Off the prompt "cuddles."

I appear to have slept 16 hours. Yay.

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Seller on one of the anime series I am acquiring dropped me an email to say 'is it okay that it's a fansub?' Ordinarily, cool, but I told him I needed raws and were the fansubs hardcoded and the answer is yes, of course they are. So yeah. Went elsewhere. It's kind of a pity, I'd really like to buy from merchants that thoughtful.

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I am not totally sure I am enjoying #ebz as intended. I am not at all well-rounded; I'm going to be the least dangerous entity in the 'Neath at this rate (I recently accidentally did something to increase dangerous quality to 4). At the moment I have an opportunity card from my Mysterious Benefactor which has an easy option (persuasive, which is very high because I seduce everybody) and an almost-impossible option (watchful, which I only bother with when it's something I specifically want). Since the watchful option involves investigating the Mysterious Benefactor, I totally want that one, and since it's an opportunity card I only get one shot at it, so I'd better increase my watchful beforehand. So I went to the fair and watched the anatomy lessons until I practically had enough whispered secrets to trade up for cryptic clues and then wandered back to Ladybones Road to see if this had opened up in further watchful storylets. I'm currently throwing myself on an almost-impossible challenge repeatedly to increase my watchful quality. Eventually I'll find this duchess's heir too, probably.

Meanwhile my ambition needs confident smile 4 and I haven't seen anything that mentions that, so who knows when I'll get any further with that.

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Bro came over to watch some B5 last night. I'm reminded that I once upon a time had a Cartagia vidbunny that I can't find any record of having written down a song for. At present I think it would be hilarious to whip out the Tik Tok for it. I mean, what would be more hilarious than Cartagia rinsing blood of his hands to brush my teeth with a bottle of jack?

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Okay it's never gonna stop being funny that the cat wants to play fetch.

I have two cats. niqaeli and traykor have four. Mine are named* Buttface and Little Miss. Theirs are named Bratmonster, Grumpykitty, Snugglebutt, and the fourth, to my knowledge, does not answer to his name, only to his mistress.

In any case: theirs like human food like ice cream and chicken. When Bratmonster went after some turkey niqaeli had after Thanksgiving, I mocked him and she rolled her eyes and said, "Obligate carnivore."

Mine do not appear to know they are obligate carnivores. Unless pumpkin guts actually are offal.

Buttface is always in the underfoot when I am cooking; I have stepped on his tail more than once (by accident!) and it does not deter him. Finding this inevitable, I do, I guess reward the behavior. I'll hold out a bit of whatever I'm making at waist height and watch him hop up on his hind legs to sniff it longingly.

Tonight I am roasting pumpkin, and if you are going through the trouble of roasting your own pumpkin then it would just be a waste of a good salt delivery system not to collect, clean and roast the seeds as well. So having put the main part of the pumpkin in the oven, I was sorting pumpkin guts from pumpkin seeds and letting Buttface sniff chunks of pumpkin guts. Only tonight this went: sniff, sniff, lick, lick, CHOMP. And then he would fall back to the floor with a few strands of pumpkin guts to devour. Oh, well, I thought, a little vegetable** never hurt anybody, and it's not like he's the one who pukes in the hallway on a regular basis.

(Little Miss is a longhair. She can't help it.)

Buttface in the underfoot in the kitchen is absolutely normal. I think if I were cooking something and didn't almost crush him at least once, I would start to wonder if he'd escaped the house or something. Little Miss, on the other hand, does not like interacting with standing humans: she is afraid of feet. She started out the pumpkin adventure a ways away from the kitchen, but in sight of it, and occasionally yipped to me. I find the best way to answer her vocalizations is to vocalize back--it's like she wants to be reassured that you know she's there. I'm not sure if vocal attention is all the attention she wants or needs or if she's trying to make sure no one's about to almost step on her.

But she edged closer. So I bent over to hold some pumpkin guts out to her. She sniffed at them from a reasonable distance of a few inches, not the nose-in-your-palm way Buttface does, and then she backed off. Ah, normal kitty, I thought.

Except she continued to yip whenever I let Buttface have a sniff-lick-CHOMP. So finally when I was just about done I left the last few bits of pumpkin guts on the plate and set the plate on the floor. I watched them come up and sniff it--both of them, how odd--and I honestly expected that would be the extent of it, because heaven knows when I offer them things like salmon skin they turn their noses up.

I turned my back on them to wash my colander full of pumpkin seeds and when I turned back around they were both sitting on the floor in the middle of the kitchen by the plate, which was entirely clean except for half of a pumpkin seed.

"Freaks," I said.

They each twitched an ear at me.



*whereby I mean what they actually answer to, because this is what they are called all the time.

**where by I mean fruit

So I'm collecting favorite quotes, hopefully to find at least one to make an icon out of. So far--

"The cream pie of justice flies one way," from the very end of Vor Game.
"Every Vor lady goes to the capital to shop," from Barrayar, with an appropriate image of a severed head.

And tonight I've decided I'm quite fond of:

"I don't want all the marbles. I don't want any of the marbles. It's death for me to be caught with marbles in my possession," from Warrior's Apprentice.

Also possibly: "Wrestling with temptation. Best two falls out of three," abridged from Memory.

ETA: I am quite possibly giddy with glee. I just rubbed this copy of Warrior's Apprentice with my face, like a cat. Why? Because Ivan was the first to tackle Vordrozda. I don't even know. GLEE, I say.

ETA2: and now I am crying at "Clay, boy, only clay." AAAAARRRRAAAAAAALLLLLL. MILES. oh my god.

Tonight we heard a strange squeaking noise, which, when investigated, proved to be a ball of grey fluff with whom BratMonster kitten was playing through the window. Vaguely tribble-ish in size, adorability, trill, and furriness, we determined it was a kitten really too young to be on its own and lured it to us with a steady stream of inane babble (after we figured out that sitting quietly was only freaking it out) and wet food. It is currently locked in the downstairs bathroom of conhq, as it was too late to canvas the neighborhood asking if anyone had lost their kitten. Though we suspect it may be abandoned as upon picking it up and feeling it, we found it was an underfed scrap of a thing with a knobby, knobby spine. It puts me in mind of Little Miss when we first got her, only tinier and therefore exponentially more deadly cute--at a year and a half old, Little Miss was barely over four pounds and her fluffy tail was as big as her body. (Little Miss has since been fed adequately and is something like twelve-ish pounds, and may no longer accurately be called Little, though what has accuracy to do with how I address my cats?) We estimate the grey fluffball to be 3-4 months old and possibly its weight should be measured in ounces.

I had an episode of... I don't even know. niqaeli suggests it tromped on my mommy buttons. In a fit of insanity I txted the roomie to ask what he thought of having three cats; I later retracted that. In any case I managed to hand the kitten off to other people, leave the vicinity, and slowly pry myself away from the idea of taking it home to be mine mine mine, during which period I repeatedly announced I was being very reasonable about this whole thing and burst into tears every five seconds.

List of Things Juls is not allowed to review while recovering from kitten:
Memory
Cetaganda
A Civil Campaign
that episode of Nero Wolfe where the dog follows Archie home
any episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation featuring any incarnation of Spot
Red Dwarf
the icanhazcheezburger feed on my droll
Glass Houses (see icon)
eta: small humans being adorable--I better not read any of thefourthvine's Earthling entries/eta

...and if I continue, this rapidly reaches Skippy length.

Curiously, the fantasy genre obligatory talking cat archetype doesn't nail this the same way, but I am still wary of removing Red Dwarf from that list.

I feel a little better now but I think I will be falling down to sleep at conhq as the whole thing has left me too exhausted to drive.

At some later point when we've made sure no one in the neighborhood is looking for the little thing, I will probably post a link to adorable pictures in niqaeli's journal as we seek to find it a home that is not mine (or hers, but mostly not mine, as that seems to be where the emotional risk lies).

The waitress at Waffle House informs me tomorrow is another day and it will get better. Also I think she may have threatened to beat up my man (I was not very articulate about why I was crying).

ate a firewire cable.

AFTER I sprayed them with bitter.

He ate through my phone charger. Again. IN LIKE FOUR PLACES.