sleepy pixie 🌟

There’s a lot of evidence that animals have regional accents. Both birds and sperm whales in fact to vocalise differently depending on where they grew up.

As for felines themselves, there’s an ongoing study underway on at Lund University precisely about this.

As a phonologist who has watched entirely too many cat videos on the internet, I can confirm that cats of differing countries do have differentiated accents in their cries. Felines in England tend to have shorter, lower “mow” whereas Japanese cats do tend to make glides into high vowels, and are sustained longer, such as the ubiqutous use of “nyaaaan” in Japanese onomatopoeia.

To which the manager (internally, because she doesn’t want to be fired), went “you’ve got to be fucking shitting me.”

Here’s the thing: it is totally possible to do a job for the passion and not be obsessively thinking about the money every minute of every day. In fact, there have been economic studies regarding that very thing.

You know when it starts?

When the employee in question is making $50-75k per year.*

That’s the starting point of financial security. That’s the point when you’re fairly secure that you’re going to have rent, food, and basic living expenses covered. 

I’ve worked a lot of jobs over the years. A lot. I saw the same working as a freelancer– when I charged lower rates, my clients treated me like shit and acted like they were doing me a favor; when I charged more, they respected me as a professional. A newspaper that started out paying me above market wage also treated me very kindly, because they started with the assumption that I was a human being who needs to eat.

In my experience, the employers that insist that your job be your “passion” are also the ones that pay you nothing and treat you like garbage. It’s exactly like abusive people, who tell you that you would put up with their abuse if you “loved them enough”. It’s a way of convincing the victim that they’re responsible for their own mistreatment, which is absolutely fucked up.

Here’s my advice to you: