#country vets make do

[defilerwyrm]

you know you’re at a country vet clinic when the doc says she needs to take a urine sample from your cat and what she comes back with as the collection vessel

is one of these

(yes this actually happened this morning. it was very effective)

[shinobicyrus]

It doesn't matter to JD Vance - or Trump's supporters - that the 'immigrants eating pets' stories are false. He's admitted as much, and says he will keep repeating them. Because "memes."

It also doesn't matter when it's pointed out to him that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are in the country legally. He's going to keep calling them "illegal" because their legal status is not the thing about them that he finds objectionable.

It doesn't matter if they're legal immigrants or illegal immigrants. It doesn't matter that immigrants - regardless of legal status - are statistically much less likely to commit crimes than those born in the United States.

None of those things matter, because it's never been about those things.

Trump & JD Vance and all of their supporters hate immigrants. Full stop. The reasons and justifications will always shift and change to fit the present circumstances and political environment; reactionary politics at its finest. Meanwhile, the cold and vile core remains unchanged:

"These non-white people are lesser than us. In fact, they aren't people and we don't want them here."

[iftitah]

there was a buffalo that was about to die soon but we were not allowed to tell it to the owner

[good-beans]

Goodnight wonderful people who live in my phone!!!

[floralsapphics]

.

[crowcryptid]

who knew the price of getting 4 days of alone time was a pet and family member passing away and 2 more family members being hospitalized (one is serious, the other will be fine)

All completely unrelated incidents. Just insane timing I guess.

Interesting series of phone calls these past 2 days.

[bestial4ngel]

Gotdamn, my younger sister moves to the US and all it took was a grand total of FOUR MONTHS living there for her to decide she wants to JOIN THE MILITARY?????

[doggirl-narcolepsy]

.........................................i haven't slept all night and i have a job interview in 2 hours :)

[gummees]

.

[rhoselacksthorns]

call me a cathedral the way my buttresses spread wide, kneeling before my altar can end with you seeing god and if you enter me far enough to push into my organs just right I make heavenly sounds

...although maybe Lincoln cathedral the way my spire isn't as long as it used to be...

...

and the way I reside in Lincolnshire...

*trying to call a woman beautiful but i've forgotten how to engage other humans in conversation* girl, you remind me of architecture

[zorthania]

A piece about survivors guilt.

This comic isn't perfect. I started it back in October 2023, and every time I picked up my pen, I wept.

I bring this to you today, on 9/11, in hopes that you reflect on this day a little differently than how most Americans would. Let it move you to continue to boycott, protest and challenge your family, friends and colleagues. You have a bigger impact than you would believe.

Thank you for reading this with an open heart.

From the river to the sea...

I'd like to bring to attention the fact that the figures depicted above are a gross undercount of the actual number of deaths. I scoured the internet high and low to source my findings and not a single one could break down the devastation that befell an individual ethnicity. Instead, they lumped a bunch of ethnicities together, provided a general timeline, and called it a day, reinforcing the sheer scale of dehumanization propagated in the west. The only consistency between all the articles I looked up was the 4.5 to 4.7 million figure I've included above, and even then, they were all published by western media news outlets... the very same that have been so unreliable and complicit in the genocide of Palestinians today. So I have to take everything they say with a grain of salt.

We are not just numbers.

All of us have ambitions and desires and lives worth living.

With that said, this is your friendly reminder to:

Donate an e-sim

Donate to PCRF to provide Palestinian children aid

Donate to Pious Projects to provide woman with feminine hygiene kits

Donate to CareForGaza to provide food to displaced families in Gaza either through their Gofundme or their paypal

Donate to any of the vetted gofundme campaigns on GazaFunds to help Palestinians trying to flee Gaza.

And if you or someone you know sees or experiences a hate crime and can afford it, SUE. This is a more effective use of your money than most realise. The reason zionists act with impunity is because of the normalization of white supremacy and oppression of ethnic minorities. Challenging that in any capacity tells them that there are consequences to their actions and makes them think twice before engaging in hate crimes and helps raise all of us up against the systems currently in place that let them get away with it.

If you can't donate or spend any money, you can:

Do your daily clicks.

Boycott targeted companies on the BDS list (if you're like me and you don't want a single dollar to go towards anything supporting Israel right now, you can use Bdnaash to double check what products are okay to buy, but the BDS list is sufficient as it is a strategic attack and proven very effective thus far)

Flood your representatives emails and voicemails with how you won't be voting for them unless their politics align with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

Attend a protest, be LOUD.

Challenge your circle of friends, family and colleagues with conversations about Palestine. (THIS IS THE MOST UNDERRATED AND MOST EFFECTIVE THING YOU CAN DO)

and if you're really up to, be disruptive in any capacity that you can think of towards major corporations benefiting from this onslaught. (i.e. halting military manufacturers from production + shipments, sticking boycott stickers on products at your market etc)

And finally, if your country wasn't mentioned in the above excerpt, it was no deliberate omission on my part and I encourage you to come forward and tell your story about the suffering of your people so that this may be a learning opportunity for everyone.

You are seen.

You are not alone.

Thank you again if you've read this far.

From the river to the sea...

[malcriada]

Help save Bilal's family!

i want to talk about my friend Bilal @bilal-salah0. for over a year now, Bilal has been living in germany, trying to adjust to his new living situation in a foreign country, learning a new language and working full time. 

when the war started, he was far away from home and his family and has been living in daily fear for their lives ever since. 

being forced to work long hours and promoting his family’s fundraiser at the same time, he has taken on more responsibility than anyone ever should. still, he managed to raise money for their evacuation fund and helped take care of his family’s daily needs with the money he was making while working. 

in a cruel twist of fate, all of this got taken away in an instant. he lost his job and his apartment and even his residence permit. which means he is at danger of deportation from germany that could happen as soon as next week!

i have been in daily contact with Bilal for a while now and connected him with some of my friends in germany. together, we are trying our utmost to make sure he can stay in the country. anyone who knows german bureaucracy knows what kind of hell it is. but we won't give up.

without his job, he was forced to dip into the money of his family’s evacuation fund to cover their daily expenses like food and shelter. this meant he had to raise his goal from €70,000 to €100,000. this was not an easy decision for him to make, he even asked for my advice on whether or not to do it, because he did not want anyone to think he was scamming people. 

even in such a desperate situation, Bilal does not want to be seen as someone who would ever take advantage of people's generosity

his family is comprised of 18 members, 10 of them are adults and 8 are children under 16 years old, some of them newborns who were born amidst the chaos of war and displacement.

currently, he is sitting at:

€71,817 / €100,000

donations have been slowing down ever since he reached his original goal. i cannot stress how important it is that they pick back up!

WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! HE NEEDS TO REACH HIS GOAL BY AUGUST 15TH!

THAT MEANS HE HAS TO RAISE NEARLY 30K IN THE NEXT TEN DAYS. THIS CANT WAIT.

his campaign has been verified and can be found on @/el-shab-hussein’s and @/nabulsi’s list of vetted fundraisers here (#132, line 136) so PLEASE don't hesitate to share and donate.

With such a tight deadline, i cant do this on my own. So i implore you to PLEASE share this wherever you can– on your whatsapp groups, on your discord servers, please share his story on other platforms wherever you have reach! Please share his story wherever you can, so that we can ease this burden from his shoulders.

[ID: a gfm link with a picture of two small children sitting in the sand in front of a cooking pot. they are looking up a the camera, eyes half-closed. the title reads "Donate to Help Evacuate My Family from Gaza to Safety, organized by Bilal salah" End ID]

tagging for reach under the cut, please let me know if you'd like to be removed:

@meaganfoster @briarhips @dirhwangdaseul @mahoushojoe

@schoolhater @pcktknife @sawasawako

@feluka @terroristiraqis @irhabiya @commissions4aid-international @wellwaterhysteria

@deepspaceboytoy @post-brahminism @khanger @kibumkim @neechees

@mangocheesecakes @kyra45-helping-others @7bitter @tortiefrancis

@toiletpotato @fromjannah @vague-humanoid @criptochecca

@aristotels @komsomolka @xinakwans @heritageposts @nibeul

@ot3 @amygdalae @ankle-beez @communistchilchuck @dykesbat

@watermotif @stuckinapril @mavigator @lacecap @yugiohz

@socalgal @chilewithcarnage @ghelgheli @sayruq @northgazaupdates2

@vakarians-babe @wayneradiotv

@psychotic-gerard @mavigator @communistkenobi @socalgal @chilewithcarnage

@ghelgheli @determinate-negation @papasmoke @omegaversereloaded

@xinakwans @givemearmstopraywith @loombreaking @killy @deathlonging

@palms-upturned @blackpearlblast @littlegermanboy @loveaankilaq @sar-soor

@fridgebride @27-moons @tamarrud @familyabolisher @fleshdyk3

@decolonize-solidarity @palipunk @gothhabiba

[lucky-fy]

Time to hijack the post with my Toffifee!!

Black tabby with agouti fur inside the stripes, and a warm saturated underfur! Very soft too (my other cat feels like straw comparatively, ahaha)

(Yes, she’s overweight… we’re working on it)

Grim's patterning is so beautiful

[tungledotedu]

uh why the fuck would you say this

this post has 3000 notes and they get worse.

el-shab-hussein has already explained why he no longer shares how he vets individual fundraisers. scammers will use the information to be less obvious, making it more difficult to spot them.

and senatortedcruz's post has no actual proof of a widespread scam. that is a serious accusation to make, yet people are reblogging it and accepting it as true with no evidence. i won't deny that there are individual grifters on tumblr, but there are accounts like @/neechees, kyra45 and anonthescambuster that will help you avoid them. hussein even has a #scam alert tag for this purpose.

it's racist to spread misinformation about a supposed large-scale deception posing as fundraisers, not to mention dangerous because this makes it less likely for gazans to get what they need to survive and escape relentless airstrikes. we've already seen the consequences of this bias. some of these people are all too happy to be cops and harass or report gazans thinking they're bots or 'spamming' inboxes.

almost nobody on that post is encouraging others to donate to organisations or other vetted lists like those by operation olive branch, which has a faq sheet that explains how they verify fundraisers. i suspect this is an attempt to discourage people from helping palestinians altogether.

gazans are making fundraisers because they have no other choice. many of them cannot work and earn money as their workplaces have been destroyed. some have been disabled by injuries thanks to the iof's targeting of civilians. the fault is on israel for besieging them and on the egyptian government for exploiting their need to evacuate.

they're doing this for the same reason they have been posting photographs and videos of genocide so that people will pay attention to their suffering, so the world will not forget. is it such a leap in logic to understand they will also use social media to start fundraisers? do you just expect them to sit there and die in silence? so you can ignore them and your countries can keep arming israel as it commits atrocities?

[pigaletta]

.

[absentlyabbie]

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.

edit: since apparently i need to clarify this, i'm saying cats should live inside, that they should not live outdoors, even part time. visiting the outdoors supervised on a leash or in an enclosed catio is not the same as even part-time living outside, and i am certainly not advocating against it.