RIP Yoda

This post is not for the faint of heart.

Yoda. Before he was freed.

We've fostered 8 kittens so far. Today I witnessed the second death. It was different; we had spent so much more time together than when it happened to the first kitten. Two weeks ago Yoda coughed up two long tapeworm segments. It was pretty nasty, so naturally I was fascinated. So I gave all of our animals deworming medicine. Yoda actually seemed to be doing better than the other two after that. But then after weighing them a week later I realized that they all weighed the same as when I got them three weeks ago. I took them to see the vet. They got more drugs. Padme and Jabba got better. Yoda stayed the same. I was really hopeful for him and he was sort of my favorite out of the three - he seemed to have a more loving disposition than the other two. But a few days ago he looked markedly worse. Henri noticed - I think he is better than me at noticing these things - perhaps he should be the doctor. So I started to give Yoda fluids. But he seemed to be giving up already. My coworker says that they can be fighters sometimes, and sometimes they just give up. I think Yoda gave up last night. I painfully watched him struggle to get up from the heating pad. I wrapped in him in a towel and made him comfortable. Perhaps the hardest part was watching him try to meow for - something, for help, for the end - and not hearing a sound, not being able to do anything. I now know what I think must be the worst feeling to have as a mother - helplessness. He toyed with my heart at 4am with optimistic movement. But when I woke at 8, I could see he was taking his last breaths. At least now I know he's in kitteh hvn.

Yoda is survived by:

His brother Jabba
His sister Padme (as long as she survives the vampire kitteh)
and of course, the usual crew, Kraken and Lucky.

Full Throttle

There is something about cold weather. Especially the first few days of it in fall. I get motivated whenever I step outside and everything looks more beautiful than usual, even if outside is monochromatic and I am taking out the trash. I guess Texas does that to you. Up north people get excited for the first snow. In Texas, you're so used to simulated hell that when it drops below 65 degrees you just want to smack the weather god square on the lips.

Right now I'm trying to convince Lucky to lay upside down. I am chuckling because there is this blog that shows pictures of dogs upside down, right side up. It's hard to convince a Lucky to lay upside down. You could just use brute force but then the resulting fire-breathing snarling upside-down dog is no more cute right side up, if ya know what I'm saying.

Midterm Week

My motivation is cyclical and the bottom of the cycle tends to correlate with exam times. I did manage, I think, to fly by the seat of my pants in my history exam because I %^&*ing rock at essays. My brain just works that way. Multiple choice questions, however, capitalize on my tendency to overanalyze and be obsessive-compulsive.

I used to make really terrible grades and so I cower in fear that I am reverting to my old self. I think fear appears every semester. What I want to be true is that my success is binary and my zeros magically turned to 4.0s in 2006. Unfortunately I do not think this is the case.

It all comes back to the question, the rabbit hole I wander in, of how much I am and how much I think I am.

Water kitteh.

Padme, Yoda, and Jabba

We have new foster kittens. This is Padme. I knew she would be naughty the second we got in the car, when she started practicing plastic-and-metal reconstruction art with the cat carrier.

Yoda is the Yoda-looking one in the back. The front one we call Jabba cuz he's a fatty and he growls when other animals try to eat food within 3.14 meters of him. He's like a Geiger counter for omnivores.

Kittens are like crack for Kraken. When they're gone, she goes into withdrawal mode and tries to extract kittens from my neck at 4 am using creative combinations of tongue, teeth, and claws. When they're here she is asleep with a dopey smile on her face. That is, when she's not establishing her dominance by beating them up through the wire cage while they're using the litter box.