"Etlu"

This Vulcan, I’m calling her T’Pen, goes to a shelter and gets a cat, and the shelter employees are like, a bit weirded out? But obviously they’re going to give her a cat, I mean, she’s a Vulcan, she’s Super Responsible, she takes all the pamphlets and listens attentively to all the advice the shelter employees give her, even though it is obvious she researched a lot on her own.

Then T’Pen asks the shelter folks what she should name the cat and runs into That Thing Humans Do Where They Confound a Vulcan With Their Weird Ways

Shelter Employee 1: oh, you can name a cat anything! That’s what’s great! People names, common nouns, whole phrases.

Shelter Employee 2: yeah, nothing sounds weird on a cat. Everything from Chad to Cupboard is fair game.

SE 1: yeah, I mean, you can’t call a dog Chad, that would be weird

SE 2: I wouldn’t fuckin’ trust anyone who named their dog Chad

SE 1: oh word

T’Pen:….

Vulcan Co-worker: T’Pen, what have you named this small Earth feline?

T’Pen: I have named him Marmalade.

Vucan co-worker: Is that not the name of a type of Terran fruit preserve? I do not understand the logic behind this choice.

T’Pen: the logic is self-evident to a human.

Human Co-worker: T’Pen, omg, you have a cat! What’s his name?

T’Pen: thank you for your inquiry. His name is Marmalade

Human Co-worker: oooh! yeah, that makes sense, because he’s orange and sweet! lmao, great name

Vulcan Co-worker: …

T’Pen: He has the peculiar habit of walking on my workstation.

Human: Aggravating, isn’t it?

T’Pen: We Vulcans do not feel human emotions. However, I would prefer it if Marmalade stayed off my workstation, particularly when I am working.

Human: Get a box.

T’Pen: Murdering Marmalade seems an overreaction.

Human: No, you need a box with interior dimensions approximately the same as Marmalade’s body, and set it on the floor next to your workstation. Marmalade will sit in the box.

T’Pen: Why do you believe that this will work for Marmalade?

Human: We don’t know. It’s just something cats do. If he fits, he sits.

T’pen: My colleagues are amused and entertained by Marmalade’s interactions with his environment. I am amused and entertained by their reactions as reflected in the comments.

Vulcan Commander (reading): “U haz done me a startle”?

T’Pen: Some of them like to verbalize what they believe are Marmalade’s thought processes. He is a cat, so they imagine that he does not grasp human spelling and grammar.

Vulcan Commander: … Fascinating. As you were. (signs off)

T’Pen: You have just eaten. Logic dictates that you should not yet be hungry.

Marmalade: Meeooowww!

T’Pen: I must remember that cats do not adhere to the dictates of logic, and adjust accordingly. However, I will not give you more food right now as that would be unhealthful.

Marmalade: *sad cat eyes*

T’Pen: You attempt to appeal to my emotional side, however you will find that your attempts will be fruitless.

T'Pen: I have noticed that among Marmalade’s curious habitual instincts is the desire to knock over glassware, including and especially when they are filled with liquid. Despite my attempts to train him out of this habit, I have found it unsuccessful. When I sought advice from my human coworkers, they simply said that all cats have this peculiarity, and thus advised I leave him in a separate part of the building when such events are to be held.

Marmalade, pawing at a see-through door: *Mreeeowwww!*

T'Pen: Despite this arrangement, he continues to loiter by the door in the apparent hope to, quote, “guilt-trip me” into allowing him complete access to all of the faculties of my domain.

Vet: ….Your cat chews on plastic so you’re worried that he’s an idiot?

T'Pen: As a Vulcan, I do not ‘worry’. I merely note possible negative situations and seek expert information on how best to approach them. (pause). That is an adequate rephrasing, yes.

Vet: He’s fine. Don’t let him eat plastic.

T'Pen: Are those two statements not contradictory?

Vet: It’s normal for cats to want to chew on plastic but you still shouldn’t let them. At least, not on regular household plastics. I can direct you to a few places to acquire cat-safe chew toys.

So my wife bought a different product ($30) and we were both put out that it came in such a small tube for the price. We decided we'd use it up before going back and getting the first goop again, even if it was more expensive. We did like that the small tube didn't have any residue afterward, but for the price we paid it still seemed like a rip off.

We have been. So wrong.

The tube has appeared like it should be empty for weeks. Yet every night, we convene in the bathroom for nightly goop. I hold out my finger and my wife squeezes the tube. Every night, there is enough.

When we first thought it was almost done we bought another tube. Even if it didn't last as long we liked that there wasn't a residue with it. But now that the first one still isn't empty it's clearly very good bang for our buck, because it is frankly staggering both of us that we still keep getting more out of what appears to be an empty tube.

Early on I joked it was a Hanukkah miracle but at this point eight days was over last month and we're gonna have to make a new holiday to liken this phenomenon to because this is the energizer bunny of goop.

You know what you are so right... We have a bond, these 50 rats and I....

OH SHIT OH NO

WAIT

Turtle Quilt by Laurraine Yuyama

What they did have was a single spare bed in the small, comfortable, quiet, wildly expensive facility for girls with eating disorders.

They asked each of the young women currently living there if it was acceptable that I might occupy a bed in one of the rooms for a while, just the long weekend while I was waiting for a doctor's evaluation. I hadn't been violent, I had gone with the cops without putting up any fight at all, and I was still and I was small and all those things were sufficient for me to be deemed safe. So up they sent me, to somewhere high in Western Psych, above the smells and sounds of the denser-packed wards, above where the care workers were harried and frustrated, to a gentle space with seven or eight young women in it.

I was five foot three, and I weighed about 115 pounds. I was underweight for my frame, as a fair amount of that weight was martial arts muscle; I would probably have been ten pounds heavier if I were healthy, with the amount of activity I got.

I was at least two inches shorter than pretty much every other young woman there, six or seven inches shorter than one of them, and I had at least thirty pounds on several of them. The tallest was not allowed to walk, she had to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed around, because her condition was so advanced that the motion would undo what good her hard work had done.

And over the course of the four or five days I was there, multiple of them came up to me alone to quietly tell me that I had the *perfect* body, and they wished they could be as skinny as I was. That I needed to live, because I was beautiful, and if they were as beautiful as I was, they wouldn't need to be here.

Their eyes were on me all the time, in the hours that I wasn't sleeping. I spent a lot of time sleeping, and we took our meals separately (I not needing to be monitored while I ate, and not having my food weighed), but we spent a fair amount of time sitting around in the little shared living room space, talking about movies and magazines and books we'd loved, talking about our families. I didn't talk about my family; they didn't pry.

They were all so fucking nice.

And I could have broken any one of them over my narrow knee. They each thought they were bigger than I was.

Their brains lied to them, every time they looked at a mirror. Every time they looked down at their own thighs. What they saw was not what I could see. They had bright, beautiful eyes in dark hollows, and I could count their vertebrae, could see their ribs winging when they breathed, could see the motion of every tendon on the backs of their hands.

They weren't celebrities. They weren't being paid to have particular bodies, nor were they deep in the toxic sea of having strangers take photos of them to sell to gossip rags if they stepped out of doors in old jeans. They had families and loved ones who were doing everything that they could to protect them, to uplift them and help them be healthy. They were just everyday people--a nurse, a couple of students, a couple of recent college grads, a young woman who had decided it was time to really get help because she wanted to be a mother--and still they'd been so injured by the neverending fucking deluge of body-image bullshit that they were dying of it.

A. Zombie bit you! 🧟

B. Safe

C. Zombie bit you! 🧟‍♀️

D. Safe

E. Safe

F. Safe

G. Zombie bit you! 🧟‍♂️

H. Zombie bit you! 🧟‍♀️

I. Safe

J. Safe

K. Zombie bit you! 🧟‍♂️