Where is the next comic?

Babycat, a calico tabby with a white chest and paws, looks up at the camera indignantly as her son, a long grey tabby, takes up her box and spills over, also looking a little pissed off.

“My son is very intense and he took my box, when are you going to make comics about this?”

“Mom, I’m a good boy, why won’t my girlfriend love me? MOM?”

…yeah, there’s a comic coming this week, I’ve been working on it all week. I HAVE BACKUPS. It’s just not done and that’s my life now. But look at these cuties. These cuties aren’t in the next comic, BUT THEY HAVE STORIES TO TELL.

So, Where Were We?

A woman with short hair an a padawan braid holds a coffee mug and a piece of rye bread with peanut butter. A face mask is dangling from her left ear. She says, "So, where were we?" Nearby a purple spider in a top hat hangs from a tree branch and says, "How much time do we have?" A fluffy black cat licks himself and purrs near a hedge.

Yeah, so…it’s been a while, huh?

I’m going to try to catch up but let’s be honest, you don’t even remember where we left off. Last week was 17 years since I started this comic, and last month was The Fluffy One’s 18th birthday, The Puppy’s 15-year Gotcha Day, Babycat’s 2nd anniversary of living with me, and her son is now 2, and where I left off was trying to explain what happened when he met a girl.

(All my cats are spayed and neutered, even random ones I’ve met outdoors, but how we got to that was…well, you’ll see? There were some funny bits.)

Anyway. I think I’m back? We’ll see. No schedule yet, I’ll get to that, too, weather permitting.

Top Men Are Working On It.

A grey tabby lays next to an open PC. A fluffy tuxedo cat lays on the side panel of the PC. They appear to be looking at the open computer.

Where were we? Last January one computer went poof as I was working on a comic you all haven’t seen yet, that one is safe on a drive…that wants a password to access? I’ll get to that. The old PC I used to put together my comics followed in July. That drive was fine, but with the computer dead, I wasn’t backing up what I was drawing with the laptop, and I don’t want to get into the three months of comics that got deleted before I could finish and post them.

But there was this other computer just sitting there under my desk, not as new as the first one that failed and not as old as the other wreck. No, this computer’s only flaw was it ran Windows Vista.

So it’s been upgraded to a dual boot of Windows 10 and Linux Lite, and I have Krita back so can draw, and luckily still had a copy of Paint Shop Pro 7 Anniversary Edition, because my install CD cracked. Without that none of the comics would have words. Maybe I don’t need so many words.

Anyway, these guys tell me they upgraded the RAM and if I keep holding up their story they’ll start drawing it themselves.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

The Puppy stands at a window wearing a green hat.
“Oh hey, it’s St. Paddy’s Days.”
The Fluffy One wears a green derby.
“Indeed.”
A tabby looks nervous about a green hat.
“Oh no.”
A silver tabby leans away from a green hat.
“OH NO!”
A fluffy black and white cat reaches for a green hat.
“I would like the green hat.”
A black and white cat with a white nose wears a green hat.
“Wow. So this is St. Paddy’s day.”
A black and white cat glares at me for trying to put a green hat on her.
“I need a drink.”

Hey hey, it’s the first post in two months! That plan to post from my phone didn’t work at all, but I finally have Krita re-installed on my computer, and I am still alive, so maybe it won’t be three months until the next post?

Blue Skies….

A rainbow painted on a river rock.

How’s everyone doing today? Good? I hope so. I can’t wait to tell you what I’m doing today but most likely I’m exhausted right now so you get the first bit of artwork I made this year.

(I was spaying and neutering Team Tuxedo, good lord I was nowhere near Washington DC but yay for awkward scheduled posts!)

Happy 2021!

Wow, you think I would’ve had something cool drawn for today, but believe it or not, I’m still going on side quests to get Krita back on a computer. And back up my photos. And clear space on a hardrive. Also my Nan’s PC got corrupted so I reinstalled her OS and while I was at it, I put a spare drive in. Now my photos and comics are backed up there, just in case.

But I took the night off to ring in the new year, and everyone had some crunchies.

A photo of The Puppy, a tan dog with a white muzzle, wearing 2021 glasses.
“Oh hey, Happy New Years.”
A photo of The Fluffy One with 2021 glasses nearby.
“Indeed, it is the new year.”
A photo of Babycat, a calico tabby, loafing in a box with 2021 glasses in a neighboring box.
“Happy New Year, baby.”
A photo of The Kitten, now a full-grown silver tabby, standing over the 2021 glasses.
“AHHYAAAA I’m gonna party!”

“…Will you party with me?”
An animated GIF of a fluffy tuxedo kitten spinning the 2021 glasses.
“I will party with you, Uncle Dad!”
A photo of a tuxedo kitten with a white nose posing next to the 2021 glasses.
“Wow. This is a party?”
A photo of a mom tuxedo cat sniffing the 2021 glasses.
“Weird place to leave these things.”

So that’s us and where we are now. The comic is coming back because I need the stories to be told.

There are also 1200+ older comics that I have to bring over here. So more adventures await. Cheers!

A photo of Lynda, wearing the 2021 glasses and a ridiculous hairband that reads "Happy New Year!" The kitten sits next to me, looking like he wants to eat the hairband.
The best part, as always, is the cat.

Well, this is a pickle.

I had a lot of comics in the works, and having not learned my lesson in February when one computer went kaput and took a comic with it, I continued to not use paper and just tonight noticed I lost about 700 files of comics in progress, reference photos, fan art requests, and who knows what else.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

The comic was my therapy, and so figure how long I’ve gone without that, multiply it by how long people have been waiting for fan art from me and square it by all the days I didn’t get outside this year, and well, I’m not in a great place mentally at the moment. The cats and Puppy keep me alive, I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have to explain why losing my artwork hurts, to quote the late great Sean Connery in Medicine Man, “Haven’t you ever lost anything?”

We have top men working on the issue.

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

A tuxedo cat sits between two tuxedo kittens. They are all looking at the camera with their ears perked.

You know I couldn’t leave them be.

To be fair, she brought them into the basement, I just followed her in with a litter pan, bowl of water, plates of food, a radio, some boxes, lots of crunchies….

I really didn’t mean to bail on the comic, but drawing on a phone is weird when you have to keep an eye on where the kittens are and assure the mom that the big silver kitten is really a sweet guy and it’s just that all the cool toys were his up until now. A bit of déjà vu except The Fluffy One is totally cool about all the cats he has to deal with now. So many stories to tell.

Wakanda Forever

The Ninja twins declare they are going to skate from selections from the movie Black Panther. The Slinky One is dressed as T'Challa, The Fluffy One is dressed as Zuri, keeper of the heart-shaped herb. The Fluffy One admits to bringing catnip and while he wants to leap a lot at the halfway mark for maximum points, The Slinky One is getting cold and wants to go see the Black Panther movie.

A flashback to 2018 in honor of the king. This year is so cruel it now took Chadwick Boseman and I can’t deal with that. He’s younger than me, for one thing. My heart goes out to his family and all the kids who saw T’Challa and believed they could do anything. That part of him stays. He never yielded.

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