Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

"It's... it's like the Place du Portage in Ottawa ate Cthulhu and shat itself."

I should really put some more effort into "building" and getting to know my new persona for handing Cat Stress and related issues.

I've finally got a hazy identity starting to form for her. Her name is "Brill" -- as in the type of fish, a weak pun on the fact she was inspired by encountering a beautiful sweet dog named "Oyster" -- and like Oyster, she's an Aussie shepherd.

Personality so far is somewhere between Applejack, Buffy Summers, and Shreve (that saint of a rancher who raised the late, much missed Charlie the Coyote of dailycoyote.net).

She's slightly punky, brusque, and ruthless in the nicest damn "OK honey that's nice but you still gotta get up and do it" way. She's already been in my head, though not quite in the control booth, a couple of times during recent Cat Issues -- she was especially helpful while we were rounding the kids up for Snippage.

I look forward to knowing her. Maybe I'll be in a position to introduce her someday. She'd probably enjoy getting to run around in someone's RPG world and boss people around for their own good. Arf arf arf arf arf arf arf get the fuck back in that pen stupid sheep. XD

@mxsparks They are the latter for certain. I am not so sure about the former. XD They're... they're about as good as 7-week-old kittens can really be expected to be, and while I'm VERY concerned about their mama apparently going into heat today, she has also been REALLY helpful and just a real good Cat Mom through the whole process. <3

🖼

If any of y'all with a Birdsite account could go vote in this poll, I'd be really gratified.

https://twitter.com/CatAndAHalf/status/1332381201559064576

I'll be perfectly honest: if your choice is somehow actually "Leninism," not only would I prefer you keep it to yourself, but you might want to sidle away from me slowly because we're probably gonna end up enemies someday. I took too many history courses in school to be with you on this one. :(

You know. Like this absolute fedora-brained dimfuck. Feel free to take a shot at him, I think I've already got him pinned.

https://twitter.com/contrarianski/status/1332365588828655622

every time i inform a conservative "contrarian" that einstein was a socialist, i grow a new stripe

someday i will be all stripe and that megastripe will rise up and devour the corporate state

so help me out here -- link this EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. you see someone trying to conflate Scandinavian-style social democracy with Bolshevism

https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

@JulieSqveakaroo So in summary, unless you're willing to drive down, pick up a couple kittens, and drive back... XD Nah, we're doing as well as can be expected.

And the kittens should be ready to adopt out in another month, absolutely max -- some sites are saying we can do it as soon as next week, but I really wanna give the little monsterbabies as much time with mama as possible.

@JulieSqveakaroo Oh, I meant emotional and psychological resources, not financial ones! But thank you so much!

We are doing pretty much OK moneywise thanks to everybody's previous generosity! Plus the fact that we djdn't end up having to pay premium vet prices for the Snippages, just a bunch of donations to some VERY nice local catcare volunteers.

We just... we love Liv and Snowy a lot, and having Sugarfoot living indoors with us is not without substantial charms. But Peg and I REALLY miss quiet nights, unimpeded passage through our shotgun house with a Kittenarium right in the middle, and me having a proper home office that Basically Has No Cat In It instead of a labyrinth of cat toys and litterboxes patrolled by three excitable minipanthers. :)

At least if we ever get an proper indoor cat that is actually a *pet* at some point in our lives -- as opposed to "3 to 8 friends that live under the porch" -- it'll feel like Easy Mode. Kitten rearing is just not a good match for my anxiety, and even Sugarfoot is kind of a handful -- especially this week. D:

oh gods i think Sugarfoot is going into heat. she's superclingy and vocal and i dont even wanna discuss what she tried to do when i innocently petted her flank. no spraying yet, fingers crossed

about a week, they're saying on the cat care sites. *deep breath* We can do this. Depending on the site, theyre saying we can spay and rehome Liv and Snowy anywhere between a week and a month from now. We're holding out as best we can, but its 2020 and resources are low...

@packbat God, that's infuriating isn't it. My Reddit username is the name of a CLEARLY FEMALE film character and I still constantly get called "this guy" and such. The idea that male is "default person" somehow, and not just on the net, doesn't seem to be getting any less pervasive among the mainstream.

@Aradia @Ratttz @SangriaSnake God *damn* I'm envious. :D Especially of that lasagna!

There are times when "shrill" is a cruel, sexist, and dismissive thought-terminating cliche... and there are times when it describes the high-pitched monotone of somebody's unexamined sociopolitical grievances perfectly, and gender just isn't a consideration.

I really try to avoid using the term out in the battlefield, because of the former. But I really wish I could sometimes, because of the latter.

'Cause there are people out there, people nominally on my side, whose rhetorical habits could be compared unfavorably to a tornado siren stuck on "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.". And I wish there were more words to express how much I fucking hate them and how far their behavior sets us back. -___-

I am thankful for my teeth, my claws, my small cat friends, and my dragon.

I am also thankful that the skulls of our Terran oppressors proved to stack so neatly. They will make a lovely centerpiece.

May Sekhmet, Bastet, St. Shere, and St. Hobbes accept my humble-for-a-tiger gratitude. I'm gonna go eat a whole lot of something now.

A *whole* lot.

Amen.

@anthracite Yeah. Thank you. Sorry I got uptight, but... kitties. Aunt Tiger gets protective. <3

Last goddamn thing I want to do, though, is fight with the Glorious Feline People's Hero. We have not forgotten The Incident of several weeks ago. 😻​

@JulieSqveakaroo I admit I don't really understand the VTuber thing very well, but maybe you could do something like that "Inugami Korone" does -- we could getcha a sqveakroo avatar and some kind of voice coder, pump you up and let you go... I'd love to see that, honestly. <3

Goddammit.

That moment when you realize someone you've been following on Twitter is someone you REALLY DIDN'T LIKE in their previous incarnation... but you LOVE them in their current one, so... you just gotta shrug and roll with it.

Oh, well. (It's not any of you, someone from the LJ days whose political hyperbole and smugness drove me crazy. But they're... apparently... pretty good now?!)

Jumpy and twitchy as hell this morning, but it's actually due to massive excess caffeination and not, say, any current or anticipated feline crisis nor uspol. (All the kids showed up this morning, except for CJ who is the shy one, so I suspect they survived last night's fracas just fine.) So that's unexpectedly nice.

Also there is a REALLY pretty and friendly half-Dalmatian sniffing around my table at the cafe. Which is also nice. I gave them a little scritch and got moistened digits for my troubles. Yuck. 😽​

I have acquired a copy of the critically acclaimed Turkish documentary Kedi ("Cat"), about the lives of street cats in Istanbul.

Said lives are apparently pretty cushy -- Istanbul is famously cat-friendly -- but I still don't think I'll be able to watch it until my general Cat Anxiety Level settles down.

Fuckin' Bast, last night there was a horrible yowl followed by some faint Sad Cat Noises and I've been fretting ever since that somebody's not going to show up again. That's probably a ridiculous fear, over what was probably a two-second non-injurious cat squabble. But that's my life right now.

On the other hand, my life is also about 20-minute scritching and petting sessions, and that SQUINT OF LOVE they give you when you scritch their throats just right, and cat-fishing derbies with the Jingly Man, so I don't think I'd trade it. Even if those little bastards are going to break my heart someday for sure.

I mean, I know for sure I'm gonna get it broken a little in around five weeks, when we adopt Liv and Snowy out. I look forward to having my office/study back but I bet I'm gonna cry a bit when they're gone. I really hope we can stay in touch with whoever adopts them, maybe visit.

Anyhow. Yeah. Apparently, there's a recurring theme in Kedi of "taking care of homeless cats gave me a sense of redemption when I really needed that." And yeah. Now I get it. I kinda really needed it too. Even if we fuck something up or lose a friend someday, those cats have better lives than they would have.

I hope that doesn't come off as conceited. Honestly, taking care of these cats has not technically been that hard; every human parent on earth is a fucking legend compared to us. But after bombing out in Seattle and feeking like a pariah, yeah, taking care of these guys and not feeling like I'm totally blowing it *is* redemptive I REALLY NEEDED THAT.

Fan theory: Kenneth Parcell from 30 Rock is a misincarnate Janet from The Good Place.