Today I was thinking about what I was up to this time last year. In June 2005 one of our cats, Melon, was sick. Very sick. In fact at one point I thought she was going to die in my arms right then and there. It was terrifying and in the end very expensive.

We saved some money by getting the medicine, shots, and subQ fluid accoutrements and doing the treatments myself. Force-feeding her thin wet food every four hours, putting needles under her skin to get some fluids into her, giving her vitamin and antibiotic shots, getting pills down her throat. The house was vibrating all day from some earth tamping machine for the construction behind us. It was bad.

All it took was stamina and having a stronger will than hers was to just go lie in the corner and die. With that particular illness that’s really what the best cure was: having a tenacious will and the time to feed and force pills and fluids. Those are two things I have in spades.

I found out just how tough I was. And how buoyant Melon was too. After a few weeks she started eating on her own. We experimented with all kinds of foods: baby foods, tuna with supplements, raw fish from the deli. We started buying weird crap from the exotic foods aisle and hit on a winner she would consistently eat: tinned kipper snack. Blegh that stuff is gross. But I don’t like fish unless its sushi anyway.

This morning, a year later, I woke up and she was making her little “meh” sounds at me, saying “It’s time for the wet food, Mom!” At first I was annoyed and wanted to do other stuff first - like get some damned coffee. Then I thought how great it was that she was here, bugging me for food like nothing had happened last year.

Now all three eat the canned Iams food and have access to two different dry foods that they snack on as well. They’re probably overweight. In Melon and Kurry’s cases, having both been through scary illnesses where I could feel their spines they were so skinny, they can eat all they damned well please.

In knitting news, I knit two skinny pink scarves for think pink yesterday. I have an interesting variety of pink yarn for several more. Yes there is glittery fun fur. But she said any size any material.

I’m out of materials to finish the baby hunter’s cap so that’s on a break until I have the time to get more plush yarn to make a lining for it. Lining the ugg booties went really well! I even learned the magic loop for the second one. Easy peasy. I can see the benefit of it but I think I’m going to stick to two circulars for right now.

*Holy crap I just quoted a song from Cats