I know it can be a nightmare to dig through the tags and see all those asks and not the guides. So here is a handy-dandy list of all the “official” how-to posts.
FYI: This used to be a rude advice blog. It is not any longer. Some of the really old guides still use that format, but as they are updated with more information, they’re edited to fit the new, less abrasive format. For more info, please visit the about page.
All posts are written by Jez (@typesetjez, formerly called “The Responsible One”) unless otherwise noted.
other tips for new cat owners / people who may get cats soon:
no, getting a grown cat won’t be boring / less cute! they’ll become just as attached to you as a kitten. get a cat that speaks to you (literally or figuratively, maybe you want a cat that’s chatty). older cats will be so appreciative to have a home. people get rid of their cats for all kinds of unfair reasons. just the ones i’ve seen on the craigslist listings in the last 5 minutes: “i am just more of a dog person (7mo old kitten)”, “we hoped she would get over her kittenish behavior, she has not (2yr old cat)”, “i need to get rid of my cat before my baby is born (3yr old cat)”. you can totally pick up a beautiful, loving, grown up kitty who will be needing some comfort after getting dumped. just look at this girl.
(taken off craigslist) she would be more than happy to live her cat life with you. is she not cute? she is. she is cute. so, ultimately, adopt whatever cat you like, but don’t rule out older cats!
nextly: no no, do NOT declaw your cat. DON’T DO IT. I’M TELLIN YA. it’s a deeply painful procedure, actually removing the entire first knuckle, not JUST the nail. it causes long-term and potentially permanent pain in the cat, and can lead to nasty infections, behavioral problems, and helplessness if they ever find themselves outside and in need of protection or climbing abilities. “but i don’t want my cat to scratch me / my kid / my furniture!” okay, i feel you, but there are other, cheaper, less inhumane options. my favorite of which are claw caps.
you gently press on your cat’s foot (to unsheath their claws), and place the soft cap onto their claw using the glue that’s included in any soft paw kit you get. it might take some getting used to on the cat’s part, but it should under no circumstances be painful, and when the kitty’s claws grow, the cap just kinda falls off, and you’ll put another one on. you can also file or clip their nails down! if you’re too nervous or clumsy to do it, your vet will usually do it for a small fee, or a groomer can take care of it. Personally, I just let my cats’ claws hang out and accept the pokes when they knead on me, since i don’t have any little babies or expensive upholstery in my home.
No, cats ain’t “low maintenance”. This is a living, social creature, not a chiapet. Especially if you’re raising them from kittenhood, they need a lot of attention and resources. cuddles, playtime, training, health care, feeding, cleaning up their facilities. you get a pet to interact with, not to buy and leave it be! a cat that you don’t socialize is going to be very moody and sad. get a pet if you plan to invest the time and energy they need- if not, maybe we can come back to that cactus idea?
Cats need meat. I repeat, cats cannot survive without meat. Dogs need meat too- but cats are incapable of creating taurine in their own, and where do you find taurine? meat! hallelujah!! Feeding cats a vegan or vegetarian diet is a slow form of starvation and animal abuse. If you’re not comfortable feeding an animal meat, please do not adopt a carnivore. There are plenty of vegetarian mammals that you would be much better suited owning, but do not abuse your cats just because of your own feelings about protein. Without enough taurine in a cat’s diet, severe health problems will follow, like blindness, weak and decaying teeth, weak heart, and digestive issues. This is terrible. This objectively sucks. So pretty please give your cat a proper diet!
It’s way way safer to have an indoor cat. I don’t need you to tell me that you want your cat to be with you for many years, ‘cause I already know you do. Outdoor cats are exposed to wild animals, animal abusers, poisonous substances, cars, harsh weather, kidnapping, and diseases. Cats like rolling around in grass and grabbing birds from trees, and that’s great, but having an outdoor cat makes for a steep decrease in their estimated lifespan. The average lifespan of an indoor cat is 16.8 years, whereas outdoor cats average out to a hard-hitting 5.6. Ouch. So it’s definitely safer to keep a cat indoors! If you’re adopting a young kitten, it won’t be hard, since they won’t be expecting outdoor time already. If you’re still really into that whole grass idea, you should totally grow some indoor grass for your cat to chill in.
good.
that’s everything i can think of for the moment, but please don’t be afraid to do your own research on animal care. there are tons of resources out there, and if you have a good vet, they’ll answer any questions you have!
thank you for readin’ about cat care. as a reward, i’m adding a picture of toby as a baby. enjoy.
A
no A+
Adult cats are wayyyy better than kittens! You couldn’t pay me to bring a kitten into my home.
💙❤️🕸 Some Generics I worked on for Spiderman: Into the spiderverse! ❤️💙🕸 Worked with such an amazing character team! And learned a lot working on this movie! ✨😊
not to be a nerd but the university of manitoba is putting out a book next month which is an english translation of a recent french book on pre-christian inuit third-gender embodiment, reincarnation, and magic, and the author worked for thirty years with elders who not only fully remembered the pre-christian period and oral histories and folklore but also knew knud rasmussen, and this is so astoundingly up my alley im screaming
But, for those that don’t know what this means, it’s what Critical Role’s Matthew Mercer says when a player is about to slay an enemy in an epic manner.
Getting the killing blow on an enemy, whether big or small, it still satisfying to a player, so let the player take the wheel for a second to describe how they dispatch of their foe.
And you can simply say it back to them and the rest of the table, but in greater detail, to really show the strength and power behind this final fatal strike…
“When last we played…”
It is almost essential to recap the events of the last game, especially if your group meets up only a few times a month, or even only a few times a year…
But recapping the story to the group helps them remember what they were planning to do next before the session ended, and allows You, the DM, to bring up and highlight some of the more epic, gruesome or comedic events of last session.
It also helps the players and you to remember what happened, what new enemies they made, and what new allies they have for the next big battle they face…
“Do you say that in character?”
This one is probably the most common phrase on the list, because all DMs want their players to role-play and think in-character rather than simply looking at a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper and saying “I probably shouldn’t do that, I’ve got a -3 in Charisma.”
“Play the Character, not the Game” is common advice to players.
If you, the player, think that it’ll be REALLY REALLY NOT GOOD for you to call the Lich a “bone-y dead boy that lives in a rock”, but you just KNOW that your character would say it the first chance they get, then play the character and scream your insults to the rooftops and beyond…
Actually… Maybe that might not be the greatest of advice…
“I don’t know, is it?”
This one is just fun and let’s you play with the players a bit… mess with their minds…
A player can ask “Is it trapped?” and you can simply reply “I don’t know, is it?”.
It can at the best of times provide just the tiniest bit of tension and suspense.
Combine this with “You find nothing…” and you’ll have a group of paranoid players checking every door, window and wall in every dungeon room…
“That Hit would’ve killed you… But…”
This is my personal favorite, and one I use almost every game I DM for…
When an enemy hits a character, and drops the character to extremely low Hit Points and leaves them barely alive, this is your chance to let the player describe how they bend over backwards to avoid the immediate force of the impact, or how they take the hit, but keep on fighting.
I use this phrase a lot, take this example:
A barbarian rages, so the barbarian now takes ½ damage from almost every non-magical weapon.
The barbarian is on 5 HP, and takes 6 damage from an enemy hit, but because the barbarian has resistance, that damage is reduced to 3, so the barbarian is still alive, but barely.
If the barbarian wasn’t raging, they would’ve been knocked unconscious…
That Hit would’ve killed them, but because of their sheer strength they take the mighty blow and throw it off as if it were mere scratch across the chest, and with their own primal anger fueling their body, they fight on…
You get the point, these phrases just sound really cool…
You know, with all the language throughout Star Wars about “giving in” to the Dark Side, how the Dark Side makes you more powerful, how the Dark Side makes you age strangely and destroys you, it sure doesn’t sound like an “opposite side of the coin” so much as the “deeper end of the pool,” like it’s actually the true form of the force and being a Jedi is about keeping it tamed so it doesn’t eat you the way it actually wants.
the force is entropy
Eldritch Jedi pls
This is one of the reasons i love the second Knights of the Old Republic game, wherein one of the major characters (who defines herself neither as Jedi nor Sith) actually views the Force this way, saying “I hate the Force. I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance, when countless lives are lost.”
It’s also the game that gave us the two most entropic, eldritch characters in the franchise: Darth Nihilus, whose dark-side-borne ability to feed on the Force and consume life itself has twisted him into a half-living “wound in the Force”, more presence than flesh
and Darth Sion, whose entire body is a ruin, his flesh nothing but ragged scar tissue, every bone and muscle broken and torn, kept animated by will alone as he forces himself, second by agonizing second, to exist
I wish there were more horrifying perspectives on the force like that
This is one of the reasons the term “Light Side” never felt right to me, even before it was used in any official media; The Force always struck me more like an ocean than a binary concept: the deeper you go, the darker and more crushing it gets — at a certain point becoming an effectually consistent darkness — and while light filters down and fades for some distance, if there is a truly light “side” it’d be the surface.
Which isn’t to say “the Force is evil unless you flounder about near the top” — just that it’s a natural force, and as such is something you need to respect and be adequately prepared for. (Take electricity, for example: super awesome and pretty dang useful, but OH HOLY SMOKES don’t try and harness it unless you REALLY know what you’re doing!)
In this sense, being tempted by the Dark Side is less a case of “Hey, I wonder what’s on the other side of this coin it looks pretty cool haha oh whoops I’m Space Walter White now,” and more one of “The deeper into this thing you go, the harder you’ll need to fight to resist the ever-increasing pressure, to remain whole, even to just see whatever the heck you’re actually doing.”
(which is why Jedi training is so important: those padawans gotta build themselves a mental Deepsea Challenger!)
THIS META BLESSED ME
Okay but let’s suppose, for a moment, that the Force is actually malevolent.
That would make a lot of sense.
Consider, for a moment, an eldritch parasite. This ancient being feeds off of the life-force of other creatures. Not that unusual, as most living things also consume other living things, to various degrees. But this one is technically somewhat removed from the usual structures of biology. It is a passive and opportunistic predator, for the most part. Whenever a living being that is connected to it - however weakly - dies, it consumes part of its energy, and gets bigger.
As life in the galaxy flourishes, and time passes, this singular entity gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Like a catfish; the only limit to its growth is how much it can consume to fuel it. The larger it gets, the more it is able to sink its invisible claws into other living beings, until eventually there is hardly any life out there which hasn’t been ‘infected’ by it, and slated to become its spiritual dinner as soon as its biological form gives out.
And here we actually come to - of all things - the midichlorians. Which, the Jedi use to measure someone’s sensitivity to the Force, which works because midichlorians are the vehicle for the predatory parasite to infest living beings. The immune systems in some people begin to develop a certain degree of resistance to them, which is why some folks have more, and some have less, and this directly correlates to their Force sensitivity. The more midichlorians you have, the worse your immune system is at fending off the parasite.
The Force counters the risk of being bred out of subsequent generations by developing camouflage, and adapting itself into a more seemingly-symbiotic relationship with its prey.
What the Jedi see as the ‘light side’ of the Force, is a reflective layer that this predator has created via its connection to all living things. This network is the honey trap that encourages the beings still strongly connected to it, to spread that connection, because it affords them advantages while they are still alive. But its elements are comprised mostly of echoes and reflections of their fellow prey organisms. Force Ghosts that resemble the departed. Emotions that are transmitted along this layer and between individuals. Small amounts of power that can be siphoned off to impact the environment, and can also spread the Force to whatever living thing it comes into contact with.
This being is huge now, it needs a lot of juice in order to maintain its existence, let along continue to grow. And like most predators it’s willing to expend a certain amount of energy in order to guarantee a bigger pay-off.
The deeper you go into the Force, the more the Force starts exerting its own will through you. And the less you see of the reflected camouflage of it, and the more apparent it becomes that the Force wants large swaths of death to feed it. Which is why Dark Siders often become so preoccupied with things like Death Stars.
But it’s a balancing act. A large population of relatively peaceful Force sensitives, like the Jedi, cost more than they’re worth, because beyond a point they take too much energy from the Force and don’t kill enough people to pay for it. A single individual abusing their powers for self-gain and murdering left and right, though, accomplishes the goal of feeding it. The Force obviously doesn’t want its food supply to die out completely, but this explains the persistent cycles of the Star Wars universe - as a soon as a group of peaceful Force users becomes prominent, they get wiped out by a few Dark Siders who have tread too deeply past the reflective surface of the Force, and become actual vessels for its will.
And then when the Dark Siders have finished killing a whole bunch of people, it’s time for them to go, too, so that they don’t wipe out the entire populace and kill off the Force’s food supply beyond its ability to reasonably recover. The peaceful types then see an upswing, as they are more adept at spreading the Force. So the cycle goes - Jedi spread the Force, Sith kill the Jedi and feed the Force, Jedi kill the Sith and resume spreading the Force. It’s a planting and harvest cycle, and the galaxy is populated with the Force’s living spirit crops. Anakin Skywalker, who was arguably one of the beings most closely connected to the Force, and had an extremely high midichlorian count, basically lived this cycle in its entirety as an individual - he spread the Force as a Jedi, he killed people as a Sith, and then he ended it all in order to preserve his progeny for the next round.
tl;dr - the Force wants to eat your soul. The reason the ‘light side’ types always get so up in their own asses is because what they perceive as the Force is basically their own reflections dangling in front of them like an angler fish’s lure. The reason the ‘dark side’ types get so messed up is because they’re basically the equivalent of those grasshoppers who get infected with a parasite that makes them drown themselves.
This point of view would actually explain both No-Attachment rule and the Order’s cradle-robbing - some more self-aware Jedi saw the Force for what it is and pushed for a rule that potentially would cut births of Force-sensitive kids to a bare minimum. And those who
were born Force-sensitive thanks to a quirk of the Force are to be taken from the society in the quickest way possible before they mess up, given tools to keep it at bay, and indoctrinated to never want to dabble in the deeper ends of their ability. It would also explain the whole debacle of Unifying vs Living Force and why Jedi seem to prefer the former - all of the description of the Living Force I came across present it as more ever changing, nearly organic entity and Jedi that use is as more responsive to its nudges, so potentially more inclined to being “corrupted” by it.
i feel like there’s this huge unfulfilled niche in the Dark Academia thing (kill your darlings, the secret history, dead poets society etc) for stories about women???? like can we have rakish girls quoting sappho and anxious genius poet girls, bespectacled, frantically tapping away at typewriters? wild girls trying to start literary movements and being dragged down by their own hubris? innocent girls discovering love and sex and angela carter? cute girls in 60s looking school uniforms investigating ~mysterious happenings~? going to class the next day hungover and exchanging knowing glances? can we just have. the thing
I raided my bookshelves and came up with these:
The Chinese Garden (1962) by Rosemary Manning
“In a girls’ boarding school in the late 1920s, a world of iron-willed authority, frigid rooms, and forbidden friendships, sixteen-year-old Rachel struggles to find a place for herself. When a rebellious student introduces her to a mystical, secret part of the grounds, the ‘Chinese garden,’ Rachel becomes torn between this hidden world of sensuality and pleasure and the formidable, controlling headmistress who inspires Rachel’s intellectual growth.”
Miss Pym Disposes (1948) by Josephine Tey
“Miss Lucy Pym, a popular English psychologist, is guest lecturer at a physical training college. The year’s term is nearly over, and Miss Pym–inquisitive and observant–detects a furtiveness in the behavior of one student during a final exam. She prevents the girl from cheating by destroying her crib notes. But Miss Pym’s cover-up of one crime precipitates another–a fatal ‘accident’ that only her psychological theories can prove was really murder.”
Olivia (1949) by Olivia (aka Dorothy Strachey)
“Olivia is sixteen years old when she goes to Les Avons, a finishing school near Paris, run by two Mademoiselles. It is a place of few rules, of laughter and lively conversation–a welcome surprise for a reserved young English girl. But the gaiety and freedom of Les Avons is only surface deep and emotional liaisons and jealousies form the hidden curriculum. Very quickly Olivia too is caught up in its spell, overwhelmed by her increasing infatuation with Mademoiselle Julie. Here she describes the powerful allegiances and repressed desires which smoulder at this secluded school, and the intensity and desperation of adolescent love.”
Regiment of Women (1917) by Clemence Dane
“In a small English town, just before the Great War, battle rages over Alwynne Durand, an appealing but dangerously inexperienced young teacher. Two women struggle to win her love and loyalty: Elsbeth, her fiercely protective aunt, and the formidable Clare Hartill. A brilliantly charismatic teacher, feverishly adored, Clare’s power is great–her abuse of it greater. Greedy for love, but incapable of returning it, she compulsively destroys the affections of those she most needs.”
The Small Room (1961) by May Sarton
“Anxiously embarking on her first teaching job, Lucy Winter arrives at a New England women’s college and shortly finds herself in the thick of a crisis: she has discovered a dishonest act committed by a brilliant student who is the protegée of a powerful faculty member. How the central characters–students and teachers–react to the crisis, and what effect the scandal has on their personal and professional lives, are the central motifs of May Sarton’s sensitive, probing novel.”
Frost in May (1933) by Antonia White
“The Convent of the Five Wounds, where Nanda Grey is sent when she is nine, is on the edge of London–but in 1908 it is a world unto itself. For the young girls receiving a Catholic education behind its walls, religion is a nationality, conformity an entire way of life. In this intense, troubled atmosphere, passionate friendships are the only deviation. Nanda is thirteen, a normal, quick-witted, spirited girl, when, catastrophically, she breaks the rules and pays too large a price for her transgression.”
The Getting of Wisdom (1910) by Henry Handel Richardson (aka Ethel Richardson)
“Henry Handel Richardson’s novel is a coming-of-age story, set in turn-of-the-century Melbourne. When clever and imaginative Laura Rambotham leaves her home to attend a prestigious ladies’ college, she finds herself compromising her ideals in an effort to fit in. The Getting of Wisdom is a portrait of an artistic and unwieldy soul chafing against stuffy ordinariness, told with great empathy and passion.”
I would also like to add:
Gentlemen and Players (2005) by Joanne Harris (of Chocolat fame) I really can’t say much about it without ruining the ending, so I’ll simply say: read it.
