My first question to someone who’s like, “You should give up writing and learn to code!” would be to ask, “Is that how you entertained yourself during the pandemic? With long videos of people coding? Or did you read books and watch TV and movies like the rest of us?”
i’ll tell you what converted me to being all-in on keeping cats indoors only:
living for a year and a half in a rural area with a sudden feral cat colony explosion on the property.
i moved in with my folks for a bit and at that time, one (1) stray cat mama had taken up residence on the property, but was too feral to let my mother anywhere near her. but especially after she brought three kittens around, mom fed her and the kittens in hopes they’d grow trusting enough she could catch for spay and neuter at the minimum. momcat stayed mean and hella wary, but the kittens would hang around a little nearer and play with my mom via long stick, but still wouldn’t come close enough to touch or catch.
unfortunately, two of the three kittens were girls and started having kittens of their own before further progress was made, shortly after i moved in. and that was pretty much instant doom.
there were so many kittens. SO MANY. multiple litters. every time we turned around, more kittens.
we fed them. we hunted for and located the kittens every time anywhere on the property and would move them to a repurposed doghouse anytime a mama cat had them somewhere else, so that they could grow up human-socialized and we could spay/neuter them when they were old enough. (also it was a handy tactic to push the issue of the mamas getting more used to/trusting of us themselves. only really worked with one of them, though.)
and we watched them die.
we watched litter after litter of kittens never make it to the age they could be spayed or neutered. the moms stayed, for the longest time, too skittish to more than briefly touch, much less catch and crate for a vet visit.
it sounds like a silly joke to say i have kitten-related ptsd, but i absolutely do.
too many goddamn times i’d walk out of the garage and find the carport and gravel drive strewn with tiny bodies. others simply went missing, never to be found.
one in particular, i wish i hadn’t found, and the visual literally haunts me still, almost a decade later.
i saw so many kittens die of snake bite, spider bite, wild dogs, birds of prey, hit by cars, respiratory illness, covered in fleas and eyes crusted with infection.
and we loved them all. scrimped for antibiotics if the vet could be convinced to give it to us despite our being unable to bring them in. bought flea collars and ointments. we cared for them and fed them and petted them and played with them, brushed their fur and cleaned up their little faces, put ice in their water in hot summer, rigged a heating lamp in their house in the winter.
and they died. horribly. that property is pocked with unmarked graves of kittens and cats.
all the best intentions, not enough resources, and it didn’t matter anyways because the population went from three to almost twenty (at times, over thirty) in the blink of an eye.
they died and died and died. our hearts broke over and over again. the stress and anxiety wore us down like sandpaper. i think, by the end of it all, we managed to find less than 10 of them all homes, including batman the disabled kitten i found a home across the country through tumblr.
it was carnage and tragedy, frankly. and we were helpless.
it only ended because they started dying faster than they could be born, and because we finally caught the two remaining mom cats in traps and got them spayed.
the points about outdoor cats being invasive predators devastating to local wildlife populations is true and valid and important.
but i know cat people, and cat people who don’t know better than to let cats outdoors. what matters to you is the cat itself, generally. the cat being happy and taken care of.
keeping cats outdoors, letting them outdoors, is not taking care of the cats. it’s not protecting them. it’s not giving them any happiness or invigoration that couldn’t be provided to them as indoor-only pets with just a little research and effort.
they die. they get ill. they get hurt. they’re at risk of predators, and cars, and disease, and carelessly cruel children and deliberately cruel adults. they’re at risk of disappearing on you because someone else saw a cat outdoors and intervened to give it a better, safer life not in conflict with the local environment.
and if that offends and angers you that someone would just take a cat they saw roaming outdoors, even collared, and that it sounds like i’m endorsing that, i am, but not if you intervene and be that person yourself for your own cat.
if what matters to you is doing right by your cat because it’s family and a living creature whose happiness and health and safety is important to you,
keep them indoors. not part time. always. exclusively.
When Khaled Hosseini wrote “a man’s heart is a wretched, wretched thing. It isn’t like a mother’s womb. It won’t bleed. It won’t stretch to make room for you.” I had to stop, put the book down and breathe because never had a sentence knocked the breath out of me like that did.
And when he wrote, “Learn this once and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle always points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.”
this is random and embarrassing but if we are mutuals on here i genuinely adore you so much and if i wasn’t horrendous at making conversation i would be bothering you so much. u guys are so cool (please be my friend)
“Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they’re 15” this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit
I think my favourite thing about tumblr mutuals is how it lets me really lean in to loving people in the simplest of ways
And by that I mean - I don’t really know my mutuals extremely well, for the most part. I know pieces of them - maybe a name, maybe about their pets, or what area of the world they live in, or what fandoms they like, or little things they love about the world. Maybe about their sorrows, too. But little things. Things that feel ok to share on an open platform.
But they’re still my beloved mutuals. And I still love them. So I get to leave nice little messages, or tell them that I love what they’re writing, or send condolences in their replies when something hard happens. I can try and make this person who I don’t really know that well smile, or feel a little bit loved, so why wouldn’t I try?
And my mutuals do the same for me! I get tagged in posts, or people send me asks for an ask meme, or like the silly things I post. Little bits of love sent my way all the time.
I dunno. I just love that this platform lets us try and make people’s day just a little bit brighter, simply by knowing that someone out there, halfway across the world, is smiling at you and wishing you well and sending you love through frog pictures or fandom gifs. Thats all.
Do you ever eat popcorn out of the palm of your own hand with such ardent desperation that you feel like both a wild horse and the gentle schoolgirl feeding it treats to gain its affection
Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2022, commenting on this post from 2016. There’s been a lot of people on this site lately being like “oooh no don’t make viral uwu I’m so pathetic, little, and defenseless and my poor notifications can’t handle 10k reblogs” well first of all ALL of us are pathetic, little, and defenseless and secondly none of our notifications can handle 10k reblogs and thirdly I’m not a coward and I think this should have a million notes. Not because of its own merit as a post, I just think it’d be funny if when I turn 30 this year and I reflect on the greatest accomplishments of my life thus far, I have to at least consider putting “famous tumblr popcorn post” on the list
Hey there guys. It’s me, in 2023, in May specifically, I’m 30 and for the record it rules, I had a lil aging crisis and now I’m past that and I’m just like goddamn it is great being in my thirties and I had a wonderful birthday NO THANKS TO YOU GUYS
actually, much thanks to you guys. Some of you were inspiringly crazy about this post. Frankly you worked harder for this than I did, and your efforts were touching and inspiring and funny and yet we STILL FAILED. GUYS WE GOTTA PUT OUR EYES BACK ON THE BALL. We have ehhh about six months before I turn the big three-one, which is actually the most important birthday because now you’re in your thirties For Real, and I personally can’t think of a better way to ring in my 31st year of life than by trying and failing to do something that I was hoping to knock out in my twenties.
Good luck, kiddo
Are you satisfied, op? When will it be enough?
I feel I couldn’t have been clearer about the number at which this will be enough
You guys I had this whole fucking bit planned. I was gonna pathetically beg for notes for months. It was gonna be a whole progressively building thing. But you guys were, and I say this with complete affection, so fucking annoying to me personally and to everyone who follows you. Again, I really phoned this in. Some of you guys were just like “what if I replied every letter of the alphabet one at a time and then did it again.” And then reblogged it 30 times. That’s so much work to make some numbers go up and again so annoying to so many people. You all should be proud. I did literally ask for this. Your weird level of work made me feel connected to a sea of strangers who wanted me to succeed but also, and again I say this with affection and love, annoyed me deeply along the way.
ALT
