The Dog With A Blog

And we say yes, and he asks if we can blow them up, and we say yes, and direct him to where the balloons are and he goes and disappears into the store

Comes back not even a minute later. “Can somebody help me”

“Did you find the ones you were looking for so you can bring them up here?”

“I can show you”

So we’re like. Ok whatever. And my coworker goes over to the balloon counter to help this guy

And as she’s blowing up a latex balloon for him he goes, “how do you tie it? Can you show me how to untie it so I can suck the helium out?”

My coworker is, understandably, baffled, so the guy elaborates, “We’re doing an experiment,” as if that absolves him of all questioning

Coworker says “I’m not doing that.” Guy gets all huffy with her and asks why. Coworker is like, “we put GLUE inside the balloons and then put the helium in there you don’t want to ingest that”

And the guy goes, “can you just not put the glue in and just do the helium”

“No!!!”

“Why!?!?”

“It’s still bad for you??”

And he’s still not getting it. He’s like, GENUINELY confused by why she’s not giving him helium

And eventually my coworker’s like. “I’m not blowing these up, you can go to the grocery store or the dollar store but I’m not doing that.”

And the guy is all confused and sad like “I don’t understand” but eventually he storms off, baloonless, heliumless

Boy am i glad that the con has a facebook page so i can post this photo:

i

I befriended a feral cat once who had spent her life in the forest without human interaction. I was worried about her because she had a paw damaged from an old injury and was emaciated but obviously nursing kittens that were hidden away somewhere. It took me weeks of putting out food and sitting across the yard every evening for her to trust me even a little and when she decided we were friends and she expected dinner every night she started coming to my door and trying to call for me in the evening, but she didn’t meow. Why would she? Cats only meow naturally as kittens when their vocal chords/ears aren’t fully developed, adult cats communicate with vocalizations that aren’t audible to humans. She probably tried making noises I couldn’t hear to call me but ended up sticking to the one I always responded to- a horrible yowling growl that she had made at me when we first encountered each other in the forest. Except once we were friends she would make this noise while purring and rubbing affectionately against a nearby tree or the porch railing (because she didn’t want to touch me yet). This understandably freaked my family members out but I was touched that she had taken the time to find a way to basically yell FUCK OFF in an affectionate way.

Fast forward to when she finally trusts me enough to bring her hidden kittens out of the forest to me, long story short I gained their trust and put them in this big pen, that I had previously used to keep chickens in, so they’d be safe and to keep her from having another litter. Except she was already secretly pregnant again! (Fix your pets, guys, they make SO many babies) and ended up having her new babies in this pen. I kept my distance, sitting on the outside once they were born until she seemed comfortable enough to let me come inside. The kittens were a bit wild, hissing viscously at me as soon as they opened their eyes, but they warmed up to me. There were four of them and soon they all wanted to be the center of attention during the twice daily play sessions. I’d be playing with one and another would meow insistently behind me and I’d immediately answer them and give them love, teaching them that humans could be friends that answer their needs- making them adoptable once they were weaned. Mama cat (Artie) would just watch me play with them, and I guess she was doing some thinking because one day when they were about a month old I was playing with them and one meowed behind me. I was confused because I hadn’t realized there was a kitten behind me and when I turned, there wasn’t. The only cat there was Artie looking at me really intensely. I turned back around to the kittens and I heard the meow again, I turned back to Artie and responded in the way I always did with the kittens “yes baby?” And she meowed again in an exact imitation of her kittens! After that she would.not.shut.up. It was like she had cracked some kind of code, meowing for attention and snacks and just to say hi. Her two older kittens, the ones she’d had in the forest, had never meowed at me either but started to once they saw how I responded to their mom. and I find it endlessly fascinating because before that it had never occurred to me that cats only meow at humans because they were taught by other cats to keep meowing past kittenhood because that’s the best way to get a human’s attention.