Kitten!

So, last week, my mother and sister informed me that a stray cat was hanging around our back door. "Okay," I thought with a mental shrug. Our town isn't overrun with stray animals, but it wasn't anything too new. Besides, we'd fed strays before and we always ended up taking them to the local animal shelter. I like cats, but I figured that this one was just passing through or we'd end up taking it to the animal shelter, so I thought it best to not get too attached to the idea of having a new cat around.

The next day, I got to see the cat--my mom had put some food out for it by the back door. I was cautious at first, because, again I didn't want to get too attached, and I wasn't sure if the cat had fleas or was sick... so I tried to keep my distance, but that didn't last for long because soon she was on my lap, purring. During the next couple of days, I fell in love and bonded. I sit outside and the cat, who we found to be female and not so much a cat as an adolescent kitten, sits on my lap for hours at a time as I stroke her soft fur while I read.

I decided soon after I met her, that her name was going to be Scout. (Though, at the time, I thought she was a he; thankfully, I chose a unisex name.) When I first let her onto my lap, I made sure she didn't have fleas, because I didn't want the bugs to get onto me then get taken into the house where the cat and dog we already have would have picked them up. Scout is surprisingly clean for a stray, but we think that she was either lost or someone recently had to move and left her behind. She always seems to want inside the house, so I'd imagine she used to live with people and knows what "inside" is.

Scout came to us very hungry and rather thin. She devoured I don't know how much cat food the first couple of days she was with us. She has since slowed down because she had her fill and/or she realizes that the food's not going anywhere, that we're not going to take it away. We gave her a box with an old rug, a towel, and, most recently, an inexpensive fleece blanket to sleep with since it's rather chilly and rainy. Yesterday, I modified a box, wrapping it in plastic and duct tape in order to waterproof it for the rain and I cut a smaller doorway in the front to block out some of the wind. Scout seems to like her new house.

So, I'm hoping and praying that I can keep the kitten. We're going to see about taking her to the vet to get her shots and to get her de-clawed and spayed. I'm also going to clean up a lot of my crap in my room so the kitten doesn't get lost. I think that as long as there's nothing terribly wrong with her (health-wise)... I think, I hope, that perhaps... maybe... I might be allowed to keep her. I hope, I hope, I hope. Because she's like a little angel that was sent to me. I've been in such a slump; it's so nice to have something new in my life. She'll be my mental health cat. /sappy crap

Anyway, hopefully she'll be given a more or less clean bill of health and will learn to get along with the dog and cat we already have and Scout can stay. I hope, I hope, I hope.

Long Silence

Well... It's been a while. I needed the break. I'm taking the semester off from school to get my shit together so that when I go out into the world with a BFA, I'll feel better prepared. In fact, I've been doing a lot of thinking about what I'm gonna do with the BFA once I have it. To be a painter... an artist, that would be ideal, but I'm not feeling as thought that's gonna happen. Not right away, anyway. For a while, I was thinking about working in theater, with set and production design; I'm still interested in that, but I don't want it to be all I ever do.

As of late, I've not been able to make any new art. I've only been preparing paper with ink washes to be drawn over at a later date. It's frustrating not feeling able to do something that I should be able to do--something that I know I can do--but I feel burnt out. I've been trying to de-program myself of the art school way of thinking, trying to figure out what I want to do because I really want to do it and what I want to do because someone told me I should want to do it. I'm trying to make it be okay for me to not have to do anything. I'm trying to remove the pressure to produce art. It would be nice to create something everyday and, in some ways, I still do, but I guess I'm trying to give myself permission to not feel compelled to produce... at least, for the moment. And, if I should choose to make something, sometimes it's gonna be crappy; that's okay.

I've been trying to get into my writing--the rewrites of my novels, but I can't settle on one to work on. I want to, but I just can't concentrate. I've been doing some reading; after being told to check him out when I was a freshman, I finally "discovered" Neil Gaiman. I read The Graveyard Book, which is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I've moved onto The Sandman series which is quite excellent. I've noticed in the past that I have a difficult time multi-tasking when it comes to reading new books and working on my own writing, it feels like the new information, when it's really good (and Neil Gaiman is really good) tends to influence my writing, sometimes too directly. I don't wanna write a book that's already been written or steal someone else's characters, so I need to get some distance (or time) between the new stuff I'm putting into my head and the stuff that's coming out, or else the two will look alike. I guess I'm fairly impressionable as far as literature goes; I'm still doing a lot of learning about writing and sometimes I'm too much of a sponge.

So, I'm not making art and I'm not working on my writing. I hate not producing, but I keep telling myself that my creative well is not endless and I've gotta let it refill itself once in a while. So, I will.