nursing the non-cooperative sick sucks

Having a rat on three oral meds plus a wound salve application twice a day gets old real fast. I decided to give the painkiller and the antibiotic in the morning (I asked the vet that it's okay to mix them) and the decongestant in the evening. Perhaps I could mix that in as well, and have only one application, but the more fluid I give orally, the bigger the likelihood that it just goes out of the mouth again, and the decongestant has a sort of fuzzy "mix with water" dosage, that the vet said I could give in the drinking water too, but I offer multiple bottles and the others would drink it, so it's better to give it directly as well.

The salve application is not that bad, though unfortunately the salve doesn't seem to taste bad, so it gets licked off, and not just by the rat its on. Why couldn't they make the oral antibiotics tasty rather than the topical?

Also I removed damp (i.e. peed on) bedding twice today, to make really sure that they won't sleep in their wet spots, in the hope that this will help with the bumblefoot sores. (Why rats insist on peeing in their sleeping spaces when their skin is too delicate to take the aggravation of the wet bedding is a mystery, though.) I also put in some more washable floor cloths, so they have more even softer surfaces than newspaper.

2012 art roundup

2012 saw a plunge in art production (insofar as you can "plunge" from a not very high previous level). It started out fairly well in January, and December was good, but nothing in-between. I even failed with the fashion meme sketches I had offered.

It's almost too depressing to index, but I've indexed every year since 2006, so: This year there were three pieces of art, nine drawbles/doodles, no icons and nine months entirely without art, compared to 2011's six pieces of art, 36 drawbles/doodles, seven icons, and three months entirely without art. 2010 it was four pieces of art, 28 doodles/drawbles, one icon, and also three months without art; 2009 five pieces of art, 20 doodles/drawbles, three icons and six months without art.

January
I posted the 2011 Secret Mutant XMFC/HP art, Learned Trust, to my journal (linked in this roundup because it wasn't yet revealed in last year's)
Illustration for Best Laid Plans (Pinky & Brain)
Seven More Joy Day drawbles five here, one here, and one illustrating Basingstoke's duck!John Watson

February - May
Nothing :(

June
Hulk with a lead binkie (Avengers/Peanuts fusion doodle)

July - November
Nothing :(

December
Solace (Captain America/Spider-Man), my Yuletart painting
Christmas Bakery (XMFC), my Secret Mutant painting
Logan as fluffy wolverine doodle (X-Men)