sovinly

[sovinly]

This is my cat.

His name is Eddie Potato.

Eddie Potato came home with us from the animal shelter in January (so about 9 months ago, now). He was around five years old, and had been living on the street before he was picked up by the cops and brought to the state run shelter (my boy was arrested for loitering). When we met him, he was sick, mite-infested, and covered in matted fur, scratches, and bites: but he was also very sweet, and very friendly, and he was already fixed, so we knew he must have once had a home with some loving humans.

[Eddie at his first vet appointment, trying to hide behind a paper towel.]

We'll never know what Eddie's first family was like, of course: but within a couple of weeks of adopting him, we were able to make a few guesses. He was happy to be pet, and calm about being picked up: but the only way he had to let us know that he'd like us to stop petting him was to swat our hands away, claws out. He'd then watch us, very closely, a little tense; like he was either expecting to be scolded for scratching, or expecting us to try to touch him again.

This told us that he had an affectionate family, but maybe not one that respected his boundaries. Maybe it was a family with kids, or maybe just a loving but pushy owner.

He's a medium-to-long haired cat, so he needs a bit of grooming to stay hygienic around his, let's say, pants area. I bought some quality clippers and a pet grooming electric razor. The clippers he was completely calm about: he let me trim the mats out of his fur very calmly, even the ones behind his ears.

The razor terrified him. I mean, he knew what it was on sight. He was sitting next to me on the couch when I took it out of the box, and the moment he saw it, his ears went back; he crouched low and fearful; and then jumped down and ran out of the room.

Okay; so his first family groomed him, or took him to a groomer, that was obvious: and it was probably a 'hold him down and get it over with' kind of experience, given how frightened he was.

He was very sweet, and very gentle - except when he wanted you to stop petting him. This was a cat who expected kindness, who believed that the humans around him were his friends: but he'd learned that his friends wouldn't listen to him when he told them to stop unless he drew a little bit of blood.

We just thought: wow, this cat is a really good communicator. He is being, like, so clear.

Eddie Potato is a very stupid boy - uncommonly stupid, even for a cat - so we prepared ourselves for it to take a while for him to learn that things had changed. We paid very close attention to him while we were petting him for the signs leading up to that swat, and we got better and better at stopping before the swat ever came.

I let him get used to the razor very slowly: for the first week, I just set it next to his food bowl at dinner time, about a foot away, so he could see it while he was at his happiest. For the next week, I'd pick up the razor, and move it around while he ate. The week after that, I turned it on for a few seconds, so he could start to get used to the noise. The week after that, it went on for most of his meal time, and I moved it around his body while I pet him: so he could start to associate the razor sound with nice touching.

Then I groomed him. And he was - fine. A little bit antsy, but fine. Happily munching away at his dinner while I neatened up his pantaloons. I usually only had about a minute before he made it clear that he wanted it to stop, but that was okay: I just groomed him for a minute or so for two or three days in a row, until the job was done.

After four months, Eddie Potato wasn't scared of the razor at all anymore.

And it broke my heart a little bit, because his first family had clearly loved him. And Eddie is a cat who needs to be groomed! And it had obviously always been a scary and stressful experience for him. But it didn't have to be! He just needed patience! Surely, if the people he had lived with before had known that he could learn to not be afraid in just a few months, they would have tried.

Teaching him that he didn't need to swat didn't take much longer. It was so clear that this was not a cat who wanted to hurt us. Once we got the hang of stopping before he got tired or stressed out by petting, the swatting went away completely.

What was so sweet was what he learned to do instead: when he was done with being pet, he started placing his big paws on my hand, and gently but firmly pushing it away.

"Oh, okay!" I'd say. "We're done!" and take my hand away. And he'd watch me, for two or three seconds: and then he'd start to purr like crazy, and push under my hand again.

He wanted to be pet. He just wanted to know that he could make it stop if he wanted to!

It's been months now since the last time Eddie swiped at either of us. Sometimes, he likes to play his little push-away game for ten or twenty minutes at a time! He rolls onto his back for a belly rub, and I do for a few minutes; then he pushes my hand away, and watches to make sure I listened; then he rolls onto his back again for more belly rubs. The whole time purring, purring, purring. Eddie loves his belly rubs, and he loves being listened to just as much.

I'm just so proud of him! He's had such a hard and scary year: losing his family, living on the street, ending up in a kill shelter, going to a strange new home with strange new people. And he still extended his friendship and trust to us, and let us show him that he doesn't need to be scared anymore, of razors or hands or thunderstorms or the sound of traffic. He's so dumb and so small and he's had so much happen to him, and now he gets exactly as much petting as he likes, and he isn't afraid to get his pantaloons trimmed.

Like. That's my little guy. I get to make sure he'll be okay from now on.

[sovinly]

A large part of housecat vocalisation toward humans isn’t goal-directed communication, but rather, affiliative signaling: a simple call-and-response protocol which establishes that the participants are part of the same social unit. Amongst themselves, most housecat affiliative signaling is non-vocal, but humans aren’t really physiologically equipped to respond to such signalling in a feline fashion, and cats, well, they’re adaptable.

Which is to say that when your cat yells, and you yell back, so the cat yells again, and so forth, what you’re really saying to each other is “hiiiiii~”.

[sovinly]

listen. i honestly do try my best to not be bitchy about stuff. but if you not-joking-joked that you wanted to watch a video essay from hbomb on the kendrick-drake rap beef. i think that you are obligated to watch fd signifier's 3 hour video essay. i KNOW the watch time is not the issue.

[sovinly]

I love Thara Celehar so much??? This motherfucker takes on (AND DEFEATS) a creature so powerful and obscure that not only has no one else ever survived it, people think they're myths. AND HE HAS TO AUDACITY TO BE LIKE "I JUST GOT LUCKY" AND NOT THINK IT'S WORTH MENTIONING THAT THAT'S WHY HE LOST HIS POWERS????

HE GOES OUT OF HIS WAY TO HELP PEOPLE AND WHEN THEY'RE LIKE "THANK YOU SO MUCH" HE'S JUST LIKE "That's just my job" MOTHERFUCKER NO IT ISN'T!!!!

YOU GAVE A FUNERAL TO SOMEONE BECAUSE THEY COULDN'T AFFORD ONE, PEOPLE COME TO YOU WITH OFF-THE-WALL THEORIES AND YOU'RE LIKE "SURE I'LL LOOK INTO THAT" AND THEN YOU FUCKING CRACK A SERIAL KILLER CASE NO ONE EVEN KNEW EXISTED!!!

AND YOU'RE SURPRISED PEOPLE LIKE YOU??? THIS DUDE CAME SPECIFICALLY TO YOU EVEN WHEN HE KNEW YOU COULDN'T TALK TO HIS WIFE'S BODY BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS YOU DO YOUR DAMNEDEST INVESTIGATING HE WAS LIKE "I THINK IT'S MURDER BUT IF YOU CONCLUDE IT'S NOT I'LL BELIEVE YOU" BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS YOU WON'T STOP UNTIL THE TRUTH COMES OUT

and you have the AUDACITY to say "it's just my job" and act surprised when people like you. motherfucker.

[sovinly]

Romeo Gigli spring/summer 1990 silk, cotton, acetate, nylon, spandex, leather, mother-of-pearl

[sovinly]

you can look at the vorkosigan saga books and assume (correctly!) that it's a lot of space opera/space war stories, with daring rescues and laser gun pew pew and clones wandering around. but they're also full of other things, like

probably most famously, jane austen via space russia (a civil campaign my beloved)

look I swear we're going to finish our honeymoon but my boss's ships got impounded and whoops I seem to have found a murder mystery

oh no we lost a dead body before we could do future medicine to bring it back oh no we lost the protagonist

fake wedding turns out to be a real wedding and your cousin won't stop laughing at you

great news shareholders, we've genetically engineered humans to live in null G by giving them arms instead of legs! what do you mean humanity invented artificial gravity

culture and medical exchange's influence on gendered politics, or how does nobility's patrilineal inheritance work when you can trans your gender

navigating polyamory when one of you is dead

basically a decades-long multibook treatise on the impacts of providing and utilizing alternatives to in vitro fertilization and live births

[sovinly]

Thought inspired by this post and also it being very very late* so my judgement is impaired enough to write this down

I do believe the Amis, in general, would Super Negotiate their Wild Sexy Times. Not because they are operating to Modern Standards but because many of them are the kind of people who would (in modern terms) get so caught up in making a homebrew TTRPG that they spend six months excitedly negotiating the rules and never actually get around to playing. Also because, look at them. Look at the way they're written. These are 100 percent the kind of leftists who are gonna renegotiate the rules for a picnic every time not because they're really worried but because Debate Is Fun . *

HOWEVER , not only do I not think they're operating to modern standards , I fully acknowledge several of them are Super Freaks, canonically

what I'm saying is, yeah, I believe their Wild Times are Extremely Consensual, with agreements arrived to possibly over a series of weeks, and initialed by all concerned parties , while also being Dangerously Unsafe and Potentially Springing From the Mind of A Mad God Beyond Our Universe, or at least a terrible idea someone read in a bad translation of Hoffman.

I also believe that this applies to the picnics.

(disclaimer: I do believe they are CAPABLE of just Going With the Flow and Chilling in their daily life. But also Debate IS chilling for them, so there we are ,so that's just round and round and back where you began (at the all night shibari seance negotiation and planning session).

I am so so so tired and nothing I say should be taken seriously rn

** possible exception: while Grantaire clearly loves talking, he may not have the focus for Activity Negotiations.

[sovinly]

Plenty of highly intelligent people end up getting sucked in to cults because they just wanted people to hang out with. There are antivaxxer nurses. Your ability to act on empirical reason breaks down fast if your social and emotional needs aren't being met.

[sovinly]

do yall know about this

[sovinly]

OMG the Department of Labor just this morning issued a new rule about how to classify contractors vs employees... uber and lyft are gonna get WRECKED

[sovinly]

Dan Dos Santos

[sovinly]

There’s a release date and blurb for the final Cemeteries of Amalo book!

Coming 11 March 2025

In The Tomb of Dragons, Katherine Addison returns to the award-winning world of The Goblin Emperor, deftly wrapping up The Cemeteries of Amalo trilogy.

Thara Celehar has lost his ability to speak with the dead. When that title of Witness for the Dead is gone, what defines him?

While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.

Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.

Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.

[sovinly]

Five times Lianne of Conté learned something about Zahir ibn Alhaz, and one time he learned something about her.

Tortall, Lianne/Zahir, 12k, rated T, I don't know, I incepted myself into this and couldn't stop thinking about it until I indulged myself.

[sovinly]

Mad with boop power! I felt inspired.

[sovinly]

㋡🥀

[sovinly]

Sycamore Gap, Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland

Gavin Crozier

[sovinly]

Ignore the silly cryptid in the first pic; I just love how the clouds tonight created the illusion of a floating mountain range that stretched over the whole horizon, and slowly advanced as if following us...