The first year I had Emily, I learned to put my finger in front of her nose every few pets. If she moved to touch her nose to my finger, I could pet her a little bit more. If she stayed absolutely still, she'd bite me within the next few pets.
It took a long time for her to be willing to share softer signs of discomfort, like lashing her tail or making noise, before she escalated into attacking my hand.
Or maybe not "willing" so much as... literally able? I might be reading too much into it, but I got Emily as a year-old cat who'd been living on the streets for part of her life, when I was at the underemployed end of the grad school program that never ended, a therapist with nobody to therapize, so I ended up looking at her as a survivor of trauma and bringing therapeutic perspectives and techniques to the table. Some of which are about how we have to actually learn to understand and recognize our own internal states, especially because when we're living in fight-or-flight, that goes way down on our brains' priority lists most of the time.
So it might have taken her a while to be able to understand that petting felt nice but also overstimulating, so while she could enjoy it, it also caused that buildup of discomfort, and she could do something about it that wasn't biting.
All of which is just the context necessary for me to say, today she crawled into my lap and rested her chin in my palm, and demanded via headbutts that I just keep continuously scritching her jaw, for 20 minutes straight.
i feel like the boeing whistleblower case should radicalize more people. a major airline company is producing planes with less and less regard for safety and it's starting to get noticeable. man takes them to court, which would reduce profit at the cost of public safety. he fucking dies the night that boeings legal team asks him to stay an extra day. if nothing happens about this, i hope it gets through to people that america would literally kill you for a few extra cents
i wear women’s deodorant
and men’s cologne
i mix pink and blue
to match my birthstone
amethyst, creating a synthesis
a dialectic speaking my singleness
womanly chivalry
and masculine grace
a twist of the wrist
that turns on its face
bending borders into a threshold
equal parts silver and gold
i lead and i follow
a solo in parts
it’s hard pill to swallow
if you’re scared of the arts
i’ve never been more one than my two
perhaps this will give you a breakthrough—
the illusion that arose
of oil and of water
proves that opposition serves those
opposed to the other
as for me, i’ll keep my duality
it beats a boxed-in, binary, banality
– bigender means
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