It's Cheddar

good things will happen 🧿

I've been using the pet poison hotline's poison list cause it has a search function. It also tells you whether something is mildly, moderately, or severely toxic which can be very handy! It doesn't contain like everything but it might be a good place to start, it also includes plants for fellow houseplant lovers <3

few years ago when i was freaking out because my cat devoured a lot of garlic (in sufficient quantities this makes cats' blood stop working, and she stole a whole garlic-encrusted chicken thigh and devoured before anyone noticed) the vet told me that a lot of resources about cats eating garlic online are framed for the benefit of dietary supplement dipshits (she did not say this word) who are so convinced of the Inherent Health Benefits of garlic that they are, in fact, feeding their cat huge quantities on purpose, over an extended period.

Is anyone else starting to feel kind of wary about the increasingly common narrative that "women's bodies are so different to men's that modern scientific recommendations do not apply to them"?

And that's how grifters de-politicise what is a highly political problem (and not an isolated one: medical misogyny relates to medical racism relates to medical ableism relates to medical transphobia). By not acknowledging medicine's status quo as political and capable of being changed through sustained, collective action, they make being (or more truly, looking) healthy seem like just another aestheticised consumer choice. That's why so much wellness bullshit looks aspirational in advertising terms, with visible ageing and disability as sticks, and Eurocentric beauty standards and the easeful performance of apparent health as carrots. At the core of "wellness" as an industry is the idea that we can buy our way out of the health inequalities imposed on us by inequitable systems of medical research, education and practice. Wellness gurus don't want us sitting down and thinking about how our historic exclusion from studies has skewed the data, but we can get better data by pushing for more representative studies - as is already happening, e.g. the growth of scholarship (increasingly led or coproduced by people directly affected) on subjects like perimenopause, autistic health inequalities (and their often gendered nature), and Black maternal health inequalities.

thinking about the time a former housemate said to me "hey I put these box fans in the living room because it's hot" while gesturing to the fans that I was actively sitting in front of because it was hot. and I said "okay thanks." and she kept standing there like she was waiting for something else so I said "am I blocking the airflow? do you need me to move?" and she said no I'm just letting you know they're here, in the living room, for circulation. and I said well yes, I did put that together. I am enjoying them. thank you. and she looked confused. so I asked "am I meant to do something with this information or are you just informing me?" and she said no I'm letting you know they're here because It's Hot In Here. she seemed a bit aggravated, and her emphasis seemed deliberate.

I have observed enough allistic communication to know that generally, if somebody points something out to you that you can already see or are already clearly interacting with, they are making an indirect request. but as I don't know what the request is, the only way forward is for me to guess (and likely get it wrong), or prompt the allistic to tell me clearly what they need.

y’all.

I even thought to myself “maybe it was me?” because of my ADHD. but shutting doors and gates is one of my ONLY reliable habits because i’ve been on farms my whole life.