My cats saved my life this past week. Again. It's an annoying habit they have whenever I'm circling the drain of depression and despair.

But enough about me...

Sometimes when Jenny comes up to me to be petted, she's wet. Never smells like urine as if she's peed all over herself, so I just figured she's been rubbing against something wet out in the catio and dismissed it. But then... I was petting her, she left, went and got a drink of water, then came back wet. And there it was. Her tongue that's half paralyzed (which is why she makes such a mess when eating wet food) is somehow splashing water everywhere which then bounces off of whatever to land on her. Or maybe her tongue is throwing it on her back? Weird. One of these days, I'm going to have to run over to her while she's drinking so I can try and figure out exactly how it's happening. Because it seems physically impossible.

Jenny seems to alternate between being wary of me...

Or resentful of me...

Except when asleep, of course...

Or pretending to be asleep...

Or when I'm petting her. Wet fur and all.

Today I was driving back home from my holiday across the mountains when I got a phone call that was a punch in the gut so unexpected that I had to pull off the road because driving a car became a foreign concept in my head.

And then, after ten minutes to mostly get my head on straight, I was off again...

Because this is the only major East-West route left across the state (flooding destroyed the other one) and it snowed last night, there was major congestion in places... which meant that a 2-1/2 hour trip took 3-1/2 hours to complete.

But at the end when I finally walked through the door to my home, the trip was worth it because it wasn't just Jake waiting for me... both Jake AND Jenny were waiting for me. Which is strange, because Jenny usually prefers to make sure it's safe before venturing downstairs when anybody walks in the house. Including me.

It was a repeat of when I got back from Florida...

...except this time I really needed it.

There is no "worst day" for me after my mom died. That was it. That was the one I get.

Which is why one of the books I'm working on is currently titled Travels with My Mother (and the five worst days of my life). It's a collection of travel stories from when I was visiting places around the world with her interspersed with me recounting the five worst days of my life. It's been fun to write... but difficult too, because it just makes me realize all over again how much I've lost with each new page.

But anyway...

Yesterday was my mom's birthday. She would have been 81 years old.

It's also the day my car tabs are due. Which is one of those unhappy coincidences that I never thought about when I had to buy a new car last December.

So I went to the bookkeeping office where I pay for the tabs, then drove home.

The road to which goes right by the cemetery where my mom is buried. Which is another one of those unhappy coincidences that I never thought about when I picked the easiest route to my home.

But anyway...

Today is Caturday, which only exists because of the two cats I got to keep my mom company and help distract her from being confused all the time. A job Jake and Jenny did exceptionally well...

Yes. I just shared this three Caturdays ago, but I didn't know it would be needed again so soon.

   
And so... happy birthday mom, one day late.

PLEASE TO EXPLAIN CAT!

Jake and Jenny always know when I'm leaving on a trip. They sense it somehow, I guess.

My travel plans for my recent trip were delayed, so I decided to clean the Litter-Robots before I left to Florida instead of having everything be frozen outside when I got back. I finished hosing out the downstairs robot first, then tackled the upstairs robot. AND WHILE I WAS SCRUBBING IT OUT ON THE FRONT LAWN, Jenny decided to USE THE KITTY LITTER BUCKET as the toilet...

NO idea how she fit into it. No clue. But litter was pitched out from her trying to cover it, so she took the job seriously.

Then I left for my trip.

And while I was gone, I was checking in on Jake and Jenny the whole time via my security cameras. It was wild. But the most wild was this... before I left I put a protective blanket over the dining room table. I've started doing this more and more even when I am home because it's the one thing I can't seem to keep my cats off of. I think it's because it's so close to their food bowls. And the kitchen and the stairs and the living room. It's a central space where they can see the entire first floor when they're on top of it. I got tired of scrubbing it with vinegar constantly, but when I put a covering on it I only have to scrub it when people will be eating on it.

ANYWAY... I kept watching as the blanket was falling further and further off the table. I think they were chasing or fighting each other on it, and once it started falling off the table it just kept going little by little as they climbed up there again.

Then one day I noticed that it was almost all the way off the table AND a chair was rocked back. So I scrolled back to find out what happened. And it was exactly what I thought it would be.

Jenny was on the table while her brother was on the part of the blanket which was on the floor. She looked down and saw him there and decided to pull some Jenny shit. She goes to jump on him, snags the chair, and it falls over... until it locks under the table...

And how did the blanket get all the way off the table? Jake decided he wanted to sleep on the chair that was locked under the table, of course! Never mind that he's at an angle, he was apparently comfortable enough to sleep there multiple times until I got home. Here he is in the chair getting up and turning around so he can go to sleep...

So... yeah. Cats are weird. There's no denying it.

Jake is aging before my eyes, and it's worrying me quite a lot.

He seems to be having a tough time, whether it's due to his weight or his age... or both. Watching him going up and down stairs is where I worry the most, though when he is chasing (or being chased) by his sister, he can all of a sudden blaze up and down them. So I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe he's faking it for sympathy.

One thing that hasn't changed is that he's an adorably handsome bear...

Also, he's still just as clingy as ever, falling asleep on me or against me more and more...

And of course he still keeps me company when I'm on video calls at my desk. The minute he hears me talking on the computer, he heads right in and lays on the stair banister next to me, then proceeds to stare at me the entire time...

For a cat that's quickly approaching 60 human years old, Jake is holding up better than I am.

I've put out warming pads for the cats every winter for years.

Last year one died, and this year the other one died. So I ordered new ones... and they make me mad I didn't buy 20 of the old kind.

First of all, the cords are not protected, which isn't a big problem because Jake & Jenny don't chew on cords. But still... dangerous!

Second of all, the warming pad is half the size of the cover? HALF! And the cover size is already smaller than the original one where the pad filled out the entire cover!

The cats are not impressed.

Here's Jenny... taking a big ol' pass on the new, heated pad and laying on the old, unheated pad instead. WTF?!?

And Jake was no more interested in it either, as he was always on the old pad. I went to pick him up and set him on the new pad, but this was what his reaction was...

Guess I keep looking. This is the first time I've been disappointed in a K&H Pet product. Hopefully the cats *warm up* to the new pads one of these days. SEE WHAT I DID THERE? WARM UP? LOLOLOL!

Guess I'll try putting the old warming pad covers on the new warming pads and see if I can trick them into using the new ones?

One of my neighbors is going to be on vacation for three weeks. They had a dozen eggs that will expire on December 1st, so they asked if I wanted them. And I took them.

Now, I rarely eat eggs anymore, and even then it's at a restaurant. I haven't bought eggs for my home in years, except when I have guests who eat them. I just put vegan egg substitute powder in my baking and it works perfectly. But anyway... I was actually more excited for my cats than I was for myself.

I cooked a lot of scrambled eggs for my mom, because it was one of the rare things I could get her to eat (the other being peanut butter sandwiches). Mom used to feed Jake & Jenny her eggs all the time, and they went CRAZY for them! I have photos of my mom feeding the kittens her eggs! JUST LOOK AT THIS...

And then the night came! I cooked some scrambled eggs for myself, then took a little bit out and put them into bowls for Jake and Jenny (before I seasoned mine). AND THEY COULDN'T HAVE GIVEN LESS OF A SHIT! Sniffed at them for a minute, then looked at me like "What the hell do you expect me to do with this slop?" Even Jake! THE CAT WHO WILL EAT ANYTHING! Wow...

Just look at that bullshit! Eggs completely untouched!

Before I go, I'm posting a comic by Thrice Fiction contributor Reza Farazmand from his Poorly Drawn Lines strip. It's a flawless summary of cat ownership...

©2025 Reza Farazmand

Yep. There it is.

I have a very long day ahead of me, so let's get to it!

I will invite Jenny to smell whatever she wants to, including any food I might be eating, because she's just being curious. She is picky about whatever stinky cat food I give her, and has zero interest in anything that doesn't stink like fish strongly enough.

Jake, on the other hand, is also curious... except he will eat just about anything. So the only food of mine he's allowed to smell are things I know he won't eat. Like applesauce. For everything else, I just move it away from him and say "Mine!" which he understands perfectly. Once he hears me say that, he stops seeing how close he can get to my food, and sits down and watches me eat it. Very carefully.

Sometimes I will set the plate down in front of him if there's a tiny piece of cheese or a small smear of mayonnaise on there he can eat which won't cause major problems. But it's a rare thing.

Not because I don't want him to have it... but because boy oh boy is he a beefy bear now. Over 17 pounds, because he's forever digging into Jenny's leftovers. It's starting to worry me enough that I've been hovering over the cats while they eat, then I'll jump in and remove Jenny's food when she's done eating it. I mean, just look at my chonky little bear when photographed from behind...

Still a handsome kitty though...

And because I've got another very long day ahead of me tomorrow, I think it's time for beddy-bye.

It isn't even 8:00pm which means that it's actually 9:00pm when you remove Daylight Saving Time bullshit, which explains why I'm exhausted, but not to the point in giving up... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Translate This! "Do you love me?" =cat shakes head no=

When I was talking about my talking to my cats in yesterday's post, this is what I was doing... but without the translator.

   
• Galaxy Girl! Does anybody else consider it utterly bizarre that I can't remember what I did two days ago, but a Schoolhouse Rock video shows up on YouTube and I know every word?

Interplanet Janet is not the most memorable, but the song sure is a bop.

   
• Happy! I am digging the first two episodes of Plur1bus on Apple TV. It's a bit plodding, but you can just feel that it's going somewhere interesting...

The trailer does a pretty good job of letting you know what the show is about without spoiling anything...

I'm not exactly sure where the show will end up landing (though I have my suspicions), but I trust Vince Gilligan to have that figured out.

   
• In Love and War! I tuned in to Kim Kardashian's new legal drama All's Fair for two reasons: 1) The reviews were so bad I was wondering if the show was truly bad or just getting review-bombed... and 2) The cast has some phenomenal actors in it, like Glenn Close, Naomi Watts, Teyana Taylor, and Sarah Paulson... plus Neicy Nash, whom I love.

And, yeah, it truly is that bad.

I could barely make it through the first episode. To see actors I enjoy in this horrific pile of shit with such awful dialogue was unbearable. I am fully willing to admit that my problem with the show may be on me because I don't understand the tone. But either way, it just... fails. If it's supposed to be camp, it doesn't go far enough and feels like serious matters are being trivialized. If it's meant to be serious with camp beats, it is completely sabotaged by moments so cringe that you can't take the show seriously. Which is to say that I honestly don't know what the fuck to make of it all. A show which is assumed to be a monument to women's empowerment feels an awful lot like mocking women's empowerment. But I'm a guy, so maybe I'm missing the point. Good Lord I hope I'm missing the point.

   
• MoonBase Alpha Revisited! Full episodes of SPACE: 1999 are on YouTube thanks to Shout! Studios. When I was a kid, I thought this show was so frickin' bizarre. Decades later, nothing has changed! Though I still think the special effect were darn good for the day and the costumes were some of the best ever made (Paramount must have thought so too, since Star Trek: The Motion Picture copied the general idea two years later)...

What's hilarious is that the excellent special effects shots we got must have been very expensive, because there are episodes where they have the characters stumbling around in the dark instead of inside an alien space ship or whatever. It definitely saved money! The writing in the first season was very smart. And one of the few episodes I remember in good detail was the fifth one (guest starring Christopher Lee!). What makes it so memorable is the ending, which is pretty brutal...

The show, which was always scientifically dicey, is ripe for a reboot. One day.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Teen Who Raped, Strangled and Brutalized 2 Girls Was Facing 7 Decades in Prison — Then a Judge Let Him Walk Free. "Violent criminals threatening American lives will be immediately deported! — Oh... he's white? And his dad was a beloved football coach? Never mind." — Amazing what passes for "justice" in this toxic shithole country. Between horrific bullshit like this and criminals being pardoned left and right not because they were wrongly imprisoned or their sentence was too harsh... but because they will be loyal to a politician... Justice is getting harder and harder to find. Read that headline again and tell me how even 70 years was enough time?

   
• Science Denial In Action. Just like Steve Jobs ignored science... at first... when it came to treating his cancer, so has Dilbert comic creator Scott Adams. And now that it's too late, he wants his buddy the president to intercede and get him the scientific treatment he needs, despite the reason he's likely being denied is because he wasted time thinking Ivermectin would cure him and now it's too late...

I don't get why people who reject science for curable diseases suddenly abandon all their "principles" when death is looming. I mean, you didn't think it would work then, but now you do? And when you've waited too long for science to work any more, then you're back to science being "bad." In the meanwhile, you've convinced other people who could have been cured to abandon science with you. That's incredibly shitty. Bad enough you let yourself die, worse you're taking others with you.

   
I guess that's all I got for the day. Good night.

Whenever Jenny has had enough of me petting her or holding her feet or whatever... she just starts kicking at me to get away while she makes her escape. It's a hilariously cat-like. They manipulate you into getting what they want. And if they don't want you around, they leave.

I can't help but feel I should be learning from that.

In other news... Jake puked on the warming pads I had put on the bed. Both of them!

After I took the covers off the pads to toss them in the wash, I went back upstairs and Jake was sitting on the warm spot left by one of the pads. I crawled back into bed to work for a while, at which point he plopped down next to me and fell asleep...

I think I mentioned how my cats are "talking" a lot more as they get older.

I've decided to talk back.

Jenny was hanging off the cat tree looking at Jake running down the stairs. I was on the couch and started meowing at her. She turned her head to look...

I kept talking to her, at which point she shifted her body more towards me... still hanging off the cat tree...

She doesn't talk back like Jake does. Instead she just looks at me like I'm a moron.

Which is also hilariously cat-like.

This morning I was awakened by Jake hacking up a hairball on the bed. He's been sleeping with me most every night, usually passing out at the blanket I have folded at the foot of the bed. All I could do was say "Good bear, you're puking on the bedding on bedding wash day!"

After wiping up the hairball and stripping the bed to toss everything in the washer, feeding the cats breakfast, and heading back up to get some work done, it started pouring down rain. This caused Jenny to run into the closet to hide, and Jake to hop up on the bed to snuggle up next to me...

And, oh yeah, now that it's colder out I unpacked the warming pads...

This makes them two very happy cats, even though you can't really see it on Jenny with her adorable resting bitch face.

Jake doesn't have a resting bitch face. But he does have a snaggletooth. Some of the time. But lately I've noticed that it's out of his mouth more and more... looking longer than it has in the past...

Weirdly adorable, I think.