Nature's good humor...

Thank you well wishers. After several days of sad paralysis, Chi Chi is miraculously opting for more cat-like routines. She's eating, going to the bathroom, and best yet, trying to walk, a few steps at a time - wobbly like a town drunk, and toppling over frequently. But it's real progress and a fucking joy to see her return to the living after that scare.

We're not out of the woods yet. The steroids we're giving her are definitely not good for her already compromised heart. And yet they certainly seem to be putting those herniated discs in their proper place. One day at a time. She'll do what she needs to do on her end, and we'll tap some medical modernity on ours.

Perhaps nature puts up with some of our interventions, even sees the good in them, like a grandpa who let's his granddaughter put his hair in ribbons.

("Photogram Beneath the Stencil, Fall, Aomori Prefecture" by Jane Alden Stevens)