I looked this up on tiktok, for the record, Roger was fine. And also, she’s a girl. Roger is short for Jolly Roger and her human sells sailing prints that do in fact include one of Roger as a tiny adorable pirate. Go here for more Roger and beautiful sailing content, if you, like me, love both cats and gorgeous lakes.
yeah, a few of my followers were alarmed, so thanks for the follow up.
i just assumed that this was a ship cat who’s comfortable around water and just got bored of being in the smaller boat. and based on the fact that the woman was filming, i would hazard a guess that Roger has done This Shit before.
Roger has gone swimming before, but not, in fact, done that particular move. Human was VERY alarmed and did have to scoop her out of the lake, but Roger walked it off like that was her intention the whole time and you can see a tiktok of her as a slightly soggy, mostly toweled off, kitty safely inside the boat if you are inclined to go look at the source for peace of mind.
So no kitties were harmed in the making of this flying leap, promise! While she is a majestic floof, she does appear to be under 2 years old, so some amount of interesting challenges to gravity are to be expected.
Here’s the thing: I won’t help you move, but I won’t shame you for asking, and I’ll show up with food I made once all your stuff is inside your house so you don’t have to survive on takeout until your whole kitchen is unpacked. (I’ll also refer you to people I know who will help you move, and get you helpful tips from folks I know who were professional movers before chronic illness made that not a viable career anymore.)
I won’t stay up all night with you on the phone the night before I have to work, but you should know that if we’re friends, you never ever have to worry about texting me “too much” about anything. I will read and respond to all of your messages enthusiastically if you’re happy and empathetically if you’re sad, as soon as I can. I will offer you a choice between empathetic listening, chattering distraction, or advice. I can deliver on any three of those.
If you introduce your deepest traumas to me the first time we meet, or if they are all we ever talk about, then we’re gonna need to have a conversation about boundaries, but I will still like you and reassure you as best I can that those events do not define you and are not your fault.
I will not babysit your infant child - you really don’t want me to do that anyway, I’m no good with babies - but I will get you a carefully curated selection of picture books for them every birthday and holiday. I will pick up formula from the store near me because the stores near you are out. If you or your partner gave birth, you bet I’m showing up with food and those pads with witch hazel on them to keep in your freezer.
There’s nuance to be had here in this conversation. Part of building a community is realizing that nobody can do everything - that different friends are going to serve different roles in your life, and that while not everybody can show up for everything all the time, you’ll be surprised how many people will show up for you if you let them decide how they can and will do it.
Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.
have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.
and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.
black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.
if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you’ve ever met. it doesn’t have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don’t know much, look it up and learn about it together.
This is Juneteenth.
white people CAN interact with this post. share it, spread it.
Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.
The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.
Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks. Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that? In the computer core, or the communications hub? You just lose power. And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.
If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.
It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost. Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.
Most fleets give you something, of course. For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass. I looked at the vial.
“It’s too soon,” Traav said.
Kvala gestured negation, shakily. She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now. Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive. “You know we’re losing the war.”
They couldn’t deny that. “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”
“Doesn’t it? The Chreee have better technology. Better resources. And they have their warrior code. They don’t care if they die.”
“We can’t give up!” Traav protested. They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told. “Any heartbeat now—”
There was a clunk. Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.
“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.
Kvala exchanged glances with me. The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors. What was the point, after all?
The Aushkune did.
There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here. They were supposed to hide in nebulas.
But if there were—
If there were, we were too late. The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—
Footsteps.
Bipedal. The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.
And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it. My first thought was, robot? That’s almost worse than Aushkune … But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.
Who wore suits?
“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala. “Urgent treatment. Evacuation.”
“Who are you?” Kvala struggled upright.
Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners. “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain. Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.
“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?” Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.
“Not Chreee,” the sound system said. “You Man. Soil Starship Nichols.” The being hesitated. “Rescue Chreee as well. On ship. Will separate.”
“You what?” I said faintly. Who would do that?
“Oath,” the being explained.
“What kind of oath? To what deity?”
The shoulders of the being moved up and down. “Several different. Also none. For me, none. Just—oath.”
I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was. I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.
The being scanned me. “Have water,” it said. “Recommend.”
Raithari have fast metabolisms. I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.
“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”
“Raithari to Raithar. Chreee to Chreeeholm.”
“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.
The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad. Sometimes lie.”
We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?
“And you—what?” I asked. “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”
The being seemed to consider this. “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.
Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense. Did it worship soil? But it had said that it had sworn to no deity …
Madness.
On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it. So why not embrace madness and see what happened?
“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.
“Yes. Soil Starship Nichols.”
I followed the being in the suit.
Took me well over a minute to realize “low frequency right angle shape” was Red Cross.
This whole thing is brilliant with translation stuff.
