Good kitty news!

Click to enlarge

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the last few months have been very hard pet-wise for Masheka and I, as we saw our little cat Riley wasting away to almost nothing. In a very short time he dropped from a normal 11 pounds to a worrisome 7 pounds, and a few weeks ago, to only 4 pounds. Further, he was diagnosed with FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis), which is incurable and fatal.

BUT! Our vet did some more detailed and fancy tests, and they all came back negative for FIP. AND after a few weeks on antibiotics, little Riley suddenly started eating like an adorable furry little piggy, and running around and causing trouble like his old self. AND he gained a whole half of a pound in just two weeks!

I don't want to be overly optimistic--he could relapse--but I'm just thrilled to see him behaving like his old trouble-making self again.

By the way, the above photo shows him little Riley at his almost-skinniest, sitting in front of a gorgeous painting that was a wedding gift to us from our amazing painter friend Cindy Procious, based off a photo by our also-amazing photographer friend Márta Fodor.

Thanks again to everyone who commented on my previous kitty post, too!

Sick Kitty

Ronnie and Riley, in healthier times.

So Masheka and I found out today that our little orange kitty Riley (named for the Boondocks character) is very ill and most likely has an incurable fatal disease called feline infectious peritonitis. We brought him in to the vet because he's lost a shocking amount of weight (poor baby now weighs less than 5 pounds, probably about half what he weighed in that photo taken less than a year ago). He's only 5 years old. I cannot even express how much this sucks. He's always been a runt and asthmatic and sickly (he nearly died of a nasty respiratory infection the first month after I adopted him) but also always very sweet and affectionate and playful and social and very fond of chewing through or scratching up or puking on or otherwise destroying absolutely everything in the apartment.

Anyway, we're just going to keep him comfortable but he doesn't really want to do much but sleep these days. Unfortunately, Ronnie (gray kitty) doesn't understand why Riley doesn't want to run around and chase things, and he keeps batting at him ("play with me! play with me!") in puzzlement.

In his more active times, Riley was the inspiration for the cartoon "Bush vs. My Cat." Seriously though, no matter how ridiculous that cat is, he definitely would have made a better president than Dubya!

This SUCKS.

From the Onion: Kitchen-Floor Conflict Intensifies As Rival House Cats Claim Same Empty Bag

Kitchen-Floor Conflict Intensifies As Rival House Cats Claim Same Empty Bag

MAPLEWOOD, MO—"It is beginning to appear that any long-term solution may have to involve deployment of the disciplinary squirt bottle," said one U.N. investigator.

Masheka emailed this to me this morning and it made me laugh through my nose. Last night I brought home some books in a bag and our two cats went nuts (over the bag, not the books), temporarily abandoning a fight over their favorite chair. And we did indeed resort to deploying the squirt bottle. Seriously, read the whole thing.

Not Political: Happy Chanukah Cat Cards For Sale

I designed this simple little kitty-cat Chanukah card to send to my relatives. If you'd like to buy some for yours, they're for sale in packets of 10 here. There are no words inside.

P.S. Don't worry, he's not singing his whiskers, I would never allow either of my real cats to light the menorah.

Mikhaela in the news: "Political cartoonists sing hail to the chief"

My cartoon "Bush vs. My Cat" (above) is currently featured in the exhibit "Bush Leaguers: Cartoonists Take On the White House" (at American University's Katzen Museum in DC, on view through July 29). I've even been mentioned in an article about the piece in the Examiner:

Through “Bush vs. My Cat,” freelancer Mikhaela Reid envisions a battle of wits. One of several women selected for the show, this hot hand is among the growing number of female cartoonists.

Full article here (warning: link is to a PDF).

I was also included in a story in Editor and Publisher about the AAEC convention panel on cartoonists and blogging. I was actually in the audience, but panelist Tom Tomorrow kindly suggested I might have two cents to put in:

Mikhaela Reid, speaking from the audience, said cartoonists such as herself who aren't daily newspaper staffers often want to do a blog because it helps build readership. She added that freelance or self-syndicated creators may not do as many editorial cartoons each week as staff creators do, so a blog can be "a valuable place to vent" when not drawing a cartoon that day.

Which I did.

Our Newly Rescued Orange Manx Kitty: Octavia

Rescued Orange Manx Kitty: Octavia
Originally uploaded by M1khaela.

Masheka and I are off to Washington, DC for the 50th Anniversary Convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. We'll be hanging out with the Cartoonists With Attitude crew (AAEC Vice President Ted Rall, plus Keith Knight, Jen Sorensen, Matt Bors, Brian McFadden, Stephanie McMillan, Ruben Bolling, August Pollak, Ben Smith) and a huge convention of famous-type editorial cartoonists (Tom Toles, Joel Pett, Clay Bennett, Signe Wilkinson, Rob Rogers and many many more!) plus special guests like Tom Tomorrow, Duncan Black and the Comics Curmudgeon. I may even bring a laptop and blog about some of the panels.

In our absence, I leave you with this photo of our newly rescued cat, Octavia, kneading me with her claws as I try to finish up the Cartoonists With Attitude Slideshow for our event this Saturday.

We've felt for a while that our other cat Riley was lonely and just too friendly and social and playful to stay home by himself while we're at work. A rescue group in our neighborhood saved this little orange fuzzball from the euthanasia queue at Animal Care and Control. We barely had her home for a few hours before she decided she had to sit in one of our laps 24/7.

We named her Octavia to (a) pay tribute to the late great science fiction writer Octavia Butler and because (b) she seems like one of the weird alien creatures from Ms. Butler's books, with her giant orange eyes, her taillessness (she's a Manx cat, and apparently this is how many of them are born) and her weird bunny-style gait.

Her political affiliations are yet to become clear, but hopefully she'll be more progressive than our other cat.

I must add that lazy and unapologetic as other other cat is, he'd never have pardoned Scooter Libby.