Thursday Art Walk 224: Cat Updates & Side Projects

I took a break from the logos (especially that stupid bowl one) this week, and I'm a little late on today's blog, I know. I have a reason, though:

I was at the vet with this baby.

Evie is nine years old, so she's considered "geriatric" by cat standards. She has some sort of growth or polyp somewhere in her face which makes it hard for her to breath and swallow. It also seems to be affecting her balance. In the last month or so, she went to being just under nine pounds to being just over seven pounds, so we've been panicking (understandably). I spent most of last night and early this morning crying, hoping that when I went with my mother to the vet's office today we wouldn't be given terrible news. It's the first time I've seen my mother cry in years. She didn't even cry in front of me when she bent her pinky weird and tore the muscles/tendons in it.

My mom is tough, y'all.

We were both crying all morning, trying to get Evie to eat. She only seemed interested in a few morsels of treats at a time. Hey, small amounts of calories are still calories. She also ate when I dipped my finger into her food and offered it. Well, she licked my finger off, but hey, calories, which since she has almost no meat on her back end are very, very necessary.

Evie isn't my cat. She's only really resorted to me when no one else is around, since she's my mom's cat. Technically, she's one of my siblings' cat, but... that kinda defaulted to my mom, since my mother gives the best cuddles, and this is the very definition of a lap cat.

So we load her up, hoping against hope that we'll be told that she's not too light for potential surgery to correct whatever's blocking her ability to eat and breathe. We get to the vet, and it's... it's packed. People and animals everywhere. A chocolate lab waiting for a checkup. A couple waiting to get their tiny chihuahua back from getting its nails trimmed. Devastatingly, a couple preparing to say goodbye to a cat so old and frail he couldn't even twitch his tail.

We lost it again when we saw him. I'm weeping thinking about him. In that moment, we feared we'd be the next ones to say goodbye. She hasn't been energetic at all, and we're both fatalists. Still, I was cautiously optimistic, having seen a lot of cat rescue videos with cats who were much older and in far worse shape than Evie bouncing back and living long, fulfilling lives.

She was great for the vet, letting her do all those vet things that pets hate (though she refused to let the vet check her mouth, which is completely normal), and we were given cautiously not-bad news:

Evie is not too underweight to go get the polyp removed.

It's going to be a long, upsetting journey, and I don't think either Evie nor my mother are quite prepared for it. Evie likes her carrier well enough. There's enough space to turn around and stand up and lie down. She just doesn't like to be stuck in it for too long. Understandably. Also, my mother hates driving on highways, and considering that I cannot drive and also fear the highway, I'm not going to be much help there.

Still, that's great news.

But it's not why you're here. You're hear because it's Thursday, and that means art!

I did something different today, which is basically a scene from each of two stories I'm trying to write. The first is going to be called either The Gimmicksmith or Butters Ridge. Not sure yet. It's a story about a craftsman who ends up working with professional wrestlers on their wrestling belts. I promise, it's weirder than it sounds. There are sheep and woodchippers involved, and no, I won't clarify :P

Here's the whole page!

The convention floor was always dead at five AM. Vendors preparing for the long day ahead milled around their respective booths or tables, or else they paced from their overstuffed vans back to their slowly-forming stations, building their dragons' hordes of pop culture ephemera, geeky paraphanalia, or artworks carefully slipped into plastic binder sleeves. Most of these exhausted people clutched fragile paper cups filled with stale hotel tea or weak pod-brewed coffee. No one looked awake.

Beau knew the feeling.

Curling his legs under the uncomfortable steel chair he'd been provided, he threw a glance over at the gallon of water under his main table and briefly considered refilling his electric kettle. It was too soon, he thought, for a third cup of cheap instant smuggled five miles down from his house. He didn't want the jitters on top of his already fraying nerves.

A closeup of beau, hard at work. I don't quite know what he's making that's draped there,
but I do know that he's working hard. Yes, that's a lucha mask on the right. It will make sense.
Eventually...

This is a scene from a story I've been sitting on for years.
It's called Sorcery Con Leche.
It's a magical girl story, but the magical girl is a male barista.

Here's the whole page!

Coffee is a life-or-death matter, despite what some may think. Too often, people would stumble into the Java Dive with dead, red-rimmed eyes and all the coordination of a one-legged deer in a hockey rink. Just as often, these unsteady patrons would be wearing a uniform. If Tim never saw another cop pour salt into his coffee by accident, it would be too soon. The terrifying number of sleep-addled bus drivers he knew by name assured Tim that he'd never trust public transit before noon.

So coffee was incredibly important, obviously.

Then why did the people actually preparing the morning Joe for so many vital individuals seem to get so royally boned?

Case and point: Tim's check was now eight days late, and rent was due tomorrow. Tips, though unusually generous lately, had barely kept the lights on.



I cannot wait to write more of these stories!

Go Enjoy Something
FC