master fufu-er

Panel one: "HARD TO LOVE" simple drawing of a cat curled up on a cane "DISABILITY AND CATS"

Panel two: "SOMETIMES, I THINK I'M HARD TO LOVE" drawing of a person with shortish hair sitting on the ground facing away from the viewer "MY BODY DOESN'T WORK LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO"

Panel three: drawing of the same person hunched over what looks like maybe a calendar with their head in their hand and question marks over their head "I FORGET THINGS" "I MOVE SLOW" drawing of the same person walking with a bag and a cane. Drawing of the same person hunched over to grab something off the floor with their hand on their back and lines indicating pain coming off of them "IT HURTS TO DO THINGS MOST PEOPLE DO EASILY"

Panel four: "MY CAT'S BODY ALSO DOESN'T WORK LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO" drawing of a cat with part of one ear missing sitting up and looking at the viewer

Panel five: "HE DOESN'T REMEMBER THINGS" Drawing of the same cat looking at the ground with question marks over his head indicating confusion with what looks like a food bowl in the background. I think this is meant to be the cat having trouble finding the food bowl. Drawing of the same cat falling gracelessly on his face. "HE'S CLUMSY" "HE CAN'T DO THINGS THAT OTHER CATS CAN DO" drawing of the same cat stretching up towards what looks like a counter. I think this is meant to be the cat having trouble getting up on to the counter.

Panel six: "AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH" drawing of the person holding the cat up, touching their faces together. there is a heart symbol above their heads likely indicating fondness, affection, or love

Panel seven: "SO MAYBE" drawing of the person with the cat in their lap, petting him, facing the viewer this time "IT'S NOT TOO HARD TO LOVE ME"

@post-brahminism check it

And that zero experience turned out to be a problem, because we hadn't had much to do with birds and the thing about a bird's feathers, right, is that you've got a feather that sits in a little sheath thing that's rooted in the body. So what you want to do is pull the feather and sheath both out. But if you're a little kid who's never done this before, all too often, the feather comes out and leaves the sheath in the body. So we'd be doing our best but the ducks would come out maybe a quarter plucked properly and otherwise still full of these feather sheaths, and then it's a matter of going back and pulling all these little sheaths out.

I remember quite clearly, my mother and aunt helping us with this part, because it's fiddly and we were taking forever. They'd take the plucked ducks and re-pluck them properly. And I remember my mum making a remark to my aunt (not maliciously, she didn't know I could hear and was just making conversation), "You know, it would've been easier for us to just do it from the start and not have to deal with all these fiddly little bits." And she was absolutely right -- my brother and I were involved for our benefit in the same way you get a young kid to "help" wash the dishes, we were learning a life skill. But even though we'd done most of the work, we'd removed most of the unwanted mass from the duck's skin, we'd actually made things harder. We'd removed all the feathers and a quarter of the sheaths, but the sheaths are much easier to remove with the feathers attached, so working on a "mostly plucked" duck was a lot more work for the adults than just doing the whole duck from scratch would have been.