Hey everyone else in the notes, I’m the grandson of a professional cat judge and breeder and you literally have to just. Hold cats. To make them used to being handled. Like, they’re gonna get pissed but you’re not hurting them At All I promise. This lil guy is just miffed he’s not being hurt and he’s not thrashing out he’s just an angry baby pls calm down
Just so y’all know here’s the same cat 7 months later 🙂
Look my dudes, dudettes and associations within – idk how else you expected the op to hold the squirming anger beast, because I guarantee you any other grip would have resulted in a drop and a lot of scratches and teeth. Yes, this kitten is angry. No, *not* handling said ball of fluff is not going to teach it anything aside from gtfo no human can ever touch me.
When my sister and I rescued a litter of four they were dirty, malnourished, could barely see from infections and terrified. Terror was also a good reason for them to be angry, which we understood. We obviously didn’t want to scare them more but they needed care, cleaning, medication and food via a syringe. We had to reach in to the carrier to get them out and of course they reacted with attempts at hissing (which when you’re that tiny its more like ‘pop pop pop!’) and squirming. After we started giving them all the things they needed and days to get used to us they became the cuddliest babies ever. They also flourished in health. The runt who had the worst prognosis is now so big he can’t fit in a regular cat carrier. They’re all giant fluffs and one of them is such a mama’s boy he cries if he doesn’t know where my sister is.
Cats are (usually) a product of their enviornment, and as you can see from the op’s reply this angry goblin has become a cuddly lapcat because the op didn’t shy away from teaching him that human touch is good and loving.
So calm y’alls mammaries jfc. OP knows what they’re doing.
SHES STILL A GOBLIN BUT NOW JUST A LOVING ONE, UR RIGHT
Aside from the Discourse™️, the very angry floof being told “you’re so grumpy! You’re the grumpiest!” in a baby voice is my new favorite thing.
can confirm, sometimes u have to make tiny trash kittens VERY ANGRY in order to do what’s best for them
As a foster parent who has had kittens of varying socialization levels, I can also confirm that sometimes you just gotta get in there and show them “hey, a person touched and handled me and I didn’t die” over and over and over again until they just start to get it.
One of my current fosters, Travina, came to us in mid November at 8-10 weeks old; past prime socialization. Another week or two and she would have probably been a completely feral cat, but she was still willing to come up and snatch food directly out of your hand, which meant she was still in the ‘stray’ category, and thus had a chance.
It took almost 2 months of figuring out her likes and dislikes, but with time and a lot of pushing her out of her comfort zone, she’s gone from a kitten that runs if you even look at her from across the room to one that mews and trots to you if you call her name from halfway across the house.
And THAT’S why we baby talk the angry fluff balls while they hiss and spit at us.
I’m actually surprised that anyone could look at the paintings in the Lascaux caves and think, “how primitive”. I know they’re like the quintessential prehistoric cave paintings, but the observational proportions and the line weight are actually really good. Also they have an incredible sense of movement. (In fact, some people think that’s the purpose of overlapping the different colored images – to basically animate the drawings. The only lighting would be flickering torchlight, and the pictures are very large. I can imagine it might be rather intimidating in person.)
Just to show you what I mean. You try drawing a better lion than some of these
Prehistoric art work is such an underrated and underappreciated part of our culture as humans and anyone who belittles it needs to just look at them! They are gorgeous!
The full rotation of the Moon as seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
It’s so beautiful and amazing that we live at a moment in time when we can see the entire moon, and not just the side that’s tidally-locked toward the Earth.
A ground breaking new book that brings together two of the major disciplines behind Jurassic Park is aiming to raise the profile of insect fossils through stunning photographs and unique illustrations.
Fossil Insects, by Dr David Penney and James E Jepson, details the incredible preservation and diversity of fossilised insects from around the world, setting the scene for what these remarkable fossils can tell us about the ancient and modern worlds, and even the future of our planet. Like the mosquito in Jurassic Park, many of the hundreds of thousands of specimens of ancient insect have been preserved in amber.
Here it is: how I got Horrible Histories banned from my school.
Sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.
Imagine a little girl, a 4’9” fifth grader with dimples and twinkling blue eyes. Oh, look, she’s going to the school library. Perhaps she’s going to rent Little Women, or read On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder!
Five minutes later, she exits the library holding a large stack of books called “Horrible Histories.”
And she’s thumbing through one called “Angry Aztecs.”
Record scratch. Freeze frame.
Yup, that’s me! The only history geek in a fifty mile radius. Living in Bumhicksville, Nowhere (name changed, but very accurate) is pretty terrible, and going to school at Caucasian Christian School of Goodness (again, a name change, but an apt description) is even worse. I snapped a bit while I was attending, due to the lack of permissible self-expression, but horrible histories were my guiding light.
Flash forward six months.
Our teacher wants us to do a history project about an ancient civilization. Since our curriculum is Eurocentricism.JPEG, most kids pick the Greeks or Romans (and completely skip over all of the good stuff, like orgies and gladiator fights) in their presentations.
I choose my favorite ancient civilization:
The Aztecs.
My teachers knew I’d been reading Horrible Histories, but what they didn’t know was that I’d also been avidly reading all about Aztec mythology. I walk up to the front of the class, pull on a turquoise skull mask, and raise my arms to the sky.
My teacher goes sheet white.
I give my presentation and skip nothing. Nothing. Every detail of the sacrifices, every dirty, disgusting part.
It all culminates when I point to the calendar.
“It’s May!” I shout, my little girl voice rising an octave. My teacher looks like she’s about to phone the police. “The Aztecs called May Toxcatl.”
No one moves or breathed. I continue blithely.
“Toxcatl was a month dedicated to the worship of the god of the night, Tezcatlipoca.” I’m still going. Everyone is afraid. Marie, one of my classmates, looks like she’s about to cry.
“They’d dress a brave warrior as the god all year, and at the end-“ I pull the red streamers out from behind my display, shouting: “They’d sacrifice him!”
The kids shriek as the streamers of “blood” roll out across the floor.
The principal walked in, hearing the commotion, just in time for me to really get into character and shout “BLOOD FOR THE GOD OF THE NIGHT!”
And that’s how Horrible Histories and all mentions of the Aztecs were banned from my school.
