I can at least say Remy let me give him a snuggle after his rough morning.

This morning started out fairly typical. I woke up right around 6 AM and Remy was there to greet me with his usual dose of purrs and cuddly nudging to get me to get up to feed him. Outside of some recent allergy issues, he seemed to be pretty happy.

I gave him a couple spoonfuls of wet food, chicken this time, in which I only give him a little bit to start as I mix his meds into it and I want to make sure he gets those down before moving onto more. I made coffee and settled into my desk chair for my usual online browsing.

It was at this point I noticed Remy head towards his litter box. Suddenly, I heard these really loud squeaks. Remy was struggling to poop. I saw him leave the box and lay down on the kitchen floor, panting hard. At that point, I was worried and got up to check on him. At first, I thought he was convulsing in some way, but I soon realized he hadn’t finished the job and was still trying. He had to lay down because the whole thing was hard for him.

He finally pushed out what he was trying to, but couldn’t even go all the way as I had to pluck it from him with some toilet paper. At this point, he laid there and panted hard for a couple of minutes before settling down. He laid there for about five minutes before getting up to head towards the litter box again. Same process, loud squeaks, but this time he was able to finish the job. He then again laid down on the kitchen floor to pant some more before settling down. As I type this, he’s still in the same spot, at this point resting.

This is how the past ten days have gone. He’s shown progress from the meds, breathing less deeply, seeming more comfortable. But, every few days, there’s been an episode of some kind which raises his stress levels and therefore raising mine. It’s hard to watch him go through this. It seems unreal just two months ago he seemed happy and vibrant. Every episode of this is a reminder to me that he’s probably on borrowed time. Things suddenly are not working as they once did for him and that’s worrisome. When he moves around, he seems fully capable. He can still jump onto my bed from the ground. He’s walking fine, doesn’t seem labored. But, internally, things are starting to go south.

All I can do is just continue loving and comforting him at this point.

Watching baseball with my buddy. He’s pretty stable tonight. Seems relaxed.

I’m watching the Brewers-Cubs game and if I’m not mistaking, I can hear the cicadas. I kinda dig that.

Mariners could make the playoffs with three more slots available. ⚾️

This is a beautiful hockey sweater! I love everything about the Seattle Kraken branding. Well done!

Taking advantage of this as much as I can.

I do enjoy watching “What’s On My iPhone?” videos, but this one from Christopher Lawley really caught my attention. I love the way he uses the Shortcuts widget in iOS 14 in a stack on his home screen.

It was a nice morning for a walk.

Yeah, I think I can skip out on NBA League Pass for the rest of the year. Here’s the Pelicans schedule for the restart. Zion is a blessing.

Same as it’s always been. 🐈

A couple of nights ago, I took Remy in to get checked up, because he had been showing a lot of deep and irregular breathing. This is usually a warning sign for cats. Upon inspection, they found fluid around his lungs, but not enough to tap there. They instead sent me home with some medication, which I mix into his food a couple times a day.

Unfortunately, when they did a CT scan on him, they found a mass near his heart. We don’t know at this time if it’s benign or not, really only time will tell. If it is benign, there’s really nothing to worry about. If it isn’t, it’s basically a ticking bomb and it could take him soon. Surgery in that area is too dangerous.

I’m hoping it’s nothing. Upon receiving the meds for the last 36 hours now, Remy has rebounded and is acting much of his normal self. His appetite is back, he’s purring heavily, and he just seems like his happy go lucky self. More importantly, his breathing looks much more normal. I’d hate to see him go any other way than on his terms because that’s what he deserves. He’s been too sweet of a cat to go out painfully.

In the meantime, all I can do is continue medicating him and loving him as I have. He’s frankly easy to love, being the teddy bear he is. As I look over him right now, he’s laying on the floor snuggling his favorite horse toy.

Filipe Espósito, writing for 9to5Mac:

Today, Twitter is announcing its new Twitter API v2, which was completely rebuilt with new features. One of the highlights of the new Twitter API is the real-time tweets stream — one of the options removed in the past. Third-party apps can once again load new tweets as they’re published and not just after a period of time.

Other changes to the API include conversation threading, polls, pinned tweets, better spam filter, and advanced search. The Twitter v2 API will be available on three different levels: Standard, Academic Research, and Business.

The Standard level offers access to basic features of Twitter for free, which is useful for development purposes and small apps. The Academic Research level allows developers to access more data about public conversations such as user behavior on a specific subject. And with the Business level, developers will have full access to Twitter features and data, which is great for popular apps.

I’m glad to see Twitter come around on this. I’m a big fan of Tweetbot and Twitteriffic on both iOS and macOS. Twitteriffic, in particular, has some really powerful filtering tools which I rely on.

Watching my first live American baseball since March. Mariners intra-squad game.

I finally checked my mail for the first time in a week (I’m horrible about that) and found my Micro.blog stickers had arrived. Thanks, Jean!

Vahe Gregorian, writing for the Kansas City Star:

Rhonda LeValdo, an Acoma Pueblo woman, teaches media communications at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas. She wrote a guest commentary for The Star in January bearing the headline: “Problem with ‘Arrowhead Chop’ isn’t political correctness. It’s about human dignity.”

While she appreciates some of the efforts the Chiefs have made, she and others have for years implored the Chiefs to ask their fans to stop dressing up and chopping and otherwise appropriating Native ways.

But they’ve gotten nowhere significant.

So while she sees the potential for useful progress if the Chiefs condemn or otherwise work to stop such actions, she adds that barring a name change, “You’re going to always have the same person who just doesn’t care and keeps doing it.”

And so she advocates a new name, particularly one pointed out to her that could “right all the wrongs.”

Call them the Kansas City Monarchs, she said, an homage to the fabled Negro Leagues team in the city where the enterprise was born 100 years ago.

I would like the Kansas City Monarchs.

I’ve returned to using the Kiko theme after finding some custom CSS, which achieves a lot of what I would want out of the theme. I’ve also started working on my dark mode, including a fun glow effect on my masthead. The colors are a set I’ve used many times from the Seattle Sounders. Light or day mode use the classic Rave Green and Sounder Blue, with the dark or night mode taking from the team’s Nightfall look.

Update: A few have mentioned they like the glow effect in the dark mode theme. It’s simply a layered text shadow effect, set at markers of all the way up to 70 pixels. The example I found, showed it with an animation, but I didn’t want to make it too distracting. With the Kiko theme in mind, the CSS code looks like this:

.masthead-title a {
    color: #fff;
    text-shadow: 0 0 10px #fff, 0 0 20px #fff, 0 0  30px #c8347e, 0 0 40px #c8347e, 0 0 50px  #c8347e, 0 0 60px #c8347e,  0 0 70px #c8347e;
}

Saw this on my walk this morning.

Remy is still breathing hard, so I’m taking him to the vet tomorrow to get him checked out. He’s been a little bit lethargic today, seems content staying in one spot. I need to see what I can do for him.

But, then I had chicken dinner tonight and that’s when he perked up and became much of his normal self. Of course I shared a little with him, because I like to see him happy.

While I was in the waiting room at my dentist office, another guy comes in, sans mask. When asked if he would put one on, guy lets out a hard sigh. Given where I was at… yeah, kinda like pulling teeth.

I’ll be in a dentist’s chair in about an hour. I look forward to getting this over with.

I finally found my cat’s laser pointer, after a few days of looking. That little red dot is the one thing that’ll get him moving.

Christopher Spata and Sara DiNatale, writing for The Tampa Bay Times:

Often, law enforcement has determined there was no violation. In Tampa, police responded to several complaints where they explained to callers that people can go maskless indoors if they maintain a social distance of 6 feet. Someone called police to a Hillsborough Avenue Waffle House to complain diners weren’t in masks. Police explained you don’t have to wear one while eating.

This whole thing drives me nuts. Police aren’t really willing to enforce any rules. Restaurants are open for dine-in. When businesses try to enforce their own rules, customers act like victims.

What I know is other countries have this virus under control. The US does not and there’s a distinct disparity in how we’ve gone about it here. Worse, I feel like some are kind of proud of that.

One of the apps I didn’t expect to be replaced on my Mac with Big Sir was Bartender. But, since they introduced Control Center to the Mac, I really have no reason to have Bluetooth or display controls in the menu bar any more.

Typical Sunday morning for me. Sipping coffee, watching Premier League, will probably head out to do laundry soon. Hopefully I can remember to put my clothes away right away this time.