Sunday Coffee – Judging Books By Their Covers

Posted on August 28, 2022 by Thistle

They say not to do it, right? But we all do. There are who marketing and design teams dedicated to getting book covers right for a target audience. Slap an old painting and a script font on Wuthering Heights, and you’ve got a perfectly acceptable and common version of a classic novel. Give it a cloth cover with curling metal vines, and you have a special edition. But put a Twilight-esque cover of a bloody rose and gothic script, complete with tagline “love never dies,” and suddenly you’re marketing this same classic novel to a YA audience that never would have picked up either of those previous versions. (No, I did not make that up. Google it.)

Now of course, covers only give us initial impressions. They’re meant to draw us in, to get us to read the contents inside. When a cover doesn’t do well – or when it’s aimed at a different target audience – we’re less likely to pick the book up. Target audiences change over time, as well as preferences in aesthetics. Consequently, book covers get updated all the time as well, if the market warrants it.

I bring this up because of a particular book that came to my notice recently: The Killings at Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham. This mystery was original published in 1987, and has been made into a TV series since 1997. Tbh, I’d never heard of the show until recently, maybe the last year or two, when suddenly it seems to be everywhere. I couldn’t say if there’s been an increase in popularity, or if it’s just come to my attention so I’ve noticed it more. I’ve never seen the show, but it didn’t surprise me when I saw The Killings of Badger’s Drift show up on an Audible sale. Nor did it surprise me that this particular cover mentioned the TV show.

Because I wasn’t sold on the audio version, I checked if the book was available through the library, and it was – with an entirely different kind of cover. Whereas the one above is exactly the kind of cover that would draw me in, the old cover has an entirely different vibe. The old one reminds me of elderly ladies and British tea parties and dull dullness, whereas the new one evokes a bit of spooky whimsy and sharp death and good fun. If I’d only seen the old cover, I wouldn’t have picked up the book at all without further recommendation from readers I trust. As it is, I picked up the book based on the new cover alone.

[Notably, I didn’t end up reading this book. I read the prologue, which read far more like the second cover than the first. Then I was so irritated by the “hide the secret from the reader” trope (you never find out what the narrator of the prologue saw that freaked her out) that I returned the book to the library. Likely I would have read further if 1) the writing style was super 80s, which isn’t my favorite, and 2) I read a few spoilers that made me uninterested in continuing.]

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Destruction, Destruction…

Posted on August 26, 2022 by Thistle

Oy. Well, the land-clearing outside my fence has continued since my last post. The photo collage shows the picture I took a couple days ago vs one I took yesterday. As you can see, they cut the big tree down. I was hoping they’d leave that one up. Not only was it 40-50 feet tall, well-established, healthy, and beautiful, but a whole flock of mourning doves lived there. In fact, all last night, I watched mourning doves fly in and circle, trying to find their former perches. It was just so sad as they got confused and wobbled their way to nearby trees, then took off to circle and search again. Anyway, it’s frustrating and annoying, to see this happening to the trees that didn’t really need felling, but the situation goes beyond that.

Who in their right mind, when cutting down a tree with a chainsaw, pushes said tree toward a path that will cause property damage? WTF?

So when I heard the chainsaw going outside my house yesterday, I went back to my room to get photos/video, and I’m glad I did, because I witnessed everything that happened. I watched the guy with the chainsaw step up to look around before he pushed the tree. I saw him choose the direction to push, so that the trunk would be parallel with the fence line, rather than out into the field where there’d be no possibility of damage. I took a photo of the big tree the very second it began falling, and by the time I switched my phone to video, the tree had already hit our fence.

Now, our fence wasn’t in the greatest shape to begin with, but it was all upright, with a working gate. We had one plank removed to allow the feral cats to go in and out, but that was deliberate. The tree knocked three planks free completely, ripped out an entire panel, and knocked some posts askew so that the gate will no longer open. Not to mention, a tree branch smashed half a panel away, a bunch of branches were torn off two trees in our yard, and two of our new plumbago bushes got squashed.

I had to go out and get the man’s attention, which then led to me talking to two other men (who treated me alternatively like a – sorry for the use of the word – Karen for asking for their company name, and a stupid little woman who couldn’t possibly understand that my fence wasn’t REALLY damaged and all they had to do was put some nails in). Long story short, it’s an ongoing mess. Thankfully, our outdoor camera caught the entire thing on video, planks blowing out at the smash, branch ripping away part of the wood, etc. As I type this, some guys from the company are out at the fence trying to see if they can get away with cheap repairs instead of replacing the parts that they destroyed. They clearly don’t want to take responsibility and they think that since our fence was in poor condition before the tree fell on it, they shouldn’t have to. Um, no. That’s not how that works. It’s not like we’re asking them to to replace the half of the fence that the tree didn’t fall onto, and that’s the side that was in really bad repair.

This morning, the doves are still circling and trying to find their tree. I was up super early because the lack of tree-line meant I got a lot more sun around the edges of my curtains from the now-empty sky. Not to mention the much louder noises of traffic that I can now hear from the highway – noises that used to be almost nonexistent. Lord Grey is missing his breakfast because the workers are investigating the fence issue, and last night he actually took refuge in our yard because the woods outside it – his former kingdom – had been destroyed. The whole situation is just so sad and unnecessary.

So why are they doing this? We don’t know, but after talking with multiple workers from the land-clearing agency (who, the boss claimed, didn’t know who hired them, just “some guy named Cody.” Sure, dude…), we’re under the impression that the electrical union, who owns the land, is clearing it to sell because it’s more valuable now that it sits between a neighborhood and an apartment complex. I don’t know where it’ll go from there. But honestly, it’s just another nail in the coffin of “gotta move away from here.”

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Construction, Destruction

Posted on August 23, 2022 by Thistle

Yesterday, Laurence and I returned home from an appointment to discover that there was some kind of construction going on behind our house. The above picture shows what things looked like in April 2021. There’s a dense tree patch right behind the fence, followed by woodsy scrubland. That used to go all the way to the highway, which was quite some distance, but early in 2022, some construction began. An apartment complex was going up, which meant a lot of the woods and scrubland were being bulldozed to the ground.

I discussed this a little back in March. It’s when I started seeing all the cats in our yard, and began to try to TNR and provide a safe space for displaced feral colonies. In the end, most of those cats must have found food sources elsewhere, because only one, Lord Grey, adopted our yard and the woods behind our yard as his home base. We feed him twice a day, and provide water 24/7 for him and all the other animals who stop by overnight (foxes, raccoons, possums, skunks, and armadillos). The birds and squirrels also share the cat food during the day, whatever pellets Lord Grey leaves behind, and the system has been mutually beneficial for everyone.

In the beginning, we worried that this construction would rip out all the green space, but it seemed to stop and leave a generous strip between the new apartment buildings and my neighborhood. For half a year, we haven’t worried. Then we came home yesterday to find some kind of bulldozer and claw machine ripping down the trees right behind ours and our neighbors’ fences.

(this morning’s view)

Thankfully, they didn’t (yet) rip out the very tall tree that all the mourning doves roost in. They stopped and went around that tree and the cedar that’s between it and our fence. I don’t think their machine could get through. But later in the day, a man came by with a chainsaw to cut more things down and drag out larger limbs and trunks. Again, he seemed to stop right before the big tangle of trees on the west side of the fence, but the crew will be back. In fact, I already hear chainsaw noise in the distance this morning – and by the time I finished writing this post, they were directly behind my fence, severing more trees and limbs. Who knows what the view from my deck will look like tonight, or tomorrow, or next week? I’m not sure what the goal of this is – to cut everything down and expand the buildings all the way to our fence-lines? To thin out the green space only? To manicure the green space into something to they can market to potential renters?

One positive note. We didn’t know if little Lord Grey would be back, now that his habitat has been largely cut down, but he did return for food this morning. I can’t say for sure if he’ll keep returning, given that this seems to be an ongoing process. But I hope so. We’ll keep putting food out for him for as long as he stays around here!

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Sunday Coffee – Emotional Damage

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Thistle

Yesterday morning, my mom sent a video to my sisters and me to tell us that our grandma was going into hospice care.

She followed that up by telling us we were shitty kids that didn’t care about any of our grandparents so obviously the news wouldn’t matter to us.

This is not an uncommon tactic my mom uses for “dealing” with her grief. But it took me until January this year – until I was almost 43 years old – to realize just how inappropriate and manipulative this behavior is.

It was the proverbial straw for me. I called her out on her behavior. Her response, late last night, was to deny all responsibility for her words. If I was offended or upset, she said, that was on me, not her. Again, not an uncommon response from my mother.

All of that makes the perfectly normal and healthy grief for a dying family member so much more complicated, and so much worse.

It’s ironic. All I’ve ever wanted was to be part of a large, happy family. I never realized that that was because my own family was abusive and dysfunctional. So there’s that.

Now, all I can think is fuck that. Fuck them. I’m done. And I can’t wait to move away from here.

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Two Short Nonfiction Books

Posted on August 15, 2022 by Thistle

I read both of these over the weekend – two short little nonfiction books that I’ve decided to mini-review because I don’t have much to say about either of them.

Community Cats – Anne Beall

Subtitled: A Journey Into the World of Feral Cats

I thought this was a book about community cats and their behavior, a subject that I’m very interested in. Instead, it turned out to be more a collection of stories from various colony caretakers in Chicago. Beall herself is a colony caretaker, and her personal journey into the world of community cats is what inspired this book. It talks about some of the organizations that help feral cats in that area, but mostly there are short looks at the different ways people become caretakers and how they appreciate their feral cats. There’s some discussion of TNR practices, too, but nothing that I didn’t already know. In the last third of the very short book, there’s a sudden dive into statistics that read like an appendix or supplemental information, rather than being part of the book. The whole thing was rather disorganized and meandering. I know that Beall and the other workers, caretakers, and advocates she discusses are all wonderful people who have done such great work for cats. I appreciate all of them so much. But as a book, I didn’t get much out of this, unfortunately. I couldn’t tell you if that’s because I already knew the stuff Beall discussed, since I do know a lot about feral cats, or if it was a flaw of the book. I’ll just say that I think there are better resources out there if you want to learn about community cats.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning – Margareta Magnusson

Subtitled: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter
Read by: Juliet Stevenson

The idea behind death cleaning is to rid yourself of possessions as your life advances, in order to make things easier on whoever must deal with your stuff after your death. This can be done by giving things away, organizing them, marking them for specific places to go after you die, etc. In a lot of ways – right down to beginning your cleaning with clothes – this reminded me a lot of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, except more nostalgic and less organized. I did appreciate the nod to personal history and its importance, which made a nice change from Kondo’s “chuck everything” attitude. On the other hand, the book was filled with casual sexism (invite men over to go through your husband’s tools, they love that!) and elder-snobbery (can young people even use a pen these days? why does no one write thank you letters anymore? back in my day…). In the end, I didn’t feel like I learned anything of much use, mostly because what I could have learned, I’d already done so from Kondo (and subsequent regrets of tidying too hard in the wake of Kondo).

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Darling Girl, by Liz Michalski

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Thistle

From Goodreads: Life is looking up for Holly Darling, granddaughter of Wendy–yes, that Wendy. She’s running a successful skincare company; her son, Jack, is happy and healthy; and the tragedy of her past is well behind her…until she gets a call that her daughter, Eden, who has been in a coma for nearly a decade, has gone missing from the estate where she’s been long tucked away. And, worst of all, Holly knows who must be responsible: Peter Pan, who is not only very real, but more dangerous than anyone could imagine.

TW: Brief sexual assault, addiction

There’s more to that Goodreads description, but it goes a bit too deep into the story and borders on spoilers, so I’m not including the rest. This is enough to get the idea across. Darling Girl is a modern visitation of Peter Pan – not a retelling, but an exploration of what it might look like if the fairy tale were true. Because fairy tales can look beautiful on paper, and are often a nightmare when you get deep into them. Peter Pan and Neverland are presented as an ideal, eternal youth, but what does eternal youth mean? From this book:

“It’s as if he’s a three-year-old, a giant toddler bashing about.”

Darling Girl explores those darker sides, but this isn’t just a book about fairy tales and nightmares. That just makes up the background for some very complicated questions on ethics. Holly is a scientist with a complicated past. She’s trying to help her children, but her methods wade into very murky areas. At what point do you cross the line from ethical medical practices into harmful ones? Particularly when the situation is more complicated than it would be if there were not ties into a magical realm? Then there are the choices and dilemmas Holly faces as a mother, entirely separate from her medical and scientific pursuits. Parental ethics are a different kind of question. At what point do you go from protecting a child to harming them by your actions (or inactions)? It was a really fascinating exploration.

“Just because you ignore something doesn’t make it disappear.”

This was a really well-written book. My only real quibble was that the climax of the book took place off-stage, making it really anticlimactic. I understand why it took place off-stage, and I’m grateful that at least the two characters who experienced it told their stories so we find out what happened, but still. After feeling like the inevitable showdown was getting closer and more dangerous all the time, it was a letdown to miss it. And that’s the thing that will keep this from being one of my favorite books of the year, because it was really that good up to that point. I do still highly recommend it, with the caveat that the conclusion might not be as satisfactory as you’d wish.

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In the Air Force now

Posted on August 5, 2022 by Thistle

On June 13, we dropped Ambrose off for basic training. Air Force BMT takes place at a base here in San Antonio, which was a double-edged sword. On one hand, he had to go through that training in brutal heat. On the other, we got to see Ambrose this week for town day after graduation without flying across the country.

After Morrigan’s medical discharge from the Navy in 2019, I was absolutely worried that something similar would happen to Ambrose. Particularly because he’s my least-military-esque child. However, Ambrose always surprises me, and when we finally got a letter from him, he sounded like he was in a much better place, mentally, than Morrigan did in his letters. He said he even found things to enjoy, in addition to making friends and immediately finding his niche group of like-minded folks. (Aka, the weirdos, as he puts it.)

He tells us that he accidentally (long story) read part of his report card at one point during BMT. The report commended him for enthusiasm and volunteering for uncomfortable jobs that others don’t like (like standing at the door for hours on end, just watching). It also said he didn’t have a good military bearing, which is the least surprising thing about this whole bit. Ambrose got a good laugh out of it. He said he would have called them liars if they’d said his military bearing was good. Ha!

Town day meant that we all got to hang out for about eight hours. We took him to Raising Cane’s and to Salsalitos per request, and he also asked for “lots of desserts,” which Jason took to heart, making multiple dishes the night before. The four of us spent a lot of time chatting, snacking, and playing silly Jackbox games.

Ambrose had all sorts of stories to tell us, and generally, he was smiling and laughing and amused by so much. There’s a thing about my second child – he’s always been a very young soul, with this inner light and joy that radiates from him. People would look at him and just smile. Teachers loved him without him ever asking to be loved; kids protected him from being bullied. He has the inner confidence of a young child that hasn’t been traumatized by the world, except that he’s lived through plenty of horrible things.

We always worried that something would shatter him, and he’d lose that light, or that just by growing up, he’d shed that childlike innocence. But not even eight weeks of grueling training, drill sergeants, and boot camp mentality could change that deep, essential part of him. He’s still quintessentially Ambrose, the kid who kept getting in trouble for smiling during basic military training.

Now, he’s off to Biloxi for tech school. The career path he’s been assigned to isn’t his favorite, but it’s not a bad one either, and he has the opportunity to cross train to change careers at a later date. Tech school will only be about two months, so it won’t be long before he finds out his first real assignment. It was so great to see him, even if only for that short time. Jason and I are very proud of him, and wish him so much joy in his new life.

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July 2022 in Review

Posted on August 1, 2022 by Thistle

Does anyone else feel like it’s still May? I don’t know if I’m stuck in that traditional caught-in-time, always-behind feeling of adulthood, or if this is worse than usual because I’ve literally avoided being outside as much as possible for months now. Well anyway, July was about as normal as July could be. There were wild moments and some bad news and new stuff and a lot of decision-making for our futures.

Reading and Watching
July continued and finished my Murdoch Mysteries rewatch. Books weren’t really a high priority, but I have a feeling they’ll become more so over the next few months. Unfortunately, I had my first (and hopefully only) one-star book of the year (You’re Invited). At least the other two were excellent!

Goals
I revamped my goals for the second half of the 2022, and actually Jason and I were already able to get the house list made up and prioritized. There are way too many items on the list – even after I made a second, pared-down version – but hopefully we can get it all done over the next few years. The sooner, the better!

House
Well, like I said, there’s a whole lot of new projects on the list. And we did get a few things crossed off: duct system cleaned out, a/c leak repaired, defunct flowerbed edging removed around the live oak, front path replaced, and some plumbago beds planted along the back fence. Mostly, though, it’s been too hot to do much of the outside work. Other than the plumbagos, we haven’t wanted to do any actual planting, just to have the plants boil alive in this weather!

(So it begins: edging around the live oak removed)

The Ferals
It was an insane month in Cats. First, there was the whole issue with our foster cat Sunflower and the upper respiratory infection she brought into the house in late June. She spread it to our other cats through Angus, who was interested in sniffing her under the door to the foster room. While our older cats only got mild symptoms, the three one-year-old siblings got extremely sick, coughing and sneezing and feverish. (And in Gherkin’s case, drooling and gunky-eyed, too.) The vet said it was just a virus, though, and we let it takes its course. They’re still coughing periodically, but are mostly better. I do wonder if their extreme reaction is because it’s their first exposure (like babies with the common cold) or if it has to do with them being exposed to feline leukemia as babies. They fought off the virus and are FelV-negative (unlike their sister Reaper, who went off to a special program for FelV cats last summer), but the exposure can cause a weakened immune system.

In any case, they’re better now, and Sunflower went off to the shelter for spay on the 10th, and was adopted on the 22nd. Yay! Adult cats often take a lot longer to be adopted, so I’m glad she went so quickly. She was so sweet and absolutely would love to be an independent family-kitty! And of course, there was the whole bit with the Wild Feral Family that I wrote about, and the mom-and-daughter fosters who came after, and who are still here with us for a few more weeks. And lastly, after almost six weeks of treatment for ringworm, Penny and Tillie finally got put up for adoption! It took less than two days for little Penny to get adopted, and while Tillie is still waiting, I’m happy to say our neighbor went to visit her, and she’s looking gorgeous (pic)! Hopefully someone adopts this sweet baby soon!

Health/Fitness
It continues to be way too hot to leave the house, and so July involved way too little movement on my part. Towards the end of the month, I’d had enough, and splurged on a new treadmill. Treadmills aren’t my favorite (are they anyone’s favorite??) but I can use one while I watch TV or listen to podcasts and audiobooks. It will help get some movement back in my day, since it’s unlikely that the temps will relent anytime before mid-October at earliest! Not to mention, I plan to be much busier with house repairs, or at least with taking over most of the house work so that Jason has more time to devote to house repairs. Hopefully this will provide a convenient, if annoying, way to get some walking in!

Quarantine Diaries
I got my second covid booster this month, finally. Because it was my first Moderna, I was worried about side effects, but they weren’t too bad. I had some really heavy fatigue, some brain fog, and a couple days where I felt generally ill and wanted nothing more than to eat tomato soup, drink gaterade, and sleep. Unfortunately, in some bad news, my mom’s side of the family (who all had Omicron back in Dec/Jan) are falling ill with covid a second time, starting with my uncle. He passed it to my elderly, frail, extremely-vulnerable grandmother, but thankfully once again, she was in the hospital – for an unrelated issue – when it was diagnosed and so was able to receive the right medications to treat it. (As opposed to the conspiracy-theory treatments, like worm-juice!) Sadly, my mom has fallen victim to even worse conspiracy theories than in January, so she believes, for example, that the government deliberately chose the treatment with the highest death rate, and that they’re paying hospitals for every covid death they can provide. I mean, wtf y’all?? My grandmother is starting to improve, though, and will hopefully leave the hospital today or at least soon. She sadly isn’t very well, generally, and I doubt she’ll be around much longer. (Pic from my grandparents’ 65th anniversary in 2018.)

Favorite Photos
It was another of those barely-used-my-camera months, so I don’t have a lot for favorites. Actually, all of these came from the last third of the month. Sheesh.

Left: Lilo (mom) and Stitch (daughter). Right, top to bottom: light-painting; urban sunset; struggling to grow

Highlights of July
A lot of this month was a hazy of monotony, but there were definitely good points:

  • nerdy board game night at Jennine’s house
  • in a letter home from boot camp, Ambrose told us that he keeps getting yelled at for smiling, and that’s the most Ambrose thing I’ve never heard; I love it!
  • helping Morrigan and his fiancé Katy (via phone calls and texts) nurse their sick kitten back to health from the brink of death
  • a new cat tree for our babies to enjoy –>
  • seeing possum mamas with babies on their backs on the overnight camera
  • also baby raccoons frolicking on camera!
  • spending time with my half-sister for the first time since Christmas
  • talking with Ambrose over the phone (first time talking with him since June 13!)
  • hanging out in my friend’s parents’ pool with her and them, sipping piña coladas and generally enjoying what summer is supposed to feel like (on a rare day it only hit 99 degrees!)
  • trying my hand at light-painting for the first time
  • finally taking my Instagram private
  • everything related to Matt Gaetz and Olivia Juliana, ha! #RapeyMcForehead
  • getting to see Tillie as she looks now (as the photo of her on the shelter website is from when she first arrived at the shelter in mid-June)

Coming up in August
If all goes well and he has town liberty, we’ll get to see Ambrose in a couple days! Thankfully, we’ll be able to watch his graduation through a livestream the day afterwards, too. Then, at the end of the month, Laurence will be off on his new adventure, to Canada (New Brunswick) for college. So by the end of August, my two younger children will both be off to their new lives, and Jason and I will officially become empty-nesters. It’s going to be extremely weird, given that we had our first child 10 months after our wedding and only about half of that were we living together without other roommates in a shared apartment. A very new experience for all of us.

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The Gifts That Bind Us, by Caroline O’Donoghue

Posted on July 27, 2022 by Thistle

After the traumas of spring, life is meant to go on as normal. Except now, Maeve and her friends are filled with burdening magic, stressed by separations and worries of the future, and suspicious of new activity from the extremist conservative group, Children of Brigid.

I read the first book in this series, All Our Hidden Gifts, last year and was blown away by it. This sequel was one of my most anticipated books of 2022, but for some unknown reason, I struggled to start reading it. A few times since getting it from the library, I’d picked it up only to put it back down after a chapter, or even a few paragraphs. Something wasn’t clicking. I realized that I didn’t remember the previous book despite loving it so much. Part of me considered rereading All Our Hidden Gifts. Part of me wondered if maybe I should just leave the first book as a decent standalone and not move forward. A couple days ago, I gave the book one final try – only to get immediately hooked and pulled into the new story. Maybe the early chapters were too adolescent angst for me, or maybe my brain just wasn’t ready. I don’t know. But once I got there? This was every bit as good as the first book!

Obviously, I can’t say too much without giving away spoilers for the first book, which I don’t want to do. But the general crux in this book is twofold. First, there really is a lot of angst (in real life) about the end of school, and in changes in relationships as people move into new parts of their lives. Despite all the magic stuff going on, The Gifts That Bind Us treats this source of worry, frustration, and fear in an open and real way. Those issues don’t get lost in the background. There’s a great moment when one of the characters says, “You always think that when really dangerous stuff starts happening, you’ll just start acting really heroically. But it’s never like that. The world could be burning and you would still be just…worrying about your own crap.” I feel like that does a good job of summing up the juxtaposition of real world and crazy magic happenings.

Second, there’s an air of the mystery novel, a magical who-can-you-trust as a bunch of new and potentially suspicious characters are introduced. There’s the unexpected out-of-town family visitor, the hip new guidance counselor who may also have magic in her, the trans rock star taking one of them under her wing, and the political pundit last relevant in the 80s. Not to mention the friends’ old arch-nemesis, a religious zealot, who has taken an inexplicable turn toward undoing his former wrongs. There’s another really excellent line here: “It strikes me that a witch, a minor god, and a former zealot all living together for two weeks is a reality show I would pay to watch.” Me too, Maeve. Me too.

Just like in the last book, there is a lot of emphasis on gender politics (both identity and rights), abortion, sexuality, and morality as the Children of Brigid stir up evangelical hatred. “I sit there, wondering how the whole world got so obsessed with teenage girls and who we let inside us,” Maeve says, because it really is a peculiar obsession when you get to thinking about it. A lot of what the extremists obsess over feels pointless and mean-spirited, tbh. And when you think about it, who wants to worship a god who hates people for X, Y, or Z anyway? What kind of hateful god deserves worship? Yet, conversations like the following are so common these days that they aren’t even surprising anymore:

“Oh, I see what this is,” he says finally. “You think I hate gay people.”

“You’re saying you don’t hate gay people?” I let out a dry, hollow laugh.

“No,” he says. “God does.”

That’s where I’m going to leave this: with the absolute disgust that is evangelical extremists. Once again, this book (and series) does an amazing job of blending politics, religion, magic, and individual stress. I can’t wait for the next volume!

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A True Feral

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Thistle

This is a hard situation to write about, and it was even harder (and more traumatizing) to live through.

In my last post, I mentioned that I would be picking up a mama cat and her three babies to foster. This cat was a friendly stray that adopted my mom and had her babies on my mom’s enclosed porch. The babies were 5 1/2 weeks old, and were meant to be in our care for 3-4 weeks. Instead, they were in our care for roughly three hours.

When we picked up this family, we were told that the mom was “a little growly.” We expected some fear and warning growls – after all, she’d gone through a lot of change in 24 hrs! Our plan was to set the family up in the foster room and then leave them alone so they had time to adjust. However, when we opened up the carrier, both mama and babies immediately expressed interest in exploring and getting to know us. Mama sniffed us and head-butted us and asked for pets. She was a bit skittish and growly, yes, but again, that was entirely expected. I pulled out a Churu treat for her and she ate out of my hand without hesitation. We handled the babies without any objection from them or Mama, and all was going well.

Now, my mom had warned us that ever since the kittens were born, Mama had shown signs of aggression against other cats. She would actively run toward the door if she saw my mom’s cats through it, trying to attack them. (I do wish she’d mentioned this before we volunteered to foster, because our cats are always interested in sniffing at the door!) We knew we were going to need to be careful about going in and out of the room because of this. After about 20 mins with the cats, Jason left the room for a few minutes and returned. I don’t know if Mama caught sight of a cat or if Jason smelled different when he came back, or if there was some other trigger, but out of nowhere, she became an entirely different cat. A wild, aggressive, territorial, extremely feral cat.

I’ve been around a lot of feral cats over the last year, but mostly they’ve been skittish and afraid, only threatening if threatened. This was different. Mama-cat began to scream and yowl the way you might hear tomcats scream when they fight. She ran at Jason, hissing and spitting and screaming. He backed off, and she chased him, then turned on me. I managed to get out of the room, and Jason followed, narrowly avoiding a bite but getting some deep scratches on his feet. Even after we left the room, Mama continued to scream. It was like nothing we’ve ever had to deal with before.**

Immediately, I contacted the shelter. This was not the situation we were expecting and clearly wasn’t going to work out. We don’t know what set Mama off, but obviously we were not the right household for this kitty-family. For an hour while we talked with the shelter, we left the cats alone in the foster room, hoping to give Mama time to adjust to the new situation. At that point, we needed to somehow wrestle her into the carrier to take her back. Oy.

Jason did this part. Honestly, I don’t think I could have gone back into that room. (As a kid, we had a semi-feral pet cat who attacked us constantly, and I developed a fear of cat attacks, so this was really triggering to me.) Jason dressed in full coverage (sweats, long sleeves, gloves, socks, etc) and got a towel to throw over Mama. The second he opened the door – an hour after we were last in the room – she attacked. He managed to get the towel over her and wrestle her into the carrier with only a few more scratches on his hands (through gloves!). Once Mama was contained, I came in to help round the babies up to go into a different carrier. Mama was screaming, and the yowls became much worse if she made eye contact with one of us. She kept attacking the bars of the carrier. We covered the carrier with several blankets, trying to calm her the way you do with feral cats caught in traps, but she wouldn’t calm. Jason had to avoid her claws through the carrier and two blankets as he took her out to the car.

Long story short, we returned the family to the shelter, and instead brought home a mother-daughter duo (Lilo and Stitch) who are the two grey kitties pictured in this post. (Yes, I have a lot more photos of Stitch. Lilo is a bit afraid of the phone so I haven’t wanted to scare her by getting too close with it.) My mom contacted the shelter and was able to get set up as a foster, and brought the family back home to her house, where Mama is perfectly happy and friendly, with no trace of that insane feral behavior she showed here. I have no idea what will happen to her after she’s separated from her babies, if the shelter will decide to TNR or adopt her out. But honestly, I hope she’s TNRed because if a cat that feral lurks inside her and can explode out of nowhere like that, I feel like adoption might not be a good fit…

It’s been a few days since this all happened, and it has really affected me. I jump every time one of my cats head-butts me or rubs their face on me, thinking they’re about to bite me even though they’re clearly not. With the new fosters, I’m extremely wary around Lilo, because her history is unknown and while she’s friendly, it’s clear she wasn’t a house-cat and has very little experience with humans. She needs some socializing despite being sweet, and it’s hard to do that when I jump every time she tries to give me love-nips on the fingers because she wants to play. On the other hand, I don’t have any fearful reaction to Stitch, probably because she’s the tiniest thing that ever existed. So after these guys are ready to go up for adoption, I’ll likely stick to fostering kittens only for awhile!

Lilo and Stitch are really the cutest little babies, though. They’re both tiny, so the shelter labeled Stitch as four weeks old when she’s clearly more like 6-7 weeks old (given her coordination, eating, teeth, and physical development). Because she’s a singleton, Lilo is her only cat-companion, and Lilo has clearly been an excellent mother. They wrestle with each other, and Lilo has taught Stitch not to bite or claw too hard when fighting. They groom each other (and us), and whenever Stitch calls out for her mom, Lilo has this little chirp to let her baby know where to find her. It’s such a sweet dynamic. I hope I can get over my fear to really spend some good quality time with both of them over the next month!

**Note on the foster room: We had the room set up with places for the Mama-cat to hide if she was scared, or to snuggle her babies into, etc. She was not acting even the slightest scared, not for herself or for the babies. Her behavior was definitely territorial, and we were not welcome in her territory.

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