sigelphoenix

Title: "Long Live the King"
Characters: Erazema
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: I had a conversation with ratzeo about what's going on in Erazema's head, and though he (of course) gave me no concrete answers, we talked about the two most likely possibilities based on the knowledge we've been able to glean. I tried to share this information with lunapome and starbird, but condensing the conversation down to an abstract summary ended up with me sort of verbally flailing and not being very coherent, so I thought it would be easier to explain it narratively. So consider these two snippets as separate possible versions of canon. (Unless, of course, she's just been mind whammied or blackmailed or otherwise is not in possession of her own mind and will, in which case this whole thing is non-canon.)
Notes: The title is meant to refer to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", which lunapome suggested as Erazema's image song.

( 'And I discovered that my castles stand / Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand' )

( 'Just a puppet on a lonely string / Oh who would ever want to be king?' )

I always take recipes from allrecipes.com with a grain of salt, because I often run into recipes here that suffer from "Flavor your dish with a jar of processed X and a packet of pre-made Y" syndrome, which, as I've already complained about, is not what I'm looking for when I attempt to make healthy(ish) homemade food. But it's not impossible to dig around and find some good recipes, and I've been making some successful dishes from the site lately. (Plus I haven't been as successful with the recipes I've been trying from my food blogs lately, so.)

( Some recs, along with my suggested alterations )

( Bonus dessert section )

Title: Sleepless Night
Characters: Luth, Nexus, Drannor
Word Count: ~2600
Summary: Luth continues to feel disturbed after killing Kadira, and talks to Nexus.
Notes: RP with lunapome after adventure 45 and before Sapphire Nightmare.

( Kadira messes with Luth's head from beyond the grave )

We had some really nice weather on Sunday, and it got pretty warm in the apartment. One of the cats' favorite spots is my desk, which is in front of a sunny window and is *cough* covered entirely by two plush cat beds. Since it was so warm, though, they sometimes lounged underneath the desk, in the shade.

ratzeo reported the following scene: Both Kershach and Drannor were under the desk together, lying in a yin yang shape with their heads next to the other's back feet. Drannor was tenderly grooming Kershach's back paws ... while his back feet were tenderly kicking Kershach in the face.

Drannor's such a good older brother. XD

I'm semi-joking about the "spring curse" part, but it's interesting to note that one year ago (give or take a few weeks) was when the water heater in the apartment two floors above us burst and rained on our unit ... >_>

Our fridge is borked. It didn't stop working completely (thankfully), but it somehow stopped cooling enough, and our freezer got to fridge-temperature and our fridge got to nearly-room-temperature. We're not sure when the problem started - I finally noticed the bizarre temperatures last night as we were about to go to bed, but since it wasn't a sudden shutdown it could have started much earlier. In fact, I noticed something on Friday - a package of bacon I put in the freezer Thursday night was not frozen as solid as I expected, but since I don't have experience freezing bacon I thought it might have something to do with the fat content, or the fact that it was a solid block of meat. I wish I'd recognized that as a red flag at the time, but, well, hindsight and all.

Anyway, the good thing is that the mystery problem resulted in unequal warming of the freezer, so while the stuff on the top definitely went above freezing, the stuff on the bottom remained cold enough to stay frozen. Since I keep most of my meat in the bottom drawer, and since the amount of raw meat I have in my freezer probably breaks triple digits in monetary value ... yeah, I'm glad. O_o Some other stuff that was stored in the bottom and/or back of the shelves also remained solid, but a lot of stuff went fridge-cool, so now I'm trying to determine what is safe enough to keep or needs to be tossed. Right now all of it has been moved to a fridge in a vacant unit in the complex (yay for a responsive manager who answers her phone at 11pm and gives you the key to the empty apartment!).

So, to keep myself from stewing in irritation and frustration, here are some happy things:

1. ratzeo is very good in a mini-crisis (and probably a major crisis as well). While I was gnashing my teeth at the thought of losing hundreds of dollars' worth of food, he called our manager (which resulted in us getting access to the empty apartment) and also was the one to figure out that the bottom of our freezer was still frozen (which resulted in me being less upset). This is pretty much how we operated when Drannor developed FLUTD, and I know the pattern - once I've gathered my wits I will pursue the solution with laser focus, but before that I have to overcome my desire to hide my head in the sand, so having ratzeo there to act as my rock keeps me going until I reach that point.

2. I am frustrated that this is the third time I've dealt with a broken fridge (the first two were at my old house, not this apartment), and frustrated that this comes on the heels of another unexpected expense, Drannor's emergency vet trip. BUT, I know that this is by far not the worst household disaster that could happen, and this is definitely a "you better cut back on eating out or buying books for a little bit" kind of setback, not a "this means I can't make rent" kind of setback.

3. Yesterday was actually a good day, and the whole weekend a good weekend. I got to play ratzeo's game, went to pick up my bridesmaid dress with my sister and her fiance, and met her fiance's parents' shiba inu.

4. This morning I saw Drannor take a drink from the "waterfall" part of the cat fountain. I've seen him do it a couple of times now (as opposed to just drinking from the bowl), so I hope this means that the moving water appeals to him, and catches his attention to make him drink more often. (Kershach, on the other hand, has only now progressed to drinking from the bowl. Poor water-fearing scaredy-cat.)

5. In other news about Drannor, we're done giving him meds. Anyone who's had to medicate an animal (or probably a small child) knows that that is something to celebrate!

... to those who have ever had to negotiate that delicate balance of giving a cat enough treats to make the medicine experience less horrendous - not too many before the medicine so he gets satisfied and walks away before the medicine - making sure that you have access to both treats and medicine when your hands are already full of unhappy cat - trying to give him some treats afterward when he's mistrustful of anything from your hands - and then making sure to give treats and praise to your other cat(s), because you don't want them to feel "left out" from the attention and treats and praise your medicated cat is getting.

YOU'RE RIGHT, IT'S NOT EASY. >_<

Poor Drannor has come down with Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease, which is a fancy way of saying that he's having trouble peeing. This is my first time dealing with cat health problems, because Kershach is young and robust and has always been spectacularly healthy. So I'm ... trying not to freak out, because I know that far more cat owners have to deal with far more serious issues, and this is relatively minor. But I've been on a constant, low-level "fret" frequency since this weekend.

( The medical details, for the curious and/or my own records )

( Home, and meds )

( Food, water, and other preventative measures )

This part I won't hide behind a cut because it's cute: I thought at first that Kershach was oblivious to his brother's suffering, but I may be wrong. He didn't act any different on Sunday (he didn't even get out of bed when we got home from the vet :P), but he and Drannor slept with me in bed. This isn't unusual for Drannor, but Kershach has not joined me every night like he used to (lingering jealousy issues is our hypothesis). However, ratzeo said that when he came to bed late that night, he found Drannor with his arms around Kershach. You know, like this. ♥ Except it was hard to tell for certain if it was the same position, because it was dark, so all he saw was a black blob and white legs stretched across it. XD

And then last night, they also both joined me in bed, and I woke up in the middle of the night to find them lying in overlapping curve shapes. Kershach was against my side, and Drannor was sprawled across my hips, his head resting on the bed beneath Kershach's throat - the perfect position for Kershach to groom him. (I reached my hand out to pet them, and their faces were so close they both nuzzled me at the same time. ♥) So maybe Kershach is helping out his brother. ♥

So that's the story for now. The hope is that the painkillers will last until the antibiotics kick in and/or the condition clears up, but I was told to check in with my vet if he doesn't feel better within 2-3 days. So I'll be watching him closely today and tomorrow.

Please send good kitty vibes Drannor's way. He's a sweet boy and doesn't deserve to be in pain.

Does the name "Siouxzy" have any real connection to the Sioux people?

... Or is this just a case of white people trying to spice up "Susie"/"Suzy" by appropriating the name of the Native nation?

... as he makes his mad dash for kibble:

1. Getting kicked many, many times. It's just with the force of my walking leg, of course, but that feels like a lot when I hit a 12-pound cat.

2. Getting sat on. I squatted down to lay down the bowl and landed butt-first on his head. (Though I guess this makes up for the time he butt-planted in Kershach's face when he jumped for a toy.)

3. Surging up from his position next to ratzeo, getting tangled in the kotatsu comforter, and faceplanting.

He also has an adorably un-musical meow, and a way of sending excited wiggles up his tail, both of which he does for kibble more than anything else.

... On a completely different subject, what is with recipes that call for an obscene amount of bottled sauces? Like adding a jar of salsa to a black bean soup or the better part of a cup of Worcestershire sauce to a stew? Similarly, I immediately click away from recipes that include things like a a can of condensed soup (or a packet of soup mix). It feels like a cheat to make dishes taste good, since they're relying on a bunch of sodium and preservatives - easy to make tasty, but not good for you. If I'm going to take the time and energy to cook for myself, I want to avoid the unhealthiness of processed foods. So cooking by throwing those very processed foods in makes me go ???

... Okay, now that I think about it, I guess these recipes are useful for people who have limited time or skill - like people cooking for a family with kids, or those cooking for themselves for the first time - and thus are helped by the shortcuts of processed foods. It just annoys me when I go to cooking/recipe sites to find good recipes, and have to weed out the ones that are one step away from being pre-packaged meals.

( This is more for my record-keeping than anything else. )

Edit: I decided to see what I could coax Drannor into using tonight's serving of Greenies ... I started by feeding them straight to his mouth, then placing them on the wet food plate, then placing them on top of the wet food, then pressing them into the wet food. He didn't hesitate to eat through some wet food to reach the Greenies. In fact, he ate pretty heartily, taking several bites before unearthing the treat. He even did this when I buried them deeply enough that he couldn't find the Greenie, and just ended up with several mouthfuls of gooshy food. All this, despite the fact that I was holding the Greenies bag while sitting next to him, and he could have given up and begged for more out of the bag. (This could be an effect of Drannor's good manners ... but honestly, they're not that good when it comes to Greenies.) He eventually got tired of the wet food, even when I presented it with a Greenie serving platter, but that was about a half ounce of gooshy food eaten (of the second-choice flavor, no less).