Bay 12 Games Forum

Playing Spelunky 2 online with strangers.   
The others (probably more experienced than I) had both died, presumably in battle with all the shopkeepers we'd been robbing. I, picking up one of the many shotguns lying around, forged ahead and managed to make it to the next zone and resurrect one of them, gunning down a couple more shopkeepers on the way. Unfortunately, they somehow died again as we were fighting the first boss.   
I finished said boss off, derped around for a bit, then found my way into the next area. I won't spoil anything, but it's a pretty inhospitable place.   

I took my time. I looked around, figuring there'd be a coffin containing a new body for one of my teammates somewhere near the start of the stage. I peered downwards, and aha! There was one below that was easy enough to get to. I dropped down, carefully dropped my shotgun nearby (I've seen other players open coffins with shotguns but it still just makes me friggin' NERVOUS) and approached the coffin.   
One of my impatient fellow explorers chose this moment to use their ghostly powers to unleash a blast of freezing air on the coffin - at the same instant I swung my whip to open it. The flash-frozen new body of my comrade crumbled into ice cubes just a split second after it came into existence. I didn't even have time to see which of the others it was.   

There was one horrible moment of silence as my brain processed what just happened. My character stood there, unmoving, and it was easy to imagine a mortified, horrified, stupefied facial expression forming behind his smoked glasses as he realised what he'd done.   

Then my thumb slammed the PS button and I went in a frantic whirl up to the "close application" option, fleeing the shame and the fury of my compatriots and hopefully closing that dark chapter of my video gaming career forever.   

   

Nah. You wrong. Nothing happens in cricket. A bunch of dudes in identical outfits running back and forth down a straight line. They can't even throw the damn ball properly. And a single game of this monstrosity can and will drag on for fucking days!   
Especially damning is the fact that cricket isn't even fun to play. And I'm not just saying that as someone with a tendency to suck at sports, no, I always sucked at soccer, basketball, badminton, bowling and such as well, but they were at least still fun to play for the sake of playing.   

Uh, dude, what about Brawndo???   

Bushwacking the psycho shopkeepers in Spelunky is actually a heroic act. Change my mind.   

That's kinda shit.    

In less-sad news, though, both of them survived the night. I mean, I only left them alone long enough to get three or four hours' sleep, but still I honestly did not expect the smaller, sicker one to be alive. In fact, he or she has improved noticeably and can actually move around now, whereas last night it practically dead.   

One thing I only noticed last night, later on, was that the kittens were infested with fleas. I only spotted them when I happened to look under one of their chins, then when I started parting the fur to look there was flea dirt everywhere. According to the internet, in very small kittens flea infestations can actually be fatal, due to anaemia caused by blood loss.   
This is horrifying. I hadn't been handling the kittens much or I might have noticed this earlier, before they started, you know, dying. Not that I know for sure that this is what did for them, the "mother's milk drying up because she's kind of an older cat" theory is still up there, too.   

In any case, I treated them both with this spray-on "flea rid" we had lying around. This was a very unpleasant task, especially since at that point the weaker of the two was completely limp and I had to turn it over to check that it was even alive a few times during the procedure, since it felt like I was rubbing flea treatment into something already dead. It had this resigned expression and everything and I had pretty much given up on it, but somehow today it's still hanging on, considerably improved - though "considerably improved" doesn't mean too much considering it was basically dead. It's not out of the woods, yet.   
The other one was wriggling and whinging quite normally as I put the stuff on it. They're so small that I had to spray the stuff onto my fingertips and rub it in that way for the most part.   

I can't see evidence of fleas on either of them this morning, so maybe that was a good idea I guess? Who knows.   

We'll be getting some kitten milk formula in a little while, so hopefully that helps get them better. I'm pretty sure those products are generally fortified with stuff like iron, right? That ought to help with any anaemia. In my entirely unqualified opinion.   
If not, I might try and convince my mother to part with a few drops of the iron tonic she usually has in the fridge.   



...Yeah, that's pretty much where we're at now. I don't really have any other Sads since they're all blotted out by this ongoing saga.   
The livelier one is adorable, though. It came marching out of the cat box earlier when I first checked on them, squeaking at me before even taking a swipe at my hand. Bear in mind that these things are friggin' tiny. Then later it was indulging its love of climbing and had made it about halfway up the side of the cot they're in, meowing fiercely to the heavens like some kind of very tiny King Kong.   

Yeah, pretty much any name has some kind of meaning to it. Simply mashing syllables together (or putting on your Fantasy Character Creation cap) for your child's name would probably get you run out of town for child abuse, haha.   
Kinda weird when you think about it. All the names we consider normal actually MEAN things. Crazy.   

That said, it is really important that you now check to confirm and remove any other casualties to avoid spreading disease to the others.

Yeah, that's sorted. I'm trying very hard not to get my hopes up but at least the two survivors are better situated now.   
I don't know if the mother is too old to produce enough milk or something (not actually sure how old she is), but I fed the remaining kittens using a plastic syringe and a mixture of water+milk since they didn't seem to be getting anything from her. Well, apart from warmth, since to my relief she is now in the box snuggling with them at least. I know, not very vegan of me, har de har, it's not my cat in the first place I'm just tryna keep her babies alive.   
Oh, and before I had the syringe I managed to give both at least a little milk by squeezing it out of a cloth into their mouths.   

One of the two seemed at first to be right on death's doorstep, in fact I thought it might have been dead already, but when I picked him/her up to try and feed 'em they proved to be surprisingly feisty. This tiny half-dead kitten literally managed to shake me off several times as I tried to feed it. That's a hopeful sign, at least.   
Meanwhile the other one is just generally still acting like a kitten, running around and pouncing at things.   

Again, not getting my hopes up, there's no guarantee that even these two will make it, but I'm gonna keep doing what I can.