Just a little something...

This is a home movie alryssa took of Symba in April 1996, during his first year of life. Alryssa and thaya_rayal were staying over my parents flat that night, as we were in the middle of attending a Star Trek convention and mine was the closest place to crash.

Symmie being as adorable as he was, they couldn't resist filming Mel playing with him. :-)

I'm not happy with the quality it's saved itself at on Photobucket - it's better on Facebook, but I keep my account almost entirely locked down so I can't link to that.

I have lots and lots of home movie footage from 1996, and I'm in the process of saving the bits worth saving to my DVD recorder for posterity (took a while before my VCR was happy to play such an old, old tape). Next up will probably be footage of the RPG evening where Alryssa and I pretended to be drunk on Romulan Ale, goofing around while Mel desperately tried to move the game forward. Very, very funny evening.

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It sounds really heartless, but for the last couple of days all that's been going through my mind - when I haven't been thinking about Symmie - is how I can go about preparing my flat for the arrival of new kittens. Obviously that won't actually happen for several months, but there suddenly seems so much to think about!

My flat is full of cables in tucked away places kittens like to go in. Plus there's plenty of surfaces to jump on that I'm going to have to tidy up and organise. I have no clue whatsoever about kitten-proofing. I haven't had to deal with kittens in fifteen years.

I keep googling kittens, and reading all the advice out there - one I looked at today even suggested my preferred brand of cat litter is unsuitable for kittens as they might mistake it for food?? :-/

Rowan asked me when we're going to get the kittens, as thinking about them has been helping him not miss Symmie too much, and I honestly couldn't answer. The flat feels so wrong without him that I would happily say "Right now!", but no. Somehow that feels wrong too, even though I've wanted some new kittens for years. We're also visiting my sister for the weekend at the end of September, and it would be cruel to get my neighbour to catsit for little fuzzballs that have only just arrived in their new home and would be totally confused by the change in carer.

The websites also advise not to get them at a time when there'll be lots going on, like near Christmas - which, of course, is when I also have to deal with Rowan's birthday so while Christmas is a quiet affair in this flat (aside from the appearance of that oh-so-fascinating Christmas tree) there may well be a bunch of eight/nine year olds descending on the flat.

Plus we're hoping to move soon. Argh! *sigh*

Sorry guys, I know this is just verbal diarrhoea. I just... there's no little furball to greet me when I get up in the morning. Or come keep me company when Rowan's in bed. Or tell me to sod off to my own bed when it gets really late.

I haven't wanted to get out of bed the last two mornings, 'cause he wouldn't be there. It hurt enough when he was in the vets. And I have to set the timer on the TV in my room, so I can have some background noise to focus on instead of the constant thoughts of Symba running through my head, or else I know I won't sleep.

Some people would think it ridiculous to feel this way about an animal, but I know at least some of you will understand. I'm going to get past it, I know that, but right now it just hurts too much.