themistoklis

Acrylic Earrings

HOCUS POCUS (1993) dir. Kenny Ortega

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.

When Mr. Oogie Boogie says

There's trouble close at hand

You'd better pay attention now

'Cause I'm the Boogie Cat...🎶

...And if you aren't shakin'

There's something very wrong

'Cause this may be the last time

You hear the boogie song...🎶

...Meooow (meow)

Meooow (meow)

MeoooOow (meow)

Good question, also no that won’t help.

shitty MS Paint 3 minutes doodle, nto entirely accurate: When you have your pinky hooked on the “bottom” edge of the phone for the extra security so it doesn’t slide out of your hand that easily, you’re wreaking damage on your hand, since the pinky is extremely askew from it’s resting position. You might have noticed that when you hold your phone like that for long time it begins to hurt, like when you are gripping a pen too tightly for example.

Crocodiles swim way faster than you think.

Something I made while dealing with my own stuff and hoping drawing this would pick me up somehow. Maybe it worked.

I started cracking my knuckles in fifth grade. My parents asked me why, and I told them it made the pain go away. My parents told me that I was too young for my joints to hurt, and that I would ruin them if I kept cracking them.

By the time was fourteen or fifteen and entering high school, I hadn’t stopped cracking my knuckles. The hurt more, and the relief was more. I was convinced that I had arthritis.

My parents told me that I was too young to have arthritis.

Fast forward thirty seven years when my joints take a dive and I cannot even get out of bed on some days. I take chemo therapy pills twice a week, and I have two injections of chemotherapy ever four months. I have to take two medications every day just to manage the pain the chemotherapy doesn’t cover.

This at least allows me to get out of bed and on most days it allows me to go to school. It doesn’t make the pain go away, and on bad days I want to cry it gets so bad.

The diagnosis? Early Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis.

It went unchecked for twenty five years, my immune system eating away at my joints like a buffet even though I wanted to go to the doctor from day one.

If I had gone to the doctor and I had been wrong - they found nothing - well, we would have been out a few bucks for the doctor’s visit.If I was right - and I was right - I would have been treated for 20 years.

If I had gone to the doctor on my insistence that I had arthritis at fifteen, I would not be in pain today. This would have been treated twenty years go.

Do I support minor self diagnosis?

Yes. Absolutely.

I would rather a minor self diagnose and be wrong than a minor ignore their body and suffer for 20 years like me. No one is harmed by listening to a minor and taking their concerns seriously. But that minor might be harmed for the rest of their life you ignore them.