Well, at least that's over. (Patreon)

CW: Pet death

Hey folks, hope your holidays are going well, assuming you're having them. Things have been rough for me and I need to share a little about it.

A couple months ago, I had to put our oldest cat Sara to sleep, then the following week, Udon (seen above), one of our big cats who was only a couple years old and seemed to be in good health, suddenly stopped eating. She began to decline in health, and long story short, we never found out what was wrong. We tried treating her, but we failed, and had to put her to sleep yesterday.

It goes without saying that losing a pet is awful. They were both lovely cats and I loved them and I miss them, but I also have a lot of complicated feelings because they were causing a lot of problems in my household, which have had me very stressed for the last year. So I'm heartbroken, but also relieved that this is over. We still have Soba, who causes her own problems, but maybe she'll calm down some - and rehoming one huge cat is much easier than two anyway.

I have tried to write this post several times but every time I talk too much about my feelings. In short, though it might not have been evident from my output, 2025 was one of the hardest years of my life, what with all this and the hernia. I'm hopeful however that things are going to look up in 2026, and that I will finally be able to move forward on some projects that I was just too emotionally exhausted to address.

I know it probably wasn't apparent how much I've been struggling lately, but from my perspective, you have all made it possible for me to get through an extremely difficult period of my life. If I had a normal job I'd have gotten fired for just not showing up to work for weeks at a time; your patience with me has been tremendous, I'm deeply grateful for it, and I hope to make it pay off.

The one remaining problem I have to deal with is the debt. I'm already in quite a bit, and took on almost $5000 extra in vet bills between Sara and Udon, plus I ran up some credit cards because I was too overwhelmed to think clearly about how I was spending money. If you'd like to help knock that out so I don't have yet another payment hanging over my head, I did set up a GoFundMe, but don't feel obligated; again, you're all doing so much already.

Thank you all, and here's hoping for a brighter 2026.