By golly, it's an update!

Amazing, I know.

I've had various reasons for staying away from here, though much of it was a basic disinclination. Still, much has both happened and stayed the same in the intervening months.

First off, I had to deal with both tragedy and a sad sort of happiness, if that makes any sense.

The sad happiness is from the inclusion in my life of two "new" cats - and the new is in quotation marks because both are seven years old, and therefore only new to my family. They have been here since just before New Years. While I'm glad to have them, and know that if circumstances hadn't played the way they had they might still be in a shelter, I'm still saddened by what happened that caused me to acquire them.

On December 18, I was forced to make the merciful and sad decision to have my Iddy Biddy, the orange and white poofball of a tabby cat that had spent 22 years of my life being my best friend and companion - sometimes my only friend - put to sleep. Over the course of one week had gradually stopped eating, and lost a lot of weight. The vet had thought it was her thyroid - and I must say I still wish it had been. Her blood tests came back showing she was in Stage 3 Kidney Failure. When she was diagnosed, we were given a survival rate, even with the best treatment available, of a bare 20-30%. Given her age and the standard risks that come with sedating a cat, we chose to be merciful, and had her put to sleep. Even at the end, though I know she must have been in a lot of pain, she didn't want to leave me, and I thank her and love her dearly for that. She's been gone for almost four months now, and I still miss her terribly.

One of the things I did during this time was to re-read the online comic ElGoonishShive (http://www.egscomics.com); while some see it as a sexual-niche comic, I see it more as an effort to tie in many things in a fun and silly way, and the comic was a good distractor from my grief. I also looked at many pictures of shelter cats. In an effort to cheer me up, one of my internet friends started showing me pictures of cats in various shelters in the towns between the two of us. After awhile, I started looking on my own, with my primary requirement being female and medium-haired, if not long haired.

During one of these idle searches, I found a 7-year old Tortie names Patches, who invoked both my protective nature towards kitties and my ire against her former keepers. She was given up because the person who had her after her original owner decided she was too much of a responsibility. Honestly, she was my second choice, but my first and third choices were adopted before I could go to the shelters they were in, and I was quite happy to "settle" for her. There was only one catch. During one of my searches through the cats in the shelter she was in, I found a pretty, poofy grey kitty that I hadn't seen earlier. most likely because I hadn't filtered for sex. His name was Squeak, and he was the same age as Patches, and had been given up for the same reason.

A few calls later found that they were siblings, and the shelter planned on them to leave the shelter together. They were both apparently traumatized, and hadn't stirred much in the room they were in. The lady I spoke to at the shelter was able to tell me that they'd been adopted from the shelter when they were two, and the elderly person who had them died recently. After that, they were shuffled from relative to relative, with no-one wanting to keep them, until they were finally dropped off at the shelter. Well, I'd be happy to take in two cats instead of one - city limit is three per house - I just had to convince my parents to let me have two cats instead of one.

Which actually turned out to not be very hard. I'd mentioned them to my brother, and her and his wife, during one of the times Dad had to pick them up while their car was in the shop, went about steering him towards the idea of having more than one cat in the house as being beneficial. It also didn't hurt that getting them both during the holiday season would be only $50 for the two of them, due to a combination of shelter standard policy and holiday sales. Patches was $50. Since Squeak was over 1 year old, I then got him for free. Buy one, get one free kitties? I can handle that!

Patches was the friendlier one at first, but now they're both fairly friendly. With the way Patches was scared so much and shied away from people touching her, once Squeak came out of his shell, we can only assume either she, he, or both were abused somewhere along the line.(Though if he was, he's recovered nicely.)

The only downside is Mr Squeak (as we've dubbed him, along with Shadow, Shadow Squeak, Squeaka-deak, and Shadow Stalker (based on how he used to slink around the house) likes to get into things he's not supposed to, and chew on things he's not supposed to. We've had to resort to spray bottles of water to keep him of the table in the dining room. We have also concluded, after seeing the various things he tries to each and concluding he most likely has the mental faculties of a toddler (or younger) that he and she will not go down the basement.

For one thing, even with Biddy, I was worrisome that she might be too curious about the sump-pump well and land in the water nose-first. Seeing as this one presents himself as less intelligent, I think there's a much greater possibility of this becoming reality. Another thing is his chewing; he doesn't really differentiate between what he shouldn't eat regardless of being scolded, having the item taken away, or spraying him with water. I knew someone in high school who had to take her cat to the vet for an emergency operation after he ate steel wool. Yes, steel wool - that funky metal scritchy-scratchy stuff used for cleaning dishes. Take the soap away, and you have what I use to clear up deep scratches in wax. Which is on my workbench. And given what else is down there - nails, sawdust, the wax itself - and what he's already tried munching on - tiger tail for jewelry, the pendant on my necklace, a beaded necklace I was trying to finish, and the corner of my monitor screen (yes, you read that right), we don't want to find out what he would try eating down there.

Which by default means that Patches - who appears to be the more intelligent of the two - won't go down there either.

They're both silly kitties, the little sweeties. ^^ I dearly miss my Biddy, but they're very good at filling the void.

Anyway, more updates will follow this one, though here are the basics for my counts:

Weight is down to 184.5, though I don't recommend trying what I wound up using to break the 190 mark - especially since I neither intended to get chicken-based food poisoning, nor do I ever wish to be that sick again. Then again, not being able to keep anything down for 4 days and therefore not eating for 4 days would do that. I got my very first IV drip at the beginning of December, and I have Chipotle to thank for it! I'm still debating whether I should talk to the manager there about making sure they test the internal heat of the chicken to ensure it's done. I had wondered why I'd never had this problem before, what with me always getting chicken and my co-workers reporting this happening to them at multiple Chipotle restaurants, but then I remembered that normally when I get the burrito to go, it's cold when I get home so i take the foil off and nuke it, therefore cooking the chicken past the salmonella point. Still, if I ever eat at one of them again, I shall be getting vegetarian.

In the last few months, I have:
-made 20 necklaces
-written 40 pages
-typed up 5 pages
-completed 1 custom pony
-begun 10 other custom ponies
-discovered the basement is too cold for me to work in during the winter these days
-found out that my allergy to Hyacinths has become worse.

Yes, I know those last two aren't progress, but the sentiment still stands.