Tag: pets

A Day of New Beginnings (and One Very Determined Cat)

Well, today was one of those days that reminds you why you do this mad, wonderful job.

We finally met Paul — the artist who is going to bring the worlds of Bella Bruce, Avery Beckett, Tara Benson Boyd and KS Buckley to life on the page. All four series, all four very different universes, one very talented human. And I am delighted to tell you that he is an absolute gem. We met the whole family today and they are just lovely — the kind of people you feel like you’ve known for years after an afternoon together. I had one of those moments where everything just… clicks. This is going to be the right fit for a long time. I can feel it.

We workshopped a mountain of ideas — particularly around Of Fables and Fantasies and where she goes next — and I have thoughts. Many thoughts. Possibly too many thoughts, in the way that only happens when you’re sitting across from someone who actually gets what you’re trying to do. I’ll untangle those for you in a separate post when my brain has had a chance to settle.

For now though, I am just sitting in the very happy glow of a creative partnership that feels like it’s going to be something special.

In entirely unrelated news: I purchased a cat bed today. A very nice cat bed. Specifically purchased for our two smallest residents, who are currently being supervised by fourteen others and deserve a space of their own.

Reader, I did not anticipate that our largest child would take one look at this bed and simply decide that it belonged to her. Only her head fits in it. Just her head. She is aware of this. She has made her peace with it. She is, in fact, aggressively comfortable with just her head in a cat bed that was designed for an animal approximately one fifth of her size.

I present to you: V2 alias FattyPuff. The Pusheen bed is on her head. The entire rest of her is somewhere behind it, living its best life on my window seat. The little pink cat cushion in the background is witnessing this and has opinions. Fattypuff has none. Fattypuff has only vibes.

The small cats, for whom the bed was purchased, remain bedless.

She is magnificent and she knows it. 🖤Photographic evidence below, because some things need to be seen to be believed.

It’s fine. Everything is fine.

It was still a really good day. 🐾

The Morning After the Night Before (I Wasn’t Even Invited)

I woke up this morning to what can only be described as a crime scene.

Toys scattered the length of the hallway. Blankets dragged from the tables. Cat beds flipped upside down. Feed bowls — every single one — upended, with kibble spread across the floor in that particular pattern that I can only compare to stepping on Lego in bare feet at two in the morning, except instead of Lego it’s biscuits, and instead of your child’s bedroom it’s your entire kitchen, and instead of one small architect of chaos there are fifteen.

Fifteen.

I have fifteen cats. Not one of them looked remotely sorry.

They had, by all available evidence, thrown themselves an absolute rave while I slept. I don’t know what the occasion was. I don’t know who DJ’d. I wasn’t invited, which I think is a little rude given that I pay for the kibble that was now distributed evenly across every inch of flooring, but apparently that’s not the kind of detail that concerns them.

They looked, if anything, rather pleased with themselves.

I, on the other hand, woke up with a headache and a toothache and approximately zero capacity for dealing with any of this. So I cleaned up the kibble — because what else do you do — and then I did what any sensible person does on a day like that. I slacked off. Properly, deliberately, without apology.

I watched lawnmowing videos. If you’ve never fallen into the lawnmowing video corner of the internet, I can’t fully explain it to you, but there is something profoundly soothing about watching someone else tame an overgrown lawn when your own head is doing what mine was doing today. I recommend it highly.

I also pottered around the edges of the bookish things I need to finish — nothing strenuous, nothing demanding, just the gentle kind of work that lets you feel like you’re still moving without having to actually push.

Some days are like that. You don’t fight them. You clean up the kibble, you make the tea, you let the cats sleep off whatever that was, and you keep going gently until tomorrow arrives with a bit more grace.

Tomorrow will be better. It usually is.

(The cats are already eyeing the cat beds again. I’m choosing not to think about it.)