benefits of working from home...

...I have two cats snuggling on me as we speak, and I would probably have three if Pete could find himself a comfy spot.

And I have tickets to Hamilton for June when it comes through Austin, and I'm very excited about those; and I'm uh. Tackling the other stuff. So that's good, too.

It's being a very productive day so far, and I haven't had to take off my jammies.

browsing random photos of purebred cats today...

...because while I have very little interest in owning a purebred cat, I like looking at them sometimes. And purebred Maine Coons are eldritch motherfuckers, which is always fun to look at.

This is how I stumbled across this Metatron Eyes cattery, which holy shit looks like one of the nicest, most ethically put together catteries I've ever seen. Damn. If I wanted a purebred cat, this is the sort of place I'd want to buy it from and support. I mean, in practice I have a strong preference for mildly special-needs cats with extremely strong personalities, and it's just straight up easier to find that sort of thing by going through rescue, and we have such a massive feral problem worldwide that sourcing random-bred cats isn't hard. But it's nice to know that if people are going to be breeding cats, there are people out there working to do it with as much attention to quality of life in their animals as possible.

(As I was writing this, Arthur Dent stomped up, crawled into my lap, and immediately started purring himself to sleep. Aw.)

I was having an interesting Twitter conversation about the weird cultural projections that different regions of the US put on dogs this morning, including a guess that a dog from rural Georgia might have some blackmouth cur in her (quite possible!) and some regional discussion of what people expect out of dog manners, so this is quite a nice bookend for my day. I've been thinking about how dog culture in the US might change as dogs in need of homes become less and less common (as they already are in many areas), especially as spay/neuter culture penetrates the US South, and how racism and classism inform rescue culture and the way different breeds and types of dogs are often promoted. (Especially with respect to pit bulls. It is impossible to understand the cultural trajectory of pit bulls in the US without understanding the racial associations and aspects of the dogs, and it's uncomfortably interesting watching the ways that different groups try to promote the breed for adoption by, well, presenting them as middle class white person dogs too.

People get pretty weird about it.

Disclaimer because it's a loaded topic: my opinions on pit bulls are: ( behind the cut )

I am currently taking a long break from MeFi after I, uh, got hit pretty hard in the exclusion trauma side of things in a thread about wlw. Again. So it's nice to have DW to come back to and natter in, and the hell with everything else for a bit.