Janaina Medeiros
ojovivo
wallacepolsom
Mike Driver
roma★
Keni
RMH
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
No title available
Jules of Nature
PR's Tumblrdome
$LAYYYTER
pixel skylines
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Today's Document
occasionally subtle
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Sade Olutola
Show & Tell
d e v o n
seen from Brazil
seen from Brazil
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from United States
@kantama
Love, grief, and magic in the mundane
1- @Bluewmist on Twitter / 2- Roly Poly is Taken on Twitter / 3- About Time (2012) by Richard Curtis, image from Mita Park on Unsplash / 4- Sherri Turner on Twitter / 5- Cold Solace by Anna Belle Kaufman / 6- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
There is a very specific kind of sadness in realizing your parents loved you, and still did not always know how to meet your emotional needs.
Because it is confusing. It would almost feel easier if there was no love there at all. But sometimes there was love. In the way they tried to protect you. In the sacrifices they made. In the ways they worried about you, cared for you, wanted a good life for you.
And at the same time, there were still things missing.
Maybe comfort did not come in the way you needed it to. Maybe your feelings were not always understood, or noticed, or handled gently. Maybe you learned to keep certain parts of yourself quiet because it felt easier than trying to explain them.
That kind of hurt is difficult because it does not always come from cruelty. Sometimes it comes from people who loved you deeply, but did not know how to emotionally connect in the ways you needed. People carrying their own wounds, limitations, fears, or ways of surviving.
And you are allowed to acknowledge both truths at once.
You are allowed to recognize their love and still grieve what you needed but did not receive. Those things do not cancel each other out.
Forgiveness, for a lot of people, is not pretending nothing hurt you. It is slowly accepting that someone can love you and still fall short of understanding you completely.
That does not make your pain dramatic. It does not make them monsters either. Sometimes it just means everyone was trying with the emotional tools they had, and some of those tools were not enough.
And I think many people quietly carry guilt for still feeling hurt by parents they know tried their best. But being loved imperfectly can still leave wounds. It makes sense that it affected you.
At the same time, you do not have to stay trapped only in anger forever either. Sometimes healing looks like understanding that your parents were human before they were parents. People shaped by their own experiences, their own upbringing, their own emotional gaps.
That understanding does not erase your feelings. It just softens the sharp edges around them a little.
You deserved emotional safety. You deserved gentleness. You deserved to feel understood, comforted, and emotionally close to the people raising you.
And if they could not fully give that to you, it is okay to mourn it.
But I hope you also know this: the love you needed is still something you can experience in your life. Through other people. Through chosen family. Through the way you learn to treat yourself now.
The story does not end at what you did or did not receive growing up.
You are still allowed softness after all of it 🤍
on watching a parent age
i saw somebody say “what if you’re gone and i haven’t become anything yet” and basically that broke me on a random thursday evening
OP, this is genuinely a masterpiece, three poems in one, moving and well crafted. Please tell me you have submitted it to at least some poetry contests, and if not, please do so.
Night Watch is one of Sir Terry’s most hopeless novels - and, by the same token, because of the same things, one of his most hopeful.
It’s a parody - and I use that word very loosely, because there’s really nothing funny about it - of Les Miserables. It’s about a failed revolution, and a barricade, and the people who fought and died there for nothing. Nothing changes. Politics with a capital P goes on, and even the most pure and noble of intentions only becomes food for the pit of snakes who pull the strings. The powerful remain powerful, the powerless, despite their solidarity, their desperation, their violence, their hope, remain powerless. Their little lives don’t count at all. Things continue exactly as they always have, minus a few faces in the crowd.
It is also, I think, where we see Sam Vimes at his lowest. Sure, Thud! does similar things in stripping him down, but that is under an outside influence, and he has his family to think of. He has something to fight for.
In Night Watch, though, all of that is taken away. Sam Vimes, eternal cynic, for once has Cassandraic knowledge that his cynicism is absolutely founded. He knows how this will end, and there’s no Corporal Carrot to make the world magically better around him, no Sybil and Young Sam to push through for, no city to protect. The absolute best that he can expect is to succeed, and lose that family, that future, forever. The absolute worst? He dies. Everyone he cares about here dies. And it’s all in vain.
Sam Vimes is an alcoholic. It’s something that we tend to bring up when we’re talking about how amazing he is, how much he’s overcome, but gloss over otherwise. Which is a little sad, because it’s fundamental.
Sam Vimes faced this exact dragon, years ago. Sam Vimes saw there was no way to slay it. He saw the ants eating at the heart of every hope, every effort. He saw the first man he really knew as a good and kind and just - but never passive, never weak - man die, horribly, slain for no reason but petty grudge and Politics. He saw John Keel’s garden wither and die in its bed. He saw the hope of a better, brighter Ankh-Morpork squelched, and the sacrifice of a good man wasted. He saw the world, in all of its rotting, miserable, pestilent despair, spoiling every good thing that dared show its face, its only ordering principle the slow decay of entropy.
Young Sam Vimes had no anchor. Young Sam Vimes had nothing left to turn to but the bottom of a bottle and the smelliest part of an Ankh-Morpork gutter.
Sam Vimes, as of the events of Night Watch, is back there. Not only physically temporally displaced. He has nothing. There is no reason for him to stand up, to take on the role of John Keel, to take responsibility for the barricade, to try to bring Carcer back to justice. To fight the doomed fight. There is nothing between him and finding a quiet seat at the Broken Drum, ordering himself a pint, and giving up. There is nothing between him and despair.
But he gets up anyway. He intervenes anyway. He tries to help anyway, even when he can’t believe it will make any difference. And it doesn’t, in the end.
Except that people lived who, save for the actions of John Keel, would have died. Except it quite literally meant the world to them.
And that’s where the hope is hiding, in this hopeless, bleak, despair of a book. There is no glory. There is no revolution. There is no good thing that cannot be corrupted. There is no point. Except.
The Disc turns on the ‘except’. Always has. Always will.
The hope across the whole arc of Discworld is that things can, if good people try very, very hard, go from extremely awful to only very awful, and that’s worth it.
Overall, the Discworld series is very hopeful about the grand scheme of things and the effect people, no matter how small, can have on it. But Night Watch is not about that. Night Watch is about what happens when ‘things’ don’t get better. When the grand scheme of things isn’t impacted at all, either way, by the actions of individual people. Night Watch is about what happens when the hope runs out. When the ‘worth it’ runs out. When all that’s left to do is save what little you can, because you can.
That’s why there are no monuments to the Glorious Heroes of Treacle Mine Road. In the grand scheme of things, nothing they did mattered. But they are remembered, because they need to be remembered. Because sometimes what we do does not matter.
And when that happens, all that matters is what we do.
You have to let people love you. You have to let people get to know you. You have to let people help you. Being so completely selfless that you try to erase yourself off the face of the planet and never ask for anything and reject everybody's offers of support makes you very hard to love! Unfortunately. Emptying yourself out of everything that makes you, you is not actually what your loved ones want from you, generally. They want to make you happy! They will be so so sad if you don't give them the chance. It's not all selfish. I promise.
Oh god oh no people are reblogging this again without the context that it's speaking back against the Christian teaching that love is abnegation and that true love means emptying yourself of your own desires, suffering, and submitting yourself to death, even death on a cross.
grief is so crazy like what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. does she know i loved her. i miss her so much. i catch myself doing things she used to do. i wish i could call her. i miss her so much. i do a crossword puzzle. i cry while washing the dishes. does she know i loved her? my heart feels like a hummingbird. i miss her so much. what if i forget what her laugh sounds like. what if i forget.
i talked ab this feeling in therapy yday and my therapist asked me, “would it really be so bad if your memories changed? if they softened and faded or looked different over time? why does that frighten you so much?” and i said, “i don’t want the love to disappear.” and she looked at me for a long moment and then she said, “it won’t. it doesn’t work that way. even if the memories soften or change, it doesn’t mean the love does. that love keeps going backward in time, forever, because you love her still. all is not lost.” i just thought i would share that in case it resonated w anyone else too.
It's a strange thing, when your friends are online.
I don't see your faces. Our relationship is nothing but words on a screen, punctuated by memes and emojis and gifs. But I hear your voices in the way you type. This one rambles about what she loves and this one is excitable and this one is often quiet but leaps into conversations with enthusiasm when she is invested in the topic and this one is slow to respond but always, inevitably does.
You say come, sit with me and nothing changes, we're both sitting alone in our rooms a thousand miles apart, and yet everything changes. I am curled up against you in some small way and we are apart-together and together-apart and it soothes the deep ache of loneliness for a little bit. You say my couch is always open for you to crash on despite the fact that I may never be in the area to do so and it is reassuring somehow. You say I am like you in not so many words and too many words and I tuck you under my wing in an attempt to shelter you from the cruelties that tore into me.
I can speak through words when my own voice stutters and dies. We offer small pieces of our lives to each other, snapshots of time caught in our screens. I am desperate for each and every one, hoarding them like a dragon does their hoard, more precious to me than gems or gold. I smile like an idiot every time I see a notification pop up on my phone, and perhaps this too is a kind of being in love.
You are all scattered miles apart from me and you are tucked into my pocket. I miss you every day that we are apart and yet somehow we are so rarely ever apart in a way that matters.
There is one particular scene in Monstrous Regiment that I love that isn't being talked about enough so I figured...maybe I should talk about it.
'Then go!', shouted Polly. 'Desert! We won't stop you, because I'm sick of your...your bullshit! But you make up your mind, right now, understand? Because when we meet the enemy I don't want to think you're there to stab me in the back!'
The words flew out before she could stop them, and there was no power in the world that could snatch them back.
Tonker went pale, and a certain life drained out of her face like water from a funnel. 'What was that you said?'
The words 'You heard me!' lined up to spring from Polly's tongue, but she hesitated. She told herself: it doesn't have to go this way. You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.
'Words that were stupid', she said. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it.'
It is such an incredibly powerful scene. I've read the book dozens of times and every time I low-key expect there to be a fight even though I know there won't be because that's how it goes, right? But Pterry is showing us, it doesn't have to. Right here, right now it's in your hands. You can choose not to. You can back down when you are wrong or even when you're right. Polly has good reason to be mad at Tonker but so does Tonker for her actions and Polly chooses not to escalate. They're in this together. Fighting amongst themselves accomplishes nothing and backing down doesn't make her weak. On the contrary, it's a strength because anger is easy. Polly isn't wrong to be angry, but there is a time and a place and she has the wisdom to recognise that this isn't it.
You're allowed to be angry! But you don't have to get swept up by it, you can choose a different path. And hell, that just goes right to the most important thing Discworld taught me. Through Vimes and Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany and occasionally even Rincewind.
Being good isn't something you are, it's something you do. It's something you have to choose to be, over and over again, every single day, every single decision. And it's hard. It's not some nebulous quality you either possess or you don't it's something you have to decide to be and work at hard at all your life but it's up to you. You can always choose to do better, to be kinder, to apologise, to say something, to not say anything, to do the right thing even when it's hard or unpleasant or inconvenient for you. Your anger isn't wrong or misplaced and sometimes being angry is the only right reaction to have, but it's a weapon too and you decide where you aim it.
You don't have to let a pair of socks do the talking.
I have to write about someone who exemplifies an alternative, healthy form of masculinity online for an assignment. I figured you were an excellent example so I wrote about your blog :)
But I'm curious -- is the way you present (a masculine archetype where you like, still openly express caring and appreciation for the world) a conscious choice? Is it something you had to work for, and if so, how did you realise/decide this was someone you wanted to be?
These aren't even questions I have to answer I'm just really curious lol
(anon in case my professor looks you up and finds me)
I was a sad angry empty teen in a shit deal and after a massive crying screaming throwing up type breakdown in a public bathroom one day I went outside and suddenly everyone I despised was beautiful and happy and alive an I realized I wanted to love the world more than I wanted to die
Loving the world, after that, felt something a little like running downhill leaning forwards and trying not to land on my face
The more I ran, the faster I fell, and the faster I fell the faster I ran, until the world started feeling like it loved me back
Honoring the tags of the boot.
Hey kids, there is a loving trans adulthood waiting for you.
It's never "too late". The people I have met who started late have never regretted starting. They have been joyful about it once they did.
Luca Ponsato - Does Anyone See My Suffering
Got into a discussion about emergency response at a professional retreat recently and everyone was going on and on about agility, and I was like, "Okay but what about contingency?"
And they were like "What?"
And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."
And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"
And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.
And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.
Anyway, that's how I figured out I'm Batman-coded and also learned how Batman must feel talking to supposedly professional superheroes who never bothered to run disaster scenarios until I pointed out that it's insane that they don't already have a plan for if Superman turns evil.
There’s a phrase that really stuck in my head around this. It was from one of the British divers who enacted the Thai caving rescue, though I couldn’t tell you which one or which interview.
As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“
And the diver said, “No, actually people always get that exactly wrong. In an unexpected and urgent situation you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”
Discworld is an interesting beast in the age of ACAB. Like, the city watch books are a story about police and the way in which a good police force can help and protect people. Which would make it copoganda. And I'm not going to say that the City Watch books are completely free of copoganda, but they also do something interesting that fairly few stories about heroic police officers do, and I think it has a lot to do with Samuel Vimes. A lot of copoganda stories like, say, Brooklyn 99, are perfectly capable of portraying cops as cruel, bigoted, and greedy, but our central cast of characters are portrayed as good people who want to help their communities. The result is that the bad cops are portrayed as an aberration, while most cops can be assumed to be good people doing a tough job because they want to help protect people from the nebulous evil forces of "Crime". The police are considered to be naturally heroic. Pratchett does something very interesting, which is provide us with Vimes' perspective, and present us with an Unnaturally heroic police force. In Ahnk-Morpork, the natural state of the watch is a gang with extra paperwork. It's the place for people who, at best, just want a steady paycheck and at worst want an excuse to hit people with a truncheon. Rather than be an army defending people from the forces of Crime, the Watch is described as a sort of sleight-of-hand, big burly watchmen in shiny uniforms don't stand around in-case a Crime happens in their vicinity, they stand around to remind people that The Law exists and has teeth. The Watchmen are people, when danger rears it's head, their instinct is to hide and get out of the way. When faced with authority, their instinct is to bow to it out of fear of what it might do to them if they don't. Carrot is a genuine Hero, but his natural heroism is presented as an aberration. Normal Cops don't act like Carrot does. The fact that the Watch ends up acting like a Heroic Police Force is largely due to the leadership of Sam Vimes, but Vimes himself is a microcosm of the Watch. The base state of Sam Vimes would be an alchoholic bully of an officer, one who beats people until they confess to anything because that makes his job easier. Vimes The Hero is a homunculous, an artificial being created by Sam Vimes fighting back all those instincts and FORCING himself to behave as his conscience dictates. Vimes doesn't take bribes or let his officers do the same because, damnit, that sort of thing shouldn't happen, even if doing so would make things a lot easier. Vimes doesn't run towards sounds of screaming because he WANTS to, he forces himself to do so because somebody needs to. It's best summed up in Thud “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief little smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.”
In the hands of another writer, or another series, this exchange would be weirdly dismissive. To whom should the police be accountable to? Themselves, shut up and trust us. But from Vimes, it's a different story. Vimes DOES constantly watch himself, and he doesn't trust that bastard, he's known him his entire life. The Heroic Police are not a natural state, they're an ideal, and ahnk-morpork only gets anywhere close. Vimes is constantly struggling against his own instincts to take shortcuts, to let things slide, but he forces himself to live up to that ideal and the Watch follows his example. Discworld doesn't propose any solutions to the problems with policing in the real world. We don't have a Sam Vimes to run the NYPD and force them to behave. We don't have a Carrot Ironfounderson. But it's at least a story about detectives and police that I can read without feeling like I'm being sold propaganda about the Thin Blue Line.
YES. a thousand times YES!!
and also
It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was “policeman.” If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.
@chillfinity
there’s something very beautiful about being able to try again tomorrow
I have been trying tomorrow for the past 3 years
and you still have tomorrow to try again
I wish it wasn’t a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story
A lot of people really don’t understand amatonormativity as another dimension of “there is a right way to love people” that we have to dismantle.
Amatonormativity 101: Amatonormativity, a term coined by Elizabeth Brake, is the very prevalent idea that there is one relationship type that is above all others. This relationship is an exclusive/monogamous, committed, romantic and sexual relationship.
According to amatonormativity, this specific kind of relationship:
Is something everyone wants (or should want)
Is the most fulfilling relationship it is possible to have
Takes precedence over all other relationships in your life
This goes hand in hand with heteronormativity, which says that this ideal relationship also has to be straight. But if you remove that part, all the normative forces of amatonormativity still exist. And they suck for just about everyone! Amatonormativity says aromantic and asexual people will never experience the “highest” form of love. It says single people are inherently less happy than people in a romantic relationship and should always be actively looking for one. It says sex without romance or romance without sex are both lacking a fundamental part of an ideal relationship. It says polyamorous people are failing to choose the one person they can be fully devoted to. It says that your monogamous, committed, romantic/sexual partner is the most important person in your life—more important than your family, your best friend you’ve known all your life, etc.
I hope we can all agree that is something queer people, and also people in general, would benefit from dismantling!
Now let me talk about an example of what I was referring to in the original post.
If you’re not familiar, Elementary is a TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s a modern day adaptation featuring Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective for the NYPD, and Joan (rather than John) Watson, his sober companion and eventually detective partner.
Sherlock has many casual sexual relationships with women throughout the series, while Joan has a string of romantic relationships with men. Neither of them is textually queer (although Sherlock feels very aromantic-coded, if unintentionally, and I personally think an aro reading of both characters has merit).
However, the two of them share a relationship that defies amatonormativity. Sherlock and Joan share almost every part of their lives together—first because Joan is monitoring Sherlock to help maintain his sobriety, but soon because they have actively chosen to remain in each other’s lives. They eventually become partners as detectives but are also functionally life partners, living together, sharing their resources, taking care of each other emotionally and physically. At multiple turning points in the story, they express their love for each other. Throughout this progression, their relationship never becomes romantic or sexual. While Sherlock continues to have casual sex and Joan continues to go on dates, it’s clear that Sherlock and Joan remain each other’s most important person.
This relationship defies amatonormativity, and in my opinion that makes it queer. Queer as in breaking boundaries, defying norms, challenging the idea that there is any right or wrong way to love someone.
Now it’s time for my real hot take. There is a reason I used Elementary as an example, instead of the many other pieces of fiction that have a very similar dynamic between two characters of the same gender.
Those stories—stories that center a platonic relationship between two characters of the same gender, a relationship that remains platonic but is deep, devoted, and prioritized over other relationships in the character’s lives—are textually queer. They are not textually gay (although yes, many of them are subtextually gay). But that does not stop them from being queer stories.
If you want to read into whatever subtext might be there and interpret that relationship as a gay romantic/sexual relationship, that's great. But I wish more people shared my opinion that this is not making a previously normative story into a queer one. Usually, it’s trading heteronormativity for amatonormativity, creating a relationship that defies different norms.
I’m not saying that one or the other interpretation is more valuable (in general—which one is most meaningful to you is a personal preference). I think they’re both queer interpretations of the story. However, given how often stories like the ones I’m describing get accused of “queerbaiting” or simply “not being canonically queer,” I’m pretty sure my opinion on this is not widely shared.
In conclusion: Queerness is a much broader set of concepts than just gay romance. We should consider amatonormativity another dimension of oppression that queerness is in opposition to. Ship or don’t ship whatever is more fun or meaningful to you but please don’t assign moral righteousness to one kind of queerness while erasing another. Also, please be nice to aro and ace people, we already have enough to deal with. I wish none of this was a hot take. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I've gotten multiple responses to this post that are basically along the lines of, "I mostly agree with this, but calling close platonic relationships 'queer' still feels weird to me. That's not what 'queer' usually means and I don't know if I'd use it to describe relationships like this."
And like. I appreciate that people are listening to my point and being receptive to it, even if it feels a little Out There to them! I genuinely appreciate the folks who aren't sure they get this but are hearing me out.
But I also keep wanting to be like. Yeah, that's my point!
We don't use 'queer' to describe platonic relationships but I think we should. (Or at least, should be able to, when it fits the circumstances!) I know, and I acknowledge directly in the post, that this is not a widely accepted usage of the term. I am arguing for an expansion of the term.
I can only make guesses as to what people with this kind of reluctance are feeling, but my best guess is that they're used to "queer" (or at least "queer relationship") being used mostly in reference to gay/lesbian/same-gender love and attraction. A lot of people mostly associate the word "queer" with gay romance. And while that's a big subset of queer experiences, honestly, I think it's a shame that it's often the only type of queer experience that gets talked about.
Queer is an umbrella term for a reason! Is there any reason "queer relationships" shouldn't include, say, friendships between queer/trans people? Or romantic/sexual relationships that could be considered straight, but include one or more trans people? Or, as I make the argument above, relationships that are breaking down the normative ideas of what kinds of relationships a person is "allowed" to have, regardless of whether the people involved are themselves queer?
Maybe that last one is a leap for some people, and you think that a relationship can't be queer if the people in it don't identify with any of the LGBTQ+ labels. I understand that reservation, but honestly, I think that there's so much social pressure against non-normative relationships that people who break them should get to be considered queer / in a queer relationship if they want, and that we should get to apply queer interpretations to characters in that kind of relationship as well.
(Also, like, a lot of people in non-normative relationships are in fact queer, especially aromantic and asexual. But if we aspecs can have fun with our queer friendships and queerplatonic relationships, I don't see why anyone else shouldn't be able to!)
Anyway, all that to say that if this is pushing your definition of queer a little bit, good! That's what I was trying to do! And I hope people come away from this a little more open to the idea.
If you still aren't really convinced, that's okay. If it doesn't change what you personally use the word "queer" for, I hope you still get something else out of this post—like learning about amatonormativity and starting to see it around you, or considering friendships in media through a queer / anti-amatonormative lens of analysis when it feels relevant. (Or just being more chill about aro and ace people in fandoms who don't ship your ships. Please. We would really appreciate it.)
And I just want to say, while I'm here: Thank you for the incredible response to this post. It's just over 10k notes as I'm posting this and I'm so happy that so many people are interested in this topic & my thoughts on it (and so grateful that the response has been 99.99% positive so far). To all the aspec folks who have told me I've put something into words that you never could—thank you, I'm truly honored and I love you all 💜💚. To all the people who have told me I've opened their eyes to something new—thank you for being curious and willing to learn! And to all the people who still don't get it but are here anyway—thank you for listening to what I had to say. I'm glad you're here.
you know the obsession with keeping cats indoors is a purely American view of the world? Most Europeans let their cats outdoors without any problems. Many Europeans even think it's cruel to keep them indoors all the time
No, it’s not. European cats aren’t magically smarter and less environmentally impactful than American cats, it’s just more socially acceptable to let them roam. Do you not have cars in Europe? Foxes? Raptors? Stray dogs? Rat poison? Parasites? Diseases? What about the Croydon Cat Killer in England, where the dismemberment of over 400 cats was being investigated, and it turned out that foxes were mutilating the bodies of cats that were killed by cars? Suddenly it’s all ok because it was only horrific death via automobile, instead of decapitation like they suspected? Totally acceptable to outdoor cat owners, who cares if your cat gets hit by a car and dies on the side of the road? There is real concern for the hybridization of wildcats in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but sure, it’s just a US problem. How about how outdoor cats are effectively reducing the protective area of a national park in Poland? How about the increased incidence of lungworms and GI parasites in European free roaming cats? How about this small study from Denmark where 90% of free roaming cats tested positive for GI parasites on necropsy (and the risk was higher in rural areas). Not Europe, but for the sake of completeness, free roaming cats kill ~377 MILLION birds per year in Australia, and 61 million of those kills are thought to be from owned cats. You can also talk to @drferox about how problematic outdoor cats are in Australia. Free roaming cats are bad for the environment, and are put in unnecessary danger. Why don’t you provide enrichment for your cat instead of letting them run around unsupervised where they will kill native wildlife and get sick or injured or die (or all of the above). Other resources from @catsindoors about the impact of domestic cats around the world. Snagged a lot of these links from their blog.
Humans would also be safer and the environment protected if we all just stayed indoors. No passing of parasites, bacteria, or viruses. No harm to other species. No cross breeding either (if that bothers you). Do you want to stay indoors?
I generally try to ignore responses like this, but I want to address this because I see this ridiculous argument a lot.
The reason that this comparison is inaccurate is because humans have the ability to use reason and make logical choices, but cats don’t. Humans see a car coming and wait until the street is clear to cross. Cats don’t. Humans know not to eat strange food on the ground. Cats don’t. Humans can look up which plants are toxic and avoid them. Cats can’t. Humans don’t eat raw rabbits and rodents that may carry disease. Cats do. Humans who hunt follow laws that prevent them from killing endangered species (besides shitty poachers). Cats don’t.
A far more accurate comparison would be a cat and a toddler. They lack the ability to recognize danger and don’t have the ability to reason that an adult does. I’m sure a toddler would have a great time roaming around the neighborhood, but no one is going to argue in favor of that. People can understand that doing that is irresponsible and dangerous. But no sane person is going to lock their toddler inside and provide them with nothing to do; no one is saying we should do that for cats either. Play with them. Provide cat trees. Rotate their toys. Give them puzzle feeders. And if you want them to go outside you can leash train them. Or build a catio. The options aren’t let them roam vs. never provide them with entertainment. If it is unbearable to entertain and care for a cat that is kept indoors, you probably shouldn’t own a cat.
Would you let your dog roam? Or your bird? How about your rabbit? I’m sure all of these animals would have a great time running (or flying) around the neighborhood, but we generally recognize that this is a bad idea. It’s no different for cats. We are caretakers for our animals, so it is up to us to use our big brains to make logical choices about what they should or shouldn’t do. We have the ability to understand the risks associated with free roaming. Cats don’t. We can weigh risks and benefits before making a decision. Cats can’t.
tldr: Humans have the ability to make logical decisions to keep themselves safe but cats do not.
Outdoor cats are also more or less an invasive species. They are such good hunters, they are capable of permanently changing an ecosystem by killing native prey animals.
Protect your kitty and local biodiversity–keep them inside!
I just wanted to tack on that, there is no “more or less”, cats are an invasive species. Domesticated animals are invasive species and allowing them to interact with the local environment without monitoring will harm the local biodiversity. Cats especially. Domestic cats have a very high success rate for hunting. Historically, they have lead to multiple extinctions of animals because people brought cats along as pest control and pets.
I’m very pro indoor only cat. But sadly, this is not common in the UK, most people free roam their cats despite the dangers.
I’ve seen two cats who were roadkill, multiple poisoned rats that make easy prey, gardens full of poisonous (to cats) plants, and a cat at the vet who survived his arm being mauled by a fox through a catio. Yet people still do it. I’m in a small village, no idea how much worse in a bigger place it would be.
It is entirely cultural. Sadly, it also means people don’t tend to play with their pets and let them free roam as their only enrichment. So they baulk at how “bored” a cat would be indoors. Forgetting it’s not just kittens who need playtime. You are seen as a “weirdo” for harness/lead training a cat here, which I don’t agree with obviously.
Most rescues will not let you adopt a cat if you do not let it be indoor-outdoor. They will even check up on your garden to see it’s safety (like a cat can’t jump a fence lol). Charities do this, too.
I still keep my cat indoors only. My step mum thought I was being cruel until I explained to her the dangers of a cat outside.
I wish attitudes would change here. Please keep your cat indoors!
It’s not even a fucking Yank thing. Here in Australia we do have people with outdoor cats, but most people see them as irresponsible wankers. People actively letting their cats outside are shrinking to the point that I saw an anti-missing poster outside of my doctor’s surgery one day telling people to stop calling them when their cat is outside, meaning that there’s now a lot of people who see an outdoor cat and assume it’s lost by default instead of the other way around.
Across the pond in New Zealand ONE SINGLE CAT drove an entire species to extinction. There are still arseholes over there but they’re generally even stricter than we are here in Oz.
Also it’s fucking weird that people say it’s understandable that we do it because of our ecosystem. Do Europeans not have ecosystems? Or are you just subscribing to the colonialist idea that your ecosystem is a boring default and only “exotic” ecosystems should be preserved?
has anyone figured out how to turn off the thing where you love your pet so much it slides inexorably into grief-borrowing
