When little Marie was rescued from Town Lake Animal Shelter she was deathly ill with an upper respiratory infection. She wasn’t eating and had reached a “dangerously low weight”, according to APA’s vet techs. Her foster parent started nebulizing her once per day for 20 minutes and saw significant improvement. Soon she was recovered and eating on her own. Marie was adopted last week — a happy, healthy cat that could have easily died if not for nebulizing.

What is a nebulizer and why do so many rescued cats need them?

While at Town Lake Animal Center many cats and kittens develop upper respiratory infections (URIs), aka, kitty colds. At the shelter the cats stay in small spaces in close proximity to other cats and are highly stressed, making it easy for a kitty to catch a cold.

Usually once we place these cats in foster homes they recover quickly but some take longer than others. Our cats need to be healthy in order to go to adoption events and find their forever homes. If a kitten is sitting at home sick he cannot be adopted. The longer he stays in foster care the fewer cats we can pull from the euthanasia list to take his spot.

Nebulizers help a great deal when it comes to getting over a URI. They are used to help cats and kittens breathe better when they are all stuffed up. If a cat can’t breath, he stops eating because he will only eat what he can smell. And not eating certainly doesn’t help a sick kitty.

via Austin Pets Alive! » Blog Archive » We need nebulizers to save more cats.

Like any of the motorist around here are actually going to pay attention to this anyway.

Recently the City of Austin has been installing some brand new (to us) bicycle-specific signage and facilities, namely sharrows and now a set of “Bike Boxes” (aka. advance stop line) at Speedway and 38th Street, seen below:

(photo taken from forum link below, credit to Tim Diller)

Unlike the bike boxes I’m typically used to seeing online and during my trip to Portland, there’s no color differentiation between the bike box and the regular asphalt, and there’s no additional signage to indicate that traffic should stop at the line beyond what is printed on the street itself.

Posted via web from victhortheviking’s posterous

The show began with Austin doom maestros the Roller. They are sonic wall of sound! So loud that only thing coming through the PA was the drums and vocals. If you have not seen them yet you got to check them out.

I didn’t know what to expect when A Storm of Light took the stage, but when they began to play I was in awe. Haling from Brooklyn, New York, A Storm of Light consist of Josh Graham, visual artist for Neurosis and formally of Red Sparrows, Domenic Seita [bass, vocals], formerly of Tombs and Asea, and Andy Rice [drums, percussion] formerly of Sinking Ships. They played a mix of songs off there debut LP And We Wept the Black Ocean Within and off of the new split EP that they did with Nadja called Primitive North.

First off the light show in the background was incredible (of coarse). You can’t beat hammer-head sharks. Halfway through the set Will Lindsay from Wolves in the Throne Room joined them onstage for the song “Mass”. The only bad thing about the show was the dude that was trippen balls in front of my who was seeing “bears”. I think he meant beers but it sounded like bears to me.

Despite that distraction, I felt I was on a higher plane of consciousness by the end of their set .

Wolves took the stage and were epic! Starting off with the 18 minute monster of a song “I Will Lay Down My Bones Among The Rocks And Stones” from the Album Two Hunters.

For those who have not heard or seen Wolves in the Throne Room yet, you are missing out on something special. After an Earth First rendezvous in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State, Nathan Weaver was inspired to create a band that merged a Cascadian eco-spiritual awareness with the misanthropic Norwegian eruptions of the 90′s ¹. So, after moving to a farmstead that his brother Aaron and his girlfriend work, the brothers began to create the sonic wave of eco-black metal. If you have not seen the video I posted of an interview with Aaron by Hardtimes.ca yet, I would highly recommend it.

The current line-up of WiTTR also includes former Middian bassist Will Lindsay. Will started off as there touring bassist and moved to guitar after Rick Dahlen left the band.

The WiTTR set was a good mix of songs from older releases and from their new album Black Cascade. Black Cascade is definitely a little more stripped down and raw than their last album but that, for me, is it’s appeal. There are no words to describe it so I will not. But I did film a little bit of the first song so you could get a little taste for yourselves.

If there such thing as a spiritual experience, I think I had one that night. I can wait for next month when WiTTR will be Austin with Nachtmystium and Pentagram.

The progressiveness that is explored in the bass lines are complex and moody (in a good way). RISEthyRUIN’s use of samples and effects bring the music depth and weight.
And finally their light show is so beautiful and could make the dingiest club a spiritual sanctuary.

If you have not seen or heard them yet I highly recommend that you do.

• RISEthyRUIN myspace page

Below is a part of a 10 minute song that I filmed at Room 710 in Austin.