Blue Dot Grouper

I didn't remember the name of this fish, but Yea Internet!, I found some info at In Love of Animals. Maybe he's a garabaldi with people-pox. We spent a lot of time at the Tropical Discovery building at the Denver Zoo. Snakes, bats, lizards, frogs, fish, corals, and Komodo Dragons.

Zebra: Check

Another checkmark on my list of "Animals Photographed While Yawning."

If Shakespeare Wrote for Beetles

It seems like it could be a balcony scene. I need to look up the species of these two love beetles.

Tiger Beetles in Spring

Spring is here -- okay, we're already halfway through it, but I've been a bum regarding blogging. I'll see if I can fix this.

Here's the romantic image of the day.

Yeti Mouse

I don't know why I started calling her mouse. I guess it's just that she looked like a little white mouse when I first got her. She was three months old, living at the Dumb Friends' League and recovering from malnourishment. She was amazingly affectionate (like OGMO, who I got the same day at the same place). When you'd stroke her down her back, her long tail would curl up so much it would touch the top of her head. She used to fetch Q-tips, but only if you threw them to the same place every time.

I had just started living with my boyfriend (and later my first and then ex-husband) when I got her. Then a move and a couple unfortunate relationships, then my marriage to Theo (with his two cats) followed quickly by three children. She managed to tolerate babies and even become enamored with the kids as they grew older and learned the proper technique for petting her. She had a special bar stool, threadbare and apparently comfy. It stood in the threshold between our front room and kitchen. To get anywhere in the house you had to pass her stool. Rowan eventually posted a sign, "Yeti's Petting Station: On Duty".

Yeti was always a fierce defender of the house. No animal would approach our house without a challenge, even if her challenge was made through the sliding glass doors. Dogs, foxes, raccoons, other cats would all know that she was there and ready to dish out some whoop ass. One neighborhood cat would taunt her by sleeping on our porch; I think he knew we didn't generally let her out. One day she did get out and kicked the tuna salad out of him. He never came to taunt her again.

She did suffer a scratched right cornea from that fight and her eye took a long time to heal. Even in the picture above, she still had a bit of drainage. After we ruled out infection and gave her steroid treatments, we could finally see the injury and it was actually healing nicely. I was glad to have that bit of health trauma behind us.

Then about three weeks ago, Yeti stopped eating and her weight loss was dramatic. She was licking odd things like paper, walls, and plaster-like fish tank decorations. I think she was originally about 12 pounds and dropped to eight, then over the weekend to seven. Blood tests all looked good -- at least kidney and liver, the things I'd always worried about with my elderly cats. However, one type of white blood cell count was up. We gave her antibiotics, but this count indicated a long term inflammation. Cancer was mentioned a few times, but she had no tumors. Another blood test showed no leukemia. I was feeling desperate and didn't know what to do. Prednisone seemed to help a little, but by now all she wanted to do was sleep with a minute or two of pets every hour. She was drinking, but fairly quickly couldn't manage to get to the basement litterbox. I was syringing soft food with vitamins, trying to get as much in without giving her so much that she would throw up. I'd stop a feeding session when she'd start growling at me.

Last Friday, March 5th, we got her an ultrasound. Our vet could see lymphoma right away; her intestine was irritated and inflamed as well. We stepped up the steroid treatment, hoping it would go in remission since there were no tumors. The upside was that it might stimulate her appetite and would hopefully help any pain. That was the beginning of a weekend of stress and worry.

Sunday, March 7th was sunny and a little cool. I carried her out to the sunshine on the porch. I took a few pictures of her as she rested in the sun and purred. See the one above.

Monday, she couldn't walk any more, she wouldn't take food anymore. She still purred when I petted her, but she'd get worn out after a minute or two and would try to retreat and rest. I made my decision and made the appointment for after Rowan's arrival back home from school.

I told the kids that I was going to bring her into the vet to put her to sleep, explaining that she would go to sleep and then her heart would stop. I tried to explain to them and re-convince myself that we didn't want her to starve to death, be in pain, have a terrible quality of life, or (what almost seemed the very worst thought) not purr when I came to her. The vet thought maybe the cancer had already spread in her brain, which would explain the rapid degeneration of her health.

Rowan, Jasmine and Theo said goodbye to her and stayed home. Kai and I brought her in.

Bye Yeti. We love you.

Cellar Spider

From the Butterfly Pavilion's display, a cellar spider and her spiderlings. I was wondering if she ate while they spent their time in her web. If so, how does she recognize them as non-food. If not, how are the "stop monitoring your web" signals turned off?

Vegetation Tresses

Does this look like a woman wearing a white knit hat? She has wild long hair curling from underneath the hat?

Cat on her Pedestal

This is Yeti, our adorable and abominable white cat in a typical sleeping pose on her bar stool. She's getting up in years, about 17. A couple months ago she received a scratch on her cornea from a local cat. He's primarily an outdoor wanderer, though he eats and sleeps a few doors down. She's a fierce defender of the house. After weeks of eye drainage and inflammation it finally healed enough that we could see the cause of the distress.

Just as she's getting over that, she fell ill. We're not sure what she has. The vet says everything looks good except her white blood count. She doesn't seem to have an infection, but chronic inflammation. Even so, she's still on antibiotics and we gave her a small dose of Prednisone. I hope it's just getting over her eye injury. He mentioned tumors and cancer. She's losing weight, but still drinking water. We're doing some blood work, and if things keep going downhill we've got an ultrasound appointment. I've started putting soft food on the roof of her mouth to try and keep her weight up.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Uh, I guess you can take my Kodachrome away

More of the monochrome pictures. Ice has really fascinated me this winter. I've especially liked the shapes of melting ice when the temperature creeps up a little.

This is the top layer of ice above a little spillway near our local playground.

Flake Upstanding

I need to make a random title generator.

Icicle on the Barbie

A black, metal barbeque grill is a great backdrop for winter pictures.

Precious Little Snowflakes

It's been a long time since I've posted. I've still been taking photos, but it has been hard to focus lately.

A few months back I found myself on the path of divorce. We've had the first skirmishes which were far more emotionally cutting and bruising than I would have ever predicted. The kids have finally been told and we're well on our way to the main legal fights while still trying to live in the same house. The general outcome is still worryingly unknown. Hard to eat, hard to sleep, hard to think.

It's depressing. You look at your children in a far more different way.

Please Make Sure and Wipe Your Feet

I wonder how quickly a millipede family wears out a welcome ... mat. It sounds funnier if you say it out loud, but then again, that's not saying much.

I took this on a walk up to the top of Castle Rock the namesake of the city just south of Denver, before you get to Colorado Springs.

Duct Tape Takes Wing

I checked out a book from the library called Ductagami: The Art of the Tape by Joe Wilson. Cute book with instructions to make wallets, baseball caps, shower curtains, etc. It has fun retro graphics and clear instructions, but no traditional forms! Here's my addition. It has about a 9 inch length and 9 inch wingspan.

I think that this crane would make an artsy contribution to my girl-cave-garage-workshop. Okay, it's not really a shop, it's more like a push cart.

Feather in Cat Tail Dander and Algae

Mucking about in another local puddle. Many birds were congregating such as red-winged blackbirds, ducks, and thousands of starlings. The sun was setting and the wind was blowing the downy seeds of the autumn cattails into the water.

Bleeding Hearts in High Contrast

Not taking as many pictures. Weather? Illness? Preoccupation? Brooding?

Ghosts of Fall, Raindrops and Cracked Concrete

Our maple tree dropped its leaves once they'd lost their ruby luster.

A selection found the driveway at the end of their fall.

The stone was cold, the air was wet and snow fell.

The icy weight cast autumn shadows, the color of dried blood, on the cracked concrete.

The leaves were gone and raindrops were falling by the time I saw the evidence.

Gravid-tas

I finally got my praying mantis shots in. She's a gravid female, very gravid. She had a very calm manner, not as curious as other mantises I've known, nor was she aggressive at all. Quite a regal bearing all in all.

We were due for a significant temperature dip, so I brought her inside. She wasn't so sure about this until I dumped a number of feeder crickets into the terrarium -- then everything seemed to be to her liking.

Triops

A few pictures of Rowan's Triops. I think they're about an inch long head-to-tail here. The top image may show some eggs there. The images are a bit fuzzy due to the plastic habitat; I need to get another mini-glass aquarium for pictures.

Fall

All the pretty colors are here again.