Mephistophles. Misty. Slim. Cheeseburgerhead.

Misty really doesn't appear to be doing so well these days.

Eighteen years old, afflicted with a hyperthyroid, and now he has what I think is an eye infection (small amount of nasty gook that I have to clean out of his eye). My poor guy. He's so thin that it breaks my heart every time I run a hand down his back. Bump bump bump against his spine.

Before yesterday, he was still so active. Careening all over the house, tap-dancing on my head in the middle of the night, doing his very best to scale Mt. The Engineer. Purring his machine-gun purr and letting out little squeaky meows. Are you talking to me? Mrreow. Mrreow.

Last night, I came home from an movie outing with Wemble and Misty was just...not the same. He didn't eat any of the dinner I set on the floor for the cats and only appeared to be interested in the water bowl. And when the Engineer came downstairs from his apartment, Misty didn't run to pester him like he always does. He just laid quietly on the floor, occasionally getting up to pace over to me and sit in my lap without struggle. He even let me clip his nails, front and back without complaint. And that is something that has never happened in his entire life.

He didn't want any food, but mangled a few treats I slipped him from the treat bag when I gave him his medication and cleaned out his eyes. Later on, as I was heading to bed, I found him in the hallway making pukey noises, but no vomit actually made an appearance. Not even any fluid. When I come home tonight, I'm going to bring with me a couple of cans of good catfood to see if that will tempt him into eating, especially since he didn't appear to eat this morning either.

I don't know. He's not in any pain, but just seems to keep withering away, bit by bit and he just hasn't been the same since my mother died. I hesitate to take him to the vet's office because he gets so very distressed whenever I put him in the carrier. And what are they going to tell me? He's eighteen freaking years old and has a progressing disease that medication doesn't do anything for anymore.

I damn well know what decision I need to make. I just don't want to do it. I really don't want to.

I reckon I will see how he's doing when I get home from work tonight. And depending on his condition, I'll go from there.

love letters and alt.gothic

Browsing through my past posts on Usenet, I found this post I'd written on 06-22-02 on alt.gothic. Amazingly, I still like what I wrote. It may be something I expand at a later date.

Love letters are a virus, a sickness.

I used to compulsively write love letters.
Hundreds upon hundreds of daily missives
written either with tap-tapping fingers
on a keyboard or a slowly scrawling
pen on paper. I promised the moon and
stars, I debased myself. I begged to be
Jerusalem. I painted an apple gold and
mailed it with a little scroll reading
"for the most beautiful". I wrote cotton
candy stories. I sent a platypus and an
armidillo in a box.


I put so much of myself into these actions.
I breathed life into my words and shed
blood for the same.


Every word put onto paper was an effort
to show the receipient how much I loved
them, that my words could be believed.
If I could have torn my heart from my
chest and lived, then you damn well know
that it would have been wrapped up in
a neat, little parcel and shipped off Priority
Mail.


I made myself a fool with those words
and offerings. Writing gave my thoughts
a permenance that speech never could.
Writing made it more powerful, more
palpable.


And in return, I received other words. And
other gifts. I still have all of those things,
despite the fact that the men who sent
them are no longer my lovers.


"Words endure, flesh does not."


Truer words have never been spoken.
Which is why I no longer write love letters,
much to my present lover's terrible
apparent dismay. I don't trust words
anymore and therefore refuse to inflict
them, in a love letter sense, upon anyone
ever again.