the purest form of serotonin is when a cat looks at u and u go like “what?” and it meows at u
like, that is a very unspecific response I still have no idea what you want but I applaud how adorably you meowed all the same, well done
This post led me to reminisce on the nature of cat’s meowing, and I have a funny story
I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.
Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.
Imagine befriending some weird giant with the wrong number of legs that you met in the forest who seems nice enough but doesn’t seem to be able to hear you, until your friend explains that all they can understand is fuck off! And I’m a baby give me love!
i know an engineer-type dude who said fiction bored him, because fiction is mostly-formulaic and tropey, and you can generally guess whatâs gonna happen next, and yada yada
so his solution for this problem was⊠to solely read serial web novels in languages that (1) he did not speak, and (2) for which there was no actual translation, fan or otherwise
apparently, the combined forces of âtrying to figure out WTF is going on via the power of Google Translate" + âcultural differences in storytelling conventionsâ + âthe inherent randomness of where the hell amateur authors are gonna take their plotsââthose all mashed up to make stories that were unpredictable enough to keep him guessing all the time
then he described to me this totally batshit-sounding Hungarian story heâd been obsessively reading once a week for years
and god i think about him all the time. like. that is the most wild way to process fiction that i have ever heard of, but also, iâve gotta admire the sheer chaos energy of it
like i tried to tell him suspense isnât about having no fucking clue whatâs going on, itâs about having expectations subverted in novel and interesting ways that nonetheless accord with oneâs understanding of the storyâs universe, etc
and heâs just like âno. Â suspense is when i cannot guess what is happening next, full stop. Â quantum physics is a suspense novelâ
i find it so unfair that i cant do all the science. like what do you MEAN I can’t study bio and chem and biochem and atrophysics and physics and geology and climate science. what do you MEAN i have a limited lifespan and need to get out of school at some point to get a job. i want to collect the science fields like pokemon, this isn’t fair
it obviously makes sense, but one of my friendâs kids is going into swim class, and all the parents got an email today going, âwhen little ones are scared, they cling on to instructors. PLEASE trim their nails.âÂ
i donât know why thatâs so funny to me, but just. the idea of this poor, scratched swim instructor having to make sure to email before each class as a reminder to please declaw the children SENT me.Â
When I taught swim lessons I remember trying to delicately ask parents not to cover their child in shea/coconut/olive oil before lessons.
âI understand your skincare regimen and wanting to protect their tender baby flesh from the pool chemicals, but COULD YOU NOT OIL YOUR CHILD LIKE A GREASED PIG before tossing them in the POOL? Thanks EVER so much!â