The Merlin Kitty

Friends, family, followers:

My friend Bridget has one of the very best kitties in the world. His name is Merlin.

I first met Merlin when my best friend was preparing to move in with Bridget and they were introducing their cats. Dash was a cantankerous, territorial, prima donna pain in the ass. He was hiding in his carrier and wouldn’t come out. I mostly expected there to be a cat fight, because pretty much every cat I’ve ever met is that way in the extreme. But Merlin just walked back and forth in front of the carrier, rubbing up against it affectionately, and peeking inside from time to time. Dash eventually ran out of growls, but Merlin never ran out of patience or love.

In all the years I’ve known him, Merlin has ben the paragon of catly excellence. He’s never a “butt” as so many cats tend to be. He doesn’t bite, claw, or scratch. In fact, he sorta seems like a cat that Catholics might want to give a sainthood to (don’t those things alone count as miracles?). He’s kind, caring, and attentive to his friend cat and his person.

But now, Merlin’s in trouble.

He has a diaphragmatic hernia. In layperson’s terms, it basically means that his liver is up near his heart (note: this is not where it belongs). Insurance will cover some of it, but Bridget is quickly approaching her cap on coverage, what with all the ER visits that it took to get this diagnosis.

Merlin will probably need an operation, and soon, if he hopes to live much longer. His quality of life has gone downhill recently, and he needs treatment ASAP.

Bridget is hoping to raise $5,000 for his veterinary care. Since she can only estimate the cost, she is offering a ballpark figure and promising this: if it ends up being more than they need, all extra funds will be donated to the Almost Home cat rescue in Denver, a cage-free no-kill shelter that provides a safe place with medical care for all cats, even the “unadoptable” and terminally ill. (They’re located right near me!)

If you enjoy my kitten blog, please consider donating to Bridget’s campaign. Every dollar helps. Bitty kitties turn into grown-up kitties, and my goal in fostering is to raise wave after wave of kitties who are as wonderful as Merlin. It’s easy to ignore the plights of big kitties because they’re “not as cute” as kittens (though I think Merlin is), but they’re the reason we foster parents go through all the trouble. The grown-ups are the ones who are our best friends and companions.

See? Told you he was cute.

So go now, and with kittens in your heart, give this week’s latte to Merlin. He could really use it.

https://www.gofundme.com/TheMerlinKitty

•••Hey, did you know? I’m fostering kittens! Come look at adorable pictures on my kitten blog! Paw-Purr-azzi•••

Mondays are the absolute worst

You know why? I’m guessing you probably do, but let me tell you anyway.

For me, Mondays are the worst because I haven’t been online at all over the weekend. I have all my comics, deviantArt, and all of Tumblr to catch up on. So, even though I technically have time for all of that since I’m on hiatus, it takes fucking forever. I have to leave here in an hour and I haven’t even had lunch yet. (It’s 4:22.)

Balls on that.

So, May On Hiatus is going well so far. I’m coveting my free time and rolling it up into balls and then baking those balls into cookies and loving it. I’m not having literary thoughts, for which I apologize. I’m drinking lots of Starbucks. I just wish I had anything entertaining to blog about. I suppose I could talk about my kittens, but if I were going to do that I should have started back in April when I got them. Now I’m all talked out.

My teacher, Mr. Byrne, died recently. I’m so thankful that I got to say goodbye to him, and I am pretty confident that by the time he went, he knew what a huge impact he’d had on the eager young minds he had educated over his life. Buonviaggio, caro mio.

Snow and rain are finally making room for nice weather, but that may not save my tomato plants. Stay tuned on that.

I’ve been trying to “be good” about getting to the gym during my hiatus month. So far I went three times last week and twice this week, but my goal is four times per week… but it’s very hard to motivate to do that, since all I really want to do is play video games with the TV on in the background and eat Doritos. (Resisting the Doritos. So far, anyway.)

My brothers had a nice mothers’ day with my mom and “forgot” to tell me about it, so now I’m the bad kid. Thanks, guys!

Uhhhh. Got nothing. Come back Wednesday for more drivel!

May the road rise to meet you.

My good friend, and the mastermind behind the Writers’ Group that has served as such an amazing support and inspiration, is moving away soon. We went to school together in our adolescence, and over the years we’ve been through various levels of closeness, but against all odds, we never lost each other.

Over the last year or so, she’s attended the group less and less as life has become more and more stressful for her. That has meant that we’ve seen each other a lot less frequently. I’m sad—truly—that she’s moving away. It seems so permanent. But I try to keep in mind the fact that though we only attended school together for one year back in 1996, we’ve remained friends for almost twenty years (what the fuck twenty years?! how in ze hell). Though distance may have strained, miles cannot break our bonds of affection. We will meet again. And I’m thrilled for her, that she has found a person who she judges to be worthy of her love. She’s quick to tell me that she wouldn’t move just for a guy, and I believe her—she has some great opportunities where she’s going. But I know that he’s the catalyst to this move, and I know that my friend is anything but indiscriminate in her affections. If she’s willing to uproot herself and her daughter, he must be something special.

So, my friend, my soul-sister, I will miss you. Deeply. May you find all the happiness you seek.

In her absence, I do worry a little about the fate of the Writers’ Group. She hasn’t been attending, true, but somewhere in my mind I still think of it as her group, and I miss her when she’s not there. On top of that, some of the more regular attendees have sorta stopped writing. I wouldn’t presume to judge that—to write or not to write (and to share or not to share) is each person’s decision and many things contribute to it. But...

As I near the end of my second draft, I know I’m going to be taking some time off writing afterwards to, well, get a breather, put things in perspective, and let it all sorta steep. Branden’s finishing his story in not too long here. Rachel has been writing shorts for our amusement, but sometimes she goes months without anything to share. And Becky is going to be finishing her story in the not-too-distant future, and I don’t know what she’s going to want to do at that point.

I love all these people, and without their creative influences in my life, I feel like a part of me would shrivel and die. Several of our members opt to not attend if they didn’t read everything and don’t have anything to share. If enough people do that, the group will have zero members. Every time someone comes who maybe wasn’t planning to, they always say what a positive thing it is and how happy they came even though they didn’t feel like they had much to give. I wish everyone could remember that feeling, the level of support we give each other.

It’s hard to share your creative work, and a lot of writers’ groups fail because the attitude is more competitive. If I didn’t have my girls (which is what I call them, Branden notwithstanding), I think I’d stop writing completely. Let alone trying to get anything published. It’s discouraging when no one cares to read what you write, to give feedback, to validate... and having beta readers is an essential part of writing.

I’m pretty sure it’s my insecurities talking here, but some of my group seems to have a boundless energy and confidence when it comes to writing. To them, writing is an imperative; they would do it whether anyone was reading or not. They deign to scatter their pages before me, like rose petals before the queen (in this metaphor, they are the queen, not I). I scramble to pick them up and consume them, and my feedback, such as it is, amuses them. Maybe for my girls, writing would happen whether we were here or not. But it probably wouldn’t happen for me.

And it’s weird, coming to that realization in this moment. My creativity never hinged on having an audience before. On the other hand, I would only be sporadically creative before. I absolutely wouldn’t trade it.

Word count: 45,383 (녇)

A change of perspective

An update to Wednesday’s post: My dad is just fine. It turns out that he had “fluid overload,” and fluid in his abdomen was putting pressure on his lungs. They gave him a diuretic and now he feels much better.

In light of that, the plan to go to Durango was back on.

He and I passed the five-and-a-half hours in comfortable silence and happy conversation. We have always gotten along. At the terminus, I took a luxuriant bath and slept like a dead person, then woke up and had lunch with him and a couple of his friends who had been a big part of my childhood, who I remember very fondly. They apparently remember me fondly, too. This makes me happy.

After that, I sought out my favorite teacher of all time, Tom Byrne. He taught my sophomore and senior English classes, and he was one of the first teachers who made class fun.

Well, I don’t really remember high school that well, but however it happened, he is both mine and Branden’s favorite teacher, and we are both among his favorite students.

Tom hasn’t been doing so well for the last few years. He’s a young man, but he has brain cancer, and after several years of doing pretty okay, it’s starting to get the better of him. He’s in hospice now, which means that, for those of you who are like me and didn’t know exactly what that meant, he’s given up on treating the disease and his treatment is now focused on treating the symptoms, trying to make sure his remaining time is as comfortable and rewarding as possible.

He used to love to travel. In fact, he just got back from Hawaii last month. Sadly, at the end of that trip, his state took a sharp decline and it seems likely, now, that his travel days are over.

I still call him Mr. Byrne to myself and Branden and my parents and really, anyone not him. He wants me to call him Tom, so I do, but when I say “Mr Byrne,” in my own head, that’s an honorific. It’s like calling someone “sensei.” I honor him.

He was very happy to see me. We sat and talked about travel and books and people and cats. Then we went on a long walk and talked more about people and books and Durango and school. Then when we got back, we sat and talked some more about my wedding to Branden, at which he was a guest. He said it was the best wedding he’d ever been at, and that he had been kind of blown away by the fact that we’d wanted to include him in our wedding photos. (For my part, he was certainly a high point of the whole occasion.) At this point, he seemed very tired and despite not really wanting to end our visit, I think we both ran out of things to say.

Then his cat scratched me.

The message was clear.

When I left, we hugged for a long moment and I kept in my tears—barely. I knew I was losing it and he probably did too, but I hate people who visit or call sick people and cry, like, “your illness hurts me! Quick, make me feel better!” I wasn’t going to do that to him. I got to the car and sobbed for a minute or so before starting it up and going home.

After that, I was really emotional and getting weepy at any old thing. My dad took me out to dinner, which was really nice, but I almost wasn’t fit to be in public. I kept a lid on it, knowing that my dad was doing his best to keep my mind off “things,” and he did a pretty good job. But it kept sneaking up on me a little. At any rate, I’m happy to be home, in my bedroom, behind a closed door for a couple of hours.

The main character in my book is named in honor of Mr Byrne. I told him so. He said he wanted to read it. I said of course.

On that note, I think I have found the way I want to begin the revised draft of my book. I think I’m going to try to write a little tonight. Thanks to everyone for your well wishes for my dad. Until Monday!