Okay, so it was the Grandma, the Younger Human, and his Much Better Half...but still, people. AND THEY TOUCHED ME.





Oh, he was a total suck up tonight, being all nice and not bitey, making himself seem like a perfectly normal and almost affectionate kitty.

I wasn't totally anti-social. I did come out to see if there was food and if it was something I wanted. And I did allow my personal space to be invaded, because I like the Grandma and the Younger Human and his Much Better Half. And I didn't try to hit her face the way I did the younger Human's that one time...

They need to come back more often. I like it when Buddah's nice, and there was pizza. If there was pizza once, there will surely be pizza again.

Maybe next time I'll get that kiss.

I was doing this at 5:30 this morning: sitting on the arm of the Woman's chair, staring at her.

This is a perfectly normal thing for me to do; I spend a lot of time trying to make her put the computer down so I can sit in her lap. This last week I haven't had to stare--she felt bad for me so I got a lap anytime I wanted and she got no work done.

But this morning she looked at me and said, "Clearly, you feel all right, cat. Here I thought you were going to die, but apparently you just caught a bug."

I refuted that; I do not eat bugs.

But then she said the horrible, awful, no good thing: "You owe me $500 in vet bills, you little shit."

Well now. *I* did not ask her to take me to the stabby guy. *I* did not consent to the theft of my blood, and I certainly did not tell her that since they were already taking my blood, they might as well do the super-expensive send-to-an-outside-lab tests. No, that was all on her.

She can bill me if she wants, but I'm totally not paying.

And I'm still gonna make her get up in the middle of the night to feed me. That kinda power is GLORIOUS.

Okay. I'm still here.

I'm eating, and I'm up to roughly 2/3 of what I ate before on a good day. Better: I'm enthusiastic about it and I'm asking for food every 3 hours or so.

The Woman wasn't too happy to be woken up at 5:15 this morning, but she got up and opened a can for me anyway. And she has to give me props, because yesterday I woke her at 3 in the morning. It was almost like letting her sleep in today.

Just in case, the stabby guy gave the people some of the meds that will make me want to eat, so if I stop eating again, they can shove one down my throat, tell me how sorry they are and what a good boy I am, and by the next day I should want food again.

The Woman says she's not quite as worried about me dying suddenly, or finding me curled up on the bed not as asleep as I look, but she's also not declaring me perfectly fine. But for now, I'm at least okay. Eating and drinking, begging for her lap when she's in the middle of something because that's just funny when I know she's trying to be super nice to me.

And last night I decided her head was going to share the pillow with me, and I turned it and her face into a nice, comfy bed. And she let me.

Doods...you can get away with SO much when the people think you're super sick.

I don't recommend testing it because it ends up in a visit to the stabby place where you actually get stabbed, but if you have to feel like crap, it's a benefit.

I'm not ashamed...I totally cuddled

Doods, if you follow along on FB or read the Woman's blog, you know I haven't felt well for a good part of this week. I haven't been eating and felt rotten enough that I didn't sleep a whole lot from Wednesday-Friday.

The Woman's blogs posts are here, here, and here.

Long story short: I've been to the stabby guy twice, had blood stolen, been stabbed a couple times, had water shoved into my skin, and a pill jammed down my throat. I finally got some sleep Friday night, several hours spent stretched out on top of the Woman while she tried to sleep, but wanting food is still eluding me.

I ate a little bit at 3:15 this morning, and a little bit more at 7:30. I don't think the people will be happy unless I eat a couple more ounces today, and keep eating after that. The appetite stimulant the stabby guy gave me is supposed to last a couple of days, so there's hope that I'll want food again today and tomorrow, and then we have to see what I do.

All my blood work showed things are pretty normal for a guy with thyroid and kidney issues, so if I don't start rebounding, they might look at my heart and intestines. This is kind of a warning; the people promised me a long time ago that they wouldn't put me through a lot of stress when I hit this age, because going to the vet and having things manhandled (even at home) freaks me out.

Still...cross your fingers that this is just One Of Those Things, and that the appetite stimulant was just what I needed to start eating again...stabby dood did say if it worked they could give the people more to give me at home if needed.

On the upside to all this: I get a lap anytime I ask, and the Woman is staying home and not going to Starbucks to work. The only place she's gone is the store, and that's mostly been to get things she think will tempt me to eat. I think after my nap today, I'll plop down on her and ask her to put some Doctor Who on the TV and we can watch that together.

But that's where I am: I don't feel well and no one is really sure why, but they're on top of it and will cater to any whim they think I have.

Ok, the Man installed the LED light in the hallway, and it works pretty well. I can see if Buddah's down there at night. It doesn't keep him from stalking me, but at least I know where he is most of the time.

I don't think the Woman likes it, though, because if she gets up in the middle of the night to pee, it's RIGHT THERE in her eyes, but she's going to put up with it because I'm totally worth it.

No, he really is.

This morning he pooped in front of the litter box. It's not that the box was too gross to use; he did it because he could, because he thinks there's some kind of power play going on and I won't step over it to get into the box.

I totally would have, if the Woman hadn't noticed like 30 seconds later. She cleaned it up, rendering his alpha posturing useless.

He's also been stalking me. He's way too obvious about it, so he winds up getting yelled at and a pointy finger jabbed in his direction. You want to piss Buddah off? Jab a finger at him. You don't even have to get close, he just has to see it. He knows what it means. Sometimes it even makes him cry.

But the worst part about the stalking is that my eyesight is going. He's a black kitty and if he's in the hallway when the lights are off, I can't see him. If I can't judge the threat level, I just won't go down the hall, because I can't trust him to not jump on me and start biting. The other morning, before the Woman got up, I wound up taking my nap in the living room because I knew he was back there somewhere, and I couldn't take a chance.

The Woman noticed. So during the day she's keeping the hall lights on, and at night there's a night light now. It's not quite bright enough, so this week the Man is stalling a floor-level LED strip. That should give me enough to at least figure out where Buddah is, but not so bright that it bothers the people while they sleep.

Kitchen lights are on at night. The front porch light is on and it's bright enough to make the living room visible.

None of this would be needed if Buddah wasn't such a furry little asterisk.

I know y'all think he's cute. You can be cute and a jerkwad at the same time, though. I miss the days when I was bigger than he was and could pin him to the floor with a warning growl.

Getting old sucks.

I've always stared at the Woman, trying to get her to do my bidding. Historically, I've stared at her from a distance: on the floor, on another chair, while lounging on the storage thingy that lives under the window that she keeps saying she wants to get rid of but still hasn't. In order for distance staring to be effective, however, I have to meow at her every now and then to make sure she knows I'm still there.

Lately, I've been sitting on the arm of her chair while she plays online or as she works. Sometimes she's watching TV or reading. It doesn't matter  what she's doing, just that she's in the comfy chair in the living room and trying to concentrate on something.

So I jump up, and she always asks me what I want. Head rubs? A lap?

I don't answer.

I just stare.

She goes back to whatever she's been doing; if she's not online or working, she'll pat her lap and tell me I'm welcome to it, but nine times out of ten she's not wearing pants and her lap is too squishy without pants, so I stay where I am, and stare.

After a few minutes, she tends to look up, then at the clock, and then informs me of how long it is until Food O'clock. It's pointless; my stomach knows exactly what time it is. I don't need to be told.

So I sit.

And stare.

She goes back to whatever she's doing, until she feels the creepiness of unblinking eyes on her, and then asks what I want.

I don't answer.

Inevitably, she gets fed up with it and sets aside whatever she's doing and gets up, heads to the kitchen, and calls out that I might as well follow. She's getting a treat for us, or giving us lunch early. Sometimes she just picks me up and sets me on the floor, telling me to just go be a cat somewhere else.

I wait a minute or two, and jump back up.

She's getting very good at ignoring me, though. Last night I sat on the arm of her chair for an hour and a half, staring, waiting, wondering how long it would take her to break.

She rubbed my head every now and then. She offered a lap. But then she went back to reading or writing, and didn't tell me how much longer it was until dinner.

So I moved closer.

I didn't meow.

I just waited.

I picked something on her face to hone in on, knowing that sooner or later she would realize I wasn't simply staring at her, but staring at something.

After a while, she glanced at me, then rubbed her chin and mumbled that she knows she needs to shave. Menopause is a bitch, and she can grow a goatee if she leaves it alone.

Right at 90 minutes, she sighed and said, "Fine. All right. I'll get up and feed you."

I wasn't even hungry, but that wasn't the point.

The point was winning, and I totally did.

Where the heck does that saying come from, anyway? Teeth don't have skin. I mean, some of you need a good dental cleaning but no one that I'm aware of has actual skin on their teeth. If you do? Ew.

Anyway, I just made it. Another day and it would have been a month since I posted, and I said I wasn't gonna do that chit anymore. I was going to post more often. So what the heck happened?

Well, stuff happened, I guess. the biggest thing being that the Younger Human finally trapped the girl and dragged her off (kicking and screaming, I'm sure) to marry him.

Okay, fine. No one kicked and no one screamed. As I understand it (because I was not invited, but don't be upset on my behalf. That damned Dog Butters and his sister Lady weren't invited, either, and they LIVE with him. A bunch of people weren't invited, because it wasn't a big wedding and pretty much just people who were close here went) the whole thing was rather lovely and the place where they held it was almost as beautiful as the bride, and everyone was 67 kinds of happy.

Why not 70?

Because they're people, and people don't round up as often as they should.

So now the Younger Human has a wife! I'm glad I lived long enough to see it happen.


 This also happened, a new cover for paperback of The Emperor of San Francisco:


Now, these are proof copies, and the final cover was tweaked a little bit more (the title got bigger and the series line is a little different) and we're not sure how we wound up with five when it should have been one...so here's your chance. If you haven't read any of the books and want to jump in from the start, you can snag--for free--one of these. You'll be the only 5 people in the world with this exact cover. All you have to do is comment here that you want one, and then email the Woman at [email protected] with your name and mailing address...make the sure the subject line in the email says I WANT A PROOF COPY so she's sure to see it.

They'll be sent via USPS media mail, which is basically on the slow boat.

If you already have a copy, please leave this for people who haven't got one yet. And if you'd rather have one with the final cover, it's up on Amazon.


Oh, the other thing that kept me from blogging. THERE'S A DOCTOR WHO MARATHON ON RIGHT NOW! It's been on all week, and I've been sitting in the living room watching it.

Okay, I took a few naps because I'm old and naps happen, but I've watched A LOT of Who this week. And I will be all week. You know why?

NEXT WEEK THE NEW SEASON OF WHO STARTS, STARRING MY FUTURE WIFE THE DOCTOR!

Guys, I honestly wasn't sure I'd be around to see this season, but I am and it's gonna be AWESOME. If something happens to me between now and next Sunday I'm gonna be so pissed. So no one gets to cough on me or lick me or sneeze near me.

Oh yeah...she's gonna be AMAZING.

This is what the Woman walked out to at 7:30 this morning.


Buddah managed to hork all over her chair AND he nailed the rug. He's fine; he just throws up a lot.

No idea how I didn't post for over a month. I really thought it was a couple weeks at the most. I suppose I lost track because I was busy taking care of a sick person, but she's mostly better now. But now that she's better I don't have much to do. While I wait on the edits for the newest book I'm dabbling in a bit of poetry again, but there's not much else for an old guy to.

Well, there's this:


We've had the fake fireplace since we moved in, and I don't think I've ever been on top of it. Buddah gets up there a lot; it's one of his favorite places to lounge, but he has a little bit of arthritis in his hips now and jumping up there isn't as easy. The people noticed he was thinking really hard every time he wanted to go up, and a couple times lately he's almost missed.

Since he's a kitty that likes to be up high, and he gets embarrassed easy, the Woman took this cat tree from near the corner of her desk where it rarely got used, and stuck it by the fake fireplace. So of course I had to investigate.

The problem for me now is I don't have an easy time getting down off that tree. The round thing isn't as big as I need it to be, so the Man is going to build a better step so I can use it, too.

Usually he takes over my stuff. This might be fun, taking his.

I've had a couple of requests on this lately, so... I present, the Reading Order of the Wick Books:

The Wick Chronicles
The Emperor of San Francisco
Ozoo
Forked

Wick After Dark
The Space Between Whens
The Blessings of Saint Wick

Return of the Wick Chronicles
The Whens of Wick
The Book of Hyrum
Jump (end of summer release; title subject to change)


Look at this. LOOK!


Last night I didn't finish my 9pm snack, thinking I would save a little bit for later. The Woman and I were at the desk doing some rewrites and I looked up, and BUDDAH WAS EATING MY FOOD! Worse yet, he hadn't even eaten all of his own! HE HAD FOOD ON THE COUNTER!


Woman, go fix this. Make him stop.

Spoiler:
She did not make him stop.


For the most part, the rearranging of things has stopped. Now the people are trying to get things cleaned up, because rearranging everything creates a bigger mess than it cleans up.

Also, they put a new rug in the living room, so Buddah and I are trying to decide who gets to be the first to barf on it. The Man cleaned the other rug that went into the front room, and I made sure I horked on it a day later, because rugs in homes with kitties should never be hork-free. That's like a law. Or something.


We've had the hots here a lot lately, prompting a lot of people-whining. But dang, doods, it's summer, what do they expect?

The Woman just wants to go outside and ride her shiny neon pink bicycle but is too lazy to get up at WTF o'clock to ride before it gets hot. She SAYS that's because it's still dark out when it's not that hot, and she's night blind, but we all know the truth.

Lazy.

I really do think that in a previous life, she was a cat.

Spot the kitty...

...and as expected, Buddah lost his chit and thought we'd moved again. But he's reaped the most so far; he loves to be UP, and now he has an even better UP than he had before. He still has the staircase-like bookcases to climb (on the left there, only partially visible) but now they lead to the top of the Very Tall bookcases, and at the end of those he has the TARDIS where he can hide and nap.

When they get done with the other room, which used to be the living room, he'll have another UP, but not as high up. Well, two more UPs if you include one he's already got. I'm totally on board with him getting so much out of this, because maybe then he'll leave me alone.

There was a near disaster yesterday. We ran out of steak bites. Like, I ate the last of them in the morning and realized that was it for the day. The Woman said she was sorry (but I don't believe it) and if I wanted a snack it had to be something else. I almost told her to shove that other snack, but then I realized it was roast beef, so I ate it. And tonight, there were fresh steak bites! The People sacrificed and went out for dinner and brought home a steak for me to last the week.

 No, I am not spoiled. Why do you ask?

Ok, I've been 17 for 10 whole days, and I have to say, I kind of enjoy being an old man. There's been steak literally every day. I mean, the other day the Man was outside grilling a steak for me, and then he and the Woman had sandwiches. If that doesn't mean I rate the highest here, I don't know what does.


It's been wicked hot outside lately, so the Woman has been staying home to work more than she's been going over to Starbucks. We're still waiting on stuff to finish The Book of Hyrum, so we dove into the next one, and doods, we got, like, 80% of the vomit draft done. At first we were just going to take more notes for it, but then we started writing, and...boom. A book started to form.


Last night while we were working, I looked up and the Woman had actual tears in her eyes. And I was all, what this isn't sad stuff, lady. Because it's not. And she was all, well it's not sad but it is stressful and feels really unfair to do this to such a nice person. So I reminded her that he's not real and then she threw the computer across the room and yelled WELL HE IS TO ME.

True story.

Well, some of it.


The People are starting to talk about rearranging all the rooms here. Like, the library becomes the living room and the living room becomes the office and the office becomes the dammit room. This happens every now and then because they got so used to moving every couple of years thanks to the USAF, but actual moving sucks, so they make everything feel new. The thing is, Buddah's gonna THINK we moved and lose his damned mind over it.

So no one tell him.

It will amuse me, and at my age, being amused is important.


The house is going to be totally trashed while they do this. We could have a party and they'd never even know it.


This is me, hard at work. Staring. Because it seems like that's what I do while we're writing. Think and stare. Think and stare.



And yeah, there's A LOT of cat hair on that sofa. Like, a ton.

Seventeen.

This time last year, the Woman was pretty sure I wouldn't last this long, but here I am, and I feel better this year than last.

I got my presents early this year, mostly because the People aren't sure exactly what day my birthday really is, and they figure my actual birthday was a week or two ago. Today there will be steak, just for me (but I'll share with Buddah because I'm not a monster) and naps on the big bed, and after dinner I'll hop onto the Woman's lap and we'll watch some TV or a movie.

It's not as exciting as getting my driver's license last year, but that's all right.

I made it to seventeen. officially, and honestly...I didn't think I'd get here, either.

That was what the Woman asked when she walked into the bedroom and saw this:

Look close...Buddah is there...

And the answer is, of course, yes, she should worry. But really she should only worry a little bit about us being in the same room together, and more about Buddah finding his way up.






The room has been like this for a while now, but he just now had an epiphany about the top of the bookcase, and from there he can launch his massive asterisk right onto the bed. So if she's going to worry about anything, that's probably what she needs to focus on.

Every time the People buy bananas, Buddah goes bat crap crazy and spends more time than can be possibly healthy licking them. No one knows why. If they open one and offer him a bite, he backs up and looks at them like they farted, but hanging there or resting on the counter, it's LickaPalooza.

I wish I had a picture of the end result of all his licking. It only takes a day or two, and the banana is covered in thing brown streaks from where he's licked, and it's damn near art. Long, sweeping streaks made up of hair-width lines, some running the length of the banana, some swirled like the sky in a Van Gogh painting.

Kinda thinking we should preserve them in acrylic and make some money off him, but the People always eat the damn things before I can figure out how to do that.

But really...what the heck? I'd say you are what you lick, but I've licked some pretty nasty things...

So, right after talking about the people taking time off, I kinda let the blog slide to the side, but it wasn't intentional. I've been spending a lot of my time doing some hard-core napping, plastered on the big bed with the Doctor Who bedspread, barely moving so that the Woman comes in and pokes me to make sure I'm still shuffling along this mortal coil.

Yeah, no, I don't know what that really means, but I read it once and it sounded cool, so...totally stole it.


I also spend a lot of time sitting on the Woman, because otherwise she spends too much time with the computer and that's just not good for a person. We watch quality TV together most of the time when I'm sitting on her. David Bromstead is my new imaginary boyfriend (hey, I'm neutered, it's not like gender matters here) so I watch him show lottery winners homes they can buy and we like to shout at the TV when people shopping for tiny houses get inside and mutter, "Wow, this is small," BECAUSE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT, KAREN.

Oh, yeah. I yell at KAREN a lot right now, too. Just because its the Woman's name and I think it's kinda funny. I'll get over it soon.

Earlier this week I got to say YOU'RE SLIPPING, KAREN because she finally decided to order 10 hardback copies of The Blessings of Saint Wick but after it was took late to stop the print run she realized she'd ordered 10 more copies of The Space Between Whens so now we have A LOT of copies of TSBW.

I'll get links up for anyone who wants a pawtographed copy soon. For that and The Whens of Wick (which is getting really good buzz, which makes me happy!)

I think we've been dragging our heels on that because we kinda want to find an alternative to Paypal but haven't settled on anything yet. The Woman is, like, 6 kinds of pissed off at them because she keeps trying to delete a bank account from her Paypal and it keeps popping up with I CAN'T DO THAT RIGHT NOW, KAREN. Or something like that. She's pretty close to closing out the whole Paypal account, if she can find something better.

But, yeah. I haven't been doing much other than dictating the next book (The Book of Hyrum, editor is looking at it right now) and napping and watching TV. And for a guy who turns 17 in a couple of weeks and no one expected him to get that old, it's not a bad life!

Seriously, doods. Eleven days until my declared birthday, but realistically I was probably born around June 10, 2001, so I'm almost 17.

Last year, the Woman didn't think I would make it to 17. This year, since I started getting seeds in my snacks, she thinks there's a chance I'll make it to 18. I mean, at this age, who knows, but when I'm awake I'm a pain in the asterisk, so things are looking pretty good!

...though I'm not sure from what. It's not like they work hard or anything.

But, anyway, they took a couple weeks off, and instead of going somewhere like Vegas or Disneyland or France, they mostly stayed home and got stuff done around here.

This was my favorite thing. Not sleeping with Buddah, I'm still annoyed he was there. But the red and black cube thingy. The Man put it together so the Woman would have a place for her 6,398 t-shirts. A couple years ago he put together a bunch of wardrobes for the same purpose, but then they got a treadmill and it's in the way, and she couldn't get to her clothes. So to shut her up about it, he did this. And now the wardrobes will become the Place For Random Krap We Don't Know What To Do With.

They did some fun stuff, too. The Man's birthday was during his time off so they went to a car museum to look at cars they both really, really, really want to own but will never be able to. That kinda seems like torture to me, but whatever.

They also fired up the rumbly bikes. The intent was to get gas running through the lines and to make sure nothing was wrong so that they could sell them, but then they went for a short ride, which turned into, Um, this is still fun, and then a longer ride, and long story short, they didn't sell the bikes.


My favorite part was this.

The Man's birthday dinner.

(That's the annual birthday beer picture. The Woman MAKES him get a beer so she can take a picture. No, I don't know why.)

They didn't take me along, but the Woman brought back half her steak and then cut it up so that I had snacks for days.

There was cake, too, but I didn't get any of that because it was chocolate. And that's fine. I had steak. No cake is better than steak.

---

Before she took some time off, the Woman and I finished this. It's the Return of the Wick Chronicles -- Wick After Dark is done, no more overly grown up things for a while, if ever.

You *should* be able to jump into this without having read the WAD books, and doods...this is seriously the one I love the most. Everyone who's read it says it's their favorite. It's Wick's journey to find where he came from, how he came to be.

It's the shortest book in the series...it started as a novella but kinda tipped the scales into novel territory. It's also a fast read, and will tug on your heart strings.

It goes to the distributor tomorrow morning. So a week or so from now the print version will be for sale. And the Kindle version will probably hit Amazon before then.

---

In that vein, a couple people wanted to know when pawtographed copies of The Blessings of Saint Wick would be for sale. And the answer is...I dunno. If you want one--paperback or hardback--let me know and the Woman will order a few. But the last several books people have said they wanted copies, she's ordered a bunch...and we have a bunch sitting here because those people apparently really didn't want them that badly.

Y'all have been buying ebooks a lot. Print, not so much.

Also, if you want an ebook but not for Kindle, let me know that, too. We can create digital copies for other e-readers no problem. You just have to know how to side-load them onto your reader.

And if you haven't read any of the Wick books yet, we're going to be doing an omnibus of the first 3 Chronicle books and one of the WAD books soon. So you'll be able to get all 5 in 2 volumes. Might even save some pennies.

And by the end of summer...Book Two in the Return to Wick Chronicles series, working title The Book of Hyrum. You're gonna dig Hyrum, Aubrey's little brother. Also, one of y'all is a royal guard in it...and kind of annoying to the Emperor.

I'm Captain Chu Chu


LOL Buddah is Tiny Cakes