Tag: kitten

Happy 56th birthday to me

Today I’m 56 years old.

This is not me. This is Belvedere the kitten, who’s 4 days old



For you younger people out there — time just chugs along and you hardly notice it until you get to one of those milestone years — 40, 50, 55. You’re too fixated on things like careers and children to wake up and think, “wow, I’m getting older.” 

The grey hairs, the wrinkles, the thickening of the body come gradually, until you look in the mirror and see someone who looks older than you remember being. 

You don’t even notice that the cultural touchstones — the music stars, the memes and jokes — flow and change around you, and you wake up one morning to find that the younger people around you don’t get your jokes anymore. 

But you’ve survived so much!  Everyday events that would panic you before — a flat tire, sleeping through the alarm — you now handle with aplomb. Your fears that you can’t handle crises have been proven wrong time after time. 

And you have stories to tell. Middle age (late middle-age?) is a great time to start writing. Or find friends who like to tell stories and swap them. 

When you’re older, you have the perspective of years, and that is your gift to the world.

Belly cat and updates

Update:

 Belvedere the kitten (Belly for short) is still alive in his fourth day, slurping down syringefuls of milk and sleeping in happy milky drunkenness. He’s absolutely tiny:


I’m not quite getting enough sleep given his every two hour feeding schedule, but this too will pass.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten a few more rejections from agents and I just don’t know what to do about “this doesn’t really grab me” comments. Still haven’t heard from DAW and it’s officially been six months.

I wrote another short story I’m thinking of posting here but, since my stories are the least read of anything I post (TL; DR?) I don’t know if I will.

Waiting for another idea to come my way.

 In other words, I’d feel down except for the kitten. Kittens somehow exude happy chemicals. 

I’m Mom to a Baby Kitten!

Life can change at a moment’s notice. One moment the waters are perfectly calm, then a hasty decision can create turbulence that roils the waters for weeks, or even years, to come.

We’ve taken on a foster kitten.

Belvedere (Belly Cat for short) is a newborn orange-and-white kitten whose mother rejected him at birth. We don’t know why; he might have a defect or she might have had too many mouths to feed.



We’re feeding him by syringe every 2 hours, which means we’re waking up for dinner time every two hours. He’s pooped once and peed several times, so the plumbing works. Right now he’s calm, but when he screams, he sounds like a squeaky toy. 

The other cats will have nothing to do with him. Girlie gave him a good sniff and then hissed at him (because newborn kittens are threatening). 

I hope Belly survives. I hope he’s not too burdened not having a mommy. I hope he grows up to be a cuddly cat. We’re doing our best.