Showing posts with label Lafayette the Cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lafayette the Cat. Show all posts

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Come as You Are Party: Meet the Critters of the Grover Hotel


There are 3 cats here at the Grover Hotel. Giorgio is the oldest. He is 17. His former human family were jerks who had him declawed and then dropped him at the shelter when they got a new cat and Giorgio behaved like a normal cat and hissed at the newcomer.


Tara is 10 years old. She was born on 9 September 2009. I adopted her and her little half-brother or cousin at the same time. Sadly, he had to be put to sleep due to kidney failure on his 6th birthday, 17 July 2015. 


I've never gotten over losing him and I have a tattoo in his memory on my left shoulder.


Bart is 9 years old. He was adopted after Giorgio's housemate got out of the apartment that my son was living in at the time and we were never able to find her. 

Giorgio was lonely and we had seen Bart at the shelter while looking for Tori. Since Bart and Tara became housemates they have enjoyed playing together. They are evenly matched and love to roughhouse and chase each other.

For those who haven't had the displeasure of virtually meeting me previously, I'm Cie, AKA the Ornery Old Lady. I'm a former home health nurse, and caregiver, now disabled. I live here at the Grover Hotel with my son Michael, who will be 30 in May. 


My son is a creative person who enjoys working with his hands. He does woodcarving, primarily chip carving, which is a relief style. If you have a design in mind, you can email me at chartley65@gmail.com and I'll put you in touch with him.



Ghost Town Grover may seem gruff at first, but he's just protective of the ole Grover Hotel. Don't tell him, but he's just about the un-scariest ghost you'll ever meet.


Cactus Clem is one of a kind. He's a mutant cactus man. He doesn't eat solid food, but he sure does love to drink, and he ain't picky about what he's drinking. Beer, ditch water, lemonade, whiskey, white lightning, more beer, it's all the same to Clem!

Do not challenge Clem to a drinking contest. You will lose. Alcohol doesn't get Clem drunk. He just likes the taste.

I hope you've enjoyed meeting the people and critters that reside here at the Grover Hotel. Feel free to stop by anytime. Our virtual home is open 24-7!

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~


Ornery Owl
Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay


Sunday, February 16, 2020

Carpe Diem Love Month: Rainbow Bridge to the Dreamlands

Image by navallo from Pixabay

in a place beyond
over the storied rainbow
you and I will meet
perhaps in the land of dream
imagined by Lovecraft

~cie~


I will never get over this
I wish he was here with me

notes
I know nobody gives a flying toss about my notes, but since I'm pretty sure no-one will read this post anyway, what do I care?

I am recovering from a mental breakdown and from a TIA. I am trying to move back in the direction of writing what I want to write rather than what I think will make money. My health is precarious and I don't really know how long I have left on this planet. I worry like hell about developing vascular dementia. I'm not too worried about Alzheimer's because there isn't a history of that on either side of my family. My father had vascular dementia. My aunt on my mother's side probably had Lewy body dementia, although nothing was ever really confirmed. Hers seemed to onset more quickly than Alzheimer's tends to, although I have a feeling she was hiding her memory lapses until she couldn't anymore.

The TIAs I have had exacerbate my ADD. I don't have any short-term memory loss, but there is a change in my cognition. I blame this most recent episode on not having adequate insulin (thanks, Medicaid). My P.A. changed up my prescription so hopefully, this won't happen again. It probably could have been changed sooner but she was on maternity leave, and I am reluctant to see another provider. It is critical that I have a provider who treats me with respect and looks at numbers such as A1C, blood glucose, blood pressure and triglycerides (all things I'm taking medications for) as opposed to focusing on the damn number on the scale, which only triggers episodes of self-loathing and restrictive eating. Anyone who thinks that shaming large people (or anyone else) reinforces positive behavior is dead wrong. All that sort of behavior does is makes people avoid seeking medical care for fear of being shamed.

I write a segment called Henry and Henry for the Fetch universe. Henry is my female protagonist Pepper's beloved cat, who passes away suddenly. He is modeled after my Lafayette.

Henry Kalmar is the spirit of a flamboyant, openly gay New Orleans blues musician who commits suicide on the tenth anniversary of his beloved half-sister's death. Henry is modeled after Lafayette Reynolds, my favorite character in the show True Blood. Lafayette was the namesake for my Lafayette. He was played by the very talented Nelsan Ellis, who died on 8 July 2017 at the age of 39 from complications of alcohol withdrawal. Nelsan's sister Alice was murdered by her husband in 2002. This was something that Nelsan never got over.

Nelsan attempted to stop using alcohol on his own because he was ashamed to seek help for his addiction. This, unfortunately, created deadly complications. Here we have an example of how shaming people for addiction doesn't work. If shame worked, there would be no addicts, no fat people, and no smokers. I repeat that shaming doesn't work, it only makes people reluctant to seek medical care for fear of being shamed by ignorant health "care" providers.

I adopted my Lafayette's half-sister or cousin Tara at the same time that I adopted Lafayette. I suspect that both of them were very inbred. They came from the same feral colony. Both of them had to have most of their teeth removed because of feline stomatitis. Lafayette had problems with his fur falling out and scabby skin which I attributed to a grain allergy and began feeding him grain-free food which seemed to help somewhat. I later misattributed some of the signs of system failure to a return of the feline stomatitis and assumed that he would need the rest of his teeth removed. I had no idea, and I will go to my grave blaming myself for being so wrapped up in working that I missed critical signs. I will never forgive myself.

Henry the Cat meets Henry Kalmar in the Dreamlands, and together they become part of the team trying to save the Cosmos from an ultimate threat headed by Nyarlathotep, the smartest and trickiest of the Outer Gods. This ragtag group of reluctant heroes also includes a snarky Swedish spectre, a benevolent Yithian, a sweet-natured but foul-mouthed Scotsman who departs his cognitively impaired body at night to join the fight, a terminally ill British prog-rock icon, and a couple of good-natured ghouls. 

I let the story languish for five years in favor of attempting to write stuff that I believed would sell. It didn't, and I'm not going to back-burner my beloved project any longer. Would I like for it to have an audience? Sure, I suppose, but sometimes knowing that other people are watching prevents me from unleashing my creativity. So, whatever. 

Generally speaking, I am not the kind of person that other people gravitate to. I have kind of a prickly, defensive personality from years of having to defend myself, what do you know? I can count on one hand the people who will respond to this post, and I thank you in advance.