new images

Image from Through a Glass Darkly, pages 78-79

Here are two images from my journal, a jaguar and Abner. This is me messing around with photo transfers, gold leaf and crayons. You can't really see the gold leaf, but it's there, in the eyes.

I put a lot of goopy stuff on the page, shoot, I don't know what all... Light modeling paste among other things.

small joys...

Spotiswode, on the stove...

Shit. You just cannot be excited - about the weather, anyway - when it's 37 when you wake up and the high expected is 38, AND the fucking bouncy stuff is bouncing off the frozen grass in your back yard... Alternating with freezing raindrops... They're not actually freezing, they just feel that way when they slide down the back of your neck when you're out feeding cats. Nope. Just not very exciting weather.

It's a good thing I'm working on the beadboard panels today for the house, because flinging paint around IS exciting. And I'm mostly flinging around red and yellow paint, so it's primarily exciting. The baseboard trim is mostly done. It's not nailed in because I don't have a nail gun, but I'll borrow one soon. For now it's in place and looks like it's been put up and gives me a feeling of small joy and accomplishment every time I walk in the house. I'd take a picture but it's nothing really, a truly small joy. 

On top of that, it's Thursday, the day Mi Madres has tortilla soup. The special is a huge bowl of tortilla soup and a beef taco, which I always get to go. They have good hot sauce. Today is a perfect soup day. Plus, I have a cat on my lap, one who looks up at me every now and again with a look that says - to me - "I absolutely positively adore you." It probably more accurately is saying "When are you going to feed us our warm cat food?" but everyone needs their little illusions to get by.

From that, you can infer that the cats are in the house today, or in and out, as they choose. It's too cold on the porch to leave them there all day, although some of them like it. That, too, is lovely, if you like cats.

Abner goes away

Abner!

I had to have one of my favorite cats, Abner, put to sleep today. He's been diabetic for about 3 years and was having a lot of bad days recently, days where he wouldn't eat. But he would purr for me, and talk to me. Saturday was a bad day, and, if the vet had been open, I would've taken him in and had him put to sleep. As it was, I went out and lay down in the grass in the backyard next to him and talked to him. It was a beautiful day. No rain. Warmish and a blue sky with nary a cloud. Yesterday he perked up and ate some of my special food for him: canned salmon (people salmon) pureed with water. I had a heating pad and blanket rigged for him and made sure he was sleeping there. Went out a couple of times in the night and moved the other cats so he would have the prime spot. But sometime this morning he got down off the bedding and snagged his claw in it. He couldn't get it loose and lay on the deck in the rain until I found him. I don't know how long it was, but, in his condition, any time was too long. He meowed several times when I picked him up, and I took it to mean that he knew it was time and wanted me to know. I put him back on the heating pad and wrapped him in blankets and fed everyone and called the vet and off we went in the rain.

I had to wait almost an hour at the vets. I didn't want to wait inside with the other animals and cheeriness, so I sat outside on a bench with him, cradling him and talking. The sun came out and I held him so that it shone on him. I called jc and put him on speakerphone so he could talk to Abner and tell him how much he meant to him. And then they came and got me and we did it and it was over.

It was the right thing. I know that.

Abner was one of those cats who establish a mind communication with you. I've only had a couple in my life that I felt that way about. I could tell Abner, who lived on the front porch, to 'bring' me another cat, a standoffish one, and Abner would siddle up to him or her and head butt them and start working them over towards me, rubbing his head against theirs, but looking up at me every so often to make sure I knew they were coming.

So I'll miss him very very much.