New Year!

[melannen]

It's another new year!

My only new year's resolution last year was to GET A CAT and I did! I got the best cat in the world! Her name is Shelly and she does all the cat things the way a proper cat does and she does not do things that are not proper cat things, and she likes to snuggle very much. (She is actually the first cat I've ever met who seems so invested in Being A Cat properly, although sometimes she is a bit desultory at things like playing with her mousies. And she won't catch the crickets.) She has caught on pretty well at her job of making sure I get up, eat foods, and go to bed at reasonably regular times, although we need to get out of the bad habit of getting back in bed after breakfast and then being cuddled too hard to get back out again for hours.

(She is currently sulking in her sulk gourd in the other room because I accidentally sat on her leg on the bed but I am p. sure she still loves me.)

My friends say she is putting on too much weight but *I* say she is just becoming more squeezable and anyway the vet classed her as "size: large" when I got her. But we *are* both getting pretty sedentary, so my new years resolution this year is to play with the red dot EVERY DAY.

Also to post more cat pictures.


p.s. does anyone in the Birmingham-Atlanta area need a Very Good Kitten? (not as Good as Shelly but almost.)



And I wrote a yuletide fic! Which was probably obvious to anyone who saw it (it was to my recip.) I offered Gautier not expecting to get him and kind of panicked when I did get him but he is so great, and I ended up really enjoying reading all of his stuff (and a lot of other background on him and his friends), and wrote an extremely silly Star Trek crossover I had a lot of fun with!

Paris, in some unknown region of space (6375 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Petit-Cénacle RPF, Star Trek - Various Authors
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Théophile Gautier/James T. Kirk, The Petit Cénacule
Characters: Théophile Gautier, James T. Kirk, Other canon characters
Additional Tags: Crossover, Time Travel, Paris - Freeform, Shakespeare, romantics, IN SPACE!, canon-typical orientalism (both canons), apologies to Théo for stealing the plot of Arria Marcella, or was Arria Marcella autobiographical???, we'll never know for sure
Summary:

Théo travels in time (mostly by accident), meets a new friend, has a one-night stand, goes to see a play. A fairly ordinary day in the life of a young Romantic poet, really.

I also got three (3!) yuletide fics of my very own! One of them has sharing turned off, so I won't link it here, but it was a Minecraft fic, and it was so great to see it Christmas morning.

The others are:

Five people Christopher Heron talked to (or tried to) about drainage (1870 words) by raspberryhunter
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Christopher Heron/Kate Sutton
Characters: Christopher Heron, Sir Thomas Sutton, Sir Geoffrey, Alicia, Kate Sutton, Francis Russell 2nd Earl of Bedford
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Drainage, five things fic
Summary:

Christopher Heron wants to talk to everyone about drainage and water-meadows. Not everyone wants to listen.

I GOT A STORY ABOUT DRAINAGE AND WATER-MEADOWS! It's so good, and so what I want after reading the book, Christopher getting to be the absolute anorak he 100% is and finding people who also care a lot about drainage, and getting the manor, and Kate still understanding him best of all. More noble knights who are extremely into estate management please.


The Ordinary Queen and the Amethyst Revolution (3375 words) by Jay Tryfanstone
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Ordinary Princess - M.M. Kaye
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Amy (The Ordinary Princess)/Peregrine (The Ordinary Princess)
Characters: Amy (The Ordinary Princess), Peregrine (The Ordinary Princess)
Additional Tags: Marriage, Royalty, Revolution, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2022, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

“I’m so glad it was you,” confided Queen Amy, the ordinary Queen. “I thought marriage was going to be embroidery and state dinners. But it’s all griffins and orchids!”

A really wonderful Ordinary Princess story about Amy and Perry being very good at being married and very good at being monarchs! (And also better at being anti-monarchist subversives than the actual anti-monarchist subversives, because, well, it's them.)

Comments

[skygiants]

PLEASE post more cat pictures (look at her she's beautiful!!)

[melannen]

She is, she is so soft-colored and she has a triangle on her nose.

Unfortunately I am very bad at taking good photos of her that don't also show too much mess in the background and she has resting Sinister Face (the gray on one side is slightly darker than the other so she *always* looks like she's half in shadow.) And also I am lazy about getting them uploaded places.

[samjohnsson]

Squint eyes! Happy kitty!

[samjohnsson]

What an excellent cat!

[melannen]

Most excellent.

[harpers_child]

Kitty!

[melannen]

Cat!

[pauraque]

Cat!! I look forward to many more cat pictures.

[melannen]

She could do with a few less, tbh. :P

[scintilla10]

She's a beautiful cat! <33

[melannen]

I'll tell her you said!

[thawrecka]

Cute kitty!

[melannen]

It's true she is!

[stellar_dust]

Nobody wants the poor banished mew mew. 😿

[melannen]

I guess he will have to stay!

[vriddy]

we need to get out of the bad habit of getting back in bed after breakfast and then being cuddled too hard to get back out again for hours.

Aww, that's adorable :D

Did you figure out a good system for preserving room heat without closing doors?

[melannen]

More cuddles please. She hasn't been cuddling at bedtime this week so we have to put in extra morning time.



In the bedroom I hung the long, heavy curtain I just happened to have around anyway in the door, and that + leaving the door itself only a crack seemed to work. Shelly was a bit dubious and she came around; now the main issue is dashing through the curtain and forgetting there might be door behind it.

The sliding door in the living room I'm less happy about; we put a hinged panel on so it could be opened just a crack with room at the bottom to let a cat through, but the geometry didn't quite work so there's still a lot of gap. I use that room less, though, so it's been mostly fine.

[vriddy]

Good to know!! I'll have to remember that when it becomes relevant for other rooms, here. Thank you for the reply and the lovely picture :D

[sophia_sol]

Congratulations on your cat and her superior catness!

also the fact that a story about drainage and water meadows is a reasonable thing to request for The Perilous Guard immediately makes me want to read the book so I guess that's going onto my tbr list!

[melannen]

She *is* a superior cat! How did you know??



Christopher Heron is just. Very, very interested in the details of estate management and new farming technologies, as a member of the landed gentry should be. And Kate is willing to listen to him talk about it! (Nobody else ever has been.) It's the best of romances.