Chelsea Kenna

I’d hoped I’d have some memorial art done of them by now but it has just been too difficult still. Hopefully I can do some eventually.

I can’t believe it’s already been a year since Gato and Beepo passed. I still miss them so much.

I love my new kitties obviously, but Gato and Beepo were such a huge part of my life for 14 years.

They were my constant artistic inspiration and the cats that made me love cats.

If you’ve never pet a Bengal, I highly recommend it.

They are seriously the softest thing I have ever touched. I don’t understand how they are SO SOFT??

I wish I could properly convey how soft he is via images alone.

Toasty is much better, thank goodness! Basically back to her usual self. Seems like she just reacted badly to a new food.

I was just so worried because she was acting so unlike herself & I know cats are good at hiding illness…very relieved she’s fine.

She probably ate something she shouldn’t have (this cat is a fuzzy garbage vacuum) and hopefully she’ll feel better soon

but I feel like my emotions around my cats being unwell are just on a permanent hair trigger after last year’s very unexpected awfulness.

Please keep her on your thoughts.

It’s been a year since Gato and Beepo passed away, within a couple weeks of each other.

Now suddenly, LITERALLY sandwiched between the 1 year anniversaries of both their passings, Toasty is sick. I am trying so hard not to panic right now… :(

Hehe well never need to worry about it with me! It always feels so weird when people actually say my name in person. Some of my friends call me “Chel” my husband just calls me “Tiny” (he’s a foot taller than me) XD

Yeah I am at the point where I am literally bringing pages of google Gemini convos to my derm tomorrow, knowing it might just be full of nonsense, but in the desperate hope it gives him SOME new ideas.

alas. Let me know if you ever find one! I’ll do the same.

So far seems like CSP is the best option *feature* wise, but it’s a subscription not a one-time payment sadly.

He is very aptly named for sure!

Loki has figured out how to open my dresser drawers and now any time I leave the room, he opens one up and makes it a bed.

Did you ever find an alternative? Was looking at comic layout apps and this one looked promising but it makes me nervous the company hasn't posted on any of their social media (or updated the app) for almost a year 😬

Once you hit the chronic illness cap, no more additional health issues for you! You’ve reached your lifetime allotment of physical misery and may now go about your life Un-tortured!

Oh how I wish it worked that way. It’s not fair that some of us just can’t catch a break with health.

This so bizarrely captures such a very specific thought/chronic illness experience perfectly.

Like, I frequently have these thoughts about how symptoms seem to stack, how there’s always *something*, how new issues keep popping up…

And I often think ”there should be a chronic illness cap”

I am definitely over being a medical enigma. Desperately wish I could just have obvious, routine health issues that doctors immediately recognize and know how to treat!

Christmas completely snuck up on me this year!

Was I just unconscious for half the month? Where did the rest of December go?

Bar graph showing the username poll results. It shows that: “kennacats + alt” had 19.9% of the votes, “kennacatsart” had 25% of the votes, “keep as-is” had 12.5% of the votes, and “cmykenna” won with 42.6% of the votes.

Thank you to everyone who voted! I tallied up the total votes across all the sites where I posted the poll, and it’s clear most of you guys like puns as much as I do. 😉

I also found myself hoping @cmykenna would win.
Anyway, please bear with me while I slowly update my handles/links.

If I use something like CMYKenna I suppose that still works if I ever decide to professionally go by “CM Kenna” in the future!

Anyway as you can tell I probably really overthought this problem. XD

I also thought about doing Ckenna (taken basically everywhere already) and cmkenna. The latter I kinda liked…going by CM Kenna is very “literary” and I like how it sounds, but it’s also weirdly taken some places already though.

I kinda liked chelkenna but I was worried it would seem weird, given that I’ve never actually gone by “Chel” and wasn’t sure I wanted to actually officially start doing that. Using an alt handle seemed less extreme than basically changing the name I go by (despite my feelings about my first name).

I even considered chelkenna or chelskenna and other “nickname” variations. My name doesn’t really have a built-in nickname. Some friends call me Chels, but it’s more an informal/casual friend thing not something I actually use or ask people to call me.

It was super hard to come up with something! I’m envious of people like loish who have such a cool username just by using their name & initials.

I don’t really love my first name so I didn’t want to do chelseak (plus it’s not as snappy as some shorter name + initial combos, sounds like chel-seek)

Yeah I am personally leaning towards the CMYK pun, because I love puns and it’s more “general art”.

Cats are definitely my “brand” but I do sometimes do other things too. I can always use “kennacats” as a name for a specific set of art or merch line or something in the future, ;)

Yeah I dunno why I don’t like it. 😆 Just a weird personal preference. Plus I’ve had people get confused by it before (I used to use chelseakennaart as my email) and accidentally leave the 2nd a out.

I considered those originally but both end up looking weird when all lowercase unfortunately.

kennaarts has that same double “a” that I don’t like in chelseakennaart.
ckarts kinda reads like “c karts”

If I change my social media handle, which option sounds best?

1️⃣ Use kennacats (when available) + kennacatsart
2️⃣ Use kennacatsart everywhere for consistency
3️⃣ Use cmykenna (an art pun using my initials: CMK)
4️⃣ Keep current combo: chelseakenna + chelseakennaart

📊 Show results

Pastel rainbow graphic with the title “Which is Your Favorite?” above four rounded buttons labeled: “kennacats + alt,” “kennacatsart,” “cmykenna,” and “keep current name.” Decorative sparkles, a sketched Siamese cat on the left, and a cartoon cat-girl character on the bottom right.

✨ I’m thinking about updating my social media handles.

My name isn’t available everywhere so I use “chelseakennaart” some places, but I’ve never really loved how long it is or how it looks (or the inconsistency) so I’m considering some alternatives…

📊 You can vote in the poll in next post! ↘️

Also it has the same “ADHD conflict” as Pinterest the Internet in general…TOO MANY OPTIONS.

What should save me time—stock assets—ends up costing more time because I KEEP SCROLLING FOREVER 🫠

It is fully possible to make functional art and design apps on a touchscreen (see: Procreate) so it baffles me that something as popular as Canva is still THIS BAD on the iPad.

Asset management, elements all being dumped into the center of the page in a giant stack with no way to easily select all or redistribute or select multiple from the layers panel (or group from the layers panel) is a NIGHTMARE as someone used to pro desktop design software. 😩