Five years ago yesterday, we brought Samwise home. He was five months old exactly, at least according to his papers. He was however not small, a problem that has only gotten worse. I joke, of course, but I’m often amazed by just how long the little guy is.
Here are some before-and-after pictures.
Five years ago we brought home this not-so-little dorkmonster.
1/8/2015 <——> 2020 pic.twitter.com/Bp3g0xTz1F
— Tynan! (@TynanPants) January 9, 2020
He’s adapted well to life in the big city, though I do wish he had a little more room. At any rate, happy Gotcha Day, Samwise!
Let this be a respite thread for all your non-political needs.
Major Major Major Major
Some other things that have amused me lately:
schrodingers_cat
He looks so soft and silky. And grey is my favorite neutral, goes with everything.
hilts
OT
RIP Buck Henry
h/t https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/buck-henry-dies-graduate-writer-024924928.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ6gdRfBW6c
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: Oh, he’s the softest!
Mathguy
@Major Major Major Major: I didn’t know they were doing that. Awesome.
Mnemosyne
You can always give him more space by building up on the walls or getting more cat trees. Since humans aren’t climbers, we usually only look at floor space, but cats love to have vertical real estate as well.
mrmoshpotato
Samwise! ❤️?
Happy Gotcha Day!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I guess we could get a second tree…
Dorothy A. Winsor
Nice kitty
trollhattan
@hilts:
Oh, that saddens me. Buck Henry was a genius writer and very funny actor. Remember his hotel clerk in “The Graduate”?
Baud
Congrats to you both.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
If you have the wall space, cat shelves are pretty cool and less obtrusive than a full-on cat tree:
https://brooklynfarmgirl.com/how-to-build-cat-shelves-that-your-cat-will-love/
hilts
@trollhattan:
I remember it well because it’s timeless.
Also too, “Plastics.”
Major Major Major Major
@Mathguy:
zhena gogolia
I love Samwise!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I’ve seen those, but it’s maybe not the best fit for a rental unit we’ll be leaving in a year.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Here is Nikki, today is her 13th b-day.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Aww. She doesn’t look a day over 8.
VeniceRiley
My favorite Buck Henry tv moment was when he played Liz Lemon’s father Richard on 30 Rock. “You can’t have a Lemon party without old Dick!”
Just golden.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Happy birthday Nikki!
TomatoQueen
2nd try, previous was a 405 error. Delighted to see pics available of Samwise lovely boy congratulations to you and Major4. Less delighted to find my new/discontinued Cricket phone says silly things like “emergency calls only” and “SIM not supported” whenever I try to do anything with it such as place a call or upload to email. There is likely a hot date with tech support in my near future. No smartphone ever due to essential tremor in my right hand. But still, Merlin stayed in one place long enough to capture 3 whole views of him. Then an Invisible flashed across the room and he was off again.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Samwise always looks so cute. His eye color and coat color go together well too. It’s a nice contrast.
Out of curiosity, was Samwise the name the adoption agency gave him or did you and your husband name him that?
When my cat Bilbo was adopted in 2005 (he was 4 y/o, according to the adoption agency) that was the name he had and my family never changed it. So now, I always get, “Oh, like Bilbo Baggins in LOTR?”. I’ve never even watched the movie let alone read the book lol.
Kelly
3 month old Martin achieved one of his life goals last night by leaping up and knocking loose the cord for one of the window blinds. We’d looped the cords up out of reach to keep him from shredding them. Fortunately he responds well to a sharp, loud NO! He’s learned we disapprove of curtain climbing and electric cord chewing. He’s a very good boy.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The SPCA named him Casanova, the couple who adopted him named him Julian. When they broke up (getting a kitten was sort of a hail mary I guess) and we took him, we decided that neither name was really right, so…
Yutsano
SAMWISE KITTEH!!!
I’m melting more and more on getting a fur kid. But I’m pretty sure I want a couple of adult black cats.
Fleeting Expletive
I just got home from seeing a doctor about a cat bite. My old beastie reached back and bit my arm when I was petting her–must have hit a sensitive spot. Not a scary bite, but the combination of … old person, hip replacement, cat teeth … it seemed prudent. Proper antibiotic and topical antibiotic. Reassuring.
Stupid cat. Stupid human.
PST
My most enduring memory of Buck Henry was as the awful Colonel Korn in Catch-22. What a cast that movie had. Henry wrote the screenplay, which did a nice job of keeping the best of the novel.
Betty Cracker
He’s lovely! Looks solid gray too. Does he have a hidden white spot somewhere?
mali muso
So for anyone has been following the ongoing dumpster fire that has been the implosion of the RWA (Romance Writers of America), apparently the President of the organization finally resigned. Not that it solves the problems of bigotry and racism in the romance community, but still a positive step. For a primer on the whole thing, this website has been documenting the current story as it evolved. For a really good and detailed backgrounder, this older article in the Guardian does a good job of explaining the situation.
raven
We just had a ginormous bradford pear taken down. The boss lady has hated it for 20 years, says it messes up her garden design. The guy was funny, did it for the $850 he quoted but said it should have cost a lot more because it was “limby”!
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: He’s solid gray except for some very faint rings on the tail. Which he may have outgrown? Can’t see any right now, but it could be the lighting.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Marginally obligatory.
:)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: That pic is about 2 years old, but she’s still pretty active and very happy.
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks, and a Happy Gotcha Day to Samwise.
John Revolta
I remember in the first season of SNL when Buck Henry got a gash on his forehead during a Samurai sketch. He carried on and finished the sketch and they bandaged him up so he could finish the show. Then as the show went on all the other cast members got bandages on their heads in sympathy and support. Live TV at its best!
Mnemosyne
@mali muso:
The problem wasn’t just Damon Suede, though his stonewalling and obfuscation didn’t help at all. The Executive Director resigned as well because there have been a LOT of complaints that trace back to things that the executive staff has done, not just the BoD. Nora Roberts had a good essay on her website a week or so ago explaining that she left RWA and stopped being a sponsor because the executive staff was making decisions about an event she sponsored without consulting or even informing her.
There needs to be a shakeup with the permanent staff, not just the BoD.
Full disclosure: I’ve taken classes with Damon and I really like the guy. He’s a brilliant teacher. But I think he let himself get caught up in the internal politics and shot himself in the foot.
mali muso
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. There seems to be a LOT of institutional rot and entrenched structural racism. I’m just a lowly reader (since my teens) who loves the genre and wants to read good stories, but it seems pretty obvious that there is a strain of nice, white, cis women who are threatened by diverse voices. My only clout is where I choose to spend my $, so I’m trying to be more intentional there.
rikyrah
Samwise is gorgeous :)
Mnemosyne
@mali muso:
Within RWA, there seems to be this weird racist “mean girls” clique inside a specific message group that keeps shouting everyone else down. They’re very noisy and the RWA staff doesn’t seem to have any interest in asking them to pipe down and stop being a-holes to everyone else. It’s been getting on a lot of authors’ last nerve.
There are a LOT of books by romance authors of color out there, but many of them are indie published (aka self published) eBooks because they’re shut out by the big publishers. If you still prefer paper books, Berkley has been doing a decent job of highlighting their new discoveries like Jasmine Guillory and Helen Hoang. I’ve been enjoying Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series and just pre-ordered the next one.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: emailed you FYI
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Such a handsome boy!
mali muso
@Mnemosyne: These days most of my book consumption is in the form of audiobooks or e-books. I’ve enjoyed the Cole royals books and really liked her recent audiobook, “The AI Who Loved Me”. Helen Hoang is definitely on my list…in fact, I think I’m going to suggest “The Bride Test” as a read for my book club.
Betty Cracker
@Mnemosyne: One of my relatives used to write romance novels back in the 80s. She told us one publisher rejected a submission but asked if she would “change the characters to black people” and resubmit it. This person explained there was a huge market for romance novels targeting black women but not enough black writers. Can you imagine? Just not enough black writers, yeah, that’s the problem! Good God.
WaterGirl
@raven: No wonder you had to take the tree down! It was infested with tree limbs!
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Happy Birthday to Nikki and Happy Gotcha Day to Samwise!
Martin
I see we’re all aflutter with Iran’s accidental shootdown of a passenger airliner while conveniently ignoring our own accidental shootdown of an Iranian passenger airliner some years aback.
This is the thing with war – missiles are designed to blow shit up. They don’t care what the thing is – building, ship, plane, hospital, embassy, wedding party, large bird, warm cow, etc. That’s entirely on the almost always shockingly low-level guy whose job it is to move the cursor to the blip and push the red button.
The odds that crash wasn’t a shootdown was astonishingly low given the location and timing of it. Statisticians are quick to point out that there’s a non-zero chance that it’s a coincidence, but also quick to point out just how small that coincidental number really is.
satby
@Yutsano: oh, do get some adult black cats! They’re always sweeties and like black dogs they’re often passed over by adopters looking for cute kittens. I don’t pick my pets, they’re urgent (snatched from kill shelter) fosters that end up never getting adopted or street cats I take in, but if I ever go looking for a pet it’s going to be another black cat.
WaterGirl
@Major Major Major Major: Is the “Gotcha Day” a thing, or did you make it up? If so, quite clever.
Happy day for everyone.
satby
@WaterGirl: Gotcha Day is a thing, it’s the day people have adopted shelter pets. Some shelters make a big deal about it.
also used for human adoptions, but much more controversial in that area.
Major x4, psyche!
Major Major Major Major
@WaterGirl: I got it from my mom, but I googled it before i posted and it has a Wikipedia article, though that says it’s for adopted people (and also controversial) ??♂️
rikyrah
@Mnemosyne:
If not for ebooks, I wouldn’t have a lot of my Black female fiction romance writers. There are some major ones that get the hard book treatment, but, there are far more that just do ebooks.
VOR
My Max was a 3 month old tiny kitten when we got him back in 2003. He is now a still very healthy 16.5 year old, 15 lb cat. He has brought us a lot of joy over the years.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, it’s a huge and persistent problem. African American women are a huge part of the romance market, but somehow, magically, books by Black women just aren’t up to snuff. Funny how that always seems to happen. ?
What’s made it really embarrassing for publishers is that there are quite a few Black women who have had huge success in self-publishing (like my buddy Theodora Taylor) when they couldn’t get a traditional publisher to buy their books, and now they’re making way more money and have more control over their careers than they ever would have had with a traditional publisher. ?♀️
raven
@WaterGirl: The dude was a good guy, he just said “you win some your lose some. I figured a half day and it turned out to be a full day.”
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I got ruemara hooked on romance through the magic of Kindle Unlimited. ?
A lot of the self-published authors I know really prefer it because they get to keep the majority of the profits AND they have full control over their own marketing and advertising. They’re not at the mercy of a traditional publishers’ marketing department that doesn’t understand what the audience is for their book.
WaterGirl
@satby: @Major Major Major Major:
Who knew?
(Both of you, apparently!) thanks.
WaterGirl
@raven: Yep. That’s what happens when you bid jobs vs. hourly. Nice that he was good natured about it.
But what consumer wants to start a job without knowing how much it costs?
On the other hand, my handy guy who does all my work – and built my beautiful porch – generally works time & materials. It’s not ideal, but I’m okay with it because I know he would never rip me off.