So. It’s been a bit of a ratfuck of a month.

I hadn’t really been brushing Lemon because my brother took on the job. Every night he was using these two brush things and “torturing the cat”–which she loved and begged for. So I assumed that all her brushing needs were being handled and I did my usual petting her on the back and face.

But it turns out that he was actually only brushing the TOP of the cat. So her long fur was beautiful on the surface, and terribly matted underneath.

I should have just spent the money and bought the cat/dog shaver. I’m not a big fan of the lion cut, but when the fur is matted to the skin a shave is pretty much the only choice. As I learned.

Amazon adlink: Oneisall Cat Grooming kit (electric shaver for cats and dogs)
Amazon: Oneisall Grooming Kit

I was thinking that there was a way to detangle/demat her fur without shaving because I didn’t do my research. Not until afterward.

I got a combo set of a detangling/dematting brush and comb. And I really thought it was cool… at first.

Detangling/dematting brush

I looked on the cat info sites, and one did a “top brush/comb” list that suggested different styles and uses. So I bought the little set and I used the brush and it was great. At first.

You use the side with the 9 teeth for dematting, and the other side for deshedding.

And Lemon didn’t complain or anything. She just laid in my lap and let me brush through her mats and I was pleased with the way they were coming out.

I brushed her for like 30 minutes until she made a “MEW!” And I checked and there was a BALD PATCH around her neck where her collar is. And the skin looked irritated but unbroken.

So I freaked out and got out a comb and a pair of scissors and I trimmed her hair on both sides of her body to see if there were any other sore spots she hadn’t complained about

And HOLY SHIT.

She’s currently got a cat mohawk, with the sides short and a four inch stripe down her back (where there weren’t any tangles). She looks so skinny and pathetic! I feel terrible for her.

But that dematting brush TORE HER SKIN. There’s a small circle above her back left leg, a larger circle against her ribs, and a HUGE circle on her shoulder. Like, you could see MEAT.

But there was no blood. It was just missing fur.

Still, I’m really scared I may have killed my cat 🙁

So I looked up what antiseptics can be used on cats, and it turns out you CAN’T use alcohol, peroxide, or Neosporin, all of which we had.

The only real choices are chlorhexidine or iodine, which need to be watered down.

So I made some saline solution out of warm water and salt and flushed out her wounds. Then I went online to order some next-day delivery antiseptic.

Amazon Basics Povidone-Iodine solution
Amazon Basics Povidone-Iodine Solution

The iodine would come soonest, so I ordered it immediately for next day delivery along with a box of 100 individually wrapped sterile gauze pads.

It’s been several days and her little wounds have formed shallow scabs. But I’m still so scared. Those wounds look terrible.

The shaver I should have ordered in the first place came today. And now I’ve ordered some Vetericyn Antimicrobial Feline Wound Care spray because I’m not sure the iodine is working.

Amazon ADLINK: Vetericyn Antimicrobial Feline Wound Care spray
Amazon: Vetericyn Antimicrobial Feline Wound Care spray

For reals, I’ve wasted so much money in the last week. I should’ve just ordered the shaver, or after I screwed up I should have just ordered the Wound Care spray.

And I keep looking at her scabs and there’s a bit of redness around them and I keep wondering “Does that look infected? Do I need to get my brother to take her to the vet on his payday? What do I do?!?”

I’m just one big panicked flail away from knocking myself stupid at this point.

And, of course, Lemon is the one with the asthma. So on the regular there are days when she’s just laying around and everyone worries that she’s dying. Like, she’ll start gasping and choking, or she’ll just lay on the floor with her sides heaving, and that’s even with her Fluticasone Propionate inhaler.

We’re always really worried about her.

But right now with her wounds and her asthma and the way she lays around and she breathes so hard and looks so (I assume) miserable… I can’t tell if her wounds are infected and if she’s got a fever.

I’m so stressed out that she’s going to die. I’ve been having NIGHTMARES every night since the brushing catastrophe. And her scabbed-over wounds look so terrible that it’s not making me feel any better at all.

So I’ve been stressing out that I may have killed the cat.

And it’s always so terrible when a cat is sick or dies. Like, something happens and you do all that you can do, but it just goes wrong and that’s that. You feel like liquified shit. And you cry your eyes out. And you pack up their toys and all their stuff and you think you’re never going to get over it, but eventually you’re able to take a full breath again. And you think “Well, that’s life, isn’t it?”

But it’s so much differenter when you’re the one that fucked up. When something you’ve done with your own two hands results in them being sick or suffering or dying.

It feels so terrible. A heavy weight of guilt and concern and thoughts of “If I end up in Hell, the demons are going to torment me with all the pain I gave that poor cat with my stupidity. I can never be forgiven.”

Even now she’s sleeping on the chair in front of me and I’m afraid to go to bed because what if she dies? What if I’m not here and she goes into some kind of shock or something and she dies? And it’s all my fault, because she needs me and can’t call me because she’s a FUCKING CAT???

Lemon laying on chair

So yeah. I’ve been losing my mind. Not so quietly. At home.

Disability Visibility at Amazon

It is currently so cold that I wish it would snow and get it over with. Like, it might actually feel warmer if it would snow.

The worst thing about sleeping when it’s cold is that my feet get cold. When I’m sleeping I don’t notice, but when I wake up I’ll find out my feet are like bricks on the ends of my legs. I won’t be able to feel them for a while except that slightly warm water feels like boiling against my skin.

I just saw “The Society of Snow” (English translation) on Netflix. It was about the 1972 plane crash of the soccer team in the Andes Mountains.

It’s been a long time since I saw the “Alive”(?) movie about the same crash.

I figure the worst ways to suffer are freezing or burning. That they were starving at the same time they were freezing… It must have been hell.

Prairie Fires at Amazon

NINE CUTS DEEP

There was no warning. One minute he was curled up in his bed, face nestled against a plump pillow, and the next he was being dragged out of the house in his sleeping clothes.

“What is happening? What are you doing? Who are you?!” he shouted, trying to struggle but his arms were held too tight.

He was thrown on the ground and knelt up to see that his attackers were wearing the uniforms of the Imperial Guard. Their commander stood before him, strong legs braced and expression firmly unfriendly.

The commander unrolled a scroll and held it face out so he could see the words in vermilion ink. “Jan Douther, by order of the Emperor you are to be exiled for life to the island of Reuine.”

“Why?” Jan asked, horrified.

He could hear his house being ransacked behind him. Anything of wealth was thrown onto a prepared wagon. As an exile, a proclaimed criminal, he would only be allowed a single set of rough spun clothes and everything else would be claimed by the courts.

“Donthor Auerleon, once Duke of Kourton, has been sentenced to be executed for the crime of treason. The great Emperor has proclaimed that his family be dealt with nine cuts deep.”

Jan wanted to wail in horror but no sound could escape.

Nine cuts deep!

Whatever Donthor had done hadn’t just seen himself and his immediate family dead, but had doomed his family down to nine generations.

As a second cousin, Jan would be made to suffer along with their grandparents and great-grandparents and uncles and aunts and all of their families. Whatever Donthor had done had killed his own wife and children and sentenced everyone else in the family to permanent exile.

They would not be allowed to own property. Those that didn’t already have a spouse wouldn’t be allowed to marry. Any children they had would automatically be labeled as criminals. They would have to do whatever labor the government ordered. And they would not be allowed to leave their place of exile.

Jan had never been fond of Cousin Donthor, but now he discovered that he hated him.

That smug scumbag that would come to holiday events in expensive clothes layered with jewelry. Who would boast of his riches and his properties and his beautiful concubines and the best schools that his children attended. Who would flaunt his ducal title while looking down on the rest of them.

Donthor had ruined their entire family. And for what?

As Jan was stripped naked in the street and was forced into the rough spun clothes, he hated and hated.

He didn’t cry out when the Imperial Guards transferred him to the care of the prisoner transporters and he was beaten. He hadn’t done anything to fight them, but they wanted him weak. Pliable. Aware that he was no longer a person and could barely be considered human.

His status was lower than the lowest of slaves. Those whose masters could kill them for a list of offenses but who still had to follow set laws of treatment.

As a criminal his life was worthless. He could be beaten, robbed, abused, and kept captive, and if he dared to go to the Law Bureau for justice, he would first be given thirty strikes with a board before he would be allowed to speak.

The law was not on his side, and he knew it. And so he refused to cry, simply accepting that everything that had once been was no longer. Including the luxury of weakness.

Later, when he was reunited with his elderly family members and a few cousins on the ferry boat to Reuine Island–the rest of the family having been separated to other points of exile–he held them close and promised that he would take care of them. They were all that he had left in his life.

Donthor’s foolishness had taken everything else from him. Even the hope of a happy future.

=END=

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PRION

“You shouldn’t eat that,” he said, standing well back. “It doesn’t seem right.”

“Shut up. What do you know?” Logan growled and continued butchering the meat.

Meat. That’s what everyone insisted on calling it. Not beef. Not pork. Not chicken. Meat.

Wally figured it was hard to call it what it was. To admit that what they were salivating over was human. A dead human body.

They’d been hungry for so long, holed up in their ragged little town with limited supplies worn thin and thinner.

Before the zombie apocalypse, the grocery store had been waiting for the weekly delivery of supplies. The shelves had quickly been emptied in the following weeks and months.

Everyone grew hungry and thin. Several infants were the first to die, their eyes huge in their sunken faces. Then the sick and elderly began to die. Those that had lost access to their medication and their regular medical care.

Eating the dead had been an idea put forward by Logan and his crew. A distasteful suggestion that had gained traction with the hungry townspeople. And here they all were: getting ready to eat their tenth dead body.

Wally had managed to avoid cannibalism so far. His family had had a pantry full of staples and a cellar full of home canned fruits, vegetables, and boiled chicken. It had made him feel guilty not to share and the family had been tight with their rationing, so while no one was starving, no one was fat either.

They were waiting for the spring when they could move their vegetable seedlings to the garden plot they’d already dug out and begun fertilizing. With the Norman and Benson families they’d marked out a field area for growing wheat. (Wally was grateful for his sister Gail’s obsession with wheatgrass smoothies that had given them a huge bag of wheat berries ready to grow.)

Things were hard but not completely hopeless. That’s what Wally felt.

Supplies were tight in town, but not to the point of starvation and death. Yet Logan and his crew had eaten too well and ended up mixing and drinking infant formula when the milk had run out. They had insisted that the military would come and rescue everyone in just a few days… a few weeks… a few months… And those young children had died.

They refused to take responsibility. Claimed it was the fault of circumstance. Those babies would have died anyway. It wasn’t their fault for selfishly wasting supplies.

Promoting cannibalism was one of the ways they tried to divert attention away from the deaths they’d caused. As though they were creating food and not just indulging in another kind of sin.

Wally had told his family to stay in the house while he came to watch every time a human body was turned into meat. He hated witnessing the depravity, but he felt that he needed to hear what people were saying. Because those that were so happy to desecrate dead bodies might not hesitate to create more.

He had his wife, children, and sister to worry about. They were the most important things in this changed world.

So he stood at the back of the crowd as what had once been Gary from Schaeffer Street was skinned and cut into sections. The man had died in his sleep, presumably from a heart attack.The townspeople hadn’t yet turned to murder, though he feared it was only a matter of time.

He watched as a huge stockpot was brought forth and the designated cooks began to prepare a soup from the bones and meat. He even accepted a bowlful as his share, that he took back to his house and later buried in a corner of the backyard. He marked the spot and silently promised poor Gary that he would plant beautiful flowers for him in the spring.

Then he went inside to his family and forced a smile he didn’t feel to keep from scaring the children. They depended on him to let them feel safe.

. * . * . * .

Five days later, everyone that ate Gary Newman was dying. The town’s limited medical supplies were used to attempt to treat and diagnose what they were suffering from. And finally old Doc Mikkelsen announced that they’d been infected by prions, likely transmitted by the human meat they’d ingested.

“Is there any medicine they can take?” Lilah asked. Her little face was pale and scared. She’d seen too much death in her short life, from zombies to this strange sickness the doctor was helpless to stop.

Wally sighed and shook his head. “It sucks, but there are just some things you can’t do anything about. You can only pray for a dying soul and say your goodbyes. Even Before there was no cure for someone infected with prions.”

“Oh.” She hugged her rabbit doll so tightly that her fingers were white.

Wally gathered her up in his arms. “Don’t be scared. Prions aren’t something that you can catch like a cold or the flu. We didn’t eat what they all ate. We’re not going to get sick.” He pressed a kiss on the top of her head and looked toward his wife and two sons. “I promise.”

There was a reason why eating human meat was taboo. It wasn’t because it was disgusting and horrifying and immoral and… It was because there were some things that cooking could not kill. That only complete carbonization would destroy. Terrible things that bred in the quiet moments and could be spread when fools dared to eat what they should not.

He would do whatever he needed to do to keep his family from becoming cannibals. They were human beings, and he refused to let them become monsters.

=END=