Rose Thorne(She/Her)

Had a major breakthrough with Vulture. For anyone who hasn’t seen my previous comment, she is a cat who was hanging around my work, disappeared, and came back with difficulties with her back legs and full body tremors.

My ex and I have been working with her for several months after capture, including vet trips. For most of this time, she has been extremely standoffish, and no one can blame her given her condition.

Recently, she started rubbing her body against me and purring, but absolutely refused any return affections. One day, I just reached down while she was distracted and lightly touched her tail. That was allowed, and we’ve moved on to full pets! She’s now a happy little bundle of purrs, so long as I let her make the initial contact!

On top of that, our movement has gotten so much better. I don’t think she’ll ever be free of issues with her back legs, but she’s moving around a lot more, doing some more hops around her space, and has just become even livelier than ever before.

We have went from hiding in a corner and hissing, to happily strutting up and throwing ourselves in love mode. She’s even started showing increased interest in her toys! She has a favorite mouse toy she brings into her heated house to snuggle with nightly, and the others get bipped and bopped around.

We’re going to try a litterbox again soon(at first, she didn’t have the control to manage getting in and out of even a low one, so we’ve had puppy pads for now), and I have a lot of hope for that. She’s showing that she’s a very intelligent little cat that just needed time and comfort to recover.

The downside is they generally like that…

It’s why they keep asking their leaders for more of the same!

Make it 5, and only one or two are screaming. The rest are nipping at my fingers or nose, throwing paws in my mouth or on my eyes, or circling around my legs. All because we want breakfast, and breakfast time is “whenever moms alarm goes off, or we wake her up”.

I feel you there. We’re currently in a slow point, even our competitors are feeling it, but once we’re within the 5 day Christmas window? Say goodbye to lunches or being off on time. The bakery is about to be in riot mode, potentially quite literally.

Because it’s not about liking it, it’s about how it hurts the “bad people”. If you told one of them that cutting their left arm off would hurt the Dems, they’d bleed out with a smile.

They blindly believe Trump is hurting the ones who “deserve” to be hurt. If it ends up burning them, too, oh well. They’ll get better because they’re the “correct” ones, and they’ll stick to it until they die.

For me it was the musicians. Wasn’t the key thing that broke me out of the Christian Guilt Cycle, but hearing “the best musicians go to Hell” was a nice, extra wedge.

Like, really, you think I wanna miss the greatest show that could ever be to go play a fucking harp on some cloud? Fuck that.

“The bad news is, it’s cancer. The good news is we can use this other cancer to fix the first cancer.”

Ah yes. “I own cute outfits, they’re just under the Comfort Jacket™”.

I know it all too well.

Vulture, a feral from work my ex and I have been working with for awhile now, about made me cry this morning.

For a bit of context, I work at a grocery store with a large field behind it. People love dropping their unwanted animals off back there, I don’t know why, but they end up becoming something for us to deal with as they come looking for food.

Vulture was one of those cats. We had been working to catch her when she disappeared for almost a month, and then came back with her back legs barely working and shaking all over.

She’s been to the vet, they couldn’t find any cause for her condition, she’s been tested for everything and come back clean. Best guess was she had gotten hurt and had nerve damage.

Today, she was up, running around her shelter area, rubbing against the walls, talkative, excited to eat. The most life I’ve seen out of this poor cat since rescue. Don’t get me wrong, she’s been eating, drinking, physically doing okay for the shape she was in, but it was the energy around her, the look in her eyes. It was like she was finally feeling truly better.

Still doesn’t want to be pet, but that’s okay. She was happy to come around and sniff on me, sniffed my fingers, and settled down beside my feet before going after her food. She was comfortable, something she hasn’t been in far too long, and it’s given me a lot of hope for her future.

It’s been a reminder of just how rewarding rehab work can be. You always have the risk of heartbreak, but seeing one find the spark to thrive over survive just lights up everything.

I’m so sorry. But, this did lead me to learning something! I had assumed they were US-based, just given their sheer prevalence in some parts of the country.

Nope, it’s the fucking English. Headquarters in London. Just… Goddammit, England.

Around December in the US, the Salvation Army(A Christian group with a bigoted history and overpriced secondhand goods stores) set up outside stores, ringing hand bells and asking for donations.

They’re everywhere that allow them. You cannot escape the ringing bells.

For eating a meal‽ A succulent Chinese meal‽

A couple of mine love the carrier, until you’re out at the car. Then you’re killing them, according to how loudly they cry about it. Carrying them around the house in it? No problem.

I do not understand what goes through their tiny brains.

“So, y’know those mousepads with the wrist support?”

“Okay…”

“Just vertical. Fitting to a billboard.”

“Yeah, I get that, but… Why?”

“Stop asking, just do it, and if I suddenly die from falling, don’t ask what happened. Just make sure there’s enough space between them to fit the average salaryman, and let me live my dreams.”

As its gotten colder, some of the cats have gotten into the habit of getting up under my blanket and snuggling with me. For most of them, having the blanket flat isn’t really an issue.

But not little miss Calli. She has decided she needs a blanket tent using my knees to create the space so she can curl up between my legs. She asks for this by gently pawing the side of the blanket while staring at me, like “Mom, make me the space, mom”.

That is unless I don’t do it quick enough. Then we start pawing faster and trying to push our face towards mine. All I can hear in my head every time is “MOTHER, THE COLD APPROACHES, MOTHER! THE BEDS, MY SIBLINGS, THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH! I NEED YOUR WARMTH, AND I NEED IT NOW, LEST I PERISH IN THE NIGHT!”

This is normally followed by me making our space, and then inevitably one of our siblings pounces at our space, much to her distaste.

That doesn’t look like an angel to me.

Bulls skull or female reproductive system, yeah, but not angel.

I’m thankful most of my lot aren’t bad about that. Of course, it helps that those are the ones who I’ve raised since their birth and have always had access to plenty of food, so they also don’t get the drive to over eat nearly as much.

But they are very precise about their feeding schedule. I don’t need a morning alarm, I have five fuzzy bodies nipping at me and putting paws in my mouth.

Emissions testing.

(Obligatory fuck Volkswagen and their “every other company also does it!” defense)

Can we at least bring a blanket?

I have sensitive knees.

The only reason my manager and I have Black Friday off was taking on Thanksgiving closing duties. Our department is supposed to close an hour earlier than the store. We have kept the store open longer some years, because fuckers need day-of baked goods, and refuse to do it their own damn selves.

Writing “Happy Thanksgiving” on a cake while hearing “Oh, you have to work on a holiday‽ Why don’t they just close the store for the day!” Why, I don’t know, Gertrude, you absolute textbook example of genius, maybe it’s because you “forgot the traditional cake!” again, for the third year in a fucking row, and decided to do your months shopping while you’re here! Yes, get more two-bite brownies for your family of type-2 diabetics, that’s exactly what they need!