Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
friday cat blogs, mostly
I love this one, of Aurora, closer up in her cone. Not a happy cat, but way more tolerant than we ever thought she’d be.
It’s been two years since we brought her home from DO, this week. Amazing. She’s such a grown cat now, all filled out, muscular, with a good layer of fat under her fur. She just looks like a grownup, finally, so much so now that I wonder if she wasn’t a full year younger than we thought she was.
As much as I was hoping Aurora would stay healthy forever & never return to the vet again, she got into a kerfuffle with one of the other cats, we think; with Aeneas specifically, we think. She ended up with an abscess in her right paw which got more swollen every day until we brought her in. She was, as ever, hellfire in fur. But the vet got her revenge: to keep Aurora from licking her paw, she put her in one of those cone things.
She was not happy about the situation, and of course it took her about an hour to get it off the first time. I ended up rigging up my own device, a kind of sling made out of nylon knee-hi’s, to keep her from licking her foot, and then after a few days on the antibiotics, & with the swelling having gone down, we freed her from all of it.
Remarkably, she’s an excellent pill-taker, though as the days of antibiotics go on, she’s getting more resistant. A bonita flake or two afterwards seems to help keep her from rejecting them entirely.
It’s good to be home with all my loved ones, pill-taking crankypants cat included.
Aeneas, in a moment of contemplation. This moment had to come before he & Aurora got into a kerfuffle, which left him with a torn ear, & her with an abscess in her paw. 
He went to the vet yesterday, where we found out he also has an irregular heartbeat, which sucks, & she goes tomorrow (when we find out she hates the vet more than having an abscess.)
Multiple cat homes come with occasional cat fights. & Of course cats are smart enough to have them when you’re not around.
A little late, but not too late as it’s still Friday, here’s Aeneas, looking pissed off because I seem serious about getting them to lose some weight. He hasn’t quite a adjusted to us cutting out the 5PM feeding, so tends to start waiting for the 8PM feeding at about 5:05PM.
& Then, of course, she does eventually notice the secretive sniffing and give Endymion what-for. She will boldly bite him in the ass, too, & then wonder why it is he pounces and she finds herself pinned by 18 lbs of Russian Blue. She may be a princess, but she’s not always bright.
She’s still not really hip to being sniffed by the boys, so they tend to kind of sneak sniffs when she dosn’t seem to be paying attention. Endymion’s doing the sniffing this time around; we’re halfway convinced he’s in love with her, and recently she’s even allowed him to lick her head. She is the definition of princess, and fierce to boot.
Aeneas a little more awake, but still on the couch. He’ll get up… eventually. Or he’ll just go back to sleep.
Aeneas, looking groggy, since I woke him up, yet again, with the flash.
A very happy birthday (tomorrow) to my sister Jeanne, too. We’ll be away for the weekend; or rather, I’ll be joining Betty upstate where she’s been working this week.
I’ll be back Monday, but do stay tuned as tomorrow is the next installment in the Trans Couples series.
They love posing like this, asleep, eyes closed, blotting out the flash. As it gets hotter & hotter, they sleep together less & less, for good reason. They don’t think there’s any reason to worry about the supposed “bad luck” of Friday the 13th, but of course they’re not black cats, either.
& Happy birthday to my sister Kathy, too!
Apparently all the pet food recalls and other food scares aren’t really keeping the Department of Agriculture busy enough, as they’ve got the time to bug the Hemingway estate & the city of Key West about their cats. At least whoever’s running Key West has a brain.