Wow -- a virtual pet!

The name should come as no surprise... click the link and make him "dance"! ;-)

Tribute pages to Micawber on the Net

My post to the kittypix board about Micawber, which can be seen at

http://www.livejournal.com/community/kittypix/3447663.html

generated a lot of feedback. People were touched by its depth of feeling. This inspired me, in spite of my somewhat exhausted emotional state in general, to continue my careful planting of Micawber's memory on the Net.

A couple of weeks after his death, I reserved a Geocities site, at

http://www.geocities.com/micawber_cat/

which will eventually contain memories, pictures, stories, and poems detailing how Micawber touched my life and the lives of other people. He was a wonderful cat who will be very much missed.

For the moment, I've created pages for Micawber on two existing pet memorial megasites:

http://www.youns.com/memoriam/memorial.asp?ID=704

which allows people to leave tributes of their own (the password is gigolo) or sign the guestbook, and

http://www.in-memory-of-pets.com/personaltribute.asp?ID=40506

The careful eye will note the difference in the dates of Micawber's birth between the two sites... this was simply a case of me being fuzzy-headed. The correct date is actually sometime in April, but we're not sure exactly when, because we found Micawber on the street and of course he couldn't exactly answer our questions...

Emmie's unhappy butt day

Pictures from the middle of March... Emmie's hind end had become very tender, she was eating and moving around less, and she hadn't passed a bowel movement in a couple of days. We were afraid she might have a bowel blockage, but after rushing her in to the vet, we were relieved to discover that it wasn't anywhere near that serious -- she had an anal gland abcess!

Relieved, but puzzled. The vet explained that the large quantities of soft food we'd been giving her might be the cause, and proceeded to drain the abcess, a procedure which was mercifully conducted well out of our sight. Emmie came back to the examination room several ounces lighter (the receptionist, who had assisted with the draining, came back up front white-faced: "He just kept draining it and draining it...!!!"), and sporting that fashion item every cat HATES -- the Elizabethan collar.

You can tell how much she loves it in the photos... #1 -- Emmie takes solace on my lap:



#2 -- nope, not a happy girl:



#3 -- my husband George discovers that the TV remote just fits neatly inside the collar:



#4 -- oh, the horror, the horror! A long-suffering Emmie:



Don't worry, we left the remote in the collar just long enough to take the photos ;-)... George was making jokes about using the collar as a handy receptical for holding popcorn while he watched TV, thus saving us washing a bowl... at least, I think he was joking! Knowing what a strange cat Emmie is, she might even have enjoyed it...

Emmie: "Mmmm, buttery goodness!!!" (lick, slurp, munch... popcorn thoroughly covered in cat-spit!)