#tinycats

[tiny-kats-of-taocc]

hello?

[mod speaking!]

[yup, you saw that right! for the three of you still following this old, old blog, this is kats blog! i decided to revive and overhaul this whole blog, since it was kinda just collecting dust...]

[for those of you only just now following it, hello! im mod lily. you might know me for quite a few other characters, or you might not]

[kat was my very first tadc oc. wayyy back when autumn first started taocc, i made this blog because i was SO EXCITED for people to see my silly little pillow cat oc]

[but it never really gained any attention, so i abandoned kat and their blog...]

[until now! and now kat has a friend with them!]

[lyubov started as a self-insert oc that was meant to just literally be me but in tadc. slowly but surely, as most of my ocs of that sort did, she developed a personality and story of her own. and now here she is!]

[one thing i forgot to mention in kats bio is that theyre mute. they cant speak. and something i forgot to mention for lyubov is that she knows sign language, and despite the fact that she has paws and not hands, she can still sign fairly well.]

[anyways, same basic rules as my other blogs. dont be rude to anyone on my blog, dont be super horny (t o m b) because kat will run away and lyubov will blatantly ignore you and i will just be very annoyed and disappointed and disgusted, and please be considerate. also dont be homophobic or anything like that. this blog is a safe space for all.]

[and thats about it! if youve got any questions, just go ahead and ask! enjoy my two silly little kitties!]

[mod blog: @fields-of-lilies-are-pretty]

Lyubov talks like this. "She talks like this when using sign language."

"kat 'talks' like this by writing on their chest"

tags:

#pillowcat - kat is talking

#fluffycat - lyubov is talking

#tinycats - both are talking

#[mod lily] - mod is talking

#timetopawse - lore

#bopitback - reblogs

[jenthebug]

After!

My hair is cute. My Soba is photobombing. And my eyebrows are THERE.

I booked the wrong service, a wax and tint, and decided to just go with it. On the plus side, they look done. On the other hand, they look DARK and BOLD and all the other things that my natural brows aren’t. Still feeling them out.

Capri (stylist) mostly removed bulk from my hair, because my hair is THICC and tends to grow outward rather than down when I’m growing out a pixie. It feels good now.

Tomorrow is a dress down day. I will definitely be wearing a skirt with a stretchy waistband. I just need to decide on a sweater. I want to look cute and feel like I’m in jammies.

Might even wear thermal pants under my skirt, it’s freeze your ass off cold in dispatch. (Why is it always cold in dispatch? I’ve worked in 3 centers and sat in 3 more. Always fucking cold.)

Seven shifts left until surgery. *wibble*

[splinteredstar]

Tinycat you are blocking the light

[elegantmess-southernbelle]

I don’t know if I’m more of a wet hen than I used to be or if the pregnancy hormones are raging, but I’m in tears right now. Earlier, I was crying because I hated myself for bringing a baby into a horrible world. But, this world made the Carpathia, the goddamned Carpathia, a ship that performed a miracle because of the good hearts of two men who would never have been known if they weren’t good.

Maybe this world isn’t as bad as she looks.

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

[scarefox]

accidentally used my private e-mail address in a business e-mail ...

Because I have both e-mail accounts linked together (so I don't miss business e-mails since I always forget to check that account...) BUT you have to manually select your e-mail address if you want to send it from the other one. The private one is set as default which I forgot... lol......

BUT it's just a silly cute meme-ish named address which is a bit cringe... sometimes boomer misinterpret it as some spicy username tho 🙄 ....... it's just not professional like my boring name-based address....... But I just send a request for information and I might not be in contact with that company afterwards again... so not that bad. Could be worse, still a bit embarrassing.

[quotescompile]

That why cat is control world

[archive-z]

curating reading lists (without social media)

a guide to finding stuff to read, for @divorceblogger. this is a guide specifically for avoiding things like goodreads/storygraph etc which aggregate books that are popular without being all that helpful for finding things on niche/specialist topics.

a bit of housekeeping before getting to the actual list-making tips:

i mostly read nonfiction targeted at both academic and popular audiences. i also read a mixture of classic lit, genre fiction, zines & conceptual/artists’ books, and playtexts & poetry. i read traditional print books, non-traditional print publications, PDF and ePub ebooks on an iPad/iPhone, and listen to audiobooks and audio dramas.

i have a infinite number of books i want to read. the discovery process of new & interesting outstrips my capacity to read them all, so i have to be extremely selective. this also means i never tolerate a book i’m not enjoying. it can have weak points, but i have to be getting something out of the experience, or else i am wasting my one wild n precious life, ya feel?

my goal is to read for quality, not for quantity. i tend to dislike a lot of online reading communities for their focus on metrics (number of books, page count, word count, etc). i bristle at tools that try to push my reading into this direction. i have a reading practice, in the same sense that one would have an artistic practice. thinking of my reading as a practice — rather than a project, a thing to be completed and checked off the checklist — helps orient me towards patterns of thinking that serve me better

i work in the arts industry, so fiction and non-fiction books are reference tools. when I finish reading a book, I put it back on the shelf, like returning a tool to the toolbox until it is time to use it again. i live in a bachelor flat, so obvs i have to resist the incessant pressures of consumerism, but it doesn’t bother me that i have not read every book that i own. they are there for when i get to them. similarly, i would not be bothered by owning a kitchen fire extinguisher that i have not used.

where do I keep my reading lists?

Obsidian: for organising to-read lists on specific topics, genres, eras, locations, etc. i repeat books across multiple lists where appropriate. i don’t keep a single master list of everything I want to read because it would simply be too unwieldy to manage. Small focused lists of no more than ~25 books on the topic are best, imo.

TinyCat: for cataloguing physical books that i own. i have a shortcut to the website on my phone so i can easily pull it up if i can’t remember what books in a series i already have. i can tag anything unread with my “antilibrary” tag. for my own amusement, i also insert library pockets and circulation cards into my books and stamp them with the date completed (using my beloved rotary date stamp). i can also stamp the date a friend who borrowed the book completed it. i like seeing the signatures add up over time.

Zotero: for academic bibliographic citations. useful habit to get into if you transcribe lots of quotes from yr readings into yr notes.

how do i develop my reading lists?

i usually develop my reading lists through a combination of concerted effort to research a topic & ambient browsing. this isn’t Abt How to rigorously conduct research though so im gonna focus more on ~letting books organically find me~

when i have a book that i enjoy, i see if the author has written any more books on topics that interest me. incredibly basic 101 advice but somehow people still miss this one.

check the bibliographies & acknowledgements. if something comes up in bibliography after bibliography, its usually a good sign its worth checking out. also, authors usually thank other authors in their acknowledgements, its a great way to start building an idea

i love when artists talk abt their influences in interviews, like this interview abt what influences and easter eggs there are in disco elysium (i screamed at the Einstürzende Neubauten reveal!!!). i love when fans come up with their own reading lists for media, like my list speculating what daniel molloy would have read and watched in 1973.

when i am travelling somewhere i try to read something related to the to place I am going. Wikipedia is a first easy point of reference to find out if yr destination is famous for being the birthplace of X poet or Y film is set there.

tertiary sources. secondary sources are about a primary source, whereas tertiary sources aim to provide an overview of the major debates in those secondary sources on a specific topic rather than to generate their own new ideas/arguments. the oxford university press “a very short introduction” series varies in quality but its often a very useful starting point.

recs from friends/gifts. my loved ones know i like books, and books are usually a cheap & easy gift for holidays & special occasions. i gift books that i want to read myself, so we can talk abt the book together.

what physical locations do I browse?

Local library, university library. You might be even be able to get a specialist library card to an archive or museum reading room. Some public libraries also have special collections like the Seattle Zine Library.

For-sale section in the local library. proceeds usually go to supporting the library

local secondhand bookshop. there are several in walking distance, i usually hit them up quarterly, especially as i gift a lot of secondhand books

local independent bookshops. several local independent bookstores host an annual bookstore crawl where if you get a stamp from all of them in one weekend u enter a draw to win $1000 gift card :)

thrift store/charity shop/antique markets. there is usually a section with books even if the main focus is clothes/furniture

book events. author talks, staged readings of new plays, poetry readings, book/lit mag launch parties, Writers Festivals, small/independent press fair, rare book fair, zine fests, international library day, conferences

bookshelves at house parties. im 100% the person checking out yr bookshelf at a house party. great place to get yr flirt on.

travel. basically any new place im going, i look-up in advance the local library, second hand bookstores, charity shops, antiques stores etc. and save them in my maps on my phone. if i can conveniently pop into one while im there, neat! i particularly like municipal libraries bc the big ones are usually architecturally interesting (like the Vancouver Public Library) and the small ones are usually really charming and full of specific local history, leaflets to interesting local stuff, etc.

what online locations do I browse?

navigating the online catalogue to yr local & academic libraries is a whole skill unto itself. i was very fortunate be born in the late 90s and to have a specific local librarian teach me boolean operators before i could tie my shoelaces, ride a bike, or, frankly, do most human being things (shoutout to Miss T yr a real one). your library very likely has something like a workshop or at the very least a help desk that can help u with this if needed.

mailing lists of small/independent presses.

publishers websites (academic and general audience).

wikipedia. u can look at the footnotes section on wikipedia. its free. its legal.

looking up university syllabi. some are on profs’ websites, some are available through the university library. there is also the Open Syllabus website which aggregates the most often mentioned books in submitted syllabi, organised by discipline or through a visual map.

what’s available on libby/borrowbox.

Archive dot org and google books/google scholar to read the previews and judge if the book is worth following up on.

i didn’t actually include any selections of my personal reading lists, but if you would like to know more you can always shoot me an ask with a specific topic in mind.

[icanhaschezburger]

CHEEZBURGER CONFIDENTIAL

name: Dr. Tinycat

vital info: A tiny cat that is also a doctor. That's really all you need to know. Now I'm just writing stuff to fill this space.

medical acronyms:

MD, DPM, DDS, R2D2

specialties:

brain surgery, diagnostics, cat scratch fever

schooling:

Princeton, Cat Harvard, Johns Hopkittins

[naamahdarling]

Funny pet story (cats and snakes): One day I woke up and my husband was still asleep so I was doing some work outside. My little orange cat ran into the house with something in her mouth. I made her drop it but it slithered into the closet of our office and I couldn't find it. I left a Post-it note on my husband's computer letting him know to be aware of snek. He kept sleeping. The second snake I confiscated as it came in the house. I left another Post-it. The third snake went behind the TV and I managed to sweep it into the dustpan and put it outside. By the time my husband woke up there were four notes for the FOUR snakes Tinycat brought in that day. She was very proud of herself. After the fourth snake I shut her inside to stop her going out to get more.

(No snakes were harmed in the making of this story. I think Tiny believes they are exciting wiggly strings and just wants to play with them. I keep her inside when it's snake weather now because those poor garter snakes don't deserve to be traumatized like that.)

Oh my goodness! Kitty bringing in spicy noodles!!! What a good hunter! How impressive! I like snakes very much so I would have been rather delighted by the gifts provided they were alive. Do you suppose any were the same snake, apprehended by the cat a second time?

There's different types of cats when it comes to hunters. You can tell by the kind of toys they like and the way they tend to attack. Some are mousers, some are birders, and sometimes, just sometimes, you get a snake hunter. Raleigh is a mouser, Sid is a mouser, Etrigan is a birder, and Fancy is a birder and a snaker. (Smooch doesn't have very good vision so he just goes for whatever he can see under his nose.) Fancy popcorns around like a mongoose and smacks her prey into the dirt. Incredible that not only are their instincts so refined, but that some seem almost born to specialize, being good at a certain type either from birth, or maybe taught a particular thing by their mother. (We had birders at my childhood house because our oldest eternal cat taught every kitten who came through the door how to hunt, and she liked taking larger birds like jays and doves. I watched one of her proteges teach her own babies to hunt birds. Grisly but amazing. One of her babies grew up to regularly take whole rabbits. They are devastating to wildlife so I keep mine inside, but I do miss watching cats hunt. They're so amazing.)

[tiny-kats-of-taocc]

Lyubov and Kat were ready.

They knew. They felt it. The leaving. All the people that were disappearing and leaving one by one. They knew their turn was next. And they were both ready.

"I'm glad we got to be here, however short lived it was."

Kat nodded silently. Lyubov smiled, her tail twitching.

"Can't wait to go home and leave this place behind, though. I'll never forget it, I hope, but I think it's time."

Kat nodded again, a small smile on their face. Then they felt it. It was time. Lyubov stood up, and Kat floated to her shoulder. They smiled and closed their eyes, and with a soft flash of white light, they were both gone.

[splinteredstar]

It's been very warm so the tinycat has been melting on Surfaces lately

If you have a fluffy pet, I want to see pictures of that pet; reblog this and share with everyone how cute your critter is. No real reason, just "I'm having a reasonably good day and I think that the day would be improved by pictures of floofers".

[jenthebug]

Guess who’s on my lap?

His fucking paws are still wet 😂

[splinteredstar]

[dacuslucy]

BEEPBEEEEEEPBZZZBUZZZZ THE FANNES AT HOME DEMAND THE WIFE AND THE LIFE REPORT!!!!!

I LOVEMY GIRLFRIEND SO MUCH <3333 my mom gotme this digital christmas advent calendar and so i called my kal when i was setting it up and we decorated the litthe house and tree together 💖 🥹 theres a little tinycat that lives in the house thing too and we named it lucy and shes our babyyyy shes very eepy all the time (justlike me) and we played a bunch of the minigames together too 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 wish there was a minigame that let you kiss a pretty girl through the screen butttt there isnt :( ANYWAY then we watched the little mermaid (cause she lost her voice cause of EVIL SICK) (we're both sick rn) (and i was like this is just like the little mermaid) and had a datenight and it was so nice<3 and sweet<3 and the life is good but stressfulllll senior year kicking my asssss i have 2 tests next week that i am Not Ready for but also have no idea HOW to be ready for :((( WAHHHHH :(( SOBB :((( but! BUT!!!!! our new play rehearsals start on monday so how stressed CAN i really beeeeeeee <3 i love theatreeee i love my girlfriend <333333333 i love life <333333333333

[dailytinycats]

day 90 :D

honestly just yesterdays tinycat except not rushed, and also I was tired so I wanted to do something more low effort

[cosleia]

✂️ [scissors]

✄ what’s your editing process?

Hmmmm I guess I am an edit-as-I-go type? I tend to reread before continuing to write something, and when I reread I edit, which could just be tweaks but could also be rearranging stuff or removing stuff or whatever. And then when I'm done I'll do a final pass, but I usually don't do major changes at that point...instead it's more like word choice and sentence cadence and "can I describe this better". Sometimes I might realize the story needs a bigger change, though, and I'll either start on that or leave myself a note to work on it later.

Thanks for the ask! ❤️ Please give tinycat a kiss from me!

Fic Ask Game