It's Been A While
Well, it's been over a year since I last posted on this. To be honest, too much has happened. So if you're ready for a full update, buckle up and settle in for the rambling.
First of all, I finally moved in with my boyfriend after 12 years together! The catalyst for this? My sister stole my mother and moved her to the desert. (Context: my mother and I have lived together my whole life, and we grew to be financially dependent on one another due to our low income statuses. My brother-in-law promised a better quality of life for her, but it required her moving in with them. In a desert. Which she hates. I will trade her weather any day of the week.) They also took Echo with them. He doesn't seem to mind.
Altogether, the moving process took the entire spring. In that time, my sister was living with us and helping us prepare for the mass exodus of my family. My brother also brought his family for their final Michigan trip in order to reclaim the last of his belongings. So, it really did feel like my entire family abandoned me for a hot minute there, which was not comforting to my mental state.
In the meantime, the boyfriend got my loft finished before the rest of the garage interior was complete because he knew I needed somewhere to house my books. This man truly loves me. Unfortunately, something horrible happened in mid-April. On the night of the fourteenth, I brought Demon: Killer of Rabbits to the bf's house for his portion of the move. Now, I have moved cats before, and know to get them acclimated to their new homes before letting them run loose. I know this.
What should have happened was that I let Demon acclimate to his new digs in the small garage (he was an indoor/outdoor cat who lived primarily in the basement when he was inside) for a few days before I let him outside. What actually happened was that my dumbass got too excited to show him his new home. So put the brand new collar on him (it had stupid, ugly rhinestones on it which precluded me from adding extra holes for a tighter hold; it's a belt-style collar) and attached the leash to it. Ori was outside on his own cable for this interaction. Slowly, I allowed Demon to creep out of the garage. He was doing fine at first. Then Ori did a little lunge and a bark. Demon, understandably, freaked out. He leapt up and to the side, which caused him to knock over my bicycle, get the leash tangled on the pedal, and yank the collar over his head. I barely had time to register that ANY of this had ocurred before I blinked and he was gone. He'd dashed off into the swamp directly behind the yard and stopped on a log in the middle of this nasty bog.
He looked left. He looked right. I called his name and he looked over his shoulder at me. Then, calm as you please, he continued deeper into the swamp. Like the asshole that he is. April 15, 2024 was the day he left home. I was certain he would come back, but not for a while. I figured when his meds wore off and he became a tick carrier, he'd get it through his thick skull that "this never happened when I lived with mom". Or, I figured he'd head back to the old house. So on occasion, I'd call for him while I was cleaning there or when I was at work. (I lived literally right behind my place of employment. I never really needed a car for years because commuting to work was a literal trek up the hill.) He didn't come home, but I wasn't concerned. I figured he'd come back when he was ready.
Shortly before this, I joined my town's Beautification Committee. Since I started independently doing stuff for the town on my own (started decorating contests for Halloween & Christmas, candy guessing jars, and coloring contests) a couple of years ago, I decided that I should join an organization that was dying out and doing more. This has become a complicated, slightly stressful new addition to my life. Unfortunately, with very little in the way of experience, I became the Secretary of this group. There's still a lot for me to learn, but we are not without ideas, and we're trying to make it all come to fruition. (Wish me luck!) Of course, a month following Demon's disappearance, a new level of chaos was introduced to my life.
Meet: Small Creature.
On May 23, 2024, I had been at my job on a busy Memorial Day weekend when a customer walked through the doors with this little black kitten tucked in her shirt. She was looking for advice about what to do with it. Apparently, it had appeared while she was milking cows and she'd waited two hours to see if its mama would appear. She didn't. Therefore, she'd done some modicum of research to learn that giving it cow milk would kill it. So in her infinite wisdom, she'd taken it inside and fed it powdered milk for two days and had kept it in her shirt most of that time. Oh, and she was allergic.
That was all I needed to hear before I commandeered the small little being. I called my bf to take it home. Instead, he sent me home and my coworkers promised they could handle it for the next fifteen minutes. So I drove it home, got it set up in the cat carrier, and went back to work. When I got home that night, we had to make an emergency Walmart run to get the formula it needed. Then I tried very hard to bottle feed the little bugger. Mind you, I've never had a kitten that small. Oh, I've been around kittens almost my entire life, but they always had their mothers. They never needed me. So I had zero clue what I was doing. Hence an emergency vet visit where they gave me instructions and a new list of stuff to buy. They also confirmed that the kitten was no older than 4 weeks. That's 4 weeks too damn early to be away from its mother. To make a long story short: I was going to raise him until he got to 8 weeks. Then I was going to find him a new home. (I'm kind of the halfway house for a lot of displaced animals in my neighborhood, and this was supposed to be a fostering situation.) Well, that was 4 weeks of him sinking his claws deeper and deeper into the boyfriend (figuratively and literally). Thus, when his 8 week mark was coming up, I was told to cease and desist because we were keeping him.
In that timeframe, I was not getting attached. (I'm actually very good at keeping myself detached, especially if my intent is to rehome.) Therefore, I wasn't trying out any names on the little one. But when I came home from work, Ori would greet me, I'd call out, "Hi, Honey," and then I would ask, "Where is the small creature?" At this, the small creature in question would come running to greet me.
Well, this stuck. We could not come up with or agree on any other name for him. Therefore, he became Small Creature and the vet's office loves this like nothing else.
All in all, life went on. I finished the hardcover version of Demon Kin: The Queen and published that after many, many rounds of trial and error. (Jennifer Anne Davis created an incredible interior for the hardcover edition and now it looks/feels like a special edition.) I also deleted my NaNoWriMo account following all of their earlier mishaps and their endorsement of AI in creative expression spaces. I'm all for AI in data-heavy spaces where parsing things out and being able to clarify them are helpful, but typing in a prompt and having AI spit out words, styles, and voices stolen from real authors does not make you a writer in the slightest. And the gross theft of illustrator and digital image creators' works honestly disgusts me. The fact that NaNoWriMo would endorse it in a challenge meant to push human creativity was too much for me. Now I use TrackBear instead.
Other than some travel and diving to new locations, and visiting my family for Christmas, I would have thought that the excitement for the year was well and truly over. Then I got a Christmas Miracle.
Demon came home.
On December 12, 2024, I was walking through my house, returning to my boyfriend's computer that I had commandeered to play Sims4 on. As I passed through the kitchen, I glanced out the glass doors and saw a small black face peeking out from around the grill. At first, I thought it was Small Creature's reflection, but he was nowhere around. A second later, I knew exactly who it was. I ran to the other door, yanked on my coat and shoved my feet into my shoes and darted outside. After darting around to the side of the house, I called out, "Demon Dog, is that you?" And to my everlasting surprise, he meowed. I followed the sound, and whenever he stopped, I only had to call his name for him to answer me. He led me across the front of my house and into the neighbor's yard where he hunkered under their picnic table. Then he let me scoop him up and carry him all the way home. Dark as it was, and as many stray cats as there are in the neighborhood, I wondered as I got closer to my house if it was actually him, and started looking for the white on his chest. I'm happy to report that he has all of the same white markings as my baby. Also, no one but me seems to know how to neuter their cats in this area, so it was kinda easy to tell who he was. That same night that he came home, I ordered another tracking collar (we already had one on Small Creature because he likes to go outside all the time and climb every tree in the area). To end this on a happy note, we now have a little zoo forming in this house and I constantly have to veto the idea of an aquarium from the boyfriend. Please enjoy this picture of my precious baby boys. My family is finally complete.
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