Remember back in March, when I discovered Angel was down to two teeth?
Well, guess what?
Yesterday was claw-clipping and general grooming day (where, among other things, I brush everyone’s teeth apart from Angel), and I got the idea to check Angel’s teeth: And, not entirely to my surprise, I found that Angel is now down to ONE tooth.
Sigh…I wish I could find one of them. I guess she’s just swallowing them.
The other day when we went outside, I captured these portraits of Lorelai.
Usually, she’s always running. This was an odd quiet moment for her.
But she looked so pretty against the green grass.
Fear not…she was running down the hill a few minutes after I took the last photo.
Here we have a photo of all five cats outside.
Izaak, Dashiell, Angel, Alfred and Lorelai, all enjoying the great outdoors.
Okay, so…Angel chose to enjoy outside from the balcony, but still…
I’ve been rewatching Parks and Recreation, and I have remarked before that Izaak often reminds me of Ron Swanson. I had an idea this morning, and well…here it is.
This is the set of scenes of Ron going “off the grid” that lead up to my little project.
Sometimes, the cats like to nap on our bed during the day. The two main bed nappers are Izaak and Alfred…
…But lately, Angel has also been napping on our bed.
She seems to prefer being up by our pillows, whereas the boys like to sleep in the middle of the bed.
It’s really cute.
Sometimes, she kind of buries herself under the comforter.
It’s okay, Angel…go ahead and go to sleep.
Last night, Björn sent me a cartoon depicting the backstory of the woman yelling at the cat.
Well…okay, he knows what I like.
Three years ago today, my life changed: I was bitten through the finger while giving Pyret a pill.
Being new to the Swedish medical system, I stupidly went to the local clinic (Vårdcentralen), even though I was well aware of how serious a cat bite is, especially on the hand. I just thought that’s what you were “supposed” to do. The doctor I saw was Spanish, and spoke little English. I tried to tell her it was serious, but she waved me off with just a prescription for penicillin.
I didn’t know that I could go straight to the hospital. I thought, then, that you had to be referred by Vårdcentralen (although, to be honest, that worthless “doctor” should have known to send me there straightaway). Now I know I can go to the Akuten (emergency department) if I need to. Twenty-four hours later, I woke up screaming in pain so badly Björn almost called an ambulance.
They bundled me into a room, pumped me full of antibiotics and morphine, and got me into surgery as quickly as they could.
This is me just after the first surgery. Within a week, I would have two more operations to flush the bacteria out of my tendon sheath.
I also had a lot of morphine. The pain involved with repeated hand surgeries is insane.
The brightest part of my week in the hospital was the two evenings Björn smuggled Logan into my hospital room.
<
One time when a nurse came in, we hid him under my blanket.
He was good and held still; the nurse never knew he was there.
<
After a week in hospital, I was released, but still had several wound checks and dressing changes. When I first got home, my hand was in a plaster cast. I was also still on penicillin and painkillers. It seemed to be healing nicely, but on my last wound check, 20 September (the same day Alfred was neutered), the nurse noticed my finger seemed red and hot. She sent me back to the hospital, and they determined that, despite still being on antibiotics, the infection had managed to return. They wanted me to have surgery immediately, but I had to go to pick up Freddy, who was literally at the other end of the bus line.
It took a really long time to get him (I ended up taking a taxi for part of the return trip), gathered my things and got back to the hospital just before 17:00. Apparently, I took too long to get back and they weren’t able to do the surgery until the next morning.
This last, fourth surgery was the most painful. They put more stitches on my palm than on the previous surgeries, and the skin seemed to have been stretched more than the other three.
It also bled a lot more than the other three operations.
A month after the first anniversary of my bite, we were at a cat show in Västra Feölunda and ran into Göran, the recovery nurse after my first surgery. His sambo breeds Cornish Rex, and we (used to) see them at shows frequently. He asked to take a look at my hand, and I made a comment about being lucky I still had a finger.
“You could have lost more than that,” Gören said. “I could have lost my hand?” I asked.
“You could have lost even more than that,” he responded. And that was how, a year later, I learned that I could have died from this bite! Even with as much as I know about cat bites, I never thought it could have been fatal.
This is how it looks today. It’s still very stiff and it sometimes aches and feels crampy. I’ll never have a normal hand again.
So, again, the moral of the story is: If you are EVER bitten by a cat on your hand – and especially your finger – GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM as soon as you can!
So, here’s the deal. Lorelai’s in heat, and Karin neutered Io before we could have a second go (Which was a condition on the contract, but whatever).
So guess what, now she’s in heat, and I have no male to put her up with. I am beyond pissed off about this, but it is what it is. At least I got the breeding fee back (1500kr/$150).
But the fact is, Rory’s in heat. So Izaak tried to step in. He’s got the concept, but not the theory.
This is what it looks like.
I have had a rather crappy 24 hours. It’s finished now, but it just really drained me, emotionally.
Therefore, today’s post is the blogging equivalent of just making pasta with whatever sauce because you have zero idea what to have for supper and can’t be arsed to make anything but you really need to eat.
Recently, Izaak has decided he wants to try to be a shoulder cat. He’s started jumping on Björn the way Lorelai does.
I love the little grabby hands.
He’s pretty awkward, though.
Not at all the graceful little squirrel that Rory is at all.
He really has to work at keeping his balance!
More gratuitous grabby hand action. Sorry this post is so listless, but I am just completely out of spoons.
Hello from Sweden, where the nation’s head epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, tells the citizenry that face masks are “dangerous.” Well, he’s started to come under fire for his stubborn failure to change the advice he’s been giving since February. At least some Swedes are starting to stand up to him and wear masks!
You may remember my post back in June where I showed off my collection of masks.
Well, I just got this new “Six feet, people” mask from a company called Gossby. It’s a fun site, acutally: you can choose the phrase that appears on the mask, and you can choose the colours of the cat. Of course, I chose Abyssinian colours.
I also ordered this mask from them, but it hasn’t arrived yet. Sure looks like an Aby/Somali to me!
They have some cute masks, though. There are even some you can customise to look like your own cats and include their names. I like the wording on this one…the cats, not so much.
Especially when you have this mask, where the cats actually look like breeds. I mean, look at the Izaak cat; that is totally a Singapura! And the Dashiell and Angel cats…well, all of them! But I want the quarantining wording with these cats, so I am conflicted. Maybe I’ll send them an email.
But, as I always say, no one reads this blog to see photos of me, so here is Alfred wearing my new mask.
Be honest: Who wore it better?
You may remember on Monday, my post was about not being able to tell if Lorelai was pregnant or not.
Well, now we know.
…And…she isn’t. She went into heat this morning.
This little hussy is soliciting all the boy cats in the house.
And the boys are very confused.
Looks like Rory is going to have another trip to sleepaway sex camp in the very new future!
I was reminded of the two Abyssinian drawings I did for the Fall and Spring issues of the Abyssinian Cat Club of America. I made some marble magnetswith the images and just noticed them again the other day.
When I drew my cartoons before getting the iPad, I would do the sketches, trace them in ink, and then scan them and put them together in Photoshop.
I also had some inkbrush pens that I was experimenting with. Since the cover of the newsletter was printed in black and white, I wanted to do a different sort of springtime drawing. Plus, the snowdrops coming up through the snow is one of my favourite signs of spring. On the final version, I added the shadows and added an “icy” filter to the background.
I immediately knew what I wanted to do for the fall cover. Sometimes I would do several versions of a face or other parts to get the best drawing assembled.
I remember drawing these leaves. I sketched a few different styles and then traced them over and over again to get the look I wanted. It’s so much easier now that I have leaf brushes in Procreate and Photoshop! Even so, there’s something satisfying about drawing on paper…Someday I should finish the series with summer and winter.
WARNING! This post features photographs of bare cat nipples!
Tomorrow will be a month since we brought Lorelai home from sleepaway sex camp. And…I still can’t tell if it worked.
One of the main signs of pregnancy in cats is the “pinking up” of the cat’s nipples. Unfortunately, according to one of my cat breeding books. But it also says that some cats don’t pink up until later in their pregancies. Grrrreeeeaaaaat…
This is her nipple on 26 July. Doesn’t seem any pinker, but stupid me, I never checked them before now. But one good sign is she hasn’t shown any signs of being in heat…and as you might remember, her heats are quiet, but not at all subtle.
This was on 5 August. I still can’t tell.
And this is on Thursday the 13th. Seems pinker? Maybe?
These last two are from today. They seem pinker, and they were easier to find.
Meg, Molly and Anne think she is pregnant, especially since she hasn’t gone back into heat at all.
She hasn’t gained any weight yet, and she definitely isn’t showing…so I guess we’ll just have to wait a little longer.
Sometimes Alfred is so funny.
He flopped onto his back in the dust rolling spot, and of course Izaak had to go see what he was doing.
“What do you want, Zak?”
“You know you bear a striking resemblance to a beached whale, right?”
“Zak! Don’t chonk-shame me!”
“Freddy, do you need help getting up? Because you look like you need help getting up.”
“Erm…yeah, a little help might be good…thanks.”
Sometimes when we take the cats outside, we also take out the various recyclables. And the cats know the difference. When we have bags, the cats don’t go charging off down the hill as they usually do. Instead, they start following us to the bins.
Especially Lorelai.
She goes trotting purposefully ahead, very seriously. It’s very different from her usual joyful bounds.
“We’ve got a job to do!”
Once the bottles and cardboard are dropped off, though, she’s happy to make a new friend.
Rory is such a smart, happy girl.
This memory came up on Facebook today; on this day last year, Alfred opened the front door. Now, we have to keep it locked at all times, even if we’re just going to get the mail.
I know we call Freddy our “Extra Cat”, but he is a very special boy. Karin called him a “philosopher.”
He’s also wicked smart.
Sometimes he’s a little too smart. Yesterday, I woke up to a crash and found Freddy had opened the kitchen cabinet, dragged out two bags of cat treats, and spilled a box of fusilli all over the floor. Thanks a lot, Freddy.
Wonder what his next grand plan is?
Lately, Angel has started doing the cutest thing. When I give the others their evening raw chicken neck, Angel gets some dry food.
And this is a new thing for her, but she stands up in anticipation of her snack.
And she meows at me to hurry up, too! It’s the most adorable thing, ever, and she only started doing it a few months ago.
She stands up for regular meals, too…but she’s cutest when it’s snack time.
I wish she could eat a chicken neck like the rest of the cats…but she just hasn’t got the teeth for it. She’s happy with kibble, though.
The Daily Abyssinian...and Singapura 