Rat Creature's Journal

I'm so glad that the days will now be getting longer again (in this hemisphere at least). Seven and a half hours of paltry, weak sunlight at best (usually much less with it being overcast) is just not enough.

To read all the news about that swine flu panic, while you can hear through the walls how your downstairs neighbor is having a constant, horrible sounding cough, makes the news' atmosphere of impending plague and doom so much more real, even if you are nowhere near any current swine flu cases. I guess a fitting soundtrack always adds to the mood.

I've had to bring my rat Krümel to the vet today. He has some sort of very wet sounding sneezing, and for a few days now weird episodes during which he makes sounds as if to spit something out, or maybe it's like the rat version of coughing (though I don't think rats really cough) or choking, it's hard to describe and not quite like any of the sounds of respiratory trouble I've heard before. When I tried to tell the vet he looked at me dubiously, so I'm not sure useful my description was, but it doesn't sound good, though the scary episodes only happen once or twice every day as far as I can tell, so of course the vet didn't witness one of those. (Why don't pets ever demonstrate their symptoms in a vet office?)

Anyway, he listened to Krümel's lungs, and told me that those sound clear, which is at least something, so it's likely an upper respiratory thing. I got some oral antibiotic to give him, and hope that it'll work against the infection. Krümel is still eating okay, and he's lively, so he can't feel too bad, but with a year and nine months he's not young anymore, and I worry.

Also, on our way back Krümel was admired by a horde of children who were on some sort of class trip. Thankfully he's not really scared by loud noises as long as he knows they are outside of wherever he is (in this case his safe transport box), so he didn't really mind all the staring and the shouting that much as thirty or so elementary school age children were crowding around me while I was waiting for the train, all asking questions about rats as pets. He didn't even hide beneath his towel. Anyway, I tried to impress on them that rats need large cages, need to be kept in groups, and that they may need considerable vet care (as I was on my way back from there that came up, and it's not like I don't still remember the expensive eye operation he needed last winter), and so on, and thus to do my bit for the promotion of responsible pet ownership.

Unrelated to my rats, I've been getting the impression that I still get friended in periods when I barely post, but more readers unsubscribe when I'm updating more regularly. I guess it makes sense in that readers notice more easily that interests have diverged or that my LJ is boring or whatever when I actually post, whereas it doesn't matter whether or not they have subscribed while I'm quiet, but still. This kind of pattern is not encouraging... *frets neurotically*

At least I'm fairly sure that I didn't just imagine its existence. It was drawings of HP magical creatures, but done in a style of an old bestiary, i.e. the art was faking to be excerpts from an old book about magical creatures from the HP universe. The art looked like old vintage prints and there might have been bits of text too, though I'm not sure about that. At first I suspected it might have been one of gnatkip's pieces, but I haven't found it there, so that doesn't seem to be the case.

Does anyone know which fanart I'm taking about? For all I know there could be several with this premise, as it seems a really obvious thing to do, and in that case I'd like to see any variations on this theme too, but mainly I want to look at the cool fake-bestiary again that I seem to remember... And if I somehow hallucinated this and it doesn't exist, why on earth not?? Really there should exist HP bestiaries with vintage pictures.

This is what happens if you don't tag compulsively, you never find things again. I really should start again to tag all art I look at, just like I do with fic.

Also, and this is a totally random topic shift, I got a tiny tomato plant yesterday. Not that I have a garden or anything, but I thought that maybe I could attempt to grow one in a largish flower pot in my kitchen, which is really sunny and there is a good spot for it near the window where it isn't in the way. I suspect that even with the large pot I choose to put it in it probably won't grow as well or as large as it would in a garden, but I thought it'd be nice to see something grow, and I'm not really a flower person. I mean, if it does lead to some fresh tomatoes that would be great, but it wouldn't be a big loss of an investment if it turned out that tomatoes really need an actual garden with real beds, after all it was only 60 cents for the plant, plus the 80 cent for the bamboo stick I also got with the optimistic anticipation that it might grow successfully and I'd have to bind it to something, like all the tomato plants I've seen in gardens are. I guess I'll see how it goes soon enough.