We are home now, after our camping adventure. As I think I mentioned, I’m going to continue with the morning blogs, at least some days, at least for a while. While I was camping, I discovered that writing a short blog post first, before I tried writing fiction, really helped, at least on the days when my head was bad.

Unfortunately, today is one of those days. It isn’t a bad headache, but it’s still a headache, and it’s a little difficult to concentrate. Plus, I’m congested and sneezing. Part of the headache is because I’m stuffed up. Figure there’s just something in the air.

My kitty, Kiera, was VERY happy to see us. Okay, if I’m being honest, very happy to see me. She’s really still my cat after all. She travels with me from the main house to the tiny house and back. Last night, I slept in the tiny house with her. This meant I didn’t get a great amount of sleep, because someone decided they needed to be curled up right next to me and purring for most of the night. Loudly.

This always happens. The first night in the tiny house, Kiera sleeps on me. The next night, she’ll spend part of the night with me, possibly just sleeping on the bed, possibly on me, and part of the night elsewhere. By the third night, she’s either just sleeping on the bed (no longer sleeping on me) or in her butt-warmer. She’ll want to come and cuddle and purr when I wake up (or when she wakes me up, depending.) But she’ll mostly sleep on her own after that.

I’ve had to change her food recently. She had grown tired of the Rad cat raw food. It took her a few years, but eventually, she just decided she wasn’t going to eat it anymore.

So I’ve switched her to cans of grain-free wet food. Right now, she’s at the OMG NOM stage. I have five different varieties that I’m cycling through, in the hopes that she won’t get bored and suddenly decide she’s not eating any of it any more.

At this point, however, whenever I’m getting her food ready, she’s circling around me, purring loudly, head-butting me, etc. (She’ll also do that with Blaze at this time. And the cat sitter.)

My cat has always been all about the food. Until I changed brands of litter, she occasionally wouldn’t poop in her litter box. Generally always peed there – I’ve had her since 2006 and there have only been three occasions when she didn’t pee in her litter box, and those were because of other problems. However, when she wouldn’t poop there all the time, I started rewarding her with treats every time she did poop in her litter box.

It has become a Thing.

Yesterday, we arrived mid-afternoon.

Within ten minutes of coming home, Kiera pooped in her litter box and then had to tell me about it, so she could get treats.

I mean, if a cat poops without someone there, she might not get credit. This is worrisome for a little kitty.

Right now she’s curled up in her butt-warmer (a soft, heated circular cat bed) and watching me. I’ll get to the fiction shortly. She’ll stay in her butt-warmer until I finally move and go to the CORRECT place to write, that is, no longer at my desk but sitting on the bed so that she can come and lay down next to me and purr.

It’s so hard to find good minions who do what they’re supposed to do, you know? (^_^) Blaze and I always worry about the Yelp reviews that my cat must be leaving for us. “Had to go HOURS AND HOURS without food today.” Or “How unbelievably rude those humans are, not forming a lap for me as soon as I wanted one.” Or even, “I had to use a dirty litter box! How uncivilized!” (She generally comes and tells me whenever she uses her litter box so I’ll clean it – she really does not like using a dirty litter box. I mean, you flush. She would if she could.)

And that I think is enough about life with the kitty. Probably more than enough.

But I feel so much better now, and I’m going to be able to dive right into the fiction. And that’s the point.