iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 15/06/2024

And here's the lad himself: no recent pics because he recently had a thyroidectomy and still has a big patch of fur regrowing on his throat and chest.

Handsome mackerel tripod tabby (missing right front leg) lying on pink crocheted blanet.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

(Warning: pic a bit distressing for the soft-hearted) This was the state he was in a week after I brought him home (he'd already had ten days at the vet).

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 30/04/2024

And here he is, showing off his giraffe ancestry:

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 29/04/2024

Which reminds me, I don't think I've shared this to the skyline yet (this is a South African company):

Business page for Human and Pitt Funeral Services

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 11/03/2024

And here is a pic of my foster fail. Missy, three years and ten days after I brought her home from the shelter.

Very smug and happy little brown tabby cat with white tummy, on couch with blue-green fabrics draped over it.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 23/02/2024

My Wegie torty Lily has been aloof all her life. Now she has feline dementia (or she's successfully gaslighting me and the vet) and has turned into a snuggle-bunny of note. Here she is, enjoying an Indian summer:

Elderly but regal Wegie floofie torty cat stretched out snoozing on a blue and white Indian cotton bedspread.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 27/01/2024

Hello Handsome Neo -- here's my rescue tripod Boychik having a sloooow Caturday.

Handsome mackerel tabby tripod reclining against purple pillows, caught mid-slow blink.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 29/12/2023

Here are my Boychik's toebeans. (Well, they help me.)

Snoozing mackerel tabby tripod cat with his beeyootiful plum-coloured toebeans on display.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

In case, you don't see it on the Other Place, @joannechocolat.bsky.social, wanted to let you know that I have this lined up for Christmas reading AT LAST. Caracal art to keep it company for now!

Copy of Broken Light by Joanne Harris on white table, drawing of very cross African caracal cat watching over it.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 05/12/2023

The world is a TERRIBLE place, but I posted this pic of wild agapanthus I took this weekend on a mountain near Cape Point, and now there is intense debate as to what this colour is called, and it is rather cheering. Suggestions include indigo, lapis lazuli, Persian blue, tanzanite.

Intensely blue flowerheads (wild agapanthus) caught in dry grasses on a South African mountain slope.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 26/11/2023

Ernest Hemingway would like a word with you.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 26/11/2023

And then there's Hemingway's take on the matter:

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

Caramello Bear aka Humbug aka Pumpkin Spice

Beautiful sort-of tortoiseshell kitty sleeping in tight knot, with shades of shortbread, ginger, rust-red and dark grey in her coat

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

Mother's Sweetboy Precious: (yes, he is a tripod)

Utterly gorgeous three-legged mackerel tabby with huge hypnotic eyes

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 30/10/2023

I reckon we could all use a bit of pretty right now. Here's a formal garden at the wine farm Uitsig outside Cape Town, on an early summer's day.

Foreground: fruit tree with pink blossoms in bed of white and deep pink roses, behind it saltbush and searsia (indigenous to SA) clipped hedges, background has white cottages, tall stone pines and blue blue sky.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 13/10/2023

As a morale-booster, my tortie girls Meg (short-hair) and Lily (floof), the day they came home as rescue kittens, and on their 16th birthday a few days ago.

Adorable tortie kittens curled up asleep together in a wicker basket.

Two beautifully coloured elder tortie girls on their 16th birthday, asleep on a bed with a blue cover and a pink blanket crocheted by my mother.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 07/10/2023

Tabby boys are absolute dotes. Here's my rescue tripod Boychik, the most loving fella. He purrs when I walk into a room.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 02/10/2023

Forgot to tag the #capetown feed! But this gives me a chance to post two of my favourite butterfly photos:

Butterfly with beautiful brown and white wings kissing? tussling? exchanging nectar? with bee in a bed of plectranthus.

Butterfly settling on overripe plum in orchard, sinking its probiscus into the fruit where the skin is split.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 28/09/2023

One of my favourites! Here's one at the lake close to my home - fluke shot with my little instamatic (yes, I still use one).

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 28/09/2023

Good heavens, my oldie is also Lily. Here she is, having put weight back on, hurrah! Pirate Kitty sounds grrrrrreat!

Elder long-haired tortoiseshell floof sprawled on bed, fixing the viewer with green eyes.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 20/09/2023

A while ago, I spent fall in a beautiful old home in Castine, Maine. And there were heirloom apples everywhere. I come from Cape Town, which has a great tradition of chutney-making, but alas, few heirloom apples. I wrote this, and post here to wish you well for a GRAND book tour.

Screenshot of poem:

Windfall /Heirloom apples **

Giving thanks for new tastes on my tongue:
Duchess of Oldenburg, Sharon, Twenty Ounce,
Winter Banana, Northern Spy, Yellow Bellflower.
Heirloom apples with names like perfume;
sliced, spiced, parcelled raw into pastry
made the old-fashioned way, cutting and chilling and rolling,
lattice-work and leaves and cranberries for colour,
fed into a hot oven in a kitchen scented with cinnamon.
But the apples that make the chutney that keeps
come from the two dowager trees, their knotted limbs
festooned with fruit that carpets the lawn and fattens the squirrels.
They grow in the backyard of this venerable Maine home,
almost as old as its weathered boards.
Their plenitude of fruit is something like love;
which I have tried to squeeze into jars.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 19/09/2023

Here's (clockwise) Boychik, my tripod (adopted from the sainted vet who did his amputation - he was found starving and badly injured); Meg (rescued from side of road as kitten with sibs); Missy (adopted from TEARS Animal Rescue in Cape Town); Lily (littermate of Meg).

Four unusually beautiful cats: one three-leggit mackerel tabby, one short-haired tortoiseshell with unusual red tabby and charcoal markings, one little brown tabby, one imperious floofy long-haired torty. Lying on bed spread with floral cover and pink crocheted blankie.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2023

I advocate for those with Long Covid (I call it LoCo): had it for almost 3 and a half years now, but (and it's NB that people know this is possible) am starting to recover (crosses fingers, touches wood).

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2023

I'm an author. Becoz I'm easily bored, plus in SA (my home), writerly niches are a rare luxury, I have written uni textbooks, erotica, children's books, a tome on cricket (the sport, not the insect, dear Americans), two poetry collections, green handbooks + an Austen sequel. And lots more.

Book cover (pb) of Charlotte, my Pride & Prejudice sequel, pubbed by Bonnier, showing woman in period dress (c. 1810) at writing desk, against soothing blue-green background.

Cover of poetry collection: Strange Fruit Poems by Helen Moffett, lush images of pomegranates in ruby and green on black background, handdrawn lettering.

Book cover: Stray An anthology of animal stories and poems, edited by Helen Moffett and Diane Awerbuck, with shout by Helen Macdonald; striking image of cat-face assembled from multiple b&w animal pics, done by Dale Halvorsen. This anthology was published as a fundraiser for TEARS animal rescue charity.

Book cover: Wise About Waste 150+ ways to help the planet by Helen Moffett, outline of whale in deep blue water, picture is composed of plastic waste.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 17/09/2023

*coughs* I have a few new followers (thank'ee), so something about my priorities: my 4 rescues. Boychik (age unknown, 3 legs, found horribly injured by roadside, I adopted him after amputation); Lily (16, Empress of all she surveys); Meg (16, Lily's littermate); Missy (2; she keeps the rest young).

Handsome three-leggit mackerel tabby boy lolling about on desk, feet on keyboard

Imperious Elder tortoiseshell floof, stretched out on bed. Fluff everywhere.

Beautiful short-haired ginger(ish) cat with ocelot-like markings curled in tight sleeping knot on blue patterned bedspread.

Bright-eyed short-haired brown tabby perched on top of floral chair back. My little cottage loaf.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 10/09/2023

Using an image, show a movie you're sure you've watched more than ten times:

Geena David and Susan Sarandon in the front of an open-top car.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 10/08/2023

He is GORJUS. All mine (I have four) are rescues (two tabbies, two torties) but I think they are beeyootiful. One of the tabbies (apple of my eye) is a tripod. Here he is.

Three-legged mackerel tabbie on his back in a curl of bliss, on a bed with a flower-print cover.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 07/08/2023

Author and publisher Karina Szczurek attended tonight's reading on recipes/spells at Salon Hecate. She wore appropriate headgear.

Head of a woman in black, wearing beautiful witch's hat with silver cobweb lace veil. Backdrop of butterfly paintings.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 07/08/2023

Three green (actually highly colourful) witches at the Salon Hecate RELISH (recipes and spells) reading tonight. Me and authors Cathy Park and Ambre Nicolson. That's a bunch of indigenous herbs I'm clutching - we were giving them away to attenders.

Three smiling women in an art gallery: one all in red, one in shades of turquoise, one in coral and blue. Woman in red is holding a bunch of indigenous herbs.

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Helen Moffett (Dr) @heckitty.bsky.social · 24/07/2023

OK, BlueSky, I had better start as I mean to go on. Let's lower the tone for a minute. Childish cat pic follows:

Two cats on bed, one on his back, shamelessly presenting his undercarriage to his elder sister, who looks unimpressed.

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