#i just don't want mice and I hate using traps and i don't want Sweet Pea getting sick

[spaceydragons]

Does anyone know of any scents (be it essential oils or spray form) or an actual product that repells mice but are also non toxic to cats? My first thought was peppermint oil but it's toxic to cats and I don't wanna risk my cat getting sick just to repell mice

[itsclydebitches]

Honestly my expectations for episode one of v9 were below sea level and I was pleasantly surprised. Was it good? Not sure I’d say that. But it wasn’t worst case scenario bad. The mice are lame and dumb imo I honestly hate Little and all the comedic moments involving them fall flat for me. But Blake and Weiss get to talk about not Yang. Weiss is emotionally scarred from what happened and Ruby has a dramatic emotional response to learning about Penny. I wish it was more serious and less comedic as a whole and I’m really sick of these outfits. I hope Neo dies and I hope Jaune dies I’m so tired of them and I don’t know how I feel about this mystery girl we see in the intro. But by and large it wasn’t worst case scenario

Yeah you've basically listed all the moments I enjoyed. For me personally, the problem lies in Volume 9's messy tone being the worst case scenario. In a vacuum, absolutely, I love Weiss grappling with this trauma, Ruby fainting, Yang thinking she might have died... but these moments don't exist on their own and what surrounds them actively undermines the impact of each emotional beat.

Yang: "Yup I thought I was dead. No, you don't get to see me coming to that realization, or grappling with it, or trying to recover from learning differently. Why would any of that be important?"

Ruby: "I've fainted at the horror of my friend dying again. And now we're pretending I'm fine. No one has offered me any physical comfort, or pressed the 'Are you okay?' question, or waited until I'm conscious to have a key conversation about our survival here. The writing did the work of having me faint. Why would the details surrounding that matter?"

Weiss: "I'm traumatized by our fight and cannot discuss it. Wooooo go, Blake! Yeah! Awesome! You get your weapon! 👏🏻📣🎉🤸🏼‍♀️🎊Yup. Still traumatized. Why? Can't you tell? Omg lol an army of mice has captured us. How wacky IS this place??🤪 I am crying. So traumatized. This is an incredibly difficult time for me. [Next episode] Wait, Yang, you got your arm stolen by a purple racoon? Hilarious!"

I've got an example I want to give in my recap of how to do humor in an otherwise dark story, but tl;dr this is not it. The absurdity of so much of the episode -- the mice, the dodo bird, vine traps, Weiss acting as cheerleader, etc.--messes with the work the rest of the episode is trying accomplish. None of which even considers larger, series long questions like, "Why should I buy into Ruby's devastation at Penny's second death when she never reacted to her resurrection?" What surrounds these moments is just as, if not more important than the moments themselves and RWBY failed tonally in its premiere. Pretty spectacularly imo, which is precisely what I was afraid would happen.

To continue with the ever present baking comparisons: we're all eating a cake that, yeah, has some really nice pockets here and there. It's a good cake! ... provided you ignore the cloying, gummy, overly sweet icing that's covering the entire thing and slathered between every layer. Some fans are going to carefully dissect their slice, peeling off the inedible parts, nibbling the remains and praising the bake. Me? I'm looking at the slice as a whole and going, "I can't eat that."

[traumatizeddfox]

Hi Fox, I'm so glad you are okay. I know I said I wasn't going to vent but hahaha here is my attention seeking behavior again and of course something had to happen.

My fiance and his mom got into a big argument today and it put him in a really bad mood. He was already mad and started talking about my dad again. He was talking about how my dad only calls me when he wants me to do something and all other times he just ignores me and goes on with his new family and honestly he's right.

It hurt me so much to remember what my relationship with my dad really is. He called me last night and talked to me on the phone for an hour about his life with his new girlfriend and her kids, I guess they're his kids now, and it made me feel so good. So loved and wanted by my dad that I had forgotten all of the bad things that I hate him for. It's like I fell for the trap, like mice and cockroaches do, when they smell the sweet sugar on the sticky trap. Like he just called to make sure I could still help him move. He hadn't talked to me since new years and I couldn't even remember what I was angry with him for.

How can he just manipulate me like that? Why do I just lay over with joy when he gives me any form of attention? Why can't I just stand up for myself and cut him off like the rotting finger he is. He is a disease and he brings me nothing but pain and sadness.

All I ever had growing up was my dad, and he degraded it. He used me as his little cheerleader. I always was just so obsessed with him. He was the only person I had and he used me and wasted my love.

I don't know why even to this day if he talks to me I melt for him. I forget all the disgusting feelings I have and just beg for his attention. It makes me so sick and it brought back all those thoughts and feelings. I'm an adult now , how can he still use me?

How does he still have power over me? How does all of his disgusting behavior just slip right past all of my guards and I just let it all go. I hate him. I hate him so much.

He left me. He abandoned me. He had the choice to save me and he didn't. He talked to my molester behind my back because they were friends. He ruined my life just for another woman and he's not even with her anymore.

I'm so sorry I'm complaining and ranting Fox, I'm just so angry at myself that even though I know he doesn't actually love me, I just fall for his charm every time. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him Fox. He ruined me and ruined my life and he still has power over me.

Thank you for reading, I'm so sorry you have to.

so sorry to hear about what your dad did to you. maybe you should set up boundaries if you can. i know i’m in the process with doing this w/ my aunt. it’s healthy to do, especially if he’s basically using you. i’m so sorry again 💔 i hope things can get better

[nindchan]

Cat Lovers: Angelic Act or The Ultimate Anthropocentric Movement?

It begins with a piece of tumblr note written by my dear friend, about her compassion over a stray cats and dogs around her. She tried to find an answer, the reason behind why she had a soft spot for stray animals and ended up with days of thinking and worrying their whereabouts. The answer though, got me thinking. Being a cat lover my self, I was wondering did my actions brought a good deeds to those cats or it just a justification to my oh so anthropocentric action?

First of all animal lovers world is a complex community where sometimes they themselves not always agree with one another's act (trust me, social media war among rescuers nearly reminded me of my good old telenovela days). In a cat lovers world we could find street feeders (those who brought cat food everywhere), Trap-Neutered-Release activists (those who care to neutralize stray cats in order to minimize overpopulation), foster pawrens (those who fostering stray cats until they got adopters), shelter owners (those who have house with many many cats usually stray or given by cat owners), and hoarder (those who keep many many many cats for themselves). Who am I in this world? I'm just an ordinary cat caretaker.

Well I did street feeding sometimes, too poor to do TNR (for now), don't really have time to foster another cats (I'm a phd student with 10 cats for God Shake!), personally not into the idea of animal shelter (any kind of it), (almost become) books hoarder. I never brought stray cats home. Mostly they came to our house for food and stayed for sometimes (Those 10 cats I mention earlier are exceptional, they was born and rise in the house).

Cats are unique creatures. We can't expect them to do what we wanted. In other words we can't really domesticated them. My 10 (not so) housecats consists of playful Kaka, hug-lovers Paula, excellent hunter Hanbeh, attention seekers Belle, solitaire Sally, loving father Trowa, half feral Dalma, sweet Mya, mommy's boy Edric, and energetic Bara. All of them are neutered and vaccinated, but none of them act like normal neutered cats whose spent their times sleeps and eats. NO. They jumping and running around the house constantly. They hunted like a feral cats (usually for cockroaches and lizards around the house, so far only Hanbeh who's came home with mice). They have time to play outside including sunbathing in our laundry room/ rooftop garden, but they all sleeps inside the house. Cages are only used for emergencies such as keeping them when their not in a good condition.

So why did many cat lovers dream of building their own shelter? Does domesticating all the feral cats will bring better life for them? Well... in my opinion it won't.

It's true cats have their instinct to survive, and like any other living creatures they need food and shelter to keep living. The question is, can they find it themselves? Yes they are. They are able to find food, whether by scratching on the street or given by human. The problems comes when nowadays while cats population keep raising, number or bad peoples are also increasing, that's when animal abuse appears on an daily basis. And the cruelest abuse in my opinion is abandonment. You can trust feral cat to find their food but for housecat, it will be a little bit more difficult.

So does all the good deeds cat lovers done are futile? It maybe some kind of anthropocentric act, to do something just because we human thought that it has value. Cats are valuable, we save them to make us feel better. We brought them home to keep us company. We love them when none seems to love us. But they are living creatures just like us. All we can do is love them the way they are. So for cat lovers out there do not domesticated feral cats just because you wanted to feel good. Not all stray cats love being a house cats, sometimes food and shelter are enough. And for cat lovers community, all the good deeds were not futile at all, after all you save lives.

Last but not least, for those who hate cats especially stray cats, remember this. Those feral cats were forced to giving up their hunting ground because humans need more and more space. Those stray once domesticated cats were kicked out form their house because human changed their values. Human, you owed those cats a good life. Be good to them!