It's Sabot's birthday. Well, not really, I don't know when her birthday is, or how old she is. But it would have been Cocoa's 20th birthday, and I celebrated them both on the same day. I've been too sick to pay attention to days so I only just remembered. She's been getting snuggles all day though, and she just got a handful of treats, and I wished Cocoa a happy birthday too and only cried a bit. And Sabot purred a lot so at least there's that.

It's a kitty birthday!

Cocoa is 18. Sabot remains Age Unknown but likely around 13.

Alas, unlike in birthdays past, I could not make a meat cake because Cocoa is diabetic and also hates food, and also unlike in birthdays past, my Nikon is unexpectedly being hateful and needs a trip to the camera shop, so I only have my cellphone to document it. But they did get diabetic treats and catnip, plus a new bed and new sushi bowls.

( cat pics )

But seriously, the real gift is for me, as I get to share a house with these beautiful girls. If you've been following this blog for awhile, you know that there were points at which I did not think I would get this much time with Cocoa, and I am grateful for every day I have with both of them.

While I worked very hard today at marking, lesson planning, rejigging assignments to work with emergency remote learning, and listening to a 2-hour union telephone townhall, these two girls swanned around the house, finding the best possible lighting to show off their photogenic selves.

Drove up to Gravenhurst yesterday to do a workshop on night sky photography at the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve. Gravenhurst is very pretty, as is the preserve. I've never done night sky photography before and it is well out of my comfort zone of environmental and studio portraiture + graveyard photography with a 80 mmm lens at f1.8 for maximum artsy.

Overall:
+ Instructor was amazing.
+ The other people in the workshop seemed really cool and were at varying levels of skill so we could all help each other.
+ My new lens rocks.
+ It is very, very pretty up there.
+ SAW A FUCKIN DEER OMG LIKE REALLY REALLY CLOSE

- BlogTO posted about Torrance Barrens and now it is full of people. Which wouldn't be such a problem if 90% of them weren't complete assholes. There is a complete fire ban and you're not supposed to have bright lights there or camp, as it's a dark sky preserve, but did anyone pay attention? It is crawling with dickheads wanting to have their cookouts and basically endangering the whole region to make hot dogs.
- My camera has some quirks that I was eventually able to figure out but which, basically, are not apparent in the type of photography I typically do. So while I'm pretty confident with it in general, I felt like a complete n00b fumbling around in the dark.
- Tripod is okay but not great. Which, I got it for okay-but-not-great prices and in general I don't need a good one. But.
- You can't see anything when you're shooting at night, including the controls on the camera (which, okay, as I know them fairly well), but more importantly you can't see the composition of the photo you're shooting. So you just have to shoot a lot and guess.
- Y'know, I don't really like plain landscape photography as a genre. I was hoping I could do some posed shots with the night sky as a backdrop but it was just too crowded and people kept walking into the frame or swinging flashlights around.

So in conclusion I know how to do it now, but none of my shots were a m a z i n g. I'd like to do another shoot, pref. with a model, in the area but not at the preserve itself, as there are tons of places where it's just as dark but not full of wankers.

( stars and stuff! )

( bonus cats )

It's the girls' birthday today! Cocoa is 14 and Sabot is still Unknown Age. We celebrated with a meat cake and they received Enemies of the People stuffed with catnip to help them train for the revolution.









Happy birthday to my babies—I love you more than life itself.

I keep being reminded throughout the day. I mean, it's pretty hard to avoid the subject. Especially when the Board sends you that general form-letter about how to talk to children about mass shootings. Seriously, that's a thing that they have to do, because the NRA is out of control.

I don't really have anything to add that hasn't been said by wiser people. This one hits a lot closer to home than most senseless mass shootings, though. I just feel sick and sad and furious and queasy, somehow.

As—once again, wiser—people have pointed out, there is no point in asking America to get its shit together. If a school full of six-year-olds wasn't a wake-up call, a club full of queer Latinx who most of their leaders seem to want dead anyway is hardly going to stir them into action. Fucking fuck. That's it, that's my contribution. Fuck all of this shit.

There was some kind of incident at UofT today. Turned out to be nothing, but multiple buildings locked down and so on. I don't usually feel unsafe, but days like these feel pretty unsafe, y'know?

Anyway here are my cats being gay and cheering me up:

It's the Forces of Darkness's birthday today! (Well, it's Cocoa's birthay—12, to be exact—but Sabot gets to celebrate her birthday on April 1st too because I don't know when it is.)

So I made them a meat cake.

( Pictures )

It's taken them almost two years, but my cats (both adopted as adults, for anyone just tuning in) are finally at the stage where they are either BFFs or high femme lesbians, I can't tell. Anyway, they are almost inseperable. They're usually in the same room about a foot apart from each other, but lately they've been cuddling and grooming each other.

I caught them at it yesterday and just about died. Sorry for the less-than-amazing quality of these pictures; it was at night with my cellphone and the lighting in my bedroom isn't awesome.

It's sometimes very hard to leave the house with these guys being so cute.

( just cats and more cats )

I'm trying to do something vaguely creative during my vacation, but I haven't done any art since the summer so I'm feeling a bit rusty.

( So I drew my cats as people. )

Drop your suggestions for more silly things for me to draw, paint, or write in the comments.

I know you are all just dying to hear updates about how my cats are doing and to see cute pictures of them, etc.

So they are co-existing quite well! Given that it's only been a week. The hissing has almost entirely ceased, and Sabot is coming a bit out of her shell, although Cocoa is obviously still the reigning queen of the household. See below:



Cats are not to scale. Sabot is about half the size of Cocoa. She is a tiny cat of tiny, though she has filled out a teensy bit due to eating.

I finally managed to take a good picture of Sabot where you can see her properly:



She is on a red thing, of course, because she knows that she is an anarkitty and barely dodged being named Pussy Riot.

I have, admittedly, as of late, been that person who, at parties, pulls out her cellphone to show pictures of her cats. But they are really great! I mean, look at how cute my cats are.

I mean, I've been up to other things too, but those other things are not cute and fluffy.