Bayg

Yay, it's been quite a few months since I had around seven hours of sleep instead of three or four, so it’s time for my first wall post. And it’s gonna be a sort of rant... That doesn’t fare well for me... hahaha. I’m not sure how many will stumble upon it, but it’ll be out there, so it’ll do its job, I hope :D.

A thought occurred to me in the morning. People have to stop being afraid to comment or to engage in a discussion. If you agree or disagree with something that someone wrote about stuff you care about, please discuss it. If it considers a certain story, it may even help an author to fix or change some pieces of the text to be better/easier to understand for readers.

For example. I can post something under someone's story. I always try to be as constructive as possible (well, that is why I write those horrendous walls of text, haha). I always talk about things I do like in this and that, what I dislike, and/or am not sure about. But that is only me. That is only my opinion on things. It’s subjective. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinion on things, but... During a debate, we can dispel the doubts as much as possible. If someone is right, I don’t have a problem giving it to them. Hell, I’ll even applaud them for making me change my mind about something. This makes a sort of “brainstorm” where author/authors can use much of the information that are said in the comments, be it under their wall posts or story chapter posts.

What is my point? Hypothetically, there are like... 10 likes left under a chapter. That’s great. But there are no comments. How can an author check if they are on the right path if no one is commenting on their writing style, plot, characters, idk.. Even the things you, as a reader, feel like are missing. And then we get reviews or not-so-nice comments that this is this, this is that (many, random, sometimes offensive stuff). Fortunately, I haven’t seen anything offensive on this site (yet :P), which is quite wholesome.

My point is. Writers are still only humans. They can’t read the minds of their readers. We as readers (I’m telling this from pov of one) have to engage with them and each other to make certain things possible. If there are no comments, then there is no point of reference for writers. They feel like they are doing great, no one is complaining, and then sh.. happens.

Even if it is a simple idea, and from that simple idea starts a whole conversation about certain stuff, this might give authors a place to check what readers really want.
I always encourage everyone to join discussions about the things I write, which are subjective. That is my opinion on things. If you disagree with me, that is totally fine; you have every right to do so. But tell me why you disagree, why am I in the wrong? Then I’ll reply, and it forms that sort of connection people really lost throughout the years. They see everyone who disagrees with them as an absolute enemy (I’m not talking about everyone, of course). Yeah, I think that is enough on that topic unless I find something to add. :D

@Cly Anders, adding to my little wormies story, they were some kind of white worms, and that is all I remember other than the fridge that was almost moving on itself. :P
You missed my answer to our not-so-little touring talk under chapter 8 ^_^, and I'll post the horrendous stuff I wrote, under chapter 9 (regarding Ivy's story). Yes, you're gonna have nightmares.

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@Cly Anders I found some old photos of our little animal gathering. I can imagine which one you like the most. hahaha
Yeah, that was the rat that wanted to drag me into his cage and make a new carpet out of me - Rocky. And the doggo was our Fibi! ^_^

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I finally got around to writing this post (it got quite long) about my kitties. Enjoy! :P
Meowers/Fluffers/Running four-legged menace, embodiment of chaos, however you want to call them. These are my four, sometimes lovely one-braincell creatures we call cats... hahah Fun fact, many cats like me even if they don’t know me for some unknown to me reason. Happy reading!

Starting from the “goddess among men” Aurora... She is the black one (6 yo) who started the whole maelstrom of cats that we can’t get out of to this day. She was brought to us from the vet by my aunt... Why is she a goddess, you might ask. Because when she walks, every other cat just disappears, giving her way. She’s not the biggest one, yet surely, the angriest, the most vicious one. She was brought up around our dog and learned her ways. She does the same things our dog did. Also, when something is left in the food bowls, she WILL clean them up. At night. When no one is watching.
She can also be cute. She loves getting butt spanked rather hard for some reason, and also loves to get brushed, so when I had long hair (now I only have a braid), I always had a companion to my brushing. When she gets the “zoomies” with our other cat, Luna, you'd better hide every glass around in any cabinet. Things get messy. They don’t give a damn what is in their way. If they have to bounce off of the walls, you, drawers, tables, so be it, the Cat God demands it, and she happily obliges to the chaos. ;)

The next one on the list is... Aisha (5 yo). She is the fluffiest one. She is a maine-coon mix with what we suspect is either a typical alley cat, or a Norwegian Forest cat. She’s almost non-existent. She’ll sleep through most of the day on a windowsill, occasionally waking up, nudging you or pushing you a few times to give her some food, and then leave her alone, because she wants to sleep again. :P She is huge. And also weighs quite a lot for a cat (8kg ~17,6 pounds). She is the odd one, because she is the only one who was not either taken from a vet or rescued randomly. She hates being brushed and had the grooming attempt that did not go entirely according to plan. She took the biggest dosage of sedative that hit her only after the grooming attempt and not during it. She looked like she saw things she was not meant to see, and to this day, probably remembers this and waits for the sweet, sweet revenge.

---This section is about two cats that are literally immortal, and no one can tell me otherwise. :P ---

The third one is very special. He is the only male (the white one) we have, and his name is Misiu (Teddy Bear in rough translation), and he is 3 years old. He’s ironically the smallest cat we have, even though he’s a male. Through the first few months of his life, he suffered, I think, the most I’ve ever seen in real life in an animal. He was born to a very special (for me - her story will also be here when I finally find her photos) stray cat in our garden. She literally just ran through our garden, kicked him out of her womb, and ran away even faster than she came. He was born dead. My mother “pressed” a life into him by massaging his chest for a few minutes. After he finally won his life by beating death in blackjack, we put him into a container with a lot of blankets and took him home ASAP. The next two (if I remember correctly) weeks were literally rinse-repeat, put some warm water into a termophore so it keeps him warm, feed him with a syringe with some baby milk, massage him so he poops/pees, and clean up. But this was only the beginning...
He’s fallen ill (can’t remember the date). Basically, the death thought that he cheated, so it came back for him with twice the tenacity. He contracted the feline panleukopenia virus. From what our vet said, because he wasn’t fed by his mother, he didn’t get any antibodies from her, so... He had around a 5-15% chance of surviving this (his stray brother also had it and survived; he’s a bit wobbly, but goes by just fine). The next two or three weeks, we had to drive to the vet for a shit ton of medicine, starting from typical IVs, antibiotics, to things I literally can’t remember, but one thing she gave him was an immune stimulator (which is what saved him, at least probably). He had to get this every day. On weekends, he only got a prolonged antibiotic or whatever it’s called. He was never meant to survive this. We never thought he would. He was being called an “experiment” in the clinic because of that. After a really rough night that we thought he wouldn’t survive (falling unconscious randomly, not reacting to anything, etc.), he actually got better. Was this the end? Was there a light of hope finally shining on the horizon? Nope.
He contracted another illness. A golden staph. Since he had no immunity, the bacteria just thought it’d be fitting to drive the nail even deeper. It occupied his joints and destroyed them. Another week or two of driving to the vet and back, for another load of meds. He still pulled through it. He survived all of this. He couldn’t grow because of this, so he became a compact cat of sorts. He is short, be it in height or length (and rather on the fatter side xD). He moves just fine, runs, jumps, and fights with other cats just fine as if nothing happened. He can’t clean himself as easily, though, because he can’t stretch his limbs as much as other cats do. He also can’t do the breadloaf pose most cats do, but he can just throw his legs behind him and lie like on a beach.
Does he love us after all of this? Well... That’s where the word “cat” gets into the view. Yes and no. He has two personalities. The first one would be the eternal lovebug that will snuggle right into your neck/chest and sleep on the pillow next to you. The second one would be the “get your hands off of me, or I’ll rip them to shreds and feed them to you”. He was named by the very vet that saved his life. :)

And the final, fourth one is Luna, and she is my special one (the one that looks similar to Aisha but not as fluffy)... Our random find while going to our allotment garden. She is two years old. We saw her as a small kitten walking around, so we fed her. She didn’t want to come close, so we didn’t force her, and she went on her way.
She disappeared for two weeks. Then, randomly, while going to the garden to feed the strays, we saw her again. Eating some random (sweets) trash that was thrown out. She was a literal skeleton just slightly coated with skin. If one were looking for an anatomy cat figurine, she’d be the one for sure. She was so hungry that she didn’t care that we came closer to her and gave her food like the wet cat food, some milk, and boiled chicken meat, though still wouldn’t let us touch her (no wonder). The whole back section of her spine was bent really badly, and her hip was badly injured as well. We concluded that she was hit by a car, survived, and disappeared for two weeks, because she simply couldn’t walk, and then came the day she finally HAD to move and eat anything, because she almost starved.
We left her food at the same place again and again, as close to her hideout spot as we could, so she could just come out, eat, and hide again. After this period, she, for some reason, grew quite fond of me. She wouldn’t let my mother close (even if she was the one hauling the food xD), and yet I was the one who could get closer and closer to her each day, and she didn’t run (not like she could), but didn’t walk away from me. By the time our friend got her a new home (failed), she could almost run, so it was around three or four weeks of feeding her (her bones were not fixed yet; animals are really good at hiding pain). Why did the home fail? Well, she was meant to live in some kind of storage room, with her fate being basically unknown, without much contact with humans and with an uncertain amount of food. What was the worst part? I already captured her in the cat carrier. She fully trusted me; she came to me, I picked her up, put her into the carrier, and waited for our friend to answer the phone call. She did, and told us about the whole conditions the cat was meant to be left in. You can’t even imagine how many awful emotions went through my head at once, when I had to make a decision if I should just open the carrier and leave her, or... Well... My reaction to this was “There is no fu... way I let them take her there and just leave her like this”, and told them that either they want to give her a normal home, or they should just f— right off, and since they chose the second option, I took her home.
She had it rough with three other cats around (especially Aurora), but she grew accustomed to them really fast, like a week or so. But of course, everything was going too well. She stopped eating, but it was nothing really out of the ordinary. Well... At least to the day I saw what she had puked out. She puked a PIECE OF WOOD (my fault because I left her food near her hideout on a plank, and since she was THIS hungry when she couldn’t walk much, she ate the wood that still had the scent of food on it). That piece was like 7 cm long (2,75 in) and 2 cm wide (0,78 in). I even took a pic of it and showed it to our vet. You can only imagine my face when I saw this. Pure horror, bewilderment, and dumbfoundment. How did it not get stuck in her? I. Do. Not. Know. We took her to the vet immediately. Nothing happened to her. Nothing damaged inside, literally. Not even a scratch in her throat. But hey, don’t cheer too fast.
It’d be too boring if everything went great afterwards. I mean, it went great, just could’ve ended up a whole lot worse. We wanted to get her spayed, so we set up an appointment. During the surgery, our vet let us know that she had the worst pyometra she had seen in her whole vet career, and if it was left unchecked, it’d probably kill her in another few weeks or during her first successful heat (impregnation).
Now, almost three years later, she sleeps in my bed with me at night. Sometimes under the blanket, sometimes in/next to my legs, sometimes near my chest or on it. She is the second cutest cat I’ve ever had an opportunity to see and surely the cutest cat we have at home. She doesn’t meow, or at least does it very rarely (if she wants to get food :P or she gets the zoomies). She purrs and kneads a lot. And she is almost invisible during the day. She sleeps almost as much as when we first got her home (she slept like two or three days straight with short breaks for food and toilet). But when you open the fridge? Hoo hoo, there comes the little demon! She will rub against you, push you, touch you every way possible so she can get that precious slice of chicken ham... hahaha. When hers and Aurora’s brain cells connect, then the worst tornado zoomies happen. It’s like the whole chaos unfolded at the same time. They literally fly through the rooms. Also, her tail, when she gets the zoomies, gets bigger than herself. :D Another fun fact, when I write most of my wall comments, she’s mostly asleep on my legs. Even now. She’s a cutie.

And this is my second wall post, and somehow it’s even longer than the first (rant) one. But hey! You get to know the history of each of our cats in detail. Some of the details are hazy, but you get the rough idea of them and also me. I’m not a perfect cat owner; I surely botched some things up (like leaving the food on the plank), though, trying to get better at it, and it surely improved throughout the last six or seven years of feeding the strays. If anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them, be it about the cats, the strays, me, the garden or basically anything. ^_^
Also, a bonus photo of how small he was compared to my hand. :D Also also I hope the formatting won't get destroyed because I really don't feel like reposting this. xD

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