Bastet

Because life sucks as hard as it possibly can, the first of my online Christmas orders arrived yesterday and included Bandit's present. Then this morning I went on Chewy's website to see if they have Riley's food since my local pet store is out of it and can't get any until next week, and the first "buy it again" thing that popped up was the bag of freeze-dried treats I got for Bandit last month. Thank you to everyone who expressed sympathy, and thank you also to everyone who kept their negative thoughts about Bandit being allowed outside to yourselves. Believe me, I get it, but it's not the time, and I thank you for getting that. Y'all don't know it, but sweet is the perfect word for him. Back when he was a new addition to the family (after briefly turning up in a rain storm and coming back nightly so that my parents lured him with food and attention and quickly earned his trust so they could have him neutered and keep him inside at night) - young and ornery, and stressing us the hell out with his hours-long disappearing acts during the day - we always told him, "You're lucky you're as sweet as you are obnoxious." Because, oh, he was just so happy and cuddly. Purred all the time, sometimes so hard he drooled. He also talked all.the.time. (with no inside voice) and always wanted something - let me out, let me in, feed me, brush me, play with me, cuddle me. We'd start to get annoyed, and then we'd look at that face and it just went away. And he was friendly with everyone. Riley is insanely attentive and cuddly, but only with me; she doesn't even like other people. Chester loved my dad and me and was sociable with guests, but his deep attachment was to my mom. Bandit adored my dad beyond reason and loved my mom and me (he knew my car, so he was always waiting at the door to greet me; I can't believe I'm never going to experience that again), but he also deeply loved my friend (his "Auntie") who visited sometimes when I was cat-sitting and who took care of him at Thanksgiving, and anyone and everyone who came over would at some point early in their visit find him in their lap. He had a rough start, but you'd have never guessed it. And as for his floofy fur, yes. My stars. He asked demanded to be brushed multiple times per day, perhaps because he knew that 10 minutes after each grooming he'd look like he'd never encountered a brush in his life. That crazy fur:

What's particularly disgusting is that his MO is to rape them from behind in front of a mirror. So he gets off not just on sexual battery, but on watching himself do it. And making his victims watch.

Yeah, Bandit was estimated to be about three when he showed up as a tomcat, and not only was he used to being outdoors, he'd clearly never been indoors - ceiling fans, TVs, the dishwasher, etc. all startled and perplexed him at first. In the beginning, he'd be gone all day long sometimes; he'd come home and my parents would ask him, "Do you take the bus to a job or something?" We hoped in time he'd transition to indoor only (because most non-feral cats can make that adjustment), but we could never hit the 100% mark. I never really worried about him getting hit by a car, because of how he behaved when crossing the street, how infrequently he did it, and how light traffic is. Our outdoor worry was coyotes, so he could only go out mid-day, when you virtually never see them down out of the hills. Every loss is horrible, but this one is haunting. That's how my mom got her first cat as an adult - she came home from work and saw a kid across the street kicking at and throwing rocks at a cat, so she yelled at him to leave the cat alone, and the cat ran across the street and up the driveway to my mom. (The worst part is, when my mom told the kid's parents, they didn't care; I can only imagine what kind of monster he became.)

I had a heartbreaking conversation with my dad a couple of hours ago; he was checking on me, when I hadn't even got myself together enough to do that with him (my mom was the one who'd called me), and I got some more information. Some of it comforts me and some of it haunts me. I'm worried about my parents (especially my dad; Bandit followed him around like a shadow, and my dad has cried buckets at each cat loss [the only times I've ever seen him cry other than when my grandmas died], but they were so tightly bonded and this happened so suddenly, it's even worse). I don't know, y'all; I've had cats all my life, which is steadily approaching 50 years, so I've lost a lot of them and been devastated every time. Two others have also been totally unexpected. I guess it's the circumstances and having lost Chester this summer, but I really don't know how to even function right now. I came home from a dental appointment grumbling about a package that wasn't delivered, and ten steps into the house the phone was ringing with a call that turned life upside down. Looking at pictures is perhaps not the best idea I've had, but nothing is distracting me and I don't think capping this night off with alcohol poisoning is wise, so that's what I'm doing. This was Bandit:

It just makes me sick to think about. I feel like shit that I didn't go over to be with my parents, but I can barely handle life these days (chronic depression and anxiety that has progressed and become difficult to regulate does not combine well with all that's happening), and I can't walk into that cat-less house without some time to process this. I'd do it if it was just one of them, but they have each other, so I'm going to prioritize myself for a night. Riley is upset that I'm upset, but I don't know what to do with myself. This isn't like a sick cat for whom treatment has been exhausted; it didn't have to happen. If he'd been inside or in the backyard at that precise moment like he is 99% of moments, it wouldn't have. Just a second or two of difference in his or the car's trajectory, it wouldn't have. But it did, and it's our fault, because we made the decision to give him outside time that was not 100% supervised. That was what we thought best, as explained above, and it was tightly limited and largely supervised, but that's pretty damn hard to swallow right now, because our poor guy died at age 14 alone in the fucking street instead of five years from now curled up in my dad's lap with a painless injection. With him on Prozac the last month because he wasn't handling Chester's death at all well, and just starting to really respond to it, I thought maybe we should try keeping him in or taking another stab at leash training to see if we could fully eliminate, rather than just dramatically reduce, the risk of physical danger without causing an unreasonable degree of harm from stress (since he was medicated to blunt the effects of stress). But we didn't want to make too many changes at once. And I think I'm angry with all three of us about that, and that's part of why I need tonight to myself. So, yes, despite being in the immediate grip of this unexpected trauma I still believe what I said hours before and what I've always believed -- It is wrong to say cats should be indoors, period, or to say it's unnatural to never let them out, period; both are blanket statements that don't account for the nuances life is made of. (Cats are safer indoors, yes. Most cats can adapt to being indoor only, yes. Cats should never set paw outdoors, no. Cats kept indoors at all times will go nuts, no.) And it's wrong to insult owners if they've made reasoned evaluations that differ from our own; equally good owners make different decisions based on different circumstances. But for those of you who also decide some degree of outdoor time is best given your cat and your environment, just PLEASE keep it as limited and supervised as will meet the cat's needs. Because, while it may be the right decision, and while that same decision may have resulted in long lives in the past (same here; some previous cats were indoor with limited outdoor access and did just fine), there still remains the risk you'll wind up where my family is, with your cat where Bandit is. And it's a nearly unbearably awful place to be.

Yes, I am on record as saying whether a cat should have outdoor access and, if so, what kind, depends on the situation. So I dislike the "all cats should be indoors!" and "cats go nuts if they're inside all day!" extremes, since good owners exist all over the happy medium of that spectrum. And in the hours since I last posted here, I found out that Bandit, my parents' cat, was hit by a car this afternoon and died. Is that ultimately our fault? Yes, of course it is. The person who hit him should have been kind of enough to stop, but that he was in the street to be hit is squarely on us. And all three of us are great pet owners. Chester was indoor only, as is Riley, but they made - and I followed when I stayed there to cat sit - the decision to give Bandit time outside each day, because of how extremely agitated he got if they didn't (to the point it made him ill; the systemic inflammation caused by stress settled in his bladder, and that cystitis was painful - the list of recommendations from the vet to reduce stress included "more outdoor time"). He'd lived on the streets for years before they took him in, and he just didn't take to being an indoor cat, but he was deliriously happy as a primarily indoor cat, so that's the way we went. He was almost always in the backyard, and when he did go across the street we'd see him literally sit on the curb and check the street before trotting across. I don't know what happened today, but he paid the ultimate price for it and we have to live with the "what if"s. I'm still in shock.

So, declaring no cats should be allowed outdoors is an improper blanket statement, but a sweeping insult about keeping cats indoors is fine. I see.

They weren't in high school anymore (looking it up, Blair wasn't even in college anymore that season - she'd started law school), and only one of them, Natalie, was ever said to have had sex - at age 21, with the boyfriend she's been dating over a year. I hardly think that sends a message about high schoolers having sex.

No! I'm still in touch with someone I first met in a park when we were teenagers; we'd set up near each other, and it turned out we were reading the same book, bell hooks's Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. A great conversation ensued, and we're still occasionally chatting 35 years later.

I've liked her in several films, but I can't stand her in those commercials. Of course, almost every celebrity perfume commercial is unbearable.

There is such a narrow set of circumstances in which an advertisement is considered an offer (in the legal sense of constituting the required offer element of a contract) and the prevailing term in the U.S. is advertisement rather than advert, so my initial response is no, but since this is J! rather than a court, I tip my hat to the logic and say "Eh, why not?"

Yikes; as said above, way too many wrong answers and TS for a tournament semi-final match. The math TS was a real doozy, with physics ruled out. The Photoshop TS was quite surprising, too. Enough with the "women authors" crap! I almost ran the first round, but joined the contestants in being stumped by Humphry Davy and I also couldn't come up with Tolkien's name in time. In DJ, though, I only ran the vocabulary category. I missed the first three in pop culture, so I thought I was going to blow the category (as I sometimes do; I'm very hit and miss in my pop culture knowledge), but I got the next two. I also missed three in authors, but just one each in the rest. But I got FJ in time (thanks to the "puzzlingly" hint triggering an oh, aren't there strange somethings in physics? memory), so it worked out to a good game for me.

It's "I have to praise you".

If I smell like my deodorant, it's too strongly scented. I like my deodorant and lotion to be lightly scented, and if I want to smell of something, I wear perfume. I don't buy into "masculine" and "feminine" fragrances, and I like a wide variety of scents, so I pick a deodorant, lotion, shaving gel, etc. based on whether I like the smell, not whether that smell has some bullshit designation as "manly" or "girly". And if I like it, but it costs more just because it's labeled for women, I'm probably not going to buy it, just on principle.

Those tuna and avocado rolls looked really good; I think I'll make them the next time I have a friend over for lunch. I make garlic bread with a garlic, parsley, and lemon zest compound butter, and every once in a while I add parmesan, so watching Ina make hers made me get up and check my fridge to see if I have any of that butter left from last time I made it. Yep. So today when I finished off the last of the turkey soup, I made a piece of garlic toast to go with it (no parm added, though, as I already had cheese; I add shredded Monterey Jack cheese to the soup).

A lot of my toiletries are "men's" - which really means they're just the item (e.g. a razor) without a gender surcharge.

I've thankfully never had any major mishaps, so I guess my most interesting experience on a plane was sitting next to Ray Charles. I've sat next to or near several celebrities over the years, and I normally don't say much more than hello, but we wound up talking on and off for the entire flight because he was quite the Chatty Cathy!

I don't even recognize the people I presumably know; I assume that's Neve Campbell in the middle, I'm almost positive that's David Arquette to the upper right, and is that Courteney Cox to the upper left? (I've got nothing for the rest.) I'm still not at marinating in a movie theatre point of the pandemic so, since this isn't also streaming somewhere (unlike the latest Halloween entry my horror friend and I were able to watch "opening night" on Peacock), I won't see this for a while. That's a bummer, but I'm still glad there's another entry and hope it's good. At some point, though, diminishing returns kick in, and I hope they don't screw this up.

It was a football night for me, but I didn't have time to check the archive beforehand, so just did so now. I missed two each in British humor, lit and fossible words, and one in modern shorthand, so I did not have a good first round. In DJ, I only ran geography, and blew the entire sidekicks category. I missed seven across the remaining categories. To top it off, I had no clue for FJ (I knew it wasn't Mary Queen of Scots, but had no earthly idea who it was). So I'm not at all off to a good start in the semifinals. And I was rooting for Katie, so I'm not off to a good start in terms of contestants I favor winning, either. Oh, well; my football team won and I got my Christmas tree decorated, so I still had a good night.

Phobias are, by definition, irrational; people who try to explain to us (my phobia is of IV needles [not needles in general - I have tattoos - just needles that go into a vein]) why the thing we have a phobia of is perfectly harmless completely miss the point. And people who are condescending about it suck.

I've always loved flying, and still do, but it has definitely changed a lot over the years. From back when planes had a smoking section (I'm glad that has changed!), I love Designing Women's Julia saying, when Suzanne wonders where their seats are, "I don't know, but if history teaches us anything, mine will be next to a baby who smokes."

I can't remember if he's there yet on Christmas Two*, but he shows up for Christmas One - he arrives right before Sybil's last scene (where she's looking out the window and says it's snowing), greets his family, and asks who Amy is making out with in an ambulance. *I think he is, but I don't have a specific memory of him like I do from his scene in the first Christmas.

I was watching while decorating the house for Christmas, so I didn't write anything down last night, but I had a very good game. I thought a lot of the DJ clues were better suited to a first round. I object to reading the Festivus clue without saying "I got a lot of problems with you people" in Frank Costanza's voice. I hardly ever text, and when I do I use actual words, but that category was a breeze to figure out. Like another poster upthread, I figured J! was making them up. It's a good thing the game moves quickly, otherwise most of those yacht rock songs would have tried getting stuck in my head. It took me until the decks clue to figure out the "rhymes with duck" pattern in the Somethings category; I said cards, and then when it was decks instead the light bulb went on. Which made the next clue, dukes, an instaget, when otherwise I'd have probably guessed heirs to the throne like the contestant did. And I wouldn't even have had a guess for dikes without having twigged to the pattern. I enjoy categories like that, where there's an unstated pattern that serves as an additional hint if/when you pick up on it. I know Alex liked them too, and cited missing out on them as one of the risks of jumping around the board.

I enjoy it well enough (the whole live stage performance of an episode of classic television thing), but I found these last two shows an odd choice, given how many shows Lear was more involved with - and were better shows - they could pick from. For the next two, I'd love to see them do an episode of Maude and one of One Day at a Time.

Then this is it, and, yes, she's as dumb as all the other people in the AHS commercials. Her toilet has been flushing for three hours straight, and she's just standing there and shrugging without even turning off the water, let alone opening the tank to see what's wrong. (Yes, I understand all the scenarios are all cartoonishly exggerated, like how her toilet creates a vortex that sucks everything in the bathroom into it, not meant to be real household mishaps, but these ads tend to bug me, and I'm particularly irked by how many of this series in which people have no idea how to stop an appliance problem [not even fix it, just stop things like water spraying all over the place] feature women.)