Sora, you special little snowflake

Remember a year ago when Sora started having, ahem, inappropriate elimination problems that were diagnosed as crystals in his urine? They seem to have started up again. A couple of days ago, he was shut into the bathroom with me (those of you with cats will understand their desire to accompany you behind closed doors). At some point, he jumped into the (dry!) tub and peed on a dirty washrag. I didn't think much about it other than "weird cat" because he loves to jump in there and rub himself all over dirty washrags. But then last night we discovered a small pile of turds about a foot away from the food dispenser he uses most often, as if he was eating when he was overcome with an uncontrollable urge.

Luckily our weekend had been so packed with stuff that Toby and I had taken today off, so we called the vet and explained, and also explained that we didn't want to have to bring him in if we could possibly avoid it, because he was so terrified the last time. So our current treatment plan is to go back on the spiffy special prescription diet formulated for urinary problems for a while, and in 3 or 4 weeks, for us to sample his urine. This is going to involve shutting Sora up in a bathroom (away from Mama! O the humanity felinity!) with a plastic litter tray filled with aquarium gravel until he pees, at which point we grab a sample with a kit they've provided--a syringe to pick it up and a plastic tube in which to carry it. It can be refrigerated overnight, but needs to get back to the vet ASAP otherwise. (The gravel is so he can scratch, but it's not absorbent.)

Anyway. I NOTE that the Felidae dry food, which we'd been feeding them (wet food in the morning, dry food at night) changed their kibble shape! We think that they must also have changed the formula because we started the new bag, with the new kibble shape, last week and now this. So it's back to the grind of finding a food that the cats will eat. One of the vet-recommended foods was Halo, so we have a bag of that to try tonight. We fed Sora a kibble of that and he loved it enough that he followed us around squeaking, trying to get more of it. Nefer turned her nose up at a kibble, but did lick her lips, so there's that.

Tropes I am tired of

If you're a writer and you have a strand or lock of hair fall into a character's eyes and they impatiently push or blow it away, you better have built up a lot of goodwill previously because that's going to lose quite a lot of mine.

If it happens on the first page, as a way to show the color of the character's hair and that she is a tomboyish type of person, you're pretty much sunk, at least from my point of view.

Team Human

We poked around the bookstore earlier today, for lack of anything better to do :), and I came across a new book I haven't seen on any of your LJ/DW posts. I didn't get it here, but have sent the sample to my Kindle.

It's titled Team Human and is clearly a response to Twilight. It,s by Justine Larbelestier and Sarah Rees Brennan, which makes me hopeful, and gets points for the POV character being Asian, pictured on the front cover, and facing front and center without her head being cut off.

Anyone read it yet?