That video of Alex Hirsch reading S&P notes for Gravity Falls conveys a few things to me:
1) the U.S. entertainment industry (especially animation) is run by older conservative types who make up offensive terms and get really mad about them.
2) the people who run Disney would be the first to fall in line with a fascist regime.
3) most of the media we consume is tailor-made and watered-down to appeal to the tastes of older, deeply religious conservative audiences.
4) conservatism, not the left, is and always has been the biggest voice of censorship in American culture.
J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, was before that a producer and writer for a number of cartoons in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s (The Real Ghostbusters and the original She-Ra, most notably). After a few years of dealing with the censors and their obsession with finding Satanism (or at least looking for Satanism to further political agendas) he wrote an article about the whole corrupt and bullshit system.
And published it in Penthouse, to force those same censors to buy a skin mag. The editor there asked, why Penthouse?
That one is from his autobiography, Becoming Superman. See also:
(As he goes on to say, he’s never worked in animation again–he’s effectively been blacklisted by the cartoon industry.)
Every time something like this comes up, I remember two stories about making media. The first is about movies, and comes from Quentin “Feet Man” Tarantino.
When he was making Pulp Fiction, he was worried that the MPAA would object to the high level of violence in the film, so he shot a bunch of extra-gory stuff that he didn’t actually want in the film, and added it in before submitting it to the MPAA. Predictibly, they asked him to cut most of it (without even commenting on some of the things that had him worried, like the bits of Marvin’s skull that lodge in Samuel L. Jackson’s hairpiece). The resultant cuts were actually more permissive than he’d expected, so he cut a little more and submitted it, and it got passed with an R.
The second story is about that artist on Morrowind whose name escapes me (I’m not a big ES fan tbh) who figured out that if he made two creature designs, one weird and what he wanted, and one even weirder, he could get Todd Howard to agree to just about anything by showing him the whopper first, then going back and “working” for another few hours on a second, “toned-down” version, and it worked every time.
The reason I bring these up is that the thing that drives censors isn’t some extant physical rubrick of what is and isn’t acceptable, it’s the idea that they can have absolute power over someone else’s creative work. It’s about the social dominance of the interaction.
There is nothing so innocent, so clean, that a censor will not find some fault with it. Because they must find something wrong with it to justify their existence, and because it makes them feel powerful.
An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.
Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.
a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project
all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project
if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet
like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.
now
Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.
And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.
But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.
This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...
It's claiming discrimination...
It's a bot.
It's AI.
This is not a real person.
What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?
@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog
This is about much more than software. A human googling my name and seeing that post would probably be extremely confused about what was happening, but would (hopefully) ask me about it or click through to github and understand the situation. What would another agent searching the internet think? When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite?
What if I actually did have dirt on me that an AI could leverage? What could it make me do? How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows? How many people, upon receiving a text that knew intimate details about their lives, would send $10k to a bitcoin address to avoid having an affair exposed? How many people would do that to avoid a fake accusation? What if that accusation was sent to your loved ones with an incriminating AI-generated picture with your face on it? Smear campaigns work. Living a life above reproach will not defend you.
Also, because the parody writes itself, Scott also says this
I’ve talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves.
This blog you’re on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn’t figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. I won’t name the authors here. Ars, please issue a correction and an explanation of what happened.
A news outlet did an article about this, used AI for the articles, and included hallucinated quotes from Scott that Scott never said.
What are we doing. What are we doing. What are we doing.
A shadow has infinite forms, and yet it was not until ages and eons past my birth, when my daughter’s blood soaked my feet, that I first took the shape of a fool.
I am a thing of cold and dark. When this world first formed, a fragment of the blackness between stars broke away and walked upon its cooling surface. When the world first sprouted Life, the blackness swallowed a piece and became me. When Life learned to think and speak, I laughed at their attempts to give me a name.
I have had many names. I have only had one daughter.
I made her when the forests were greater and deeper, when I happened upon the bleached bones of a great stag. On whim and curiosity I filled the empty spaces where marrow had been with my own darkness, and my precious daughter sprang to life before me. The stag had been torn to pieces in death, only skull and spine and a few ribs with scraps of clinging flesh when I found it. My daughter’s darkness filled in the rest. In this form, even with its ungainly bones, she still learned to change her shape like me.
My beautiful, clever daughter of bone and rot and darkness. I will miss her until the stars burn out and leave behind so much black that I forget where it ends and I begin.
She had only a thousand years when she first took human form, and a scant thousand more when she fell in love. I could not help but like the man she chose. He loved her in all her wildness and danger, did not shy away from the burning chill of her touch, and when she shed all her forms and showed him the bone and darkness beneath, he loved her all the more. And when he met me in my glory, and learned my favorite of the names his kind had given me, he merely smiled and said it suited me.
I have known joy—eons upon this world and its wonders, how could I not—but the day I first laid eyes upon my grandson has no equal. A human with my darkness in him, and my daughter’s eyes, and her husband’s heart.
I was so far away when they bled and burned. When I returned, all I found was ash and charred, empty bones.
I thought myself clever, how I stalked my prey. To kill my kind leaves a stain that can never wash away, a scent that lingers after the murder is done. I followed the smell of smoke and ash and my daughter’s blood, and found them.
They call themselves heroes, monster-slayers, warriors of all that is light and good. As if evil does not thrive beneath cloudless sunny mornings. As if all shadows hide pain and misery. Though I suppose they did, on the day that I came.
I didn’t count the throats and hearts I ripped bloody from my daughter’s killers. I was hungry, and I ate well that day. I became everything they might call a monster, and the proud hunters fled before me. Through light and dark, day and night, I pursued them.
And then one day that woman, that murderer, met me with divinity singing in her weapons.
Can you imagine it? There was one mortal trail left to follow, one last murderer to rend apart with tooth and claw and beak, and she met me wielding blades and bullets blessed, in hands that still stank of my daughter’s corpse. I know not what celestial turncoat gave such arms to one that slaughters our kind for pride and profit, but when I find out, I will swallow them whole.
I fought her longer than I should have. Even dying would satisfy me as long as she took her last breath with mine. But with every swing of my enemy’s weapon, I lost more and more of myself, until I was a puddle when I had once been an ocean. No more could I tear my enemies asunder or swallow them whole, and so at last the chase turned round and I was the prey.
Perhaps I should have fought to the last, thrown myself against that hateful blade until there was nothing left of myself, but what then? Who would kill this murderer, if not I? How many more daughters would bleed and burn by her hand if I did not live to kill her?
Mere whim and luck saved my life one afternoon. There were few places to hide that they could not follow, for many of them bore those shining markers that instill fear and obedience in others of their kind. But that day, as they pursued me through streets and alleyways, a clever turn bought me seconds to breathe. I saw my salvation in an open window, and took a form I had not touched in many a long century.
I have loved cats since the first of their ancestors were born tens of millions of years ago. I loved them all the more when I saw them remake themselves in barns and grain stores and primitive dwellings. For ages did I favor the form, until a few indiscretions of mine in centuries past cost the species so dearly that I avoided it since.
I did not think. I simply climbed the wall with nimble paws, and vanished through the open window before my pursuers could see even the tip of my tail. The place smelled like a home, as my daughter’s once did. I slipped through its warmth, beneath the notice of its people, and found a bed to hide under and rest.
Oh, but my huntress persisted. Perhaps she had some power of clairvoyance, or perhaps the same celestial who armed her gave her knowledge as well. By nightfall, before the owners of the home I had invaded had even noticed me, the hunters knocked on their door.
I braced myself as I listened, waiting for the inevitable footsteps that would lead to my flight.
But the door did not open. A slayer’s voice rang from outside, sharp and commanding, but the man within did not let them in when he answered. For the first time, I watched as the mortal unwittingly sheltering me did not flinch at shining badges and sharp orders. Instead his words—equal parts blunt and deft—wove rules and laws into a wall that even holy blades could not breach.
The hunters left. I stayed beneath the bed for the rest of the night.
In the morning I awoke to a hand on my flank, and buried my claws in it without a thought. The voice that cried out was not a murderer, but the silver tongue that had sent them away.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” he called to me soothingly even as he bled. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He most assuredly had not. To prove as much, I came out to meet them.
It was—
It was not in the least bit like seeing my daughter and her husband again. She smelled of animal blood and he looked at her with love, and that was where the similarities began and ended.
They were polite enough in their greetings, though I did suffer the brief indignity of having my tail grabbed and lifted. The woman dodged my claws with practiced ease and inspected me quickly before announcing, “Girl,” and letting go.
…Truth be told, I hadn’t noticed. I don’t often pay much mind to such things. But I suppose, if I’m to be a cat, I may as well be a queen.
“She might be pregnant,” the woman went on. “That’s how Janie got her cats—the first one got into her apartment somehow and had babies in her closet.”
“Hope not,” the man replied, offering a dark brown hand for me to sniff. “This house only has room for one pregnant lady.”
The woman laughed and smacked his shoulder, and before I could become properly annoyed with them, there was cooked fish before me.
Charity is anathema to me. The world gives back what is put into it, and so do I. I accept nothing that I am not willing to pay for, and give nothing that cannot be bought. Though they did not know it yet, when they gave their hospitality to a lost and wounded shadow, these mortals gained its protection. I recovered slowly, sleeping in warm beds and licking wounds that my hosts could not see. I was fed and stroked and praised when I allowed it, and left alone when I did not. Another name was added to my long, long list of gifted titles: Lucy.
In the safety of silence and solitude, I allowed myself to laugh at that. I, a creature of shadow and darkness, once more named for light.
Then one night, my mortals—for they were mine the moment I claimed their home as my sanctuary—jolted from sleep and hurried from their beds. I did not follow them outside for fear that I might call my pursuers down on them while they were vulnerable. I stayed behind instead, and kept watch through the rest of the night.
They returned two days later, with a sleeping infant between them.
I—
They did not mean to fall asleep when they did. New parents, you know. But they. It.
The child fussed, mightily, and my mortals were so tired, and it had been so, so very long since I’d held a human infant in my arms.
It hurt to make myself so large. A mere four months was not enough to put me back together again. But for a crying babe, I managed it, if only to cradle him back to sleep while his weary parents rested. He was a good child, all pink and brown and wrinkled, without a single tooth in his smiling mouth.
Of course, I couldn’t feed him myself, so when my presence alone could not comfort him, I became a cat again and swatted his mother awake. She thanked me for it, and rightly so.
And so, I was part of a family again, all thanks to a chance open window, and the persistence of a cruel woman. They are… dear to me. More precious in some ways than even my own daughter had been before her murder, for I did not know then how easily I would lose her. And with mortals, loss is an inevitability. So my heart, in bleeding tatters though it may be, cherishes them all the more.
Before my grandson, I had never stopped to watch one grow from infancy. It was fascinating, watching the wriggling thing learn to roll over and crawl and walk, hearing his noises refine into words. His gentle hands rarely pulled at my fur, though on one occasion he managed to put the tip of my tail in his mouth while my attention was elsewhere. I slept often by his side from crib to bed, and he spoke to me as if he knew I could answer. When he learned to read, he practiced reading to me, and such an attentive listener was I that he continued long after he had mastered the skill.
I was—am fond of him. I dreaded watching him wither away.
And then, one night, my boy—my beautiful, mortal mayfly of a boy—left in the morning and did not return when he should have. HIs parents flew into a panic, and I—I nearly left the sanctuary of that home for the first time in years. For hours, I worried that my enemies had found him, that they had somehow divined that his family had hidden me from them. I worried that I would have to leave my mortals forever, after enjoying only a fraction of their already short lives.
Instead, my boy returned home late into the night. His eyes were red with more than just tears and weariness. The smell of blood clung to him, sticky and thick. When I climbed into his lap and let him bury his hands into my fur, the chill in his fingertips could nearly match even my own.
My boy was changed. Mortal no longer—I selfishly rejoiced that at least one of my new family would be mine for more of eternity than I ever could have hoped.
And that brings us—not here, not quite. But now we reach the parts you know.
I am sorry, my boy, my beautiful boy. I should have been there when they came for you. But I had gotten comfortable with hiding, with keeping you safe with secrecy, and in my newfound joy and safety, I forgot. I forgot that the hunters of the night are monsters themselves, in the eyes of the hunters of the Dawn.
After they took you, for a few shameful minutes I sat frozen. Even now I am not what I once was. But I was a savage, mindless thing when I fought them before. Numb with fresh grief, with nothing left to live for, I threw myself upon that woman’s hateful weapon with no thought for my own survival, first arrogant, then self-destructive. But now—oh, now. For you, my child, born from those who sheltered me, I will fight and live.
While your parents searched the city in vain, I tracked you through many. In their arrogance they did not kill you, but spirited you away for some unknown purpose. I tempered my rage with hope, and forged it into cunning. I caught their scent, for the first time in sixteen years. I had not forgotten it. I will never forget the smell of my daughter’s blood. As long as her killer still lives, it will not fade from this world.
I followed them. I found them. I found you. And as they closed in around us, I swallowed my fears and revealed the truth to you.
Did you know that I was afraid? I am a monster who brought monsters into your peaceful home. You have every right to hate me. I always thought that you would, one day, if you ever learned the truth.
But
You are my boy. You have always been my boy. Somehow, fool that I am, I forgot that I am your cat.
You fought them fiercely. Beautifully. I watched as you wielded your newfound strength at my side. Your kind can change forms too, did you know? I cannot wait to teach you.
Years ago, back when I spent far too many days as a fool, I might have carried on the fight. I might have torn myself to pieces on their weapons, desperate for their deaths. But I had nothing then, and I have you now. I love you. I love you. I will live for you, I will swallow all my grief and rage and pain and let my love fill the empty space they leave behind. My beloved daughter is gone, but you, my boy. You are here. You are enough.
Let us go home. Let us rest. Let us be ready, if they are foolish enough to come for you a second time.
This squirrel attempted to jump a full six feet (yes, I measured) from a nearby bush to the bird feeder. Its first two misses were spectacular, so much so that when it made it on the third try, I let it hang out and eat as many peanuts as it wanted.
(I'm sorry I didn't manage to get the leaps to sync up, but I've already spent quite a lot of time turning the video into gifs that'll upload here, so.)
Actually I’m incredibly upset about how tween fashion has essentially vanished from the market. I think that the tween period is wildly important for childhood development and developing personal sense of style. Like??? I was slathering myself in green body glitter every day and wearing purple eye liner. That shit is highkey important
while we continue to read and write stories about cats exploring the world, please remember to keep your real cats indoors!
there are many things that can happen to them outside, like fights with other cats, diseases, cars, predators, parasites, and even people doing population control on strays! my own grandfather used to shoot strays that wandered into his property so they wouldn’t kill his birds.
on top of the dangers, domestic cats have directly caused the extinction of at least 63 animal species, and they kill 2.4 to 4 BILLION birds every YEAR in the USA ALONE! many of which are critically endangered.
domestic cats, being a selectively bred species, are native to nowhere on the planet, thus are invasive pretty much anywhere. our job is to keep them from being so invasive!
Outdoor cats kill up an estimated 2.4 billion birds in the U.S. each year. Discover how American Bird Conservancy is reducing the threat of
also, tip if you wanna see birds every time you look out the window: let your lawn grow wild and keep the bugs around :)
even before i lived in a place with a massive population of feral cats decimating the wildlife i had read the studies and knew the data said that TNR did not work and we need to be trapping and euthanizing feral cats but now that i’ve lived in a place where there are an enormous number of feral cats it’s like, inconceivable to me that anyone supports TNR, not just for the health of the world but for the sake of the fucking cats
nobody will even acknowledge it not even in most conservation circles. We have a solution to a massive, massive problem that is more humane, cheaper, easier, takes less time, prevents animal suffering, and saves valuable members of our disappearing ecosystem. And nobody is even willing to theoretically acknowledge that it exists outside of a few very small circles.
it works. It works. It is better for the cats. It’s better for the cats. Living in a place where you cannot drive 10 minutes without seeing a new roadkill cat almost every single day really makes you think about how much suffering could have been prevented if we just dealt with the problem we have created. It’s not a pleasant way to go, being hit by a car. Or being ripped apart by a predator, or eating a poison, or starving to death, of dying of an infection, or an illness, or any of the hundred thousand ways an animal in the wild passes without human intervention. Euthanasia is simply falling asleep. It is fucking wild to me that saying you think we should take responsibility for our mistakes and ensure that cats fall asleep peacefully instead of capturing them and then hurling them back out into the world SPECIFICALLY in order to allow them to die in agony makes people treat you like a fucking serial killer.
And if you don’t care about cats dying in agony do you care about the world around you? There’s a species of bird we only know ever existed because someone’s cat brought home our only example. That’s horrific. We’ve lost so much biodiversity because we simply won’t listen to the research, which again, has proven that TNR is not effective.
https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/UW468 “How Effective and Humane Is Trap-Neuter-Release (TNR) for Feral Cats?”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6523511/ “A Case of Letting the Cat out of The Bag—Why Trap-Neuter-Return Is Not an Ethical Solution for Stray Cat (Felis catus) Management” (also has a thousand references attached that are handy)
Not a reference so much as the human society actively admitting that TNR does nothing to decrease population, actively contributes to harming wildlife, and doesn’t actually help the cats in any way, just reduces some of the nuisance behavior that people complain about: https://www.animalhumanesociety.org/resource/real-impacts-trap-neuter-return
Unscientific from here on out as i don’t feel like trying to find the studies i read in like January of last year:
https://hahf.org/awake/the-trouble-with-trap-vaccinate-neuter-return/ “The Trouble With Trap-Neuter-Re (Abandon!) from the hillsborough animal health foundation, articles also link to studies
https://abcbirds.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/The-Evidence-Against-TNR.pdf from the american bird conservancy, has scientific articles quoted.
Even More Sources on TNR being non-viable and ways that cats are impacting the world from birds to *hawai’i’s monk seals*
Animal Emergency and Referral Center of Minnesota. (2022, October 26). Indoor cats vs. outdoor cats. Animal Emergency & Referral Center of Minnesota. https://aercmn.com/indoor-cats-vs-outdoor-cats/
Campbell, V. (2017, January 25). The Obituary of the Stephens Island Wren. All About Birds. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/news/the-obituary-of-the-stephens-island-wren/
Castillo, D., & Clarke, A. L. (2003). Trap/neuter/release methods ineffective in controlling domestic cat “colonies” on public lands. Natural Areas Journal, 23(3).
Coe, S. T., Elmore, J. A., Elizondo, E. C., & Loss, S. R. (2021). Free-ranging domestic cat abundance and sterilization percentage following five years of a trap–neuter–return program. Wildlife Biology, 2021(1). https://doi.org/10.2981/wlb.00799
del Hoyo, J., Collar, N., Kirwan, G. M., & Sharpe, C. J. (2022, October 25). Guadalupe storm-petrel (Hydrobates Macrodactylus), version 1.2. Birds of the World. https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/guspet/cur/introduction
Dickman, C. R., & Newsome, T. M. (2015). Individual hunting behaviour and prey specialisation in the house cat Felis catus: Implications for conservation and management. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 173, 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2014.09.021
Edge. (2019, June 19). Guadalupe storm-petrel. EDGE of Existence. https://www.edgeofexistence.org/species/guadalupe-storm-petrel/
Galbreath, R., & Brown, D. (2004). The tale of the lighthouse-keeper’s cat: Discovery and extinction of the Stephens Island wren (Traversia lyalli). Notornis, 51(4).
Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources. (2025). Feral cats. Feral Cats. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/hisc/info/invasive-species-profiles/feral-cats/#:~:text=Feral%20cats%20on%20islands%20have,kill%20approximately%202.4%20billion%20birds.
Loss, S. R., Will, T., & Marra, P. P. (2013). The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380
McGregor, H., Legge, S., Jones, M. E., & Johnson, C. N. (2015). Feral cats are better killers in open habitats, revealed by animal-borne video. PLOS ONE, 10(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133915
Medina, F. M., Bonnaud, E., Vidal, E., Tershy, B. R., Zavaleta, E. S., Josh Donlan, C., Keitt, B. S., Corre, M., Horwath, S. V., & Nogales, M. (2011). A global review of the impacts of invasive cats on Island Endangered Vertebrates. Global Change Biology, 17(11), 3503–3510. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x
National Research Council. (1992, January 1). Scientific Bases for the Preservation of the Hawaiian Crow. U.S. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235935/
NOAA. (2024, August 29). Toxoplasmosis and its effects on Hawaiʻi Marine Wildlife. NOAA Fisheries. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/pacific-islands/endangered-species-conservation/toxoplasmosis-and-its-effects-hawaii-marine
Read, J. L., Dickman, C. R., Boardman, W. S., & Lepczyk, C. A. (2020). Reply to Wolf et al.: Why trap-neuter-return (TNR) is not an ethical solution for Stray Cat Management. Animals, 10(9), 1525. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10091525
Reed, L. (2022). The effects of free-roaming cats on native wildlife populations. Wildlife Rehabilitation Bulletin, 40(1), 17–21. https://doi.org/10.53607/wrb.v40.250
Salano, E. (2024, October 5). Eliciting the effect free roaming cats have on Native Hawaiian wildlife using stable isotope analysis. UKnowledge. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/biology_etds/103/
Steele, J. H., Thorpe, S. A., & Turekian, K. K. (2009). Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. Academic Press.
science says it’s long past time to stop prolonging the suffering of feral cats, for the sake of the people, the native wildlife, and the goddamn cats themselves.
I was at a friend's house to check on carcasses I had macerating in his yard. A little grey cat ran up to me, yelling her head off in friendliness and wanting nothing more than to be pet. I had nothing to give her but let my friend know he should catch her since she was so friendly. I am ashamed to admit I didn't give her much thought beyond that, finishing my work and giving her a last pet before going home.
My friend told me how he'd seen her before but she always vanished before he could catch her. He works far too many hours and is always tired so he couldn't prioritize catching this cat.
Three months pass with no sign of her. I go back with my partner to check on carcasses and this same little grey cat appears. This time, however, a tooth has been snapped off and her tongue is so badly cut that she can't keep it in her mouth. She was thin and dirty and screaming to please be given some food.
This time I couldn't look away. I asked my friend's girlfriend if I could borrow a cat carrier. She loaned me one and a tin of wet food that the grey cat willingly followed into the carrier. She didn't care at all about being put into the carrier - all she wanted was a hand on her. She'd arch up against the top just so my hand would rest on her back for a moment.
We drove through rush hour traffic to the only shelter still open. We knew we couldn't keep her and I couldn't stand the thought of putting her back out on the streets to die slowly.
The shelter couldn't take her. Her ear was clipped so she was a "community cat" and outside their ability to help. They tried desperately to offer alternatives to me as I cried over her carrier, knowing I couldn't take her home but also that if I didn't I couldn't live with the thought of her back on the streets.
I made a Hail Mary call to a local friend who is very connected in our city. They didn't have my number saved but answered all the same to hear me sobbing about a cat I'd found and to please help me find a place for her. Please. If I don't find something then she'll be alone on the streets again to die.
My friend came through. I could keep the cat in their garage overnight and in the morning my friend would be back in the city and could find someone to help the cat.
The shelter folk gave me a crate and some food - their hands were tied but they didn't want to leave me with nothing. They were good people doing the best they could in their own system. Community cats were ones they weren't allowed to "waste" resources on. Ostensibly they'd been dealt with and their fate decided. There was nothing the shelter folks were allowed to do for them.
I took the cat to my friend's garage. She was settled into a crate on towels, happy as a clam to be warm and safe. This was a cat made to be loved and to love, as she immediately began trying to groom one of my friend's roommates. He stayed in the garage with her, giving her food and water and in exchange having no say on whether she was in his lap or not. She was always in his lap.
Nobby Nobbs (so named for the only other character known to man that is as scrungly as she is) was then formally adopted by my friend. Her tongue has healed, her fur remains scrungly, and she's every bit the rabid love bug I suspected her to be when she came to me yelling to be pet.
She's a TNR cat. Someone thought they were doing her a kindness in that and if nothing else she didn't add kittens to the world but that doesn't negate the pain she suffered before I found her - the broken teeth, the lacerated tongue, the ulcerated cheeks, the flea-bald patchiness of her coat.
I say this as someone who adores this cat and has the privilege to see her loved and cherished: I wish she'd never had to suffer what she did. I wish people were alright making the harder call that leads to less misery on the side of the cats.
TNR is a polite fiction, nothing more. Just so the humans can pretend they've done right by the same cats they're letting loose to die miserably somewhere else. As long as the humans don't see it it's fine.
The shelter folks told me she's a community cat and that I could take her home and release her by my house. Then I could feed her myself and keep up with her and know where she was! I could still keep her, after a fashion.
I am not proud of how I snarled back that I would never exchange a quick death for a slow one. I would be giving her a different funeral plot, not giving her a life. Even near me she'd be just as vulnerable to the innumerable predators that find cats quite delicious, let alone cars and poisons and the other cruelties humans practice on stray cats.
She's the second stray cat I've met that when I held them the cat melted in my arms, purring and so desperately wanting to be loved. The first cat I was able to trap and take to a local shelter only to find when I called to check on him a day later that his health had been so terrible, so beyond help, that he'd been put down. All the love in that tiny body lost because the people I lived beside didn't care enough to trap the cats they had.
My partner was asleep. I woke her up to crawl into her arms and sob, my heart breaking for the stupidity of the humans who hadn't cared enough to grant this poor little cat the chance to be either an indoor cat, loved and cared for, or to grant him a quick death long before I met him. I've other stories of the cats they kept around, essentially feeding the poor souls to the predatory birds and wandering dogs that frequented our area.
TNR doesn't work. It is a lie humans tell ourselves so we can pretend we haven't failed these animals on a massive scale. Cats are invasive and cause massive harm in their turn. It is humanity who needs to deal with this crisis, this horror we've made, and I pray one day we look it square in the face and vow to make it right.
pixelskylines
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
2087
tangentwithtanner
