#very occasionally

So in less than a month, the kitties and I will be moving to a new house. I'm very excited about the impending move! The kitties very much would not be, if they knew about it.

Those of you who've been following me since 2020 may remember the last time I tried to move my kitties (who were born feral and have never fully recovered). That attempt resulted in me spending the first day of covid lockdown getting emergency hand surgery after Bennet administered some truly epic bites.

I've known for some time that I was going to have to try again to move the cats eventually. Because a while ago, I bought a house on the same block as my polycule and started renovating it. And I hoped to someday finish those renovations and move in. But -- the cats! Or, mostly: but -- Bennet! (Winter can be picked up and put into a carrier with only mild trouble. And back when I thought I would be moving three kitties, we were sometimes able to capture Tico.)

I thought for a while that I'd come up with a clever solution. During renovations, I frequently had to hire a vet tech to come give Tico insulin injections when I wasn't home. And I thought, "Oh good -- all the cats will all get used to the vet tech, and then the vet tech can help me move all the cats, because she's much better at catching and handling struggling animals than I am."

One problem: the vet tech was never able to even catch sight of Bennet, no matter how much time she spent here.

I thought I had another solution. I bought big leather gloves. I started wearing them for long periods of time and trying to pet/brush/feed Bennet, so that she'd get used to them.

Turns out, though, that Bennet will not be in the same room as me if I'm wearing the gloves.

I did also try all the more standard advice -- feeding them inside their carriers so that the carriers stop freaking them out, and giving them treats regularly inside the carriers.

But Bennet just giraffes her little calico neck way out whenever the food is in the carrier, and she eats without ever placing her feet inside.

Bennet is also the least food-motivated cat I've ever met, and she is highly suspicious of treats. This makes it extremely hard to mix sedatives into her food, because she simply won't eat if anything tastes at all weird.

But she can only avoid food for so long (I presume).

So I'm going extreme: I've got out the Big Trap.

It's a bit Looney Tunes, I know.

For now, it's very solidly propped up. All their cat food will be inside this thing for the next couple weeks. Bennet will have to get used to going inside... and as the food moves further from the entrance, her giraffe-neck trick will only get her so far.

Sometime in the couple of days before the movers arrive, I will remove the extra props. I will hold a very long piece of string attached to the remaining leg that holds the trap up. I will wait for as many hours as necessary, until Bennet goes inside. And then -- boom.

(What then? Well, then you throw a blanket over the drop trap, and you attach a separate carrier to the door on the side of the drop trap, and then you remove the door between the trap and the carrier. And supposedly most freaked out cats will run out of the blanket-covered drop trap and into the carrier, especially if you put one of their favorite towels inside the carrier, and treats, and such. Bennet is hardly Most Cats, so there remains some question in my mind about that part? I think I will add a hard surface underneath the trap and the food soon, and then worst case I may end up nailing the dropped trap to that board and loading the whole darn thing into the moving truck. But assuming I do manage to capture them, there is an easy-to-close-off room where the cats can stay until the rest of the move is finished, so at least that part is figured out.)

Right now, Winter is nervous but accepting -- so long as I stay back in the living room. She's been pretty far inside the trap a few times and has sniffed everything extensively, though she prefers to sit outside while she eats.

(The feeders will be migrating to the back of the trap over time.)

Bennet, so far, is having none of it.

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: ATEEZ (Band) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kim Hongjoong/Park Seonghwa Characters: Park Seonghwa, Kim Hongjoong  Summary:

“Liar. I know you.”

And Hongjoong does, doesn’t he? Sometimes better than Seonghwa feels he knows himself. It’s a beautiful thing, to know and be known. It makes him want to dig inside of himself, to find his core—bloody and beating and red. What are the things that make him him? What would he find in the loamy dirt? How far would he have to go?

Would it feel true? ______

...Jin Guangyao is the one who knows and shares (or at least claims) that Mo Xuanyu saw it. How would he know, if it was Nie Huaisang who showed him?

What if Jin Guangyao put the idea of resurrecting Wei Wuxian into Mo Xuanyu's head originally? Mo Xuanyu was useless to him and also...

There is only one other illegitimate son of Jin Guangshan's canonically introduced. While he likely had other bastards, it could reasonably be assumed this means Mo Xuanyu. And, if the implication here is that he'd pick someone else but not Jin Guangyao, but when Mo Xuanyu is disqualified then he does pick Jin Guangyao... maybe he DIDN'T have other sons, just daughters.

And if Jin Guangshan brought Mo Xuanyu to Lanling to be his successor, passing over Jin Guangyao... doesn't that out the "he made advances" thing in a new light, and doesn't it put Jin Guangyao being the one who knows Mo Xuanyu was looking at the sacrifice/resurrection manuscript in a new light?

There's a lot of ways this could be interpreted and ways these pieces could add up, but I'm going with...

Jin Guangyao recognized how childhood abuse had left Mo Xuanyu mentally unwell. He also knew Jin Guangshan wanted Mo Xuanyu to inherit. He figured out Mo Xuanyu was gay (or invented it whole, we never actually find out if he was actually gay, just that everyone believed him to be, in the "usually what everyone believes is bullshit" book), and used that to get him disinherited, leaving Jin Guangyao as the last inheritor. At the same time, he noted Mo Xuanyu's darker tendencies and he as trying to figure out the Yin Tiger Tally with Xue Yang, so he planted the seeds that Mo Xuanyu could resurrect Wei Wuxian. Had this happened in Lanling, it could potentially have been really helpful to getting power; Wei Wuxian doesn't have much of any reason to distrust Jin Guangyao if the main plot doesn't happen, and we know Xue Yang is incredibly capable of charming the socks off people who don't know he's a monster. And they both believe Wei Wuxian is swayable by flattery (whether that's true or not, they clearly think so) so if they butter him up and he only knows what he knew from his first life, this plan could even have worked.

But then other plans and events overtook this plan - Xue Yang being driven from Lanling, Jin Guangshan's death, Nie Mingjue's death - so it became unnecessary, and then Mo Xuanyu was just an annoyance and a reminder that Jin Guangshan would have put this little loser above Jin Guangyao - so he's sent back to Mo Manor and, well, comes up with his own plan to use what he's learned to get revenge his own way.

The "Nie Huaisang set up Mo Xuanyu" thing has never sat great with me and never seemed well supported by canon to me, even though it's the standard accepted explanation, and idk, spotting these two panels while reading the manhua today got me thinking.

That said, I can't recall the implication that Jin Guangshan was looking to make Mo Xuanyu his heir being in the book. That would weaken all this.

But. Yeah. Alternative explanation for Mo Xuanyu's entire thing (while still leaving Nie Huaisang somewhere in the background since how else did the arm end up at Mo Manor?)...idk. I feel like this is about has solid and supported explanation as "Nie Huaisang showed him the sacrifice ritual."