Our dear kitty, Katusha, recently passed away from a fast-growing cancer, and we are still pretty devastated. Unlike with Rhea, Katusha’s cancer formed and spread without us realizing anything was wrong at all. Or at least without me – the human – knowing. The dogs may have been aware. One day she just stopped eating and drinking and wouldn’t come out of the cupboard. Literally the day before she was climbing her cat tree, running around the house getting into things, cuddling with me for story time, enjoying her food, and playing with the dogs. I took her to the ER and after several tests they found a large abdominal mass with swollen lymph nodes throughout her body. It was really too late to do much of anything except give her some palliative meds for a while. I wrote all about it on my author blog. She was a big part of my life in California and Arizona and will live in my heart forever, as have all the other animals who’ve shared their lives with me.
Suffice it to say, we are still upset and in mourning. When we are in the bathroom, Irina still sits at the cupboard waiting for her to come out. It’s heartbreaking to me.
This is largely why I’ve been away from this blog for a while. Well, that and I’m still learning the book business, publishing, how to run a nonprofit, and animal adoptions. It’s a lot! I’m also attempting to learn podcasting so we can have actual conversations with authors while we are online. We are looking for space to open a physical store but we plan to remain online only until the pandemic is really over, whenever that may be.
In the meantime, I’ve been adding books to the Bookshop page and reviewing books on Instagram and Goodreads. And I will continue to blog here until we get the podcast up and running, which will hopefully be soon. Thank you so much for waiting patiently and for staying with us!
