Guess who got adopted today! This morning, I coaxed his royal highness into our cat carrier with the promise of some treats, then slammed the door shut a split second before the SHEER BETRAYAL fully registered. After a 10-minute car ride of HOWLS and WOE -- followed by orange-cat love at first orange-cat sight in a very nice man's foyer (we both wore masks, like supervillains) and a few exploratory laps around the joint -- he's now settling into a much more peaceful, well-suited home as an Only Cat for an Only Human, where he shall be loved and spoiled and be hereby, forever, known as Toasty. The boys had a hard time saying goodbye this morning, especially poor Ike. A successful adoption always manages to be the most rewarding part of fostering and also totally the worst. It's definitely disorienting to look around the house and just...not see that particular little creature around anymore. They're just...gone. But not really! But also, yeah, because we'll likely never see him ever again. But also, yeah, that's the entire point. If it weren't for Ike, I'm not sure this cat would even be alive today. He was destined for an overcrowded city... Read more →

I was about a third of the way through a new post for today when I realized it was kind of heavy/mildly depressing for a Friday afternoon. And nobody wants that on their Friday afternoon! Save that shit for first thing Monday morning, as the gods intended! Instead, here's another thing that nobody wants or asked for. Boring, self-indulgent photos of my pets! Finn and Rey and Fostercat finally seem to have settled into an aloof-yet-peaceful coexistence. I've been trying in vain to get a photo of all three of them together -- between the gray tabby, black cat and a big ol' orange tom, we've pretty much got the perfect moggie trifecta here -- but so far I've only managed to catch two of them at a time. Tormund: "If I don't look at her, it's like she's not really there." Rey: "Derp?" Tormund: "I will stretch alllllll the way out over this giant tiger face to assert my size dominance, even though I'm actually terrified of everything including vacuums, power cords, loud noises, my own tail sometimes, and honestly maybe a little bit of the cat behind me who is barely half my size." Finn: "Yeah but look... Read more →

Let's take a short break in all the mental health content and get back to what I'm best at: Overly long and involved stories about pee. (Will Vyvanse effect the number of parenthetical tangents in this post? No idea! Let's find out together.) So first, an update: Tormund the foster cat is still here. During his time as the January Pet of the Month he did get a couple of inquires and even one application, but alas. No adoption. He's spending more and more time upstairs, thus retiring his "Basement Cat" nickname in favor of "Torrie." He still prefers to spend the night in the basement guest room, but will now cautiously accept the occasional company. Since the basement guest room and bathroom are also occasionally needed for human guests, we moved his litter box upstairs, next to Finn and Rey's boxes. (Inside what COULD be a wonderfully useful walk-in coat closet, but thanks to the wall-to-wall litter boxes, it is the Unholiest of Unholy Places, and we do not speak of it.) (It is also where we store all our IKEA shopping bags, and where we conveniently forget about them whenever we go to IKEA.) He seemed fine with... Read more →

Anybody got any recommendations for nice-looking fake trees that I could maybe get on sale right now? Because look at this shit. Although, honestly, I just swept up the carnage and burned it all up in our fireplace. Jason came inside from dragging the tree-corpse to the curb and said our neighborhood smelled amazing! *** Hey, remember when I had a baby? Don't ever do that, because look at THIS shit. A smallish-large niche corner of the Internet lost its mind over that, while he was just like, "GREAT, another THING I have to DO now. It never ENDS, these days." *** (I just now watched the yard trim collection guy pick up, toss, and mulch our giant-ass tree. It took him barely a minute, but I bet he hates us now.) (Yes, it snowed! Don't worry, they didn't cancel school for that piddly lil' covering. They simply closed three hours early yesterday and had a two hour delay this morning for maximum schedule fuckery. YOU CAN STILL SEE GRASS, PEOPLE.) *** Look at this shit, for no particular reason (other than BFF doggo adorableness, of course): We originally decided that we wouldn't take in another foster dog until the... Read more →

Once again, we threw a huge party and did not take a single photo of the actual party. Perhaps this is all a strange, yearly hoax where we only pretend to throw a huge party and like, know people and have friends. Or perhaps Friendsgiving only happens in our sick, twisted minds and we really spend the day drinking and conversing with ghosts! Here are the things I DID take photos of, in no particular order: Ezra created a scavenger hunt for the kids, complete with a big box of prizes. I had to ask about the "Stupid Hello Kitty" -- was there a smart Hello Kitty out there as well, like as a trick? -- and he explained that it was a Happy Meal "girl" toy that Ike got by mistake. "It's not stupid because it's a girl toy, though," Ezra clarified. "It's stupid because she's supposed to be a superhero but when you press on her head and it just kind of raises the arms a tiny bit and it's just..." He trailed off, visibly disgusted at the lack of product design that went into this particular Happy Meal offering. (The "Launch Pokeball" was the Happy Meal "boy"... Read more →

So I still haven't really figured out how to keep this blog from becoming little more than a repository for Shit I Already Done Posted On Facebook & Instagram, but a certain recent development feels like it merits a mention: Every time I think this house can't get any zooier we go and add yet another damn mammal. This one is Ike's fault, because how could we possible argue with this face and logic? Dammit, he got us. I sent the video to Jake's rescue and within an hour or two they sent me this photo: Dem paws tho A couple months ago, his owner brought him to an animal hospital in Baltimore and asked them to euthanize him. He wasn't sick, or old, or a behavior problem -- she just didn't want him anymore and felt that putting him down would be the best way to be "done" with him. The vet refused. So she left without him. He'd been living there ever since. The hospital staff all loved him, but unfortunately the clock was ticking down on their ability to keep him much longer. They were desperately trying to find him a rescue before turning him over to... Read more →