Repurposing Furniture, Cat Style

"Battle Stations!  Robins at 2 o'clock!"

 
Funny, I thought this was going to be a nice new (old) cabinet for me to house my Pfaff 130.  Silly me, I obviously didn't consider what its fully-open configuration was going to mean for the lords and masters of the house.  There will be no more sharing that one, puny kitty shelf for them, thankyouverymuchindeed.

Le Sigh.

You'll notice that Little Grey Kitty and Big Yellow Hallway Monster are together in this photo, taken mere minutes ago.  They have been re-introduced and are getting along just swimmingly.  So far their playdates are all upstairs, since LGK and Electric Mayhem still hate each other.  We may try reintroducing them later this year, after my busy season at work is over with and one of the humans is home with them more.  Or, we may not.  EM is getting older and less tolerant of such nonsense as other kitties in her territory.

In other news, unrelated to cats or sewing - Happy Anniversary to My Amazing Husbandini!!!  You have always been and will always remain my little booboocitos!

Goodbye, Buddy.

We are sad to report that Hubbard, aka the Big Acoustic Kitty, left us on Thursday afternoon. He was with us for almost 12 and a half years, and while we know that all kitties are irreplaceable, Hubb was even more 1-of-a-kind than most.

His ongoing battles with age and disease have been documented here, but in recent weeks his decline became more rapid, and it was obvious that any further medications or treatments might prolong his life, but they would do nothing to improve its quality. So last weekend we made the decision to do him the final kindness of letting him go before his condition could get any worse. We took a few days to pamper him and say our goodbyes before taking him to the vet one last time.

We discussed calling Dr. Anne (the vet who helped us when Ziggy died) for an in-home euthanasia again, but in the end we took him in to our regular vet. While he had become weaker and more confused lately, there was still some fight in him, and we worried that Dr. Anne might need more help in handling him than we would be capable of providing under the circumstances. Our vet and her techs were used to Mr. Boo and his moods, so as much as we would have liked to let him go at home, we decided that taking him to the vet was best.

Please keep us in your thoughts as we adjust to the loss of our eldest boy. He was such a special friend and companion for so many years and through so many changes in our lives that the hole he has left behind is immense. We are focusing on remembering him as he was ... cranky, feisty, demanding, handsome, curious and quietly, steadily loving. We wish him a heaven filled with sunbeams, queso dip, potato chips, catnip mice and many, many noserubs.

The Amazing Husbandini will be working on some posts about our boy over on his blog, and for now I'm going to leave that to him. I'm still working my way through all of the emotions, and it feels like there is quite a way to go before I can get to the "sharing memories" stage of things. Hubbard's care had taken up more and more time and energy as he got older, and while I don't begrudge him one single minute, without him around to care for I suddenly have this huge hole in my life. There is a lot of numbness that has yet to wear off.

But in the meantime, I'd like to share a few of my favorite photos of Hubbard through the years. He was an extremely photogenic kitty. Please enjoy.

10 Feet Tall and Bulletproof ... He Ain't

Have you talked to your kitties about the dangers of 'nip?

Little Grey Kitty decided that since his humans were too busy to attend to his recreational herbage needs this morning, he was going to help himself to the catnip bag. Which would have been fine, except that someone (me) had left the bag on top of a rather unstable CD rack. Down came the bag, along with the rack and about 100 or so CDs. That particular noise got me back up the stairs in a hurry!

Since I was the one who had put the rack there in the first place, and had then made matters worse by leaving the catnip on top of it, it was pretty hard to blame LGK. Especially when he was having a lovely time rolling in the spilled nip and leaping about over his fallen prey. So I decided to leave things as they were while I finished up what I was doing, and headed back downstairs.

You know how people can be classified as a certain kind of drunk? Happy, mean, affectionate, etc.? Well, the same thing applies to nipped-up kitties. And Mr. LGK is a fearless drunk. He can go anywhere and do anything. He can waltz right in to the bedroom where Big Acoustic Kitty lives like he owns the place, he can give all the neighborhood critters a verbal what for, and he can chase Electric Mayhem off from his territory. (Now, this happens with EM at the bottom of the stairs on one side of the screen door and LGK at the top of the stairs on the other, but hey, he knows he's showing her who's boss.)

Cut to about 20-30 minutes later. I'm downstairs in the kitchen and The Amazing Husbandini come in to rustle up some cold medicine. (We're trading a nasty spring cold back and forth between us.) He goes back upstairs, opens the screen door and suddenly I hear, "Escape! Escape! We have an escape!" Mr. LGK had decided that he was not going to be cooped up anymore and was going to invade the downstairs. Mr. Full-of-Himself did real well ... until he hit the other side of the screen door and realized he was actually out.

See ... out means that Big Yellow Hallway Monster (all 20+ pounds of him) comes running over to say hi. And it means that Electric Mayhem realizes that LGK is now in her territory, and gets hissy and growly as only she can. And her hissy fits do not involve backing down from a face-to-face confrontation. And it also means that to escape these things, LGK would have to turn his back on the other cats and try to run back upstairs to safety. And the door is now open! They might follow him into his sanctum sanctorum! Uh-oh. Suddenly the 'nip haze cleared, and panic set in.

As an aside, should I be concerned that my very first instinct was to whip off my shirt? After our last escape, I wanted to make sure that I had some way to cover and wrap a cat should things get hostile, and my sweatshirt seemed to be good for that. So, I'm running through the house in jeans and a bra, trying to chase down the low-slung, puffy grey blur who is careening through the downstairs in a panic and keeping an eye out that EM and BYHM don't get into it as a side benefit.

To sum up, LGK made it back up the stairs to safety while EM and BYHM were bribed with many kitty treats to forget the whole incident ever happened. After much cuddling and tummy-rubbing, LGK calmed down enough to crash in a sunbeam, where he is currently sleeping off his 'nip binge.

Please, talk to your cats about catnip. A 'nip high is not worth having to take an ass-kicking from your sister.

Dammit, Cat!

I'll skip the backstory and cut right to the chase:

This afternoon, The Amazing Husbandini and I found ourselves hurtling down the interstate to the vet's office, with Big Acoustic Kitty drifting in and out of consciousness in the carrier in the back.

Not many minutes earlier, we'd heard odd noises coming from the bedroom and found BAK stretched out on the floor next to his food dish in a limp, drooly, twitchy pile. After a few minutes, he did manage to rouse himself, but then his back end just refused to respond when he tried to stand up. And it was painfully obvious to us that he just wasn't "there". We managed to get through to our vet and they told us to bring him over right away.

We got to the vet and they took him right in to the exam area and did a quick check on his blood sugar ... turned out it was 130, which is a totally fine result, considering his diabetes. So, his current difficulty was not caused by an insulin reaction. Good news there, but what did it mean? We were thinking maybe heart trouble, maybe stroke ... but something horrible, obviously.

The vet and a tech came back in to the room where we were waiting and put BAK down on the floor where he proceeded to stagger around ... his movements were better than they had been, but still very much nothing like normal. The vet then starts telling us that maybe the quarter-tablets of BAK's new medication might be a bit much, and it looks like an eighth-tablet might be better.

Brief backstory - this was our second trip to the vet with BAK in two days. Yesterday was a fairly routine checkup to see how he was doing and to see if there was anything more that could be done for his arthritis. They sent us home with some glucosamine/chondroitin treats and a narcotic that would supposedly help with his joint pain. It might be "mildly sedating" for the first few days, they warned us.

I looked at Amazing Husbandini and he looked at me. Then we looked at the vet as what she was telling us sank in:

Big Acoustic Kitty wasn't sick - he was stoned!

After some sub-cutaneous fluids to help wash the happy pill out of his system, and several jokes about him having a serious case of the munchies later, we packed him up and took him home, where he spent most of the rest of the afternoon zoning peacefully with his face smooshed up against the inside corner of his carrier. As of a few minutes ago, he was happily noshing on his evening fishy pudding and wandering around the bedroom as if nothing had happened.

We're hoping this hasn't ruined him for a good, old-fashioned catnip buzz.

From Noses to Needles

We've been having some problems the past couple of days.

"Snoorrrff?"

Big Acoustic Kitty has been taking his meals in his suite recently, after being startled a few too many times by Big Yellow Hallway Monster in the main floor dining area. When I took BAK's dinner up to him on Saturday, his nose was noticeably red. The light in the bedroom is fairly dim, so I leaned in to get a better look (as best I could, considering his enthusiastic slurping of his food) and saw that he had blood all over his nose.

*Insert kitty-mama conniption here.*

The Amazing Husbandini came running (as he does, when he hears me shriek) and managed to get a good look at BAK's nose and at the surrounding surfaces. While there was certainly some blood spatter, it wasn't in quantities too alarming (no CSI-type scenes) and the flow coming out of his nostril was quite faint and fairly dilute.

Returning to the computer and working his Google-fu, hubby-o-mine determined that - barring some horrible nose tumor suddenly come to life - it was probably a result of BAK smacking nose-first into something or a result of Colorado's notoriously dry winter air. So we set up one of our little humidifiers overnight, hoping that would help.

The next morning there were some more lovely blood spatters on the blankets (and the wall above my pillow - ew!) but since it was Sunday, our only options were to continue the watch & wait program, or haul him in to the emergency vet. We decided to wait some more, but we did call our vet and leave a voice mail on the off chance that somebody might check messages. By yesterday afternoon, the blood seemed to have disappeared and things were looking good.

This morning, the bloody sneezes were back, but there was much less blood and everything else seemed to be fine ... eating, drinking, peeing, pooping - all normal. The vet's office called back and we ventured out into the 8-degree snowy day to see them.

Our regular vet had the day off (for once!), so we saw the visiting vet instead. She checked BAK all over and then she and I chatted about possible causes and treatments - long story short, we decided to continue the wait & see, but she suspects some kind of bacterial infection. If it gets better on its own, great, but if not I can go back in and pick up some antibiotics. With BAK's age and health issues, as well as the meds he's already on, she suspects that a kitty bug that we had going around the house recently finally caught up to BAK and his somewhat compromised immune system is having trouble with it.

Anyway ... that's not really the point of the story.

In discussing some of BAK's current meds and how they are doing double-duty as arthritis medicine and pancreatitis treatment, the vet asked if we'd ever considered acupuncture or chiropractic for BAK. I refrained from laughing at her but did suggest that, considering how many people it usually takes to restrain BAK for any procedure (3, minimum), I wasn't sure how well he'd like that kind of thing.

She then showed me how his neck didn't really move the way it was supposed to - mostly up and down, with very little of that serpentine movement that most cats make. Then she asked if I would let her try to "loosen up" his neck a little bit. I decided if she wanted to risk her flesh, that was her business, so I told her to go right ahead. BAK was not happy about it, but he didn't kill her, and lo and behold - after a couple of minutes, his head was sliding around just the way it should. And he still hadn't killed her. (He did hiss and spit and growl and cuss, as usual, but no blood was drawn.)

Now, I have nothing against non-traditional medicine, I just don't have much experience with it. But, since we weren't going to be heading home with any expensive meds, and since the little free sample she'd given certainly hadn't seemed to hurt or upset BAK (any more than he was already upset about being at the vet) I decided to just go ahead and let her do her thing.

She had me scruff BAK so she had both hands free and proceeded to work her way down his spine ... and the funniest thing happened. The further she got down his back, the more his yelling went down the hostility scale:

Neck area: "Release me or I shall slay you!"

Upper back: "You're touching me! I don't like people touching me!"

Mid-back: "I don't know what's going on, but I don't hate it!"

Hips: "I'm not sure why I'm still complaining, but it's kind of a habit for me!"

Then, she whips out her box of accupuncture needles and proceeds to march them up his spine, between his ears and into his face! He looked for all the world like he was wearing a dozen or so red birthday candles. Then, she turned out the light and went out, leaving BAK and I resting in the exam room for about 10 minutes ... and while he did get tired of hanging out up on the exam table, he was calm and quiet and relaxed for the rest of the visit.

(As she walked into the back of the vet's office, I heard one of the techs - who knows BAK very well - say, "He let you do it?")

I'm not saying that he's going to be going back for twice-weekly visits (out of our budget, unfortunately), but if helps his arthritis and helps wean him off some of his meds, I will certainly spring for once or twice a month. (Maybe I should ask her if she needs any landscape design work or computer repair work done and we can work out a trade.)

I'm sorry I don't have photos to share of BAK playing pincushion. But I didn't want to risk using my noisy cellphone camera and disturbing him during his moment of zen.

We'll keep everyone posted!

Addendum: Vet visit was mid-day Monday, and the nose was good until late afternoon today (Tuesday) when we had another bleeding episode. But, since I let the humidifier dry up, that could have been my fault. Other than that, things continue pretty well.

I'm Back!

Thank God and Greyhound, spring semester is over and done with. I haven't been this happy to see summer vacation since ... well, grade school, probably. Burnout has been setting in, and dragging myself over the finish line this semester was a pretty tall order. But, I'm looking at three months of no classes and no 50-mile round trip to campus three days a week and I'm much happier.

I believe I mentioned that I'm once again gainfully employed, but I don't think I gave any details. I started my new job at the end of March, working in one of the local garden centers in their tree and shrub nursery. So far I'm enjoying it, though my body is far less comfortable being on its feet all day than it was many years ago when I last worked a "stand-up" job. I splurged on some fancy-schmancy gel insoles the other day, but they aren't much help. Unfortunately, it's not a permanent job - how long they keep their seasonal people on depends entirely on how their spring and early summer sales go - but from things I'm hearing, once you're in, you're in for as many seasons as you'd like. And I may be able to pick up some additional work this winter when their Christmas tree sales start. If nothing else, working in the nursery is an excellent way to have day-in, day-out, "hands on" experience with the various trees and shrubs. Sure, I've taken all the plant i.d. classes, but this is Colorado we're talking about ... for most of the semester, it's not plant i.d., it's stick-and-twig i.d. Seeing the plants every day as they go through their growth cycle is a whole different thing.

There's also the issue of my employee discount. I have a whole yard that needs a lot of help, and getting a big, fat discount on plants will be useful. I've been pretty good so far, although that walk from the employee entrance through the perennial department to get to the nursery is certainly trying my restraint. I did break down and buy some Silverheels Horehound (Marrubium rotundifolium) a couple of weeks ago. They only had about a half of a flat of the stuff out, and it's one that I've been planning on buying for the front yard. I'm going to plant it in combination with some Seafoam Artemesia (Artemisia versicolor 'Seafoam'). That particular combination is one that I've swiped from CSU's test gardens up in Fort Collins. They had the two planted around the base of this enormous Douglas Fir, and it looked incredible.

I really want a tree for the backyard (we're in desperate need of a screen for some of our neighbors), but the one I keep coming back to is not really all that practical as a screen. We have some Montmorency cherries on the tree lot that I am just in love with ... beautiful glossy reddish bark and huge white flowers. The problem is, they don't get all that big, and I can't stand cherries. The Amazing Husbandini likes them, though. So I'll probably just use him as an excuse when I finally cave in and buy one. :-)

In other news, the kitties are all doing well. The Big Acoustic Kitty is still puttering along on his mini-dose of insulin twice a day. His drinking is still up there, as is his "output", but other than that things seem to be about the same. He's certainly as grumpy as ever.

That's it for now, but once the dust settles and things around here get back under some sort of control, I'll put new batteries in the camera and post some gratuitous kitty photos.

PSA: Puppy Bowl VI

Better late than never, right?

If there's anyone out there who shares my complete and utter disinterest in football and isn't aware that there is a cute n' fuzzy option out there, please hie yourself over to Animal Planet's website and check out all the info on tomorrow's broadcast of Puppy Bowl VI. This year there will not only be the All-Kitten Halftime Show, but also hamsters flying the blimp and rabbit cheerleaders. (I'm waiting for the Disapproving Rabbits reaction to the whole thing.)

The Amazing Husbandini has set the DVR to record Puppy Bowl for me while he watches that other sporting event tomorrow. That way he can call me if there are any worthwhile commercials to watch, but I can still get my furry critter fix.

The Verdict Is In

For those of you waiting to hear the news about The Big Acoustic Kitty, I apologize. Computer problems and an over-busy schedule have kept me from posting for the past few days. Turns out that the diagnosis on BAK is diabetes with a side order of pancreatitis. His kidney function is normal, as is his liver, thyroid and a bunch of other bits that escape me at the moment. So, The Amazing Husbandini, BAK and I are heading to the vet's again this Thursday for our "education appointment" at which I'm sure we will completely piss off BAK with our ham-handed attempts at administering insulin injections. But, we'll do our best.

Update on Big Acoustic Kitty

Here's a picture of his handsome self - just because:


Well, we decided to do a little "wait and see" on the outside-the-box piddling issues, just in case it was stress-induced. Once "the horde" was kept downstairs and he had some time to relax, that problem seemed to resolve itself. So that was good news. However, we had been noticing an increase in his water consumption and subsequent "output", so we decided to give the vet a call and see what she had to say. Predictably, she wanted him to come in for some bloodwork. So that is what most of today was taken up with.

We went ahead and okay'd the full blood panel, along with testing for thyroid problems and pancreatitis. The blood panel should be back tomorrow, with the rest of the results coming back early next week. He's down a couple of pounds since his last visit in October, and he was slightly dehydrated, so they know something's going on, but nobody's quite sure what it is yet. BAK had to stay at the vet's for most of the morning, since his usual inside-the-carrier "accident" had left his bladder empty and unable to provide a urine sample. So I took the Amazing Husbandini to work and then hit the library and did some time-killing running around for a few hours before the vet's office called and said BAK was ready to go home. They gave him some sub-cutaneous fluids while he was there, so hopefully that will be some help to him.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that there's obviously something wrong, but we don't know yet what it is or how serious it might be. We're keeping our fingers crossed and praying that it's something treatable. He was out of his carrier at the vet this morning and busily investigating the exam room, so we know he's not down for the count. We have both agreed that as long as our little curious bug is still in evidence, it's worth doing what we can to keep him going. Once that interest in life starts to go away, then we'll deal with that aspect of things.

We both hope that things will settle down and that BAK will be able to have at least one more happy and comfortable Christmas with us. We adopted him around Christmas, and if his time is coming to an end, we'd rather be able to associate Christmas with his coming into our lives, not with him leaving us.

So that's where we are now. More updates as events warrant.

Additional Sogginess

Well, it's now about 5 1/2 hours since my last post, and we've had another "incident". Unfortunately, this time there's no doubt that the culprit is the Big Acoustic Kitty. I got up and discovered that the bathroom mat was all rumpled, and when I went to put it back, it was all wet on one end.

I realize that it's about 4:30 in the morning and I'm tired and I'm stressed and I don't feel very good on top of it all, and these all combine to make this the worst time to consider this situation. However, I am up and I am considering it and I'm not happy. BAK just celebrated his Adoption Day on Friday (11 years since we brought his grumpy self home, yea!) which means he's somewhere in the range of 14 - 16 years old. As I wrote about a few months ago, before all the horrible stuff with Ziggy came along, it's been obvious for a while now that he's moving toward the end of his life. Some days he does really well and I can think that he still has a good piece of time left. Other days, well ... today is not going to be one of those days, apparently.

Obviously the next move is to keep a close eye on him and to call the vet on Monday to bring him in. He's on Metacam for his arthritis** and I know that stuff has a problematic track record when it comes to kidney function, so I'm sure that will be the first thing to investigate. Also, we have a somewhat high-sided litter box that might be giving our little old man some access problems. As I said in the last post, the other kitties - including the Electric Mayhem - have been upstairs more than usual lately, and he might just be upset about that. Too many kitties making free with his box, and all that. A similar situation brought on a bladder infection in the poor guy several years ago, so it might be something as simple as that. There are many avenues to go down before a full-on panic is called for. However, at 4:30 in the morning, full-on panic likes to crowd its way to the front of the line.

If you've ever been here before, you know that the Amazing Husbandini and I are not the type to call "deal-breaker" over this. BAK is our little old man kitty, and he deserves (and will get) a full investigation into this new problem of his, and all necessary steps will be taken to fix things. However, at 4:30 in the morning, thoughts about what on earth we're going to do if it turns out to be unfixable do arise.

Hugs and good thoughts are requested, and I'll keep everyone posted.

**I don't expect this post to suddenly bring throngs of people to the site, but let me try and fend off any potential problems by saying this: Yes, I am aware of the horror stories about cats and Metacam. I have read all the information and I have talked to our vet and precautions have been taken since Day 1. So, unless you have something constructive to share on the subject, please don't send me any messages about how I've signed my cat's death warrant by giving him this medicine. I really don't need that right now.

Sound the All-Clear!

For those of you who haven't heard, The Electric Mayhem went in to the vet yesterday for her second FIV/FeLV test, and she came up negative once again. So both kitties are in the clear on that front.

As an interesting side note, (well, it was interesting to me, anyway) each of the cats has a distinct preference in radio selections for their trips to the vet. The Big Acoustic Kitty prefers to listen to either the classical or the jazz station in the car. Lately he's been leaning more towards jazz. The Electric Mayhem really prefers to listen to the complaints of another cat in the car with her. (She feeds on their distress - it calms her right down.) However, yesterday it was just the two of us in the car, and after trying classical (an opera selection - I didn't think she needed the encouragement) and jazz and a few of the commercial stations with no success, she settled down as soon as I put the baseball game on. I don't know if it sounded familiar to her from all of her multiple-inning cuddle sessions with the Amazing Husbandini, or if she's just really been following the playoffs this year or what, but that's what did it for her yesterday. Guess we'll have to get her a Colorado Rockies collar now.

Anyway, now that she's gotten her clean bill of health, she's begun agitating for minions. Is this not the face of a cat who needs some?

(Not the greatest quality photo in the world, but it does capture her personality.)

Two Months

We lost Ziggy two months ago today. Some days I can putter along just fine, and some days I just cry all over the kitties. I won't go into a lot of detail, but it's become pretty obvious that all the emotions that had to be set aside for a while in order to get through the move and everything else that has gone on recently are now coming to the surface and need to be dealt with. It's not pretty, but in an odd way it does feel better to finally get them out.

The Electric Mayhem goes in this week for her second FIV/FeLV test. We're pretty confident that she will come up clean again, though we're still keeping our fingers crossed. At that point, we will have to decide whether to adopt again. Even in those last few days we had with Ziggy, we started to talk about adopting another cat, or even a pair of them. After he was gone, and there was such a huge void in our household, we knew that we would adopt again if the follow-up FIV tests would let us. The talk about adopting has been pretty regular over the past two months. So it's not a matter of "if" but of "when". But as the time has drawn closer, I've been feeling more and more uncertain about the whole idea of looking for another cat. This uncertainty is tied directly into where I am in the whole grief process. I won't spell out and dissect just where I am on the Kubler-Ross model (how do you do an umlaut in HTML?), but suffice it to say that I finally realized that my hesitancy to adopt is strictly emotional.

There are plenty of good reasons for us TO adopt: Ziggy was a wonderful, friendly boy who just wanted to be happy and for everyone else to be happy. He would be completely in favor of us adopting again. There are a lot of kitties out there who need homes, and we have plenty of room to take one or two of them in. The Electric Mayhem needs a companion to keep her busy. (Or maybe a minion.) The Amazing Husbandini and I are "cat people" - loving kitties is what we DO.

I've looked online at some of the cats available in our area, and I find that I'm most drawn to big grey/tabby boys - and I don't know if that's a sign that it's not time yet, or if it's just a good sign that I'm drawn to any of them at all. (In my defense, I've always had a huge soft spot for tabbies.) The last thing I want to do is to go into the process looking for Ziggy. I would give a lot to somehow have him come back to us, but I don't want to replace him. That would be unfair to us, and it would certainly be unfair to any potential adoptee kitty.

The Amazing Husbandini (super wonderful intelligent man that he is) has suggested just going to the shelter with no plans to adopt and just seeing how it feels. Not even go in and see if any of the cats "speak" to us, but just go and see how it feels to be in the shelter. That's probably an excellent first step. In my head, I have this image of the shelter where we adopted Ziggy - but the shelter is empty, and all I can see is the absence of Ziggy. Intellectually I know that's not how it will be - the shelter will be full of cats (it's a cage-free facility, though they do have several "cat rooms" along each side of the main space) and people and noise, and there will be a lot to focus on beside the fact that the last time we were there, we were adopting Ziggy.

Well, anyway. As you can tell from the quality of the writing today, I'm going through the messy part of all these emotions. Aside from the vet appointment later this week, I also have a trip coming up later this month to visit the parentals. So there's nothing that needs to be done until the end of the month. We're very tentatively looking at Halloween weekend for our first visit to the shelter. That's three-plus weeks away, which will be even more time to work through all these emotions. We'll see what happens.

(And I'm not discounting the possibility that I might come back from my trip with some new additions. My parents haven't adopted since we lost The 'Tude a few years back, though my mother would really like to. If the local shelters play their cards right, I might find myself hauling some Nebraska kitties back to Colorado with me. It is so very within the realm of possibility.)

Painting

Last night over dinner, I was trying to explain to The Amazing Husbandini how I was feeling in the area of art creation. I thought that I might repeat my explanation here, but I'm not sure how successful I'll be; I can't seem to speak coherently without excessive hand gesturing, and that doesn't translate well into a blog post.

In the 10-ish years I was a cubicle troll for various companies, I had gradually lost most of my interest in painting. When I did paint, while there was some enjoyment to be had, there was also and underlying feeling of desperation - that creativity needed to provide an escape, or else it really wasn't worth spending the time on. And not only did that escape have to be emotional, but it needed to be financial as well. If I couldn't sell some of my artwork - make that time pay for itself - there was a part of me that felt like it was all a waste. Granted, there were some self-esteem/recognition issues tied up in that as well, but having a dozen people tell me they loved something I painted was nowhere near the same as holding a big, fat check in my hand. I was trying to use the artwork as an escape route from my 8-to-5 life, and in the end, all I managed to do was turn it into a commodity.

I was cleaning off a table in the studio the other day and ran across a collection of photocopies of checks that I had saved from various art sales I'd made. While I will keep the one I received from Tadashi Hayakawa (having a well-known, respected artist shell out for one of my paintings was a thrill, regardless of any of the rest of this) the rest of them are going in the shredder. Some of the pieces I've sold - including "Sunbeam Cat", the watercolor that Mr. Hayakawa bought - are long gone - getting them ready to show and/or sell was more important than bothering to scan and save them so that I would have a record of what I had done. The level of desperation and screwed-up-ness that represents is something that I'm just now recognizing.

Not that I got into all of that part of it over nachos and iced tea last night - that's just a little background for you.

What I was trying to gesticulate to TAH last night was that now, after five months of unemployment (wow, already?), I feel like I want to paint again. I feel like I'm standing right on the edge of jumping into a huge burst of creative something - and I feel happy and interested in the whole process. Not excited, exactly, though that is a part of it. Excited was always a part of it before - any time there was a new idea or technique or what have you that felt like it was another part of that paint-myself-to-a-better-place puzzle, I was excited. Excited wasn't the problem. Happy was what was missing, unless there was money involved. The other sign for me now is the amount of information that I'm trying to take in to help me improve what I'm doing. As my mother could tell you, I have always had a short temper when it came to my artistic shortcomings. And it's a flaw of mine that I always want to get artwork perfect the first time. Spending time practicing and experimenting with better ways to do something hasn't traditionally been one of my best things. But I've been looking at some of the photos we brought back from vacation, and some of the sketches and ideas I've been holding onto, and I don't feel the rush to churn something out and get it right up on Etsy. I've been looking at them as artistic challenges that need to be considered and worked on bit by bit.

I still have my Etsy shop. I'm not rejecting the idea of exchanging some of my artwork for cash. Kibble still costs money and I'm still unemployed, after all. I've tried talking the cats into getting jobs, but they keep declining. But I'd much rather take my time and fill it with pieces I'm really proud of and that I enjoy than with stuff I'm just spitting out in an attempt to keep myself on the map.

So there it is, friends and neighbors. It's a better story when told with hand gestures, but this gets the gist of it across.

Next post: Cat Photos!