juushika

Captioned with image titles for my own records because Imgur is doubtless a shitty longterm host. These are pretty big!

( 13 pics beneath the cut )

catsplural 079
August right, which again is obvious: their personalities!!

August is okay but first there is a saga: ( Cat butt TMI. )


But, as I told Devon, it could have been terminal butt cancer and I would at this point not be the least bit surprised, so all of this ultimately ends well. It was stupid and stressful, and it breaks my heart whenever she's in pain. But it resolved to have an obvious, finite explanation, and I'll take that over another tragedy any day.

CW for pet death and COVID-19


We decided to euthanize Gillian on Tuesday March 28th. All these updates come late; this was an exhausting process that began with his dental work in January, went downhill in April/May, and turned terminal in March. Everything is padded out by weeks of doing the work or being exhausted from having done the work.

We were told that if infection were the (primary) issue, we'd see improvement after ~2 days on the second antibiotic; improvement would mean decreased swelling and less visible third eyelid. Symptoms waxed and waned, but there was no significant, permanent improvement in those key areas and there were new symptoms like congestion. This meant there was something else going on, probably cancer, but he wasn't a good candidate even for the exploratory work that would have confirmed the source. As his quality of life was never going to improve, it didn't make sense to prologue moderate annoyance and suffering while courting an inevitable decline.

So I took him off the antibiotics, we scheduled an appointment, and then he had a fantastic last day. No force-feeding meds! Still high on painkillers, great appetite: he ate four meals. (I had a lot of feelings about his "last meal" at dinner, and then felt stupid about it at midnight and then 30mins before the euthanasia, when he ate "last meal, reprise" and "last meal the third.")

August is a blanket-tent cat provided that I'm creating the tent, but Gillian for his entire life found under-blanket discomforting and claustrophobic. He preferred to sandwich himself between two warm/soft things in an arrangement we called the "hotdog." But when he started to get sick, probably because he was always running a minor fever, he discovered the beauty of the blanket tent. He spent most of his last months wrapped in my comforter (easier to wash when he drooled blood on it), only leaving to eat. But on that last day he took a break from the comforter to curl up under my blanket while I watched Devon play video games.

I'm happy about that last day. Taking him off antibiotics was a sign of commitment that made it easier to go through with the euthanasia itself. He had a day with less tummy upset, and there was no reason not to feed him a frankly ridiculous amount of food. He felt safer around me without the threat of another dosing. There's no way to know how long that golden period could have lasted, but he had that day and he never had to get worse.

Insofar as I took Mamakitty's end of life experiences forward into this situation, that reminder that attempting treatment may not ultimately be the best option, I feel like I didn't do anything here I regret—I didn't wait too long, but neither did I overcorrect and give up too early, which I worried might haunt me. The primary vet I worked with told me on one phone consult that it's never too early to consider euthanizing a ~15 year old cat, which was the best single thing that she could have said. Euthanasia isn't just giving up, it's also a compassionate and proactive choice, especially in the face of age and preexisting conditions that render not just treatment but even diagnosis difficult or impossible.

Anyway, ( the actual appointment. )

And then I was done!

⁂

The house feels so empty. This is the first time in a decade that I've lived with just one cat, the first time August has ever been entirely alone. The grieving period of "replacing" a cat is different when there's still multiple cats in the home. Just one is ... small, vulnerable; I can't shake the impression that if something awful happens it will happen to August, as if multiple cats randomizes the recipient of a catastrophe instead of just ... opening avenues for more catastrophes.

August for her part yells to empty rooms the scream of "I have but a cat-brain, and I can't track events in order to comprehend loss, but there's Less Others here and I'm lonely." At the same time she's velcro'd to me, reveling in uninterrupted mummy-time. It's two halves of nascent separation anxiety. She's a one-person cat who's never liked, oh, well, anyone but me. But she's stimulated and enriched by others in her life; she benefits from them, in a begrudging way.

I browsed a lot of cats up for adoption during Gillian's decline to keep my spirits up in an albeit morbid way: at least when he dies I can get a new cat! I expected to wait a while after he died before actually doing the thing—but, you see, I am/we are miserable. But it's an awful time to want a cat, because I can't just go to a humane society. Adoptions are appointment-only, cats are moving fast particularly in urban areas, and the lag of site listings/application processing/overworked and underfunded shelters doing their best but not always the best is, uhhhhhhhh, it's bad. It's exhausting and demotivating when I have no energy, only want and grief.

I've tried for three cats and got a bite on the third, who I'm driving down to meet next week. After missing the first two, I'm not even going to talk about this one until everything's finalized. I can't keep getting emotionally invested in cats I might never have.* But fingers crossed.

* Except I am invested and am thinking of names. Percy? Burdick? Mouse? Munkustrap, Quaxo, Coricopat?

I was, frankly, fine with quarantine—worried about family, worried about Gillian, but fine re: personal health and socialization. But cats can carry COVID and regardless it's not wise to touch things outside the home, and so it turns that while I can peacefully go months without seeing flesh-people, I can go about a week of touching only one (1) cat before I start to fall apart. They're my real social network, and with just August, in lieu even of neighborhood cats, I'm lonely.

One adventure in apartment living:

I woke to weird splashing sound to find that the inside of a windowsill was dripping because the upstairs neighbors had a leaky tub. Two weeks of ~daily maintenance visits + two fans and one massive, incredibly hot dehumidifier followed. Needing to be here to cat-wrangle for maintenance plus heat plus noise made for a lot of sleepless anxiety. (I've relied a lot on white noise to fight anxiety, but the ultra-fan combo was a smothering, anxiety-inducing sort of white noise that I didn't even know was possible.)

One weekend after the bathroom was rendered usable, the other bathroom had a backed-up shower. It was resolved that same weekend by a very-satisfying/-gross hair clog removal. But! please will things calm down for like five minutes!

Our major takeaway from all this is that communication is hard (we never seemed to get warning phone calls or time windows, and Dev had to make a number of trips to the office) but the complex moves quickly on structurally damaging things and the actual maintenance crew are personable and considerate. Forever grateful for the maintenance guy that was actively angry at the neighbors, who he suspected should have seen the leak (I'm sticking strictly to no assumptions/no ill will, if only to avoid second-guessing everything they do from now on, but the man had opinions), and told me "oh, this started a week ago? it must feel like a month, with us coming in and out all the time." I appreciate the reminder that no one wants to deal with this sort of thing, although my (not-)dealing was absolutely impacted by being big-time crazy and therefore overwhelmed by the need to masquerade as a grown adult for any length of time.


One victory in apartment living:

We reached critical (anti-)mass in our unpacking to just a few boxes and a few more donation piles, which gave us incredible impetus to finish sorting and actually take in donations and buy our last storage shelves and just be done. There's a part of me that wants to live in the domestic clutter of a Miyazaki film, and a center of me that has a lot of anxiety re: not having things and is hugely emotionally attached to specific things I do have, and part of me that is weighed upon by possessions and liberated by space. Devon comes from a family of hoarders, and so—at least while recovering from that, and determining how he wants to operate his own spaces—has a distinct "miles of open, empty carpet" aesthetic. I think we're finding a good balance: functional, no obsessive minimalism, but empty—clean—so much room to breathe.

The cats love it. Cat furniture is on our to-buy list, and an actual cat tree will reclaim some of that freed space. But open spaces have transformed August into a new beast who sprints the length of the house. There's a garden window reserved for growing sun-warmed cats. They have things to look at out windows, but more than that have safety and space to roam and play in.


Adventures elsewise:

I have a deep ambivalence over summer, because I hate sun and heat—but the summer's ubiquitous, intense* sun and heat create evocative atmospheres and memories. But my usual fear/anticipation has been colored this year by headaches. I've always had light-/heat-/tension-/dehydration-/stress-/exhaustion-headaches, and this feels like a combination of all of the above; and my usual remedies chip away, but nothing eases it completely. We're looking into blackout curtains; in the meanwhile, it's curtailing what I can do, like use the computer or my eyes at all TBH. I'm grateful for audiobooks, but frustrated. I've fallen behind on book reviews, personal correspondence, journaling.

* In as far as "intense" applies the Pacific Northwest; insofar as a PNW resident views any heat or sun at all as intense.

I've been watching a lot of JessiMew's LPs to wind down when my eyes/head feel better, especially in the evenings. I've always enjoyed her videos, but their gentleness is working particularly well for me just now.

August recently recovered from a five-day stint with the cat flu. It conformed exactly to expectations re: symptoms and recovery (she had a clear runny eye and nostril, just on her right side; some sneezing and squinting, but no breathing problems; mild decrease in activity but no decrease in appetite); it was still unenjoyable. I made a successful effort not to provide any contagious anxiety, because something like stress/going off her food could've lead to legitimately dangerous complications. And her vague self-pity and head-shake sprinkles of tears and snot were cute, in a gross way. But she's my baby and my lifeline, and I live in terror of anything bad happening to her ever. I'm glad it's behind us.

(Dee and I have no idea how she got sick! All the cats are indoor-only; August has limited physical contact with the other cats and zero contact with the dog (who obviously does go outside). None of the other cats have gotten sick. The windows have been open and we've had visiting porch cats, and that seems like the only possible vector: virus via early-summer open windows.)

* * *

My last set of overlapping books included a Le Guin (and is there anything more satisfying than Le Guin, than the strength of her language, the plot-wide influence of her worldbuilding elements); a revisit of my favorite short story of all time, Kelley Eskridge's "Eye of the Storm;" and Anne of Green Gables, a childhood favorite that I haven't reread in at least 15 years and which is remains just so delightful. It's been a decided upswing after a brief series of mediocre books.

I spent this afternoon in bed, just having finished the first and a story adjacent to the second, reading the third. August climbed under the blankets with me and lay down on my chest, and we took a nap together in an idyllic setting which echoes Green Gables: my computer was turned off, my blinds down; the room lit by diffused white light and the day cool for June; sleeping atop freshly-laundered sheets. Echoes Green Gables in specific not at all, but in that atmosphere, of finding the best of a thing; of making space and time to daydream. August's whiskers on my face brought me in and out of sleep for an hour until I finally got up to make dinner.

I have a lot of sleep issues, split equally between anxiety and back pain, which means I effectively never nap—it happens about three or four times a year, generally on accident. Pleasant when it occurs (if it doesn't fuck up my back), but not something I can do on purpose, because sleep is a carefully coordinated effort that I only have the energy for once a day.

It's one of the things I envy most in my cats, but sometimes, just sometimes, August shares it with me.

Vet visit for Dare yesterday. She had a worm a few months ago, probably the result of a flea tracked in by Odi (although there were no other signs of fleas in the house). She was dewormed and everyone was flea treated. But the hair loss on her spine persisted, and then she developed bald patches on the back of her legs. Because the hair loss is the result of barbering, she's overgrooming in easy to reach places and the skin itself is healthy (all signs that the trigger isn't physiological), and she's a high-strung, high energy cat, the vet suspects what we suspected: she began over-grooming when she had the worm, but now it's just a habit and preoccupation.

We're putting her on Zylkene, a bovine-sourced hydrolyzed milk protein which treats anxiety, isn't prescription, and doesn't interact with any food or medication. Prescription mood medication is always a possibility, but the vet wanted to start with the safest, easiest option, especially since she doesn't have any signs of stress. She's just a tightly-wound cat keeping herself occupied in her downtime. The vet was appropriately skeptical of magic milk protein, but gave us some studies as well as anecdotal evidence to back it up.

Bad habits aside, Dare is in perfect health and behaved great in a "blind cat, vaguely terrified" way. Because she has a possibly-congenital defect, it's particularly comforting to know she's in good health and this issue is probably unrelated.

This being vet visit approx. 23482942 for our menagerie, we continue to have superb experiences with North Portland Veterinary Hospital. I love them so much.

Vet visits with a blind cat are can be hit-and-miss on an interpersonal level, as some vets are prone to inspiration porn; this one, refreshingly, wasn't. She took us at our word when we talked about Dare's abilities and limitations, and never ever used the word inspiring. (Dare has developed a lot of skills to help her work around her disability! There's some surprising things she can do, and some things she does better than other cats, because she has to. It's really neat to see. There's also some things she can't do. And she's not a human being, and her disability and coping mechanisms aren't equivalent to human experience. Those things are obvious to me, but we still get vets who tell us about how animals are so much more adaptable than people and are such inspirations etc. and it's gross.)

This vet was also lovely in an ego-patting way—so relieved to learn that not just the blind cat but all the cats are indoor-only, complimenting us for intentionally taking in "lemon"/defective cats, pleasantly surprised when I asked for a spare soft e-collar (to use if Dare's over-grooming becomes skin-damaging) because no one had ever asked for one in advance before, impressed by preventative measures we take re: her open eye socket, generally telling us that this particular special-needs cat had the perfect care and home. We put effort into being good pet owners, and it's just about my only productive contribution to the universe, so an authority confirming that we're doing good is flattering and rewarding. There were just good feels all around; now we wait and see how the magic cow powder works.

When we came home, everyone sniffed the carrier a lot and August sat in it for a while because of course.

I am sitting here after very little sleep, waiting for August's bloodwork to come in—

—thinking about affect, and the fact that, whenever a bad thing is happening, one part of me is having an emotional reaction and another part of me is judging my emotional reaction: is this appropriate? is this authentic? am I performing "sad" or "scared"? When my outward expressions are insufficient, I'm never sure if it's because I'm still processing or because my reluctance to express creates an inability to experience. And always is the certainty that all of it is pretense, even when there's a concrete, external cause. This complicates the experience of bad things, becomes a sort of meta-anxiety.

I know where that self-doubt comes from. It's the natural result of an adolescence and young adulthood being told that all my negative feelings and expressions were drama-mongering, and an adulthood with an invisible condition that likes to go stealth, leaving me with comorbid tremors and depression but unable to feel the underlying pain. But I wonder when that sort of armchair self-psychoanalysis has run its course; at what point does knowing the root of a problem fail to excuse or alleviate it?

—eating chocolate: Madécasse: Sea Salt & Nibs, 63% cocoa. Picked this up because it was on clearance, and to my surprise the company seems sincerely mindful. But the chocolate itself is only so-so. I'm a percentage snob and this is way below my grade; regardless, the soft, sweet, fruity chocolate doesn't work well with the crunchy, strong, salty inclusions. The inclusions are sprinkled on the back of the bar, which looks nice but makes for irregular flavor and texture. This isn't awful and I want to like it very much, but I wouldn't get it again.

—and getting August's results! All is well: her bloodwork is normal, other than indications that she may have been fighting something off, which is consistent with her stomach issues and is already being treated with medication (metronidazole). She's still on bland food and still not eating her normal amount, but her food intake is slowly increasing, all her other symptoms have cleared up, her water intake is fine, and she's had little behavioral change. Unless things get worse/fail to get better, she should be fine. We still don't know what caused this; probably an undefined stomach bug or indigestion.

Now I can sleep mindlessly watch Star Trek for a week.

A week ago: While sitting up in bed, I threw out my upper back. How? with magic? a perverse force of will?? My trapezius on both sides were just gone, goodbye; everything hurt, but the worst offenders were sleep and the computer. I have a huge pain tolerance and endless experience with back pain, but it resisted every one of my treatments. (In retrospect, I should have iced it—the one thing I never do for my lower back, because it causes cramping.) What is it about a different pain that's somehow worse than chronic pain, not so much because it is worse or even more debilitating, but because these carefully honed coping mechanisms are now inapplicable. I've been dealing with my lower back for 15 years; I should either be exempt from other pain, or equipped to deal with anything. I was not. It went about 4 days without improvement, but is now back to normal anxious-person's-muscles level of ow.

A few days ago: Dee's mother's dog, Casey, died suddenly. Cut for brief discussion of pet death: ( Read more... ) This is not my immediate pain, but I still care immensely. All dogs are good dogs, but he was such a good dog, surfeit with love, content if he could just lean on you or lay against you and be touched. And so obedient, especially when I knew him and his puppyhood awful (of which I've heard horror stories!) was gone. And so engaged with his people. The loss hasn't quite registered for me, yet; but I've never been so glad that I had Thanksgiving with him and Odi. This was Casey: one, two, three, four.

Last night: Dreamed the mother of all anxiety dreams: I was back in school, living simultaneously-via-dream-logic at Devon's parents's house and in a boarding environment, and became convinced that the environment was so unhealthy and I was so stressed that I shouldn't have pets anymore, so I drowned August by luring her into a swiftly-flowing river with treats. Cut for suicidal ideation: ( Read more... ) I know what factors underlay all aspects of this dream; it was still singularly awful.

Tomorrow: Taking the train down to see Devon, to celebrate our 13th anniversary. (See: dreaming about his parents's house.) This is absolutely a good thing! It also bring with it "I have to leave the house" anxiety and "why do I have to travel to see him after thirteen years?" anxiety. It has been a long and strange week, an unearthly haze of blurred vision and intense pain and abstracted loss and anxiety. It will be good to make a clean break with it by traveling.

It's fairly common to see Flight Rising users put name/timezone/preferred pronouns on their profiles, which I adore. But it meant I had the opportunity to just state my preferences, and thus I discovered that wiggly hand gestures and "it's complex" are not a statement.

The reason I prefer FR's habits—compared to LJ/Tumblr/journal spaces, where it's more common to use labels like cis/trans in combination with preferred pronouns—is because I'm adverse to discussing my gender identity; I don't know how to do it without co-opting those labels. I don't talk about therianthopy much these days because my intense period of self-discovery has passed. I don't have much more exploring to do or a lot to express; it's simply an aspect of my identity, definitive but known and, frankly, no big deal.* But I really do identify as cat, and for me that also defines my gender—and cat gender is complex. Domestic cats have some gender dimorphism, but it's effected by their neuter status and life history (namely, when they were neutered)—and none of it has corollaries to human concepts of gender. To me, the defining aspect of a neutered domestic cat's sex and gender is their neutering—they have a third non-sex identity and social role.

Yet I call Gillian my little man, and I call August my pretty princess, and that's simultaneously accurate and irrelevant. Gillian has a developed face structure, and so looks like a male cat; he also has a bossiness and noisiness that we associate with masculinity. August is a very pretty cat with silky fur, and is spoiled and demanding, which fits a feminine princess archetype.

I identify with both halves of that. My gender identity is "domestic neutered cat," which means a near absence of any aspect of sex or gender, physiological or social, human or feline. But I appear as feminine, and so I'm assigned feminine pronouns. Those pronouns aren't accurate, but they're functional. To call a pet "it" is (for lack of a better word) dehumanizing; gendering pets is a way of fitting them into our worldview, of interpreting/projecting/interacting with them as individuals. I'm especially aware of this with Devon—the parallels between Devon's relationship with me and my relationship with August are startling; he's my person, and I'm his girl in the way that August is my girl: the gendered identity is a useful tool, a way of interpreting and defining my identity and our relationship.

In some ways, the gender projected and assigned to me is important because it puts me under the "female" umbrella and that's not unburdened; it effects how I interact, as a human, with humans. But it does not make me a woman, any more than what I call Gillian turns him into a man.

The hand-waving complexity nudges up on the territory of agender and genderqueer, but I'm not comfortable with those labels because they indicate an experience that I respect and don't share. There's a massive cultural difference between the experience of gender identity and species identity—in short, my circumstances are meaningful to me but make nary a blip on anyone's social radar; agender and genderqueer identities do, in loaded and painful ways, it would be disrespectful as fuck to co-opt that experience.

Given the freedom to identify myself as I see fit, without needing to justify it, I freeze up. I presume that everyone intuits the unstated complexity and silently demands that I explain myself, which is classic social anxiety: the belief that everyone cares a lot about everything I do, and they're all judging me for it. I want to footnote in some handwaving and, I don't know, an apology. But when I'm able to step away from the paranoia, it's liberating. All those wiggly hand gestures are important to me, occasionally important to those close to me, and in adjunct ways important to society at large. But they're not always relevant, they don't always need to be expressed and defended.

My FR profile says "she/her or they/them." What that means is "female pronouns are convenient and acceptable; widely-recognized non-gendered pronouns are equally accurate" with subtitle "because I'm a cat and cats don't have genders, and using these words isn't the same as embracing their connotations." I care a lot about that!

The people glancing at my FR profile don't, and that's lovely.

* The primary exception: I feel like domestic therian species are underexplored, and yet domestication is the defining aspect of my therianthropy. As example: the effect of neutering, discussed here; also neoteny and its effect on my relative immaturity/continued dependence on caretakers. Gimme discussions about domestic therians pls.

Things what happened recently:

August went in for her dental surgery, had four top molars removed, and recovered with no issues. She went back to eating just fine. I still need to tackle the issue of how to brush a cat's teeth, but the immediate problem was resolved.

Dee and I went to see The National on a rainy evening in September. It bucketed rain during most of the opening band Frightened Rabbit but the temperature was fairly mild, so we just got soaked and dealt with it, and were mostly dry by the end of the show. Neither is a band I listen to on my own, but the live show atmosphere (and the other attendants determined to enjoy themselves despite the weather) was phenomenal; a very Oregon evening.

My mother's father died on September 29th; I opted not to attend the service in mid-November. I'm okay! Death doesn't have a profound impact on me; I'm mostly concerned for my mother and sister, but my grandfather was able to talk with my mother while still lucid the day before he passed; he'd been having health issues for some time, so this was not unexpected and did bring him peace. I know that traveling down for the service would make me miserable, and that's not how I want to remember him. This feels like one of the first times that someone asked me what I wanted to do, and I responded with my own desires and best interest, not with the answer that was expected of me; as such, I'm entirely content in my decision not to go.

Dee got a kitten! Here be the beastie; I will start taking more pictures of her probably when she moves into Dee's room (she's currently living in the downstairs bathroom, which is a bit small and lonely). Her name is Loki, she's tiny and young, purrs super loud and is full of energy. I'm not actually much of a kitten person which is why I only ever wanted to adopt grown cats, but a kitten to which I have frequent access is a fantastic pleasure.