#to let me know he is okay

[punkpinkpower]

Today we said goodbye to the last of the old guard.

When my husband and I got married, we both already had commitments to two animals each, which meant we started out with an unruly brood of 4 beautiful babies. They brought us so much joy, and so much laughter, and also so much frustration. I learned so many lessons from these babies. It's hard to believe they are all across the Rainbow Bridge now.

While we have continued adding to our fur family, I'd like to talk about the OGs of our life together a bit.

Pudding Pop was unlike any Chihuahua I had ever met. She had a big enough personality to fill an entire room on her own. She loved people, and getting attention. She would shake her entire body with joy and love when husband came home from work, finally laying down to have her tummy rubbed with a smile on her face. She wasn't very barky, but God was she braver than dogs 5 times her size. She once barked at a great dane across the street as if she could take him, and you know, maybe she could have. She taught me so much about love. Husband had never leash trained her, so I took that upon myself and our daily walkies became our favorite shared activity. Once, we were approached on the street by two men in a threatening manner, and despite being only 8 pounds, she put herself between me and them, fur on end, and bit the guys ankle when he got what she deemed was too close. He tried to kick her, but I yanked her back and, having retrieved my pepper spray, continued to pull her backwards and away from them. When we got home that night I gave her some cooked ground beef as a reward for defending me. She was so devoted to her dad, I had never imagined she would care enough for me to do that. I was so proud of her and after that day it was clear I was her momma. She developed Cushings Disease at 7 years old, and I ran up my credit card getting her treatments and keeping her comfy. She was the first to leave us at 9 years old, passing away gently in her sleep. It was far too soon, but she was such an enigma. There will never be another Chihuahua like her.

Shenanigans was our large and in charge calico kitty. Husband had adopted her from someone at work when she was about 3 years old. The person was having a baby and was going to have her cat put down. Upon hearing this, despite never having met the cat and never having owned a cat before, husband asked to adopt her instead. He told me this story on our second date, and I knew we were the same kind of bleeding heart. Shenanigans was 17 pounds and on a dry food diet, and before I came into their lives, they kinda just cohabitated. She was standoffish, and who could blame her. She'd been abandoned to this ninny(affectionate) who didn't seem to know anything about cats and she was living with a bunch of bachelors. The first time I met her she was aloof, but once I pulled out her first (at least then) cat toy, she realized I was a cat person and attached herself to me. I'll never forget the way she meowed at me that day, like she was telling me all her complaints. "And all they're feeding me is dry food and my nails need trimming and can you please tell them I need another litter box?!" Like I could understand her because I'd brought the toy, so clearly I was a cat person. She was a bossy girl, and we had the privilege of being her devoted servants for around 13 years. Her kidneys started to fail around 14, but when she realized we were treating her special she decided she was going to take full advantage of that and despite being given 6 months to live she gave us another beautiful two years. She was my constant lap cat at the end, and we had to let her go when her kidney disease became so bad she could no longer control her functions. She was such a loving girl, and I'll never forget the way she looked at me while we cuddled, like I was the mom she'd always wanted. I was so lucky to love her.

Timmy. Timmy was my soul cat. I was there when he was born in my friends garage my senior year of high school. We sat a few feet away quietly whispering while Timmy's mother Princess gave birth to him and his siblings. When he was old enough to be handled, I was the very first one to hold him. I would come over everyday after school to see the kittens and by the time he was 8 weeks old Timmy would run towards me on his tiny paws as soon as he heard my voice. It took another 4 weeks to convince my mother to let me adopt him, and the only reason she finally agreed was that I'd had a falling out with pretty much all of my friends. She told me later she was afraid I was going to kill myself, and she thought having a cat would give me a reason not to. She was right. Timmy saved my life so many times. He got me through so many low points. He loved me completely, and I loved him, and we got to spend a beautiful 17 years together. We were never apart. I am so grateful for all the love he gave me. His fur absorbed countless tears, he nuzzled his nose against mine a million times, and I tried to give him a million kisses. Lung cancer came for him in his old age, and I was the last one to hold him when I had to let him go. He spent a lifetime in my arms and I will miss him for the rest of my life. He was the longest relationship I ever had, and I am so grateful for the unconditional love he gave me all those years. He saved me, as they say, in every way a person can be saved. And he took his role as alpha of the house very seriously, training up new kitties we adopted to his standards and never afraid to put someone in their place for misbehaving. God, I miss him.

Today, we said goodbye to our 15 year old tuxedo cat Rygel. He started life out as my roommates cat, and yes, he is named after the dirty old Muppet in Farscape. When he was about 3 years old, my roommate had to make some hard choices about her life, and what ended up coming out of that was my keeping Rygel when she moved out. He was the biggest goofball, an absolute unit of insanity. We often joked he had only one brain cell. He was the cat who climbed Christmas trees and knocked over TVs and sometimes he would yowl in the middle of the night like he was lost until one of us came and picked him up and brought him to bed. He had a huge personality, and he had such a big pur. He developed pretty severe allergies as an adult that cost an absolute fortune. Rygels lesson to me was patience. His allergies gave him GI issues and bladder infections, and he started having litter box problems around 9 years old that... Honestly? Made our lives kinda insane. I think most people would probably have thrown in the towel years ago, but we talked about it and decided we couldn't. We made a commitment to him, and we are long, long life journey people. He was our cross to bear, and we spent money and time making sure he was as comfortable and happy as he could be for the rest of his life. I know he knew how loved he was, because he showed me. He turned into a lap cat and a bed cat, enjoying nothing quite so much as a soft blanket and some good scritches. A week after we said goodbye to Timmy, Rygel was diagnosed with aggressive intestinal cancer. We did what we could for him, and he kept bringing us love and joy for another 6 months. This last week he let us know he was ready. He was tired. And so, with heavy hearts, we took the last of the old guard in for his soft goodbye, and held him tightly.

We have three wonderful younger cats who are comforting us in our loss, but these four were with us at the beginning and Rygels passing feels like a bookend no matter how I look at it. They filled our lives with so much love, and chaos, and joy. Despite how much losing them hurts, I would not change a thing about any of them. Except of course, if I could make it so they were still here.

If love could have saved them, they would have lived forever. I know that we will have many, many more cats and dogs that will have their own stories and we will love them with all we are, but they owe something to these four. They taught us love, devotion, bravery, kindness, patience, and a part of my heart will always be with them at the rainbow bridge. I don't know what I believe about death and what happens after, but I do believe in an afterlife for animals. They're so pure, so kind, and so full of love that I know that carries on somehow, because their love also lives within me.

Thank you for loving us, Rygel, Timmy, Shenanigans, Pudding. I will never forget you, and I will love you forever, even when I cease to be here on this earth, your love will always be part of me. I love you, my darlings. Rest well.

[hinamie]

in spite of everything, I had fun <3

[thebrainrotsreal]

Drew this real quick because I fucking love these two so much ???? Especially Bee. I wish they interacted more so badly. PLEASE.

Also learning how to draw these guys.. slowly.

[dolotonglo]

so that popularity poll huh

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[hopeswriting]

reminder that if you back tsuna into a corner he

A) sends you right back into the worst prison for mafia criminals you just escaped from, but even worse than before (enjoy being unconscious and tied up in your one room swimming pool for the next 10 years)

B) freezes you with flames burning so hot they turned into ice (< this isn't how the zero point breakthrough is explained in canon but it's the more dramatic explanation), fully knowing you were already frozen by similar ones for 8 years until, like, a month prior

C) burns you fucking alive and also undoes the last 10 years of your existence across all existing timelines. also he won't think anything about it afterwards ever (?????? like. it's not that he didn't deserve it, to be clear, but damn. 😭😭😭 middle schoolers when you just want to take over the world(s) for a bit, smdh 🙄)

D) is willing to become the boss of the most powerful mafia family in the world with a bloodstained history if it means getting the opportunity to get his hands on you and kill you beat the shit out of you. but you're lucky he likes you so you could stay on very thin ice long enough for both of you to clear things up

E) gangs up against you with all the current and future strongest people in the world, and then punches you so hard he makes you see the light of doing the right thing despite your centuries years old deep rooted hatred which singlehandedly kept you alive as an undead person

also reminder he did all that while he was only 14 years old. this is all things he did in less than a year.

this is tsuna's resume during the course of less than a year of proper mafia business.

so, you know. the next time he goes "i just want my friends and i to be safe and happy and live in peace. 🥺🥺🥺 please don't make me fight you to make it happen? 👉🏽👈🏽🥺👉🏽👈🏽🥺👉🏽👈🏽🥺"

just maybe, consider listening to him

[notacluedo]

lil guy as a companion for my other lil guy

[inkskinned]

it is totally okay to be hurt and tired and fed up with the american schooling system but i need you to understand that we need to be better about loudly and routinely defending public education.

yes, many teachers suck, many schools utterly suck. i also got bullied and was absolutely not given the right support for my needs. i am not defending public education because it was kind to me. i am defending it because it needs to exist.

right-wing republicans do not want an educated population. they want kids to be homeschooled or in private school. there is a huge religious undertone to this.

the most common argument is that despite high costs, the "result" is not "good" enough. they point to failing schools as proof that public education is just never going to work out. there will be arguments made here that you actually agree with: that teachers can be bullies, that we taught online for 2 years and still charged the same amount of tuition, that we have no recourse for students to actually have agency or a voice, and that schools are now unsafe for kids due to risk of illness and gun violence.

these are all placing the blame in a fraudulent way, one intended to get your parents to homeschool you. the less kids in a school, the less federally-awarded funding for that school, the less any school succeeds. they will not mention the fact it is their legislation that takes away important funding opportunities, that teachers are living at or below the poverty line, that buildings are not kept up to code, that administration is overpaid and forces specific curriculums, that corporations like (my personal enemy) Pearson Education control certain classroom goals because teachers can't afford other options. they pretend to be ignorant of the gun violence and say "oh just get a gun" - but these are the same people who will be sending their child to a private school with a bulletproof backpack. they don't care if your kid dies, though. they "don't believe" in covid, but they did get their kid vaccinated, because of course they did.

it is a closed loop. conservative parents hear the fearmongering and remove children from the system. frequently these parents are also deeply religious. the kids are raised without access to other media & learn to parrot their parents. you have now created a new generation of conservatives. additionally, one of the parents/caregivers must stay home and homeschool the children, usually for free. i will give you 1 guess which parent tends to stay home to homeschool the children. these parents are encouraged to have many, many children. those children are most likely not getting access to safe sex ed.

we might laugh at fox news suggesting teachers are forcing children to use kitty litter but: first of all, there is kitty litter in the classroom. it's part of an emergency kit in case children are locked in due to a shooter. so that's fucking dystopian, and the fact they've completely reimagined the scenario to somehow make the teachers look bad when it's instead a fucking huge symbol of our failure as a country to protect our children.... it feels a little intentional.

secondly: don't just dismiss the situation. because, yeah, obviously, no teacher is encouraging kids to be a catboy. but the actual undertone that fox news is trying to sew is an outright distrust of teachers and of public education. they rely on the dehumanization of trans people as a common touchstone to hide the fact they're pushing two agendas at once. (which is ironic. because the thing they accuse teachers of. is pushing. an agenda.)

whenever someone tells you they want you to read less, you should be suspicious of that. when someone tries to separate you and your education, you should be suspicious of that. i don't even like incel rhetoric nor would i want my kids exposed to it - but i would not take away my child's (age-appropriate) access to the internet. i would just provide more educational materials, not less. the difference here is that i believe we can resolve ignorance with knowledge; whereas conservatives believe that ignorance is bliss.

they misappropriate funding and demonize teachers. they pull the same trick each time - the same thing we are seeing with anti-trans rhetoric. they do not want you to have access to safe sex ed, so they act horrified, claim sex ed teaches you how to thrust deep, claim that we have no idea what "age-appropriate" means. since the mid-nineties, the united states has spent at least 2 billion dollars on abstinence-only education, even though to quote the above link: "a preponderance of studies has found no effect of abstinence education at reducing adolescent pregnancy". conservatives want you to think less of any person struggling with addiction so they can continue their racist "war on drugs", so they spend up to $750 million dollars a year on the DARE program which has absolutely no effect. acting like teachers "must" be "grooming" children is just the same thing - so they can demand that funding either goes to their causes or the funding doesn't "exist" ("i'm not paying for our kids to learn that thing!")

and they want you to feel uncaring about this. they are aware that you will hate some parts of your school experience. pretty much everyone does. they want to lean into the parts that you hate so that you don't put up a fight about it when they take it away for not being "good enough."

i know i maybe sound like a conspiracy theorist. but truly. truly. it is beneficial for conservatives to reduce your faith in the american public schooling system.

one of the explicitly stated campaign promises of the conservative party: to axe the Department of Education in 2024.

i know we are all tired and burnt out and there is so much else wrong with their entire platform. but maybe just - pay attention to this one.

[casualavocados]

Learn from who? Learn from you?

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[wispurring-moss]

brain said this one had to be written in hieroglyphs so idk if the jokes are even gonna land— 😆😂

but don't worry, Angel; when there's only so many braincells to go around then it's inevitable that you'll have some absolute smoothbrain moments like this one, it's okay, we all have them— x'3c

[suntails]

🐬⚔️

[jareaulover]

I can't believe that there are people out there who don't see Supernatural as a love story between a man and an angel. Like, how embarrassing.

[hinamie]

binding vow

[frobby]

mc when they go into a book and fuck shit up: why is the story different!!!

My brother in christ YOU CHANGED THE STORY!!!!!

[egophiliac]

(breathing into a paper bag) FRALIO....

can't believe they gave us another guy. oh my god. so I guess Kelka is more, uhhh, more OOO then, and Fralio is Ankh? not that it matters too much, although they do seem to be doing something with the connected Riders so. who knows. anything goes! or if I may, anything gOOOes! god. of course they're the Ambition parallel. of course they are. oh my god.

fortunately there's nothing else they can throw at me right now that could possibly --

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[saberafterdark]

i am going to combust into a million pieces