Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@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.

@balinares "In this world, Olivia and Snowshoe, you must be oh so smart, or oh so mew. Well, for years I was smart... I recommend mew, and you may quote me." (with apologies to Jimmy Stewart and his invisible rabbit friend)

me while i scritch napping kittens:

"Yes, you're such good kitties! You are such good kitties!"

"..."

"OK, listen, despite anything you may have heard me say in the past, you ARE still good kitties."

"..."

"I mean, we live in a complicated world, and who's really to say who's good or bad."

"..."

"OK, let me level with you. You're kind of terrible but you're *cats*. And if there's one thing you're going to want to know during the course of your life, it's that that's good enough."

@anthracite It always makes me so happy to see the two of them getting along together. 😻​ If we ever do have to find them another home, they are DEFINITELY going together...

@frameacloud Oof. That's a far better point than my knee-jerk snark, yeah. I don't think fatherhood or marriage is *bad* either -- they're just such non-accomplishments, not really anything to be *proud* of simply for doing them... I put using them as pride signifiers in the same category as being really "proud" you're a fan of a given football team. You didn't really *achieve* anything, it's just showing off a membership badge -- in this case, one with some unpleasant partisan/ideological connotations.

Huh. Well, there goes a big ol' geyser of sad gender longings and self-hate.

Honestly, I'm fine, I'm just impressed it managed to crack the multiple calcified layers of job, cat, money, plague, cat, uspol, existential, and cat anxiety above it.

I don't think I've really "felt" gender one way or the other for like the last three months. Which I guess is actually kinda la dolce vita as failed transpeople go.

Does this mean I at least succeeded at being an enby, by setting up a life were 98% of my friends don't give the faintest shit WHAT I am and have zero gender expectations of me?

Yanno, I know you all well enough that I'm gonna just answer "yes" and take some victory where I found it.

@frameacloud "So let's start with the main fact about you, as you yourself have presented it: the two most important things you have ever done are [a] 'participate passively in a religious ritual then eat some cake' [b] sire a human child in a time of profound overpopulation. Thank you for the warning that you have not a damn thing going on in your intellectual, professional, or creative life worth mentioning in a bio."