I was going to do an entry about seeing the new Harry Potter movie twice, and why I enjoyed G-Force but had some issues with the writing, and why Torchwood: Children of Earth is excellent and also makes me want to hurt something. However, that has been superceded by what has to be one of the worst 24-hour periods of my life.

I came home from G-Force to find Cat, my 15-year-old cat, panting on the floor. The A/C had stopped working properly. Fearing he was dehydrated, we put him in the tub with a half-inch of water to cool his feet, and he drank for ten minutes straight. His breathing was wheezy and not at all good. So we took him to the emergency vet at one in the morning. "Come on, Cat," I said, without really knowing why. "We're going on an adventure..."

He had lung cancer that had metastasized. We were going to have to put him to sleep. I was up 'til four in the morning crying and praying that he would be okay.

He wasn't. Poor little man, he was so miserable, they had to keep him in the oxygen cage and his breathing was still awful...he was in so much pain. We sat with him and talked to him and told him we loved him and cried and pet him for about a half an hour before the vet came in to give him the shots...

...and I saw my furry brother die.

We opted to have him privately cremated, since he deserved better than the mass cremation for the pet cemetary. (That was all my push - it was more expensive but I would have paid for it on my own.) So his urn is getting shipped to us in about another week or so. I listened to "Bright Eyes" and "The Day Before The Day" in the car on the way back and cried my eyes out.

I miss him. I miss the way he'd always come up and beg for food in the kitchen. I miss the way he'd try and steal some off my plate. I miss giving him his thyroid pill. I miss how loud and energetic he was. I miss the particular way he trilled when he meowed. I miss the way he came trotting down the hall when we called him, the little pouch he got when we neutered him swinging freely. I miss his cute little paws and his horribly dirty little ears. I miss his patches above his eyes that were practically bald. I miss the way he smelled. I miss how he was always purring.

I miss Cat, god damn it. More than words can express.

Merlin Dulles "Cat" Villanueva
April 4, 1994 - July 26, 2009
"Bite; bite hard, and find the tenth life."

The four-year protest against the Bush administration begins NOW. If you care, you will help.

You're probably all scared now. You're scared because you're individual, and what individuals fear more than anything is homogenous tyranny. Repression. After all that many of us have struggled to achieve to allow us to be true to ourselves, you're faced with a New World Order that wants to annihilate your rights to be those things, to speak out about those things, who wants to make you less than a person for being those things. Whether you're gay, bi, trans, queer, furry, Otherkin, plural, BDSM, kinky, zoophile, [insert anything here]-phile, straight but not narrow, straight but having sex outside of marriage, asexual, you've ever needed or thought you might need an abortion, or you're supportive of any of the above, THIS AFFECTS YOU. This threatens your very way of living, even if in ways that aren't obvious. No, they're not going to hunt you down for being 'kin. But the Bush administration is about, and for, rich white American fundamentalist Christian heterosexuals; the majority of the people who voted for it. These are the people who decide what's good and what's evil. What's holy and what's sinful. What's worthy of being in the bookstores. What's worthy of funding in the school and college societies. What's worthy of being portrayed on TV, and how it's portrayed. What's worthy of arrest.

You don't have to have a kink. If your mind tends to flippant, humourous death threats when you rant, you're affected. If you're a writer, you're affected. If you're anything other than a rich white American fundamentalist Christian heterosexual YOU ARE AFFECTED. And you're probably scared.

You have a right to be scared. But fear is what tyrants feed on. Fear on its own is a tame, futile emotion, reducing us to cowardice. Seize your fear and thrust it out into the daylight screaming for its blinded eyes, make it run, run like a rabbit. Set your fear alight. Back your fear with anger, not senseless, irrational anger but righteous indignation, and light it ablaze with rainbow flames.

Now, more than any other time, our diversity must be our weapon. Now, more than ever, is NOT the time to hide, NOT the time to shrink back from self-expression, NOT the time to start locking our LJ posts and taking our art shrines and our writings down off the web. Now is the time to shine, and show the world that what we are is not some hideous monstrosity, but a brilliant, bedazzling dragon of potential and harmonious dissonance, resonating in all the colours of the spectrum.

Write, draw, compose, create masterpieces that reflect your glittering soul. Make love, with yourself, with another, with many others, in public, in leather, in fluorescent body paint, in the ocean. Question, comment, share, create community so that others may build. Ask what hasn't been provided for, what hasn't been done for the world, who's hiding, who's in fear, and give them that space to shine. Dress up, dress down, party in the streets, party in the schools, sing, dance, chant, show them you're alive and you care about this world. Infiltrate the secret heart of the city. Plagiarise, cannibalise, take the acts of others and use them as fuel for your own acts of rebellion. Leave around mix CDs with music you love. Drown out the hatred with delirious joy. Do a class project on alternative lifestyles. Skirt the law, live on the edge, believe, breath, dream, be, push your limits, push your mind, push your soul. Try something new. Don't be afraid. Be who you are, but be it a thousand times brighter. Tell a friend. Tell the world. Come out... and play.

Most of all, PROTEST. Scream it from the rooftops. Flypost. Make banners, make posters, leave messages on computer screens, marker pen in the bathroom stalls - take one out with you tomorrow - fake blood-spattered dolls abandoned on garbage tips mourning the death of the individual. Wear all black. Wear a t-shirt with a message. Wear the message on your body - paint, tattoo, Miss Universe-style sash.

And keep loving. Goddess, keep loving. The things you love, the people you love, will see you through.

If you believe in the spirit of this post, copy it to your LJ with this message attached.

You have my support.

Ugh.

Eurgh.

Yep, you guessed it.

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more warlike union, fuck-up justice and destroy domestic tranquility, provide for the common offence, destroy the general welfare and then secure the curses and hatred of every other nation EVER...

...have re-elected the incompetent incumbent, the Shrub, Bush Junior, Dubya, call him what you will.

GreenCat is sad.

GreenCat will watch Space: 1999 and eat chocolate to feel better.

As she is doing that, GreenCat will plot the downfall of the Shrub at the hands of Cam.

"Miss Sandman, you have the conn..."

-GreenCat, alone, depressed, in pain, and misrepresented.