and realised I was covered in blue ink.

And the cat rolled and went to sleep on it.

I have a blue-spotted cat.

I'm trying to figure out if this means that dyeing him blue is redundant or required, now.