Ophelia, Part 3

Ophelia died of lung cancer last Saturday evening. She was seven and a half.

She loved our boys. She would let them crawl up to her as babies, grab her ears, bury their faces in her belly.

She sat on our lap for hours, purring. Her claws were perpetually out. Many of my pants have snags because of her, and all our towels, but I don't regret a single misplaced thread.

We have spots all over the basement carpet where she threw up or couldn't make the litter box. She wheezed the past few years, but we thought it was asthma because she is chubby. The vet didn't catch the tumor when we took her in for an ear infection six months ago. Cancer in cats is hard to catch. But if you think your cat is sick, if you think she's having trouble breathing, it might be worth getting an X-ray.

She moved from south Salt Lake to our Sandy apartment to our new house. She doted on all three of our boys. She scratched my husband's chest when she was resting there and our two-year-old sent an empty milk gallon down the stairs, she killed countless spiders and flies and ate them, and she was the sweetest, snuggliest cat I've ever met.

This is Ophelia, as of last week. She loved the boys even on her sick blanket. And now our baby keeps chasing Scout, who is far more skittish, just hoping that she'll let him snuzzle her fur like her sister used to. She won't, but that won't stop him from trying...

I miss my chubsy cat.

Ophelia, Part 2

This part may seem to be about Scout. And it kind of is. But Ophelia is there, always there, the cute mewling innocent instigator...

Okay. So we got a one-bedroom apartment. It was small, and in the basement, so our cats could hunt all the interesting bugs that came inside. They also liked to play chase, dashing from living room down the hall into the bathroom and jumping inside the empty bathtub before sprinting out again. They always followed that pattern, no matter who was the chaser and who was the chasee: from living room to hall to bathtub, skid and tumble out and repeat for many wild minutes.

I graduated in May of 2007. My husband graduated in April. And on the morning of his graduation he shaved, picked out a button-up shirt and black pants, and ran some hot bathwater. He left the door open, because we were married, and it was our very own apartment, and he didn't really think about it. He settled back into the bubbles.

And Ophelia decided it was time to play chase.

Ophelia was a stockier build than Scout, so you could hear her when she started up in the living room. I was on the bed, reading, and I didn't really think about it when they rushed down the hall, Scout in the lead with Ophelia close behind.

Then I heard the splash. A shout from my husband. A squeaky, frantic pawing. I stood up, peering around the corner. And this is what I saw:
 

See that trail of toilet paper? And that wet cat? Do you also notice THE TOTALLY DRY CAT IN THE BACK? That would be Ophelia...

Ophelia had chased Scout right into the full bathtub. Scout tried to twist in the air, jumping at the walls and landing on my husband's leg. She clawed her way out, toilet paper stuck to her wet paw and trailing after her.

The fateful bathtub

Post-soaking Scout

Ow

Of course my husband got dressed. He graduated. We smiled for pictures.

It would be easy to blame Scout. She's our vocal cat with the loud Siamese meow, the one who follows me around and demands water from my hand and laptime on her terms. Ophelia was always sweet, chubby and floppy, always relaxed on the bed. But Scout wasn't the chaser that time, on the Day of the Bloody-Leg Graduation...

Look at how forgiving he is! Or maybe Ophelia's just too snuggly to resist.

TOMORROW: the conclusion I don't want to write.

Ophelia, Part 1

Once upon a time in 2006, my husband and I adopted sister Siamese kittens from Wasatch Animal Rescue. We named one Scout, and one Ophelia.

Scout liked to be alert. When we took them home, Scout yowled loudly in the crate, demanding to be released.

Ophelia sat in the back. She didn't make a sound.

Our kittens got used to the basement where we lived. They slept on our bed and pounced on our feet all the night long. I was going to graduate school at the University of Utah, and my husband was finishing his bachelor's degree at BYU. We studied sometimes. But it was more fun to play...

You can see why!

Ophelia always had those light brown marks on her back as a baby. When she got older, she got darker, until she was almost black. We jokingly called her our "watermelon cat."

Teen Ophelia.

Cheap camera + cat gaining weight = flattering picture? Only Ophelia could pull it off. Especially when you imagine petting that chubby fuzzy belly...

Within two months we moved out of the basement into our very own one-bedroom apartment in south Salt Lake City. The dishwasher door could touch the wall, the police often came to chat with various drug-loving neighbors, and the walls smelled like fungus. But it was ours and we loved it. So did our cats.

Then Scout sort of accidentally attacked, and things got bloody...

TO BE CONTINUED

Life Stuff

New stuff in my life:

1. Our three-year-old son is on the autistic spectrum. Like he has Aspergers, except Aspergers isn't a thing anymore, so spectrum is a good word to know? Anyway, he's still cute, and he still draws some excellent brick fences, and we all love him a lot.

2. One of our cats is sick, but it's looking like she probably has pneumonia instead of lung cancer since antibiotics seem to be working. This is definitely a good thing.

3. Have you ever tried bringing a crawling nine-month-old, a three-year-old, a five-year-old, and a thirteen-pound cat to a vet with you as the ONLY ADULT RESPONSIBLE PERSON? I have! Also, I am still alive! This seems like something to be proud of.

4. I love writing. And reading. And you, if you read or write. Seriously, stories keep me sane.

I drew this picture of a Unicat for you. I guess technically it has wings, so it's an alicorn-cat (an alicat. Get it?), but I made this song about unicats in third grade that I wrote on sheet music and everything, so the name sorta stuck...

My First ARC!

I have never read an ARC before, but I won one.

Allow that to sink in.

I won an ARC! And not just any ARC, but a copy of THE WHATNOT by Stefan Bachmann! And it came in the mail today! And there were doodles, and chocolates, and I am so excited to read more, and yay!

Oh, and since this is an exclamation-mark post: one of my critique partners got an agent!!! I do not know if I am allowed to brag for her, but this is a super agent, and she is an excellent writer, and I am so excited to read her books when they are published with beautiful haunting covers in a form I can hold in my hands! This makes me happy. As does the chocolate I keep eating while I type (poor, sticky exclamation-mark key...).

So! Here is a picture of my new ARC:

from the best jellysfishy blog because I am too lazy to go find the cord to upload my picture onto the computer, but isn't it pretty? or at least creepy and geary? I love it!

Moral of the post: keep writing! I love all these exciting, exclamation-worthy books!

Whew!

AHHHH my oldest son just finished his first week of kindergarten and my middle son is starting to potty train and my baby is cute and I just read the last chapter of my second book edit and now I'm going to change stuffs on the computer and print out a new copy. Did I mention grading? And students? And I got a new hair cut and color that is really dark brown-red?

I think I will just look at this picture I took at the hot air balloon festival for a while and pretend I am still there. Mmmmm...summer...

Who am I kidding? I love school and being crazy-busy--but that's a secret, so don't tell!

SCHOOL

It starts.

We went to kindergarten testing today. I told my son tests are like a game. "You get points when you answer right," I said, "kind of like the stars you get in Angry Birds. It'll be fun!"

He came out. "It was fun," he told me. "And there were lots of books! Volcano books and earthquake books and space books and crab books..."

Here's to school, and to the hope that he can keep his childlike enthusiasm for the next twelve-plus years!

Five-year-old on Grandpa's shoulders. Between teacher meetings and kindergarten prep and my parents in town and my grandfather's funeral and THREE KIDS ALL THE TIME, I have been a bit of an absentee blogger.  But look! Hot air balloons! With rainbows! Am I forgiven?