Because I Am Too Many

The Babes: Patriot and Kahlo

Patriot, a black American shorthair, was adopted nearly six years ago to the day from a nationally recognized pet adoption center despite the adoption associate’s urging that I shouldn’t do so because, as she said, it was inevitable that he would die and would do so soon. Obviously I took him home anyway. Best decision.

Black cats, of any age, are the least adopted and the most euthanized in American shelters, simply because of their color and the superstitions, stereotypes, and stigma surrounding it. 

See here for more on Patriot’s story.

Kahlo, a tabby-patterned American shorthair, was adopted just over a year ago from a local shelter. Though in much better shape than Patriot had been, she was still one of he least healthy animals at the shelter and the most fearful of people. Now, just over a year later, she is happy and healthy.

It’s August 17th, which is Black Cat Appreciation Day! Though it may seem a silly sort of holiday to have, there is good cause behind it. And to prove it, I’d like to share my story. Well, not my story, but Patriot’s.

You see, when I was in high school, my family decided that I needed to get a pet, a sort of unofficial therapy animal, to help me deal with some mental and emotional health issues I was having at the time. Though I was reluctant at first - it was only a few months before I would leave for university after all - I went to a local pet adoption organization to pick out a cat to bring home.

I almost left empty-handed. Yes, there were a lot of very cute kittens at the shelter, but they were all dead fast asleep, and I was interested in having a cat with a little more oomph. Or so I told myself. But taking a last look, I saw a small cage in the corner with two kittens inside, one of which had climbed as high on the bars as he could and was crying for attention. And, as stupid as it sounds, I knew. And the conversation I had with the associate while I held him only made me more adamant.

I was told not to adopt him; she politely informed me that he was going to die. And soon. Now, I admit, I can be very stubborn and have a severe soft spot for lost-cause animals, so naturally I didn’t listen. I named him Patriot, and I took him home. And my family, expecting an adorable, soft little kitten, were more than a little shocked to see this:

(Please excuse the bad quality of the pictures; I had a shit camera phone back then.)

Yeah, looking back on it, he looked pretty bad, to say the least. His face, as you can see, was gaunt, nothing but eyes and ears. He was so malnourished that you could easily see and feel every rib; so thin that within an hour of it being inserted, the shelter’s mandatory tracking chip simply fell out. Covered in fleas, ears filled with mites, a skin infection, a sore on his shoulder so bad it was open to the muscle, a bacteria in his gut plus worms. And though the shelter associate had assured me that he was three months old (the minimum age, as I’ve been told, for a cat to be neutered/spayed - which he was), the veterinarian determined that he was far younger than that.

Needless to say, we went through a lot of medications and were at the vet a lot. Some of my friends upon seeing him for the first time refused to touch him at all, let alone pet him. My parents were secretly worried that he wouldn’t make it and were even more worried about the effect that that would have on me. I was invested - wholeheartedly.

After a year, I was finally able to say that Patriot was healthy.

I won’t lie: it was difficult. But it was so much more than the work it took to get him healthy. Looking back, I don’t remember the times I woke up extra early to make sure he got his meds before my carpool, all the vet visits, or even how many pitying stares we got both from family and friends and strangers at the clinic. But I do remember a kitten who would perch on my shoulder as I walked around the house, cuddled close against my neck even as we slept at night. I remember a tiny black kitten who was afraid of the dark and would cry until either a light was turned on or he found someone to snuggle with. I remember a growing, healthier kitten who would meet me at the door when I came home from school every day in high school and every weekend in university.

And now it’s August 17th, 2015. Patriot is six years old now, six years older than he would have lived if I had listened to that associate. Which brings me to the reason why I’m posting his story: Black cats, of any age, are the least adopted and the most euthanized in American shelters, simply because of their color and the superstitions, stereotypes, and stigma surrounding it. Which is, needless to say, fucking stupid. I’ve had numerous animals, of all kinds and colors, throughout the years, and Patriot is by far the most loving, loyal animal that I have ever had - dogs included. At six years old, he still sleeps snuggled as close as he can get into my neck, still excitedly meets me at the door every time I come home, whether it’s from work or grocery shopping or whatever. As I’m typing this, he’s curled up dozing at my feet.

I know that there are a lot of more pressing issues going on in the world right now, causes more important than how people look at and behave toward black cats. But that doesn’t mean that the issue of how we look at and behave toward black cats isn’t important. That any person should reject another creature solely because of a social stigma or because someone with any measure of authority or influence does so themselves is difficult for me to understand, let alone condone, especially when that creature, much like Patriot, would thrive from steady, constant compassion.

If you are looking to adopt an animal, please consider giving a home to a black cat. (I promise you, the vast majority are, unlike Patriot, healthy.) If you know someone else who is looking to adopt an animal, please encourage them to consider adopting a black cat. And if neither of these apply to you, please tell someone about Black Cat Appreciation Day and why it’s not such a silly holiday to have.

plus, you can look at it in 3d!

theres a lot of viewing options and other things! theres an option on-site to take a screenshot, so you don’t have to have a program for that!

Oh man. Okay. You didn’t ask for a rant, but it is ABSOLUTELY RANTING TIME because I’ve been travelling for four fucking days, I’m already angry, and I have a lot of feelings about this issue. To be clear I’m not ranting at you, I’m just ranting. In general. At everyone.

First and foremost: Romeo and Juliet is a really fucking complex play, and trying to say it’s strictly one thing or the other is like saying the Civil War was strictly about slavery. (If you disagree take a fucking history class–like, yes, dude, slavery was a HUGE part of the conflict, but was it the sole cause? No. Politics and economics, motherfuckers.) It’s simplistic and reductionist. This is the biggest problem with R & J analysis–people spend a metric ass-ton of time arguing that it’s one thing or the other without admitting the possibility that it could be both. 

Emma Smith, who’s a lectuerer at Oxford, does this amazing series of podcasts called Approaching Shakespeare (which you should absolutely download and listen to if you haven’t already, they’re free) and in her R & J lecture she talks a lot about how it actually plays like a comedy until the crucial turning point of Mercutio’s death in Act III. That’s when everything goes off the rails: Romeo kills Tybalt, he’s banished, Juliet is betrothed to Paris, and it sets off a chain-reaction of catastrophes. Before that, the play looks like a classic romantic farce, complete with forbidden love and oblivious parents and every trope of the genre dating all the way back to commedia dell’arte. So is it partly a comedy? Absolutely. But that’s what makes it so fucking tragic. Would we care half so much what happens to Mercutio or even Romeo if we hadn’t seen them so delightedly playing with each other three or four scenes before the fatal duel? Would Juliet’s death be half so devastating if we didn’t see her as an eager, excited girl, nervous to meet her lover for the first time? Hell no. Mercutio dies and Romeo dies and Juliet dies and it’s all absolutely gut-wrenching because they were alive and well and laughing only half an hour ago. 

This sort of brings me to my second argument, which is with the heartless shitheads who think Romeo and Juliet are just a couple of stupid horny teenagers. (I talked about this briefly in this post here but I want to expand on it.) Romeo and Juliet are not just a couple of stupid horny teenagers. They are a couple of stupid horny teenagers, but they are also in love. For fuck’s sake, do you not remember what it was like to be fifteen? Yes, your hormones were all over the fucking place but so were your emotions. Are they really impatient to get in each other’s pants? Duh. Look at Juliet’s monologue when she’s gearing up for the wedding night:

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging: such a wagoner 1720As Phaethon would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, That runaway’s eyes may wink and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen.

THIRSTY. AS. FUCK. 

But why for the love of Eros should that mean they’re not also head over fucking heels for each other? Isn’t that the dream??? To be married to someone you not only want to bang into oblivion but also someone you love so much that you’d literally die without them? Listen the fuck up R & J haters, because love and lust are not mutually exclusive, and if you think they are, I pity you, because you must have one hell of an empty love life one way or the other. (Unless you’re ace or aro or something in which case you’re probably doing just fine all by your bad self, rock on.) If you want proof that they’re in love, just keep reading. Look at the end of this same goddamn monologue:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night, Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Bro, nobody says that shit about someone they just want to play tonsil hockey with. Every instance of their language towards each other illustrates a consuming, intense (if naive) kind of love. Look at the balcony scene, when Juliet tells Romeo that if he were her pet bird, she would be afraid of killing him by pressing him too tightly in her hand. What does he say in reply? I would I were thy bird. That’s all he wants. When they meet, their first lines to each other form a perfect sonnet. The sonnet was the most romantic poetic form of the time and I fucking refuse to believe that Shakespeare would have wasted one on ‘just a couple of horny teenagers.’ 

More to the point, if Romeo and Juliet aren’t in love, the play simply doesn’t work. If Juliet was just a pretty face and a quick fuck, why is banishment worse than death to Romeo? Why does he try so hard not to fight with Tybalt? He goes fucking mental when he learns that Juliet is ‘dead.’ HE BUYS FUCKING POISON, JOY-RIDES BACK TO VERONA, THREATENS TO LITERALLY RIP HIS SERVANT TO PIECES IF HE TRIES TO STOP HIM GOING IN THE CRYPT, MURDERS PARIS, DRAGS HIS BODY INTO THE TOMB, CRIES OVER JULIET’S BODY AND THEN FUCKING OFFS HIMSELF TO BE WITH HER AGAIN. YOU DON’T DO THAT SHIT FOR SOME PIECE OF ASS YOU MET ON TINDER. It’s love. It’s young love and it’s messy and impulsive and irrational, but it is love. Shakespeare isn’t George R. R. Martin, this isn’t Game of Fucking Thrones. Death and sex are not schlock gimmicks to get good ratings. 

But let me be clear: Just like Romeo and Juliet are not just horny teenagers, their story is not just a love story. It’s a didactic tale about the perils of holding a grudge. The ongoing feud between the Capulets and the Montagues has a body count before the play even begins, as we’re told by Prince Escalus, and it takes literally the gruesome deaths of these noble families’ two youngest children–not to mention Tybalt, Paris, and Mercutio–to bring them to their fucking senses and put the bad blood behind them. It’s a love story but it’s much more than that. It’s a cautionary tale against grudges, against revenge, against civil war, and so many things that are so much bigger than the two title characters. 

Like anything else in Shakespeare, you can read it a million different ways. But I think if you reduce it to a cynical satire about the idiocy of youth, you are doing Shakespeare a great disservice by willfully misinterpreting some pretty significant chunks of the text (because he couldn’t possibly be serious about these two young lovers), and you are doing yourself a great disservice by completely missing the passion of the play–and a much bigger picture. 

‘My Hijab Has Nothing To Do With Oppression. It’s A Feminist Statement’

Not all Muslim women cover their bodies. Not all Muslim women who do are forced to do so. Like freelance writer Hanna Yusuf, who chooses to wear a hijab in a daily act of feminism. In a new video for The Guardian, Yusuf challenges stereotypes by setting out to reclaim the choice to wear a hijab as “a feminist statement.”

- often when a teenager (male or female) puts on some fat it’s in preparation for a growth spurt. Grownups know this. 

- teenagers grow in weird gawky ways, like a girl’s hips will spread out and look “fat” until her legs get longer, or they’ll shoot up super tall and then slowly put on muscle and fat. Grownups know this. 

- it’s very common for a women’s body weight to fluctuate plus or minus 5% with her menstrual cycle

- South African feminist Bernadette Mosala

I really love this guy.

“He leant tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis.”

“Stones, then rocks, then boulders which pranced past him like clumsy puppies, only much, much bigger, much, much harder and heavier, and almost infinitely more likely to kill you if they fell on you.”

“He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.”

“It looked only partly like a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on, and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.”