Life Hurrying Past Us

The kitten posse continue to delight and bring endless joy to Moss Cottage.

Here’s the latest update on my efforts to get their overactive immune systems under control.  Both Otto & Iris appear to have some sort of autoimmune disease.  Very likely stomatitis, among other things, according to their vet.  It’s unlikely to disappear, but will likely be an ongoing issue.  I have them on a very good species-appropriate diet, a regimen of CBD oil, esterified fatty acid complex, seaweed powder (Clenze-a-dent), and plant sterols and sterolins in the form of Moducare  They’ve tested negative for FIV and FeLV.  I did have them on l-lysine, but stopped after reading that the thinking on that has changed.

Initial symptoms were a growth on Iris’ lip, itchy ears, wheezing, coughing, sneezing, inflamed mouth, gums and throats.  I include these details here as a way to document what I’m trying.  In the future someone who is struggling with these issues with their own cats might find some of this helpful.  When a mammal you love has a mystery illness, you become a detective.   Eventually I might have to resort to more conventional treatments for stomatitis, time will tell.

If you have a cat with a diagnosed case of stomatitis or another autoimmune disease and want to detail the therapies you used in treating it, I’m all ears.

It is a daily practice to stay here with the uncertainty and learn to be resilient, come what may.

Working things out in the sketchbook.  That’s all I do.  Everything is an experiment.

These portraits are from the 1950’s David Park – a California painter.   There are some fantastic pieces about he & Richard Diebenkorn on Youtube.  I think I’ve mentioned them before, but I’m presently too lazy to go look.  Should it interest you, I have a search bar up at the top of this blog.  I use it frequently myself!

As you grow older it dawns on you that you are yourself.  That your job is not to force yourself into a style, but to do what you want.  -David Park

Richard Diebenkorn.  Both of these are from early 1960’s I believe.  I’ve taken a deep dive into his work before as mentioned above.  Always something new to discover.  There are some fantastic Youtube documentaries about both men and the post-war Bay Area Figurative artists in general.

2 more portraits below.  August Macke 1908 (woman with blue hair), Hermann Stener 1911

I enjoy looking at portraits painted in a roughly 100 year period between 1870-1970.   I’m curious about the lives of artists before there were so many images flying across the tiny screens they didn’t hold in their hands constantly.

OMG Zoom Update

See you Sunday at 10 a.m.   I’ve added some more playdates – one a month through December.  They exist only in real-time and aren’t recorded.  You can log into the class blog to read more about that.

We’re doing portraits this week as you may know or have guessed.  Come armed with plenty of photos of yourself from all angles.  Our playdate will go longer than an hour I predict.