On Thursday we bid goodbye to the smaller of our two cats, Silly (short for Drusilla). She was diagnosed with a tumour on her lung on Monday having been coughing for a week or so, and by Thursday she had gone downhill to the point where we felt that we had no option but to take matters into our own hands with a final trip to the vet. While immensely sad, I am glad in a way that her decline was so rapid it was obvious when we needed to make the call. If a pet is gradually going downhill I imagine it can be very hard to look back and say ‘well, this is definitely worse than x amount of time ago, therefore we need to take this decision’. When the change just from one day to the next is profound, and there is a known terminal illness present, it’s about as easy a decision to make as it can be in the circumstances.
Goodbye, Silly. She loved all humans (or at least all humans that would stay still long enough for her to sit on them, which was about 0.8 seconds), and would then claw you mercilessly if you dared to move. Easily the most affectionate cat I’ve ever known.
The good news? I’ll be appearing at Fantasy In The Court again this year. I missed out last year, and my previous “appearance” in 2014 (I signed that bag that’s been used as the image for this year’s site) was before Dark Run was released so I was basically an Author In Waiting. This year, however, I actually have not one but two books out! So if you see a guy with a black mohawk wandering around then feel free to come and say hi. Just bear with me if I seem a little distracted: with that many people that close together it’s a bit hard for me to hear conversation, and I’ve yet to work out if my hearing aids help more than they hinder (they’re supposed to cut out background noise, but last time I was there I think everyone else was so loud that the people I were talking to were the background noise!).