02/20/2008
Inks for page 287 are up.

03/22/2008
The inks are up and no, there are no pencils for the next page yet.

This last month has been pretty stressful. Ladydarke's cat, Billy Bob, has had cancer for at least a year. When she moved to the States we got him surgery to remove his right eye, where the cancer started. We didn't get him chemotherapy quickly enough, though and the cancer returned. He got a second surgery and this time he got radiation treatment. He bucked the odds and surprised a lot of people for about 3 months. Then we found his skull had been softened by the cancer and radiation and he was getting a brain infection. The antibiotics made him nauseous. He couldn't open his mouth to eat so we had to feed him through a tube. He started losing his ability to keep a constant body temperature. This is bad in cats. He went into the vet hospital (Columbia, Missouri has one of the finest Veterinary hospitals in the country, by the way) and we tried to get his temperature to stabilize. He had several seizures and Ladydarke visited him every day, twice when she could. In his last few days, he needed oxygen to breath and they X-rayed his chest. They found that the cancer had spread to his lungs. He vomited up his feeding tube and he was too weak for the anesthesia needed to put it back in. He was basically living on life support at this point. So Sunday, March 15 we went in and signed the papers to have him euthanized rather than waiting for him to starve to death on life support. He died at 12:43pm.

The doctors and students (this was the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at University of Missouri) were amazing and supportive. We thank them very much for their efforts.

Ladydarke took Billy's death very hard. He was born under her bed and he died in her arms. There's no way to understand how deep that connection really was, but to see her as broken up as she was by this I'm glad I was here enough to be of some support.