Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

The night before New Year's Eve, Thomas stopped eating or drinking. He was listless, and had no interest in being snuggled or engaging in favorite activities, like playing with the water. The morning of New Year's Eve, we called around until we found an open vet who could see him right away. They diagnosed him with constipation and a mild obstruction, gave him laxatives and anti-nausea drugs, and sent him home.

He got worse.

New Year's Day, we went to a vet closer to home, where he received an enema, more anti-nausea medication, and a second examination. By this point, he had lost quite a bit of weight, and was visibly unwell. Still, he rallied after treatment, and was sent home.

He got worse.

Yesterday, we were finally referred to the emergency vet, where an ultrasound revealed a mass obstructing his small intestine. Surgery happened that night. There was no necrosis, and the mass (a congealed, compressed hairball) was successfully removed. He ran a fever for some time afterward, but this responded well to antibiotics, and went down. He was not sent home.

Thomas is currently hospitalized for recovery. His digestive system is not working properly; he has not had any food in four days, although he is able to receive subcutaneous fluids. He is not out of the woods. The woods are dark and deep and full of wolves, and I am so scared, and he is so sick. My baby boy is so sick. I don't have children: I have my cats. They are the world to me, and I am so afraid right now. So please. If I am quiet, if I am slow, if I am a little off from what you expect, be kind to me.

I am waiting for the sky to fall.

10. It's December! That is...terrifying and amazing and lots of other things, but mostly, it's a huge relief, because I don't have anywhere to go for the rest of the year. Oh, I have a lot of local commitments, parties and appearances and a doll meet-up, but nothing that requires travel. I get to sleep in my own bed, snuggle my cats, and clean my house for an entire month. I am ridiculously excited about this.

9. A lot of folks are doing their holiday shopping right now, which is swell! I posted the holiday book buying reminder yesterday. You can also contact Mysterious Galaxy, in San Diego, for signed copies of Out of Tune, and for copies of Dead But Not Forgotten signed by Charlaine Harris, Toni Kelner, and a bunch of the authors (myself included). Support independent bookstores this holiday season.

8. Or maybe you're buying stuff from me, posters and T-shirts and the like. If you are, please use the PayPal option for sending money to friends and family. There are a few reasons for this. First off, I am still not a store: I am literally pricing things to cover cost of item + cost of postage. Having huge whacks of money vanish into PayPal fees makes this a loss, and means I have to start charging more to be able to afford to ship things. Secondly, you know how I always say "please send me your shipping info via this other channel"? I have found that people who chose "goods and services" are more likely to ignore that request, because they've already provided a shipping address, and if I were a store, I'd be able to access that data. Not a store. Cannot access easily. Please don't.

7. The new Pokemon game is not making me as happy as I wanted it to. I am sure I will enjoy the post-game, where it's apparently LEGENDARYPALOOZA, but I am not enjoying my Pokemon journey, and that makes me sad.

6. Thomas, who has always been an asshole, has taken his assholing to new heights in his glee that I am home. Lots of purring, lots of cuddling, lots of knocking things off shelves to demonstrate that he is still the boss of all he surveys. Thomas is going to be mittens if he doesn't cut this shit out.

5. I will be doing the Thirteen Days of Hogswatch again this year, beginning on December 12th and continuing until December 24th. The introductory post will go up on December 11th. The prizes, drawing times, response times, and requirements for each day are not negotiable; if I say "I must hear from you by X time for you to win," and you think you might not be able to check your email on, say, Christmas, I am very sorry, but I do mean it. I can't have people claiming prizes weeks after the drawing. I'm just not set up for that. But hey, I am giving away so much stuff.

4. I missed the October tip jar, which means we're running out of prioritized free fiction. I don't want to open a tip jar in December (holidays), but I may go ahead and do it in January. (Or we may have to pay for all the bodywork on Mom's car, in which case, I will not only open the tip jar, I will dance on freeways if that's what it takes.)

3. Oh, yeah: some asshole hit Mom's car on Thanksgiving night. The damage isn't massive, but she was parked at the time, and we didn't see it happen. Now we need to get the bodywork done to fix the dent on the side of her car, before rust sets in and everything gets buckets more expensive. Whee. (Yes, she has insurance, but the deductible is huge, especially if we can't produce another driver.)

2. I'm going to see The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County on Friday! I'm so excited!

1. Jean Grey is not dead right now and it's making me cranky.

That's my list. What's new with you?

Today is Thomas's fourth birthday. We have celebrated with treats and petting and much indulgence, all of which he has accepted as his absolute due. He doesn't really know what "happy birthday" means, but as it comes with good things, he really doesn't care.

He's enormous now. He has vast, spatulate paws that can work a doorknob, and a high, chirpy voice, like he's gargling songbirds. He likes to be held while I'm at the computer, just so he can prove that he is more important than the tappy box. He enjoys watching videos of birds, and will sometimes sing to them, because he is a bird too. He is my best boy, and I can't imagine life without him.

Happy birthday, Thomas.

We're gonna enjoy a whole lot more.

...although I suppose that since these days my hair is dyed in a lovely "sunset over the cornfield" ombre, I should probably consider changing that title, huh? Nah. Shan't. I am who I am, and even if I dye my hair black and start being Mira full-time, I'll always be a blonde girl. So! Statuses and such.

Shipping.

I am in the process of packing prizes and purchases and presents to go into the mail. I had a rough couple of weeks, and didn't do the mail when I was supposed to, which means I have a truly daunting amount of mailing to do. I shall persevere, have no worries on that front! It helps that I just got a brand new Ikea shelf for the front room, to act as a shipping supplies/office supplies storage area. I am much more likely to actually cram things into envelopes and send them out in a timely manner if I have easy access to envelopes, rather than needing to rummage through half the back room to find the damn things. (This is part of the overall "declutter the house and make it more easily livable" plan that has been in process for the last month or two.)

Post-Hogswatch cleanup.

So quite a few people who are not regulars around here added me to their LJ friend lists during the Hogswatch festivities, which makes total sense, since who doesn't love a daily giveaway? And now they're subtracting me, sometimes with apologetic little notes, because the giveaways have ended. I just want to remind y'all that doing this is totally cool. I am a voluntary follow zone! Please un-friend me at will, and don't worry that you're going to hurt my feelings. Unless you belong to a very short list of people, all of whom are dear friends who have known me for ages, I will not be upset. I'd be more upset if I learned that you had forced yourself to stick around out of obligation, and consequentially become sad.

Prepping for Boskone!

My first official appearance of the new year will be at Boskone, a Boston-based science fiction convention where I will be appearing as the author Guest of Honor, and more, where my first ever collection of essays and poetry, Letters to the Pumpkin King, will be released. I haven't seen the cover yet, but I'm sure it's going to be gorgeous. More, it's an opportunity to own the contents of my first two (severely out of print) chapbooks. So that's cool. Boskone will be held over Valentine's Day weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, and I hugely recommend swinging by if you're in the area and want to hear me blather about whatever the con winds up telling me to blather on about.

My icon.

Something new is coming in 2014. Step right up and try your luck; a dollar and a quarter buys an all-night pass. Details to come: watch this space for news (but don't bother asking me now, for I won't answer, no, not at all).

Cats.

Mom ran the shop vac on Saturday, to prep for the new Ikea cabinet I mentioned before, and the cats flipped their shit as only cats can do. Two days later, we still feel the echoes of the epic shit-flip. Thomas has been doing sock slides in the hall, Alice is a ball of bale, and Lilly keeps getting confused by the way things have moved, sitting down in the middle of the floor, and keening.

Cats are complicated, and I can't find the reset switch, is what I'm saying here.

Do you wanna build a snowman?

Or ride our bikes around the hall?

T-shirt update.

Shirts are being mailed! But in the interests of not being stoned to death by the other people who use my small local post office, they're being mailed in batches of twenty to thirty at a time. What does this mean? It means that if you have not yet received your shirt, it probably hasn't been mailed, but is instead sitting in a large sack in my living room. If you ordered three or more shirts, there is a good chance that your order is coming in more than one envelope. Breathe deeply, and it will be with you soon.

CDs and stuff.

I have sent a restock of both Wicked Girls and Red Roses and Dead Things to CD Baby. I estimate that I have roughly a hundred copies of Red Roses left, after which the CD will be out of print. I'm not currently planning a reprint, so, y'know, get it while it's available.

My cats are weird.

This morning, Thomas decided that he was going to accompany me to work, and attempted to accomplish this by stuffing himself into my backpack. It astonishes and terrifies me that he can fit inside my backpack; he's a lot of cat, and there are other things inside that bag. But he did it! And if he'd remembered to pull his tail inside, he might have made my day a lot more exciting than I ever wanted it to be.

The Pirates of Emerson.

Just a reminder to my Bay Area friends: the Pirates of Emerson have opened their annual haunted theme park at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Five awesome haunted houses, two mazes, the Bumpkin Patch, live entertainment, games, and more, all presented by spooky-ass pirates who leer and go "arrrrrrr" whenever provoked. It's a lot of fun, it's super reasonably priced for what you get, and I highly recommend it.

(I do not, however, recommend it for kids under twelve, or even for easily frightened kids under thirteen. You can still take them if you want, but you can't blame me for the night terrors and bedwetting that may follow.)

Best shirt ever.

My friend Craig sent me an official CDC Zombie Preparedness Task Force shirt, and it is the best shirt ever. I am the happiest disease/zombie fangirl in the whole wide world right now.

One con more...

I have only one convention left in 2012: WindyCon in Chicago, this coming November. After that, I am blissfully home free for the (admittedly short) remainder of the year. Which means a) if you wanted to catch me at a con, Windy is your last chance this year, and b) I might actually take a nap.

Although that's unlikely.

Well, it's official: as of this past Sunday (when I was a bad monkey, and had abandoned my beloved cats for the dubious comforts of Comic-Con), Thomas Price Lynn Rhymer Taylor McGuire, my blue classic tabby and white male Maine Coon, is two years old. This means he has ceased to be a kitten, and has become an official cat. Not that he seems to have noticed. Most of his time is still spent racing around the house like a loon, collapsing in my arms and purring loudly, and demanding to be fed. With any luck, this is his adult personality, and I have finally fulfilled my childhood dream of having a twenty-pound kitten.

The cats, all three, are still very clingy and unsettled about my recent trip to San Diego, which went on rather longer than any of them wanted it to, and has resulted in my spending my nights beneath roughly eighty pounds of fluff. This is why I am going to be slaughtered in my sleep Sunday night, since I'm leaving work early today and flying straight to Portland. Alas. On the plus side, I intend to have a good time while I'm there, and I'm only gone for three nights this time. Maybe they won't notice.

...no, that's silly. They're going to eat me.

(Portland is not a public event, by the way, which is why it's not listed on my Appearances page. Always check there if you want to know if I'm going somewhere for social and sharable reasons.)

Naturally, I am totally exhausted, which has led to things like poor Vixy getting told all about the Tyrannosaurus leech. (She took it better than Shawn did when I told him about the axolotl.) I've managed to shower, do laundry, and pack a suitcase that's actually cleared for flight, containing no weapons of any kind. This is an accomplishment in my current condition, and I want you all to be very, very proud of me.

San Diego was lovely, and I'm going to keep promising to write a con report right up until too much time has passed and I forget about it. (This fate has claimed so very many trips in recent years. Disney World anyone?) Right now, I'm going to take a few deep breaths and prepare to plunge back into the fray. Because it never, never ends.

See you when I get home!

Thomas says that it's time for an open thread, because I have used up all of my erudite and coherent, and have been staring at my screen, not actually doing anything, for hours. This time would be better spent petting the cat, ergo, it needs to stop. So here is a picture of Thomas cuddling his beloved plush Perry the Platypus to get you started. Nothing starts a conversation like a Maine Coon hugging a secret animal agent.

But anyway. Open thread! Say anything! Woo! Thomas says so.



Comment amnesty is on for this post, but I will be reading, and may reply anyway, because I'm wacky like that.

Peace out, y'all.

ME: *asleep*
ALICE: *asleep*
LILLY: *asleep*
THOMAS: "Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh hack hack hack blurgh bleah puke puke puke."
ALICE AND LILLY: "MONKEY MAKE HIM STOP."
ME: "Huh wha' is it time for school yet?"
CLOCK: *1:45 AM*
ME: "...oh I am going to make slippers."

So that happened. Poor Thomas decided to celebrate my birthday by throwing up all over the hallway shortly after midnight, resulting in my first birthday activity being "mop up all the cat puke." Also, ew. He seems fine, just unhappy, and got snuggles before I went back to bed and dreamt* about being eaten by a giant gar.**

ME: *asleep*
ALICE: *asleep*
LILLY: *asleep*
THOMAS: *sulking*
ALARM: "Good morning good morning good morning GOOD MOOOOOOORNING!"
CATS: "MONKEY MAKE IT STOP."
ME: "I hate everything."
FACEBOOK: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM THE POPULATION OF HALLOWEENTOWN! LIKE, REALLY, THE WHOLE POPULATION!!!!!!"
ME: "...okay, maybe not everything."

Today is my thirty-fourth birthday! Which is pretty awesome, since I, like most nihilistic teenagers, never really expected to live past the age of twenty. I definitely didn't expect to be writing books and snuggling cats and going to Disney World and having amazing friends and basically getting a pretty good score at the game of Life. Even if my little car lacks other pegs (which I never really wanted anyway). Mom is checking up on Thomas throughout the day, but he really does seem to have just eaten a bug that didn't agree with him.

Tonight, there will be writing, and maybe cupcakes, if I'm feeling ambitious and like walking down to the bakery before I go home. And this weekend, there will be blessedly nothing. I will rest, and it will be glorious.

Happy birthday to me.

(*Dear spellcheck: screw you, that is the correct past tense of the word "dream.")
(**It's a kind of fish. With bonus teeth.)

Thomas can open doors.

Thomas has been able to open doors for a while now.

Thomas has never previously opened the front door. So this was new.

I got up to get ready for bed and discovered the front door of the house standing open, and an utter absence of cats. This, naturally, triggered INSTANT HYSTERIA, and lots of frenzied cat-calling, which probably frightened the neighbors.

Lilly came immediately, looking faintly ashamed of herself, and limping slightly. Thomas was in the yard, sniffing things, and came when called. I closed the door and turned to inspect Lilly's paw...during which pause Thomas OPENED THE DOOR again and let himself back outside.

I retrieved Thomas, called my mother, put on trousers, went outside, locked the door, and began searching the neighborhood for Alice. I found her halfway down the block, investigating someone's garden. I got her to come by clanging a can of wet food with a fork. She's mad now because she didn't get treats. I'm mad because, well. ESCAPING ISN'T COOL. Poor Vixy got me calling her in hysterics, wailing about how they got out.

All three cats are fine and uninjured. I cannot sleep. I have notified work that I'm going to be in late tomorrow, because there's no way I'm sleeping in the next hour. And from now on, the front door is locked even when I'm in the house.

Stupid cats.

I am, to a degree, a public figure. I know that. I am also a low-level enough public figure that I am accessible, unlike, say, anyone who's actually famous. That means that some of the things I do and say will be judged in ways that will seem unfair to me. I know that, too. I've basically come to grips with the fact that if I want to be an author, and if I want to make my living doing this, I'm going to have to deal with people judging me. That being said...

Don't you ever, ever insult my cats. Don't you ever, ever imply that I own them because they're "status symbols," or because I am in some way taking pleasure in the knowledge that other cats are being put to sleep right now. Lilly, Alice, and Thomas are my companions. They are my friends. They are the closest I intend to come to having children, and while I may be up for judgment, they are off limits. Leave my cats the fuck alone.

Why do I get my cats from reputable breeders, rather than from the local shelter? A whole bunch of reasons.

I do it for the health of the cat. When I visit a reputable breeder, I can not only meet the kitten I'm hoping to take home with me, I can meet their parents and grandparents. In the case of Alice and Thomas, I met their great-grandfather. I want to know that my cats have a good genetic shot at a long, happy life.

I do it for the temperament of the cat. I have had incredibly sweet, loving shelter cats in my life. I have also had bitter, terrified, xenophobic shelter cats who couldn't be integrated into a household, because they were too damn scared. I want a kitten that has been socialized and loved, and that has been bred to have a good personality to go with those good genes. I want a Lilly, an Alice, a Thomas, a Ripley, a Toby, an Alligator.

And yes, I do insist on kittens whenever possible. At best, I'm bringing home a new cat to an adult who isn't sure about the situation; at worst, I'm bringing home a new cat to two adults who already think there's no room at the inn. I am loud. I move quickly. I go away for long periods of time. I do things the way I do things, and a lot of adult cats can't adjust to me, no matter how hard we both try.

There are cats in shelters. There are cats in rescues. There are cats in need of homes. But I am not in the market for an adult rescue, and the kittens don't need me to be the one that saves them; kittens stand a much better chance than adults. Why do I know this? I know because I have volunteered at shelters and rescues and free clinics since I was twelve years old. Just like I know that I want as complete of a genetic profile as possible on my cats, because I buried so damn many of them when I was bringing them home from the pound.

My cats are not a zero-sum game. Bringing Thomas home from Betsy's didn't kill a kitten somewhere in the world that was waiting for my love; if it hadn't been Thomas, it would have been no new cat at all. Do I wish that there were no cats anywhere in the world waiting for their forever homes? Yes, I do. But that doesn't mean we shut down the breeders, abolish the breeds, and become a Domestic Shorthair and Domestic Longhair-only world. It means we breed responsibly. It means we support the shelters. It means we spay and neuter our pets.

And it means that my cats are not fucking status symbols. They are not somehow less worthy of love and comfort and a place to sleep than cats who have been abused or abandoned. They are exactly as worthy of all those things. And they are getting them from me, as will all the cats in my future.

If you can't be nice to my cats, you leave them the fuck alone.