And There She Is…

People ask me sometimes what inspires my work (or sometimes, why the hell do I make what I make?). It’s just what’s around me…what I see, hear, read…and cats have been in my art since the early days. Kitten was no different. In fact, if I’m correct, she was in 45 of my quilts in the last 17 years. Geez. I must have liked her. Why do I put cats in quilts? They are in my life, my world, on my fabric, literally IN my quilts (that fur, y’all), on my quilts, on my computer, on my book, and they are comfort to me. They lie next to you, on you, claws in your clothes, drooling on your arm, biting you (Kitten bit me so many times, and once I needed antibiotics…she was mad), licking you, making biscuits on your near you, pouncing on your toes, waking you up in the middle of the night, in the morning, bounding on top of you, disrupting your book, your sewing, your ironing, your grading, your sleep, your yoga, and your meditation. Cats are pretty judgmental and often snooty, but they do love and come when they’re called…sometimes. Kitten got out once, through a screen, and disappeared for 24 hours and I freaked out. She came back though. And she swallowed thread once, after 10 years of totally ignoring thread, and cost me over $3000 in the summer to save her life. She had some weird genetic disorder and lost half her teeth, but still ate the hard food happily. She was feisty and sometimes vicious, but loved in the best way ever. And every time I come in here, into my studio, she is not here and I’m having a hard time with that. Do you know that this is the first time I haven’t had a cat (of my own…there are three here who belong to the Man) since I was 22? Yeah. Crazy. And no, I’m not ready for another one. There will be one…just not right now.

Oh man, the old sewing machine. On the left, Limbo, who was also 17 when he died, and Kitten at about 2 years old.

So here’s a retrospective of quilts with Kitten in them (Limbo is in some too…they all end up in the quilts at some point). From oldest to newest.

Disrupted, 2010.

Huge piece, made for the Sightlines exhibit. All the quilts connected with the two smaller pieces on each side.

There’s the detail. I didn’t always put the color behind her eyes…I had simplified cat drawing at some point. But in this one, it looked like her.

Green Tea, 2011.

I hand-dyed that background. Crazy how simple this piece was.

Water, 2012.

Most often, she’s on a shoulder.

And I often picked weird fabrics for the calico parts. A bell? She might have worn a bell in the early days. We did put collars on the cats early on, so we could hear them. Not any more.

Babygirl, 2013.

Interestingly named after another cat we had, an adoptee when my great great aunt died, but Kitten is in this piece, which won a Pussy award.

Earth Day, 2013.

Still simple.

I remember drawing this quilt in a cabin in Julian.

I Gave Already, 2013.

She’s in this one twice…the big plate the woman is holding was a list of all the things that were costing me money at the time.

But she’s also on my shoulder (and Ivy, the dog, is on my hip).

That might have been the year she swallowed thread. Can’t remember.

Wise Choice, 2013.

This is the quilt I made about Planned Parenthood International providing birth control to women who wanted it overseas, who couldn’t get it otherwise. It was considered political (why our bodies are political, I don’t know) and there was some questions about whether it was an OK topic for the show, but the curator, Carolyn Mazloomi, talked to me and said OK. It was my first introduction to Carolyn. This traveled with the Earth Stories exhibit for three years.

Here’s Kitten…

Bottom right, protecting the baby in the basket.

Love (not), 2014.

Rough year.

But there was a cat. Those Australian aboriginal fabrics are one of my favorites for calico cat coloring. So much variety.

Absolutely Nothing, 2014.

War, what is it good for? Yes, that’s a pile of men she’s standing on. Those who freak out about penises in my quilts should count them in this one. And there’s Kitten!

Awakening the Crone, 2014.

The crone, mother, and maiden in this one. Plus cat and owl on a shoulder. Look, barn owls before I had any!

In 2015, I made a bunch of smaller cat quilts and sold them all. The last one sold last year actually. Took it a while because it was the weirdest one. Here is Cat 6, 2015.

Owned by a friend of mine.

Here’s Cat 3, 2015…

One of my favorites.

Cat 2, 2015, owned by my mom…

And Cat 1, 2015, also owned by a friend.

Earth Mother for Ventura, 2015.

One of two quilts where I hid a cat in a boob.

In Deep, 2015.

Ivy the dog is on the right, fully asleep, and Kitten is checking out the bathtub. This is the first of a series of bathtub quilts, and she shows up in all three.

Part Time Oasis, 2015.

I can’t remember who argued the cat should have a heart, but I did add one.

The Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos, 2016.

There’s a lot going on in this piece, but Kitten is sleeping through it. That’s a Kaffe Fassett fabric I think.

Holding It All In, 2016.

Second cat in a breast. This was a response of mine to Earth Mother for Ventura, where I was told I could not have nudity. So this one has nipples. And a uterus. Although one nipple is part of the tiger pattern and one is a flower.

Give Me Time, 2016.

I actually have all the Wonder Under cut out for the head reversed. I somehow flipped the drawing and traced the whole head backwards and had to go back and retrace because the bird wouldn’t fit backwards. Haven’t made it yet.

Finding Peace, 2016.

The next bathtub quilt.

And Then There Was One, 2016.

A remarkably small piece with over 800 pieces in it. Crazy.

All Stacked Up, 2016.

Kitten hated water.

I Can’t Be Your Superwoman, 2017.

Simba is on the right of the stove, and Kitten is on the left AND on the burner.

More than one appearance…

MomSleep 2017.

This is a quilt that actually laid on a bed.

Not Less Than, 2017.

Midnight, our black kitty, died just before I drew this one. She’s on one shoulder…

She looks pissed off. And Kitten is on the other one, playing with a rocket. She was pretty playful until the last 18 months.

Some Like It Hot, 2017.

Calli (the dog) is on the left in this one, but also Kitten, who would occasionally walk on the edge of the bathtub.

We Won’t Go Back, 2017.

More man piles. Probably a penis or two. And Kitten.

Womanscape, 2018.

Yup. She made it into this one too.

Sweet Delicious, 2018.

Based on a poem I wrote.

Portrait of the Artist As a Young Woman, 2018.

Always a cat.

This quilt got stolen from a venue and put in the trash, but someone saw it there and called me. Thank goodness.

Heart-Shaped Box, 2018.

Curled up in a ball, paw over her face.

Bigger in the Outside, 2019.

Back to the shoulder.

Swallow Me Whole, 2019.

Can’t have a quilt about anxiety without a cat in it.

Oh wait, I was reviewing this post, and I found another Kitten in it.

Space Cat, 2020.

These are in order by year, by the way, but not in order within the year. I made this one after I put an astronaut cat in another quilt, Connected at the Hips, 2020.

So this was the first one.

Coronawood, 2020.

No pandemic without Kitten.

Here Comes Life, 2021.

Apparently she shows up for childbirth too.

The Way Out, 2022.

I’m making this one in clay. I think it has a cat too. It does.

Same As It Ever Was, 2022.

Shoulder cat. In real life, she never sat on my shoulder. She rarely sat on me. She was a right-next-to-me cat.

War Zone, 2024.

This was drawn well before 2024 though. The bottom bit was drawn at the end of 2023, but the original drawing was much older. I added to it though.

Seeking the Crone’s Protection, 2024.

That crone deserves a cat. Kitten was a head butter. Even at the end.

Lost in the Trees, 2024.

This was another old drawing made recently into a quilt.

Same fluffy cat that was in War Zone.

Portrait of One Self, 2025.

I mentioned before that Kitten spent the last year getting really sick and we’d think that was it, and then she’d rally. I drew this in one of the really sick stages. Didn’t think she’d survive to the end of making this quilt. Hence the wings.

She’s in here twice too. Another castronaut. Catronaut?

And last, but probably not last…because my brain does what it does…AI Is Not My Friend, 2025, the last quilt I finished with Kitten in it.

The original drawing on the right was repurposed into this drawing, so it’s older.

But there she is. She’s not in the one I’m working on right now, but I can guarantee she’ll show up somewhere in the next few months. Hard to imagine her not being here in the room, and all over my stuff. I’ll be finding her fur in fabric for years, trust me…Midnight’s is still everywhere. And she’s obviously in my heart and mind at the moment. Today is International Cat Day and everyone was posting cats and I’m like, but I don’t have one anymore. But I do. She’s in a whole ton of the things she made, and I even have a quilt my mom made of her. I’ll post that next week. I kind of feel like it was appropriate to spend a few hours today searching through all my work, looking for her. And there she is.

Eating Cheese on Toast*

I quilted. This is good. Because I got through the intestines…and that’s the purpose of the intestines, for things to get through them…plus stress release dammit.

img_2236-small

And for some reason that complicated bit in the middle of her torso was fucking with my head. It really was kind of fun to stitch…around all the bits.

img_2238-small

Somewhere in the middle, Kitten whacked me because I tried to pick up my phone to take a picture (probably the one above) and it was under her tail and I offended her. I don’t know if you know about calico cats, but they are kind of attitudinal. I guess I’m a calico cat. You can see in her face that she’s still significantly pissed off at me…

img_2240-small

But then goes quite happily to sleep in the pile of fabric I obviously left for her benefit.

img_2242-small

So I kept quilting…got the right arm (well, it’s her left arm) stitched…

img_2243-small

And then stopped, because the other side has that crazy-ass skeleton ribcage, and that’s gonna take a lot of fussy stitching. It was after midnight too, and I needed to be up early today for a parent meeting. Staying late for a union meeting. Still sick to my stomach over the DeVos confirmation. I’ve seen a few of my more conservative friends express their joy (?) over DeVos as a choice (my non-US followers or non-education people may not know that Betsy DeVos is now the Education Secretary of the US, despite her utter lack of qualifications to be such a thing…don’t get me wrong, I didn’t like Arne Duncan either, but she is a significant order of powers less qualified and more likely to fuck us over more than we already are, also damaging my students. But whatever.). I would invite any of those conservative friends to spend a week in my classroom. And do my job. All of it. We ran out of our budget last week, I think (I haven’t put the last receipts in). For the year. In January. And strangely, I still have to teach for the next 5 months. I won’t even tell you about all the extra hours, especially this year, because we have no curriculum. And both my kids have federal loans for college on top of scholarships. Because otherwise I couldn’t afford to send them (honestly, I can’t really afford it anyway, but that’s another point). But let’s put someone in charge who doesn’t even know the difference between proficiency and growth.

Sick to my stomach. Just keep teaching and dealing with kids and all their stuff, trying to get them at least to think about what we’re learning…despite the crazy that’s going on in my government.

I stitched…the yellow three-pronged stitch in the cretan stitch on the right.

img_2230-small

This morning’s sunrise over the possum/armadillo tree (it’s actually two trees)…

img_2246-small

I realized yesterday my meditation app has an SOS mode…quick 2-minute meditation for days like yesterday. This will be useful.

*Kate Nash, Merry Happy

The Real Life Plague

First of all…it’s the last day of my summer vacation. No really. Already. It has flown by. Everyone keeps saying that…what happened to summer? Already? How are you teaching already? I have no fucking idea. And then everyone asks if I had a good summer, or “How was your summer?” Well, you know, it wasn’t very relaxing and a lot of stressful things were going on, but at least I wasn’t trying to work (as a teacher, because I worked as a writer and an artist all summer, and let’s not even get into the working as a mom thang) at the same time.

That’s all about to change. I’m not ready. I am incredibly not ready. Mentally, physically, with paper in hand…not ready. Except I am. Because I was in counseling yesterday and she mentioned I seemed emotional, which I am, and which I should be. It would be strange if I were NOT emotional about sending both kids back east and spending all this time on my own. And I’m so buried in artwork at the moment that I can’t go out and hang out with people much. I have too much to do. But I also have this “whatever” attitude that I think is good. And she’s been seeing me for the last 2+ years, so this is the third start of the school year she’s seen me go through. And this is a good thing. I’m just not going to worry too much about all the crap that comes with being a teacher: new principal, new AP, new teachers, changes coming up the pike with teams disappearing (I swear, it doesn’t matter how many times we tell them the pendulum swung that way once before and it was a clusterfuck, they want to do it again). Whatever. I’ll deal. I said it to my principal. I said it to my counselor. I say it to myself every single day.

Because I will. The hard thing is that it means I care less about work and I come home and make something that is all me, in me, about me, My Art, and that is what does matter. I still love my students and work my ass off for them…it’s just a degree or ten down from where it used to be. And maybe that’s healthy. Because this job can suck it all up and still ask for more and never say thank you. Or pay you a decent wage. Whatever.

So I ironed yesterday…but only 4 hours, not the 6 I wanted.

Butterfly…legs to be embroidered at a later date. Honestly, I’m sitting here trying to remember what I did yesterday. Slow start in the morning. Ironed a little, about an hour, then had to take the dog to the vet. Then counseling and Costco and blood sugar crashed (whoops…going back to school will help with the forgetting-to-eat thing). The kids left and I slept off the crash and then cooked dinner and ironed again, starting around 9.

Just like school, really. The start time anyway.

There’s lots of little fussy bits still (will that ever stop on this quilt? Probably not. I should stop commenting on it or its name will become Small Fussy Bits, which isn’t a BAD name for a quilt…it just doesn’t convey what I WANT with this quilt, although honestly, I’ve been tumbling names and words around for DAAAYYS and still haven’t come up with a name). Yes, that is how my brain works…with many parenthetical statements that you rarely hear.

The green stuff is meadowy grass that is supposed to be on the right breast…ironed separately first.

Kitten came and slept with me. She was ON the phone for a while (it tracks how much time etc, plus distracts me from the tedium of endless ironing with texts from friends and stupid games). When it vibrated, she got a bit worried and annoyed, but eventually realized she had conquered it and continued to sleep on it.

That web and spider were actually fun to do.

Then I started fussing with the arm, which had flowers and a bee…

I quite like how that little section turned out.

And then I forced myself to finish the rest of the arm, although there is one other cloud hanging off of it…but I think it’s in the 900 box. I might find it today and iron it on, because I’m going to fold this part of the torso up and put it in the box for a while as well…

By then, most of the torso was just loose anyway, not on the ironing sheet at all.

It has been the summer of the Screen Lizards. They drive kitties nuts, but I really love seeing them cautiously crawl across the screens for bugs. Every screen in the house, really.

That might have been what set Kitten to escaping a few weeks ago. I’m glad she came back. Today is her 6th birthday and she is still my constant companion. Yeah, like the others aren’t. When the kids are gone, I’ll be like the Pied Piper of furry beasts. Mommy’s moving to another room! Everybody up and follow! I even tell them, “I’m only going to be gone for a minute…” and they still follow me out, plop on the new floor section, and then sigh as I head back.

So obviously I didn’t get (close) to yesterday’s crazy goal, but I have to say, it does keep me ironing longer. I would have given up after the bee if I hadn’t already thought I was heading for completion of that figure. So then, standing there at 11:30 PM, tired as heck, I reset my goal to finishing the arm. And I did. So that was good. I did really want the bird done last night, but it’s pieces 849-966. Not a small number. I can do that this morning. Except I need to get the car smogged and go to Home Debit (boychild gets annoyed that I call it that). So I should do that NOW. FAST. Except I haven’t eaten, and we all know what that looks like. It’s too HOT to eat. Damn summer is finally kicking in.

Realistically, I got about 250 pieces ironed yesterday in about 4 hours. SLOW. But getting there. Almost halfway done. Whoo! So another 250 pieces would get the bird and the one larger figure done (still have to do face and hair, which is not uncomplicated). Probably more than 250 pieces…yup, just short of 300. So I should AT LEAST finish that today. And think about lesson planning. Really. I need to do that shit.

Aargh. Real Life. Why do you have to plague me so persistently?

Progress…I’m getting there. Somewhere.

Running Out of Flesh…

Yesterday was weird. I had a bad dizzy reaction to restarting my diabetes meds for some reason…I had to stop them because they interacted badly with the contrast they used in my fibroid procedure. I was also still really tired…it’s hard to listen to my body when it’s projecting all this exhaustion noise, because normally I don’t listen to it, and the difference is now that I’m still recovering (enough already. I’m ready to be well.).

I wasn’t in the mood for food though, and even less in the mood to waste time eating it. There are so many times when food has been an issue for me that I honestly wish I could just swallow a nutrition supplement once a day and it would take care of that, so I don’t have to stop making art to forage for something I don’t really want to eat (right now, I’m eating a bowl of cherries. No really. I am. Life is not like a bowl of cherries, by the way. Not at all.).

And the house is a disaster area. I keep trying to clean up and throw away and organize, and I think I should just set fire to the place and run. Seriously, all those organizing/tidying specialists? I don’t think any of them are artists. I’m sure there minimalist artists out there (and I don’t mean artists who make minimalist art, but artists who only have JUST the materials they need to make art and nothing more, not an extra piece of paper or pen or eraser. Just Enough. OK, I don’t really believe that.), but I’m a collector, a stash-builder, a semi-hoarder. I’ve gotten rid of tons of art materials over the years…in fact, I read some blog post about that where she listed 10 things you should do to help minimize the stash, but I’d Already Done Them. I chalk that up to being 10-15 years older than her, but whatever. I think I’m up for another round. Actually the next art project I’m doing is collaborative, and I don’t plan to buy anything but muslin and some sort of batting/stiffener for it. I’m going to use all my own fabrics. Think string quilt in human shape. I can DO this! We’ll see how that works. I’m thinking cacophony of color…my collaborators may not.

Anyway, yesterday, after helping the kids buy school textbooks (OK, boychild didn’t need any help; he’s on round 3 and pretty smart about it), which really meant standing around with credit card in hand (boychild is buying his own this year), I was finally allowed to iron stuff, so I went for the fleshy bits on the second figure…

Unfortunately, just like with the other figure, I had numbered all the bits and pieces on and touching the figure at the same time, so I had to sort through pieces 1121-1750 or so to find all of them.

Here’s all the stuff that still needs to be picked out: heart, lungs, piping, roads, electrical thingies (there’s a word for those, dammit…transmission towers)…

and buildings on the bottom, plus some cars and nuclear power plants.

I didn’t have enough of the fabric I picked for the lightest in the flesh range…

In fact, after I cut those out, this is all I had left…

Yes. I should throw those out. I know. I did find another similar fabric for the rest of the pieces that needed to be lightest, so I got all the flesh ironed yesterday…I’m at 19 hours. There was another color where I almost ran out as well. Still not close to done…closer…but no light at the end of the tunnel yet.

I also cut some stuff out after my dizzy spell…I’m glad I’ve gotten to the point where I have stuff I can do while sitting (or semi-reclining)…

Kitten is in here with me. Yes. That’s an open window. I’m totally paranoid now and when I leave the house, I shut way more windows than I used to. And that’s the slope where I thought I heard her Thursday night as well.

In the process of trying to clear stuff out of here, Kitten benefits from boychild’s administration of a scratching tool…

I should take that to school and scare unsuspecting 12-year-olds with it, shouldn’t I. Yup.

So the shopping is done and I have about an hour and a half before I have to start packing up for my parents’ house. I’m hoping girlchild is on her way home from soccer…oops, just got the text. Nope. They won. She’s got finals. If I were feeling better, I would have attempted going to this tournament, but the thought of lugging a chair any distance and sitting in the sun for hours is exhausting.

Gonna iron…hopefully…if not, I’ll cut stuff out. It’s all getting stuff done I guess. Running out of time, of flesh, of pieces? Hopefully by the time I go to bed tonight, it will be the latter…because the first is definitely true.

Kitten: Lost and Found

Yeah. I know. It’s early for me (except in about two weeks, this will be normal again…ugh). It’s been a rough 24 hours. So many of us who create have pets, furry beasts who stand on our stuff, headbutt our hands as we’re drawing that crucial line, creatures who mess up or throw up on or eat what we’re working on. I’ve always had cats and dogs in some combination or another, although at the moment, very few of them are actually MINE. I still take care of them though. My current household contains the fewest furry beasts it has since…shit…early marriage? Two cats: Midnight (who is my daughter’s notionally) and Kitten (who is most certainly mine). One dog half time: Calli (most definitely my daughter’s). When girlchild goes to college, the thought is that Calli will have a change in living situation, certainly not trading houses every other day like she does now, but we haven’t determined what that situation will be. There are factors like her undying wiggly love for the man who sticks his fingers in her ears (that is NOT me) and who will be home the most (that IS me). I mean, Calli loves me…but she doesn’t OMG LOVE me. Which is fine.

Anyway, the point of all this is that sometime between 3:30 AM Thursday morning and about 6 AM that same morning, Kitten escaped. She was devious about it, using her claws to pull a screen corner out of the frame, not ripping it, but pulling the spline out of the groove. So even though she didn’t wake me up by headbutting my boob and face and hurdling me 1700 times while meowing, I figured she was asleep in a closet somewhere. She does that sometimes. We didn’t think she could have gotten out of the house. There were only two windows open, and because of how she pulled the screen, we didn’t notice it until 11 AM. At that point, all three of us had searched the house, opening cupboards (she’s gotten stuck in those before).

I took this the night before…

She was sitting so happily while I cut stuff out and Midnight was happily next to me on the couch and I thought, you know, even though both my kids are going far away to college and I’m going to be terribly horribly alone on the human front for the next four months (which alternately sounds wondrous and horrifying), at least I have these two sweet cats and some of the dog and that will do.

So when we couldn’t find her outside either, realizing that the last time she got out, I found her cowering on the deck, frozen like a bunny in the lights, we all pretty much panicked. She doesn’t come to anyone except me, and that…well, not all the time. We knocked on neighbors’ doors, put a Craigslist notice up, made fliers, posted them all over, then went to every vet and shelter and one pet store. Because the little beast won’t wear a collar, and when we got her, microchipping was bloody expensive. Now it’s incredibly cheap. So if someone found her or brought her injured to the vet (or just to the vet because she was lost), no one would know who she was. We cancelled all the appointments we had yesterday and did random walkarounds, but mostly sat around depressed, because what can you do but wait? She’s a hider.

At night, the kids went to their dad’s and a friend came over and helped me look again. No sign. I finally tried to iron at about 9 PM after getting absolutely nothing done all day. The night before, I managed a bunch of trimming, because I was too tired to stand any more (the doctor’s visit kicked my ass…driving plus stairs plus giving blood. Crazy shit). But all this is cut out…

That’s about three hours’ worth I did there. Doesn’t look like much, but there’s about 60 black triangles for the damn snake.

Here’s what was left to cut out after all those hours…

I have Netflix on while I iron, but I heard noises on the slope behind the house and so I paused it and started to chirp for Kitten, thinking it was probably a skunk or coyote or raccoon. But she answered. Or I thought she did. I grabbed shoes and a flashlight and ran out there and called her and walked around through all the spiderwebs, but no more mews. I figured I imagined it…we have hawks and owls that can sound like cats and god knows what else was out there with me. Or she was in a tree or hurt or trapped or hiding or I didn’t know what. So I came back in and ironed some more, and there’s more noise outside, and I chirp again, and dammit if she doesn’t meow again (or so I thought, because I really did go to bed thinking I’d hallucinated the whole damn thing). I was out there and all around the yard, the house (I have over half an acre of mostly wild untamed jungle), flashlight, I swear every spiderweb wrapped around my body, and I can’t find her. Girlchild is texting me from her dad’s, wanting to come over, and there’s no point, because when I’m standing out there, dead silent for 15 minutes, then chirping and calling, there’s not a sound.

If she’s out there, she doesn’t want to be found. Yet. There’s nothing I can do. Worst feeling ever.

So I went to bed. Not well. Not sleeping much. She sleeps with me every night. At that point, I’m sure she’s been gutted by a coyote and I just can’t find her dying body (trust me, I tried) or I was hearing things, and I would be sleeping without my baby (ah, sigh) for EVER. Not a good night.

Here’s what I got ironed last night.

More little stuff. I’m missing an artery (kind of a big thing to lose, yes). And those raindrops are still MIA. Bastards.

I organized the fabrics finally…before I started ironing (they’re a mess again now)…

I woke at 1:30 AM and 4:10 AM and then at 6 AM I hear yowling. Holy crap, where is that? A mom’s adrenaline rush would probably restart the walking dead. I opened doors and called out and listened, and then found Midnight growling, half yowling at the window where Kitten had escaped (now closed, due to screen issue…we left it open all day in case she came back, but didn’t want Midnight escaping). I went out the front door…there’s a ledge on the front of the house (apparently for rat races…or lost cats) and there she was, Kitten, meowling at me (yes, that’s a word…it’s that weird meow they make when they’re hurt or scared), but terrified, won’t come to me at all. I try inside at the screen; I try the deck, for the other side of the ledge. I’m sure my neighbors were amused, because I did not get dressed for this (I don’t sleep totally naked…it’s OK…and honestly, I don’t fucking care.).

No luck. She won’t come; she’s frightened even of me. I bring food out and she comes close and I almost get her, but she bolts. SHHIIT. Then Midnight is guarding the screen, so I try to shoo her off, but she’s determined to protect me from intruders (funny how the mouse that came in that same window one year did not get the same treatment). I pick her up and she bites and scratches me (seriously?), so I drop her and yell at her until she runs to her mom’s room and I shut the door.

It takes another 10 minutes of coaxing and then waiting, and Kitten comes back in…the same way she went out…through the screen. And she’s dirty and skittish as hell, but goes straight for the food bowl and lets me pet her and feed her and holy shit.

She’s back. She’s fine. She’s not hurt.

Blurry because she is cleaning herself…

And I don’t know if escaping again is on her agenda, and yes, she’ll be chipped as soon as I can get her in (although I don’t think that would have helped in this situation), and now we have to take signs down (that’s a good consequence), but my baby is home and I am slightly more sane than I was yesterday.

No sleep, very little food, kinda weepy, but slightly more sane. Hopefully ironing today to make up for yesterday.