Adventures in Cat Fostering

For the past 6 weeks, I've been sharing my space with a momma cat and her three kittens. I really thought, prior to this experience, that I was an animal person. I've always been a little afraid of kittens (they're so fragile!) but figured I could be compassionate and hospitable regardless.

I was wrong.

While the experience came with a lot of stories, and it was a Good Thing to Do, I'm going to try very hard to never do this again. Some examples of this month's struggles:

1) Because you aren't keeping the cats, you shouldn't get attached. For that reason, the mom is always just "cat," and then there's "the kitten with the boots," "the middle kitten," and "the runt." The shelter told me I could name them, but it just seemed like a bad idea. It also doesn't help that you don't find out their gender until they're older, because I didn't even have a pronoun to use instead of a name.

2) Since you aren't attached to the cats, and they aren't yours, you feel much less forgivable when they act weird. When Shakespeare wakes me up in the morning, it's the best alarm clock ever. When mom cat does it, I'm immediately annoyed. It's the difference between having a house guest and having family.

3) Kittens are so fragile! They've had to go in for eye infections, one of them has been making messes everywhere and I have to take him in to see if he has worms, and you constantly have to be on the alert for flees. Even if you do all the things you're supposed to, the kittens still might just die. And since they aren't yours, you will feel even worse about it.

I will add that I was very lucky to have a mom cat who was generally very helpful through all this. She didn't mind when I was smearing medicine on her kittens' eyes, and we tagged teamed cleaning the kitten last night (she only clean them if they're convenient, and I was so tired of wiping it off with a wet paper towel that I just held the kitten down while she licked it clean. Gross.)

4) Animals smell. That's just how it goes. And my bathroom is too small for the litterbox to go there, so it's in my closet, and I'm constantly vacuuming and scooping and air-freshening and lysol-ing. My hands are so dry from the amount of cleaning I do. On the bright side, cleaning a litterbox is way easier than cleaning a rat cage.

5) Cats are prickly! Even when they're happy with you, they dig their claws into your leg. I had to hide my grammy quilt so they couldn't dig into that, but they've ruined some clothes and I'm constantly stopping them from yanking up the carpet. They've only recently started chewing on wood, too, so my desk and dresser are on high alert.

So I don't care how cute they are, I hate them. I do not want a kitten. I keep telling people, and they don't believe me, but truly- I want a grouchy, old, fat cat that hides in the corner and hisses at strangers and only likes me (but in a prideful, not needy way). Preferably orange. So basically, Garfield.

Beautiful Bald Ladies

I cannot get over how bad-ass Charlize Theron looks in all the promo posters for Mad Max:

So I started thinking about all the women I know who have been or are currently bald, and all the ways they've hid it (popular opinion is that wigs are the worst. I actually have my grandmother's from when she was getting chemo). I wish that I had the guts to shave my head, because I really do think bald women are super-beautiful and am genuinely in awe of them. So besides all those women that I love, here are my top 5 favorite bald babes:

1. Natalie Portman

Not only did she rock the bald look, but she also managed to look awesome as she was growing her hair out. Plus, I just love that she had it shaved on camera. 

2. Erykah Badu

She looks so fierce, but still entirely feminine. It's almost like the bald head softens her look. And how often do you notice people's necks? I think being bald leaves a certain amount of vulnerability, but in that, you notice all of the other qualities that make a person beautiful. 

3. Sigourney Weaver

Because little girls should grow up wanting to be Ellen Ripley, not a disney princess.

4. Sinead O'Conner

Another easy answer, but she is too cute! I think the common thread here might also be "women who have beautiful eyes and flawless eyebrows"

5. Karen Gillan

She's another person on the list that looks awesome every step of the growing-out process. I also just like seeing Nebula look so happy. 

I'm not brave enough to pick up the clippers (I'm usually not even brave enough to pull my bangs back), but I can dream. Until then, I'll just have to learn to use photo shop so I can play pretend at bald. 

Some things, for April

1) 80s Sweaters- My mom has been cleaning out the attic and found a pile of her clothes from the 80s. The jeans I rejected, but sweaters have mostly stayed the same the past 30 years. I'm currently wearing an adorable green one that my grandmother knitted.

2) Books- In April, I read all of the Gillian Flynn books and The Girl on the Train, and then lost my momentum (and also couldn't find anything else similar in genre). Mostly, I sit on my porch and read Entertainment Weekly, because I have a pile that I never read. There is something very home-y about having a magazine subscription and a designated reading spot.

3) Movies- I finally watched Before I Go to Sleep, which I would describe as not a waste of an hour and a half. The family watched How to Train Your Dragon 2, which obviously I loved (the first movie is one of my favorite animated movies, only rivaling Aladdin and Lilo and Stitch). I watched all 3 Mad Max movies in preparation for the new movie. I've also been doing a lot of coloring, because my aunt sent me the COOLEST London coloring book, but Mad Max is not a movie you can color during viewing. Mostly because there is almost no dialogue, and if you aren't watching it is very easy to get lost.

It also brought back horrible memories from the nightmare that is The Brave Little Toaster. I looked it up on youtube and maintain that it is the scariest movie I have ever seen. Really. It is not for children. Especially children that can get attached to inanimate objects if you give them eyes.

4) Travel- I went to Nashville and had the best time, but I already posted the photos and the stories on facebook. It was a much needed and very eventful vacation (that also led to my not having time to go grocery shopping for an uncomfortably long time).


Aren't you glad I haven't been posting so often, with all these poorly written and disjointed thoughts? April, you disaster, get out of here!

My new favorite thing on the internet:

Kayse pointed this out to me, and it feels like a real bummer that I didn't blog about this sooner (what wasted opportunity) but I love everything about this. Check out the full article here.

What I've Learned about Heterosexual Female Desire From Decades of Reading:

• Women only love men with CROOKED SMILES, a man who smiles with his mouth all in a straight line might as well be DEAD; a male smile should resemble nothing on earth so much as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Lombard Street, a lightning bolt, a scarecrow with a broken neck, or two palm trees leaning against each other to form a big “X”
• Most women cannot distinguish between the feeling of “love” and what happens when a young male has floppy hair that falls over his eyes; truly lovable men have eyes hidden so deeply behind a cascade of floppy chestnut hair they are effectively blind
• Men are most attractive when they have at least one but no more than three minor cosmetic flaws (scar on chin, slightly chipped tooth, poor), like Chip the cup from the cartoon version of Beauty and the Beast 
• A woman can forgive a man for anything, except for having freckles or a weak chin
• 100% of women want to have sex with a man who embodies the fox version of Robin Hood from the cartoon Robin Hood, but most do not actually want to have sex with a fox or a man dressed as one
• It’s not enough to have a lot of hair falling in your eyes; men must be constantly tugging at their own hair in exasperation or at the very least running their hands through it as they think carefully about art or something
• Men should have a TON of money but not care about it for even a SECOND, he should literally forget he even has money, he should whisk you away on a helicopter and then when you try to tip the pilot in cash he’s like “what are those weird little flat green dudes in your wallet?” because he doesn’t care about money at all even though he has so much of it
• Women love it when a man seems gay and mean but is actually straight and nice, or at least he wants to be nice, or at least he wants to be nice to one person and that person is you, and instead of straight he’s gay 98% of the time but he’s super-mega-straight for you, and nobody knows what bisexuality is
• Someone understood him once but then she died (my favorite)
• It’s really good when a man could hurt you and maybe spends a lot of time hurting other people but makes an exception in his hurting-people schedule for at least one woman he doesn’t hurt, but he could if he wanted to, only he doesn’t, so it would be great if he murdered everybody except for you and didn’t murder you even a little bit 
• Just this pretty much
• If he’s normally so powerful that he could destroy you but he’s in the hospital or prison or something or just tied to a bunch of cabins in the woods maybe and you have to bring him mush and he’s totally dependent on you and he hates it and reminds you of how much he hates it but there’s not even anything he can do about it and he has to rely on you and maybe trust again for the first time in his whole entire life, that’s good
• Whenever possible, a man should have a cruel mouth, particularly if he has blue eyes – the bluer the eyes, the crueler the mouth; a man with cornflower-blue eyes should have a mouth like a genocide
• If he can’t have a cruel mouth, he should have strong and callused hands, sort of rough but surprisingly gentle, like if it turned out his hands were actually made of doves, and he should be sort of dim but incredibly dedicated to you, he should be so dumb he can’t remember fractions but every day he builds you a four-poster sleigh bed out of oak and devotion and needs to have wordless but noisy sex on the hour and also needs help signing his own name
• It’s good if a man is skittish and terrified of affection, like a beautiful horse that appears on the edge of a frozen lake one day and you have to tame it by bringing it a handful of food every day until it slowly comes to learn your scent (but with sex) like a mean professor who always wears powder-blue button-ups and has a little bit of chest hair that’s not too dark and he withholds praise from you constantly? 
• His mother is just the worst and you’re nothing like her
• If a man is calm 100% of the time, like so calm that he’s mostly dead, and he only gets boners for his job, because he loves his job so much and he’s always sitting at a desk or standing with a phone doing his job, but then all of a sudden he can’t stop getting boners for one specific woman and he’s mad at her from how much she’s distracting him from his job, which has never happened before, because he’s literally never been attracted to even a single woman in the history of being alive in his own body until right now and he’s going to straight up murder you with sex because it turns out all that sedate studiousness he thought was his personality was actually the calm before the dick storm
• Sometimes women instead love it when men are little and sweaty and sleazy, like a sexual rat, idk

This piece of advice keeps coming up...

“Women need to shift from thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to do that- and I'll learn by doing it.”   -Sheryl Sandberg

This makes me happy.

Barbara posted this a few weeks ago, but I keep coming back to it.

Best Things about Chicago!

1) Staying at a fancy hotel- Actually, our hotel was kind of awful, structurally. It was definitely designed to not handle copious amounts of electricity, the wifi didn't work, and it was just generally old. But it did have character, and the staff was very attentive. I learned I can't actually function in a queen sized bed because I get lost and can't find the bedside table. I also got used to watching tv in bed, a luxury I had given up when I moved to my apartment. Plus, with CST, I could actually stay up to watch Jimmy Fallon!

2) The Signature Room at the John Hancock- It's a bar on the 96th floor where all the walls are glass and you can just sit and look out at the city. I didn't take any pictures, but it was the perfect bar scene. Plenty to look at when you weren't talking to someone, but quiet and dark so it was still comfortable for private chit chat.

3) Taxis! - Technically, I have ridden in a taxi before (in San Francisco, with Barbara) but I've never had to get one for myself or just relied on finding one to get somewhere. I love riding in cars, and I hate driving in cities, so taxis are totally worth it to me.

4) My First Big Business Trip- I learned that at the end of the day, no matter where you are, you're just tired and ready to go back to your room. I had lots of long, fancy dinners after long, stressful work days, and I did not want to go exploring after that. I never understood people that ignored opportunities to be in a new city for free, but now I do. Friends that have not done this yet, don't judge. It's a great experience, but it really is exhausting. I even had a ticket to a second city show and ended up getting a gift card and surrendering my ticket. I'll go back another weekend when I have the time and energy to do more.

5) And the Bean? -Of COURSE I saw the bean. On our last night, at 11pm, because I mentioned that I hadn't seen it yet which meant I hadn't really been to Chicago. So we hopped in a cab and went straight to millenium park via a cab driver on his 1st day of work. We learned all about how a person ends of a cabbie, and what is hard about being a newbie at the job, and that might have been my favorite part of the whole trip. Just some guy trying to feed his family after he lost his job, nervous about getting from point A to point B.

All in all, it was a great experience (although I came home ready to crash) and I'm so lucky that I have such pleasant coworkers. The trade show was a success, all our hard work was worth it, and now we don't have to worry about another one until September!