Cat Caveats

An at-length discussion on the “If I fits, I sits” phenomenon concluded with a shake of our heads and a repetition of one of our go-to mantras, “cat people” (other oft-repeated phrases include “Seriously!/?/!?” and “Fuck that noise.”). Normally, “cat people” indicates a topical shift for us. It pops out when we’re at the end of our explanatory feline rope. We have conveyed all that we are capable of verbalizing on the subject, and are forced to chalk up the rest of the mystery as being accessible only to members of the bizarre world of cat ownership.

It’s a very exclusive club.

However, this time something was different. Maybe it was a result of the temporary lull in the Hellish July heat wave, or perhaps it was due to the moving-induced deterioration of our mental health states, but for whatever reason, we just couldn’t let it go.

PAUL: Cat people.
ANYA: Seriously, cat people.
PAUL: Right.
ANYA: No, really. Like, we’re all weird about our pets. Your dog is the most neurotic mess I’ve ever seen, and I’m completely insane about my ferrets. Sure. But CAT PEOPLE, man. They’re on a whole ‘nother motha-fucking level (to quote Chris Rock in Ye’s hit record ‘Blame Game’).

The conversation kind of devolved from there, to the elaborate ways that cat people explain their feline companions to other people. From their social handicaps, to their delicate sensibilities, to the weird shit humans capture them doing, cats are fucking crazy, man. And some require more in depth guidelines for coexistence than others. See: My Cat From Hell. Love them or hate them, we can all agree they’re bizarre and inexplicable creatures. And so their owners (guardians?) have to write whole rule books for visitors meeting the cat(s) in the house.

Smiling to hide their joint terror.

And for any of you out there who are saying “noooo, that’s crazy, cats are pets just like everything else, and other pet owners are exactly the same/worse”, calling bullshit on the play. To demonstrate the truth of this, see below. One of these scenarios happened before our very eyes. If you can guess which one, kudos, you have a cat and you’re crazy. If you can’t...well then that really proves our point. Sound fair? Don’t care. Here goes:

Scenario 1:

STOP! What are you doing!? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but you’re really better off not sitting there. That’s Gregory’s spot. He doesn’t like the fabric on the couch, and we can’t reupholster again right now. I tried putting a blanket down, but he knows and just tears it up anyway. I know it sounds like I’m being crazy, but things have been really stressful around here. For both of us. Since I started the new job, I’ve been getting home 15 minutes later in the evening, and it’s completely destroyed his [still on the cat here] schedule. He always ate dinner at 6:15 on the dot, and he’s having a very difficult time adjusting to change. And who among us doesn’t? It just breaks my heart to think about him crying here for a quarter of an hour “where’s mommy?!”. Ugh I feel so guilty.

And on top of that, he’s completely changed his eating habits, like he wants to punish me! He has always gotten pretty much whatever he wants, of course I do the mixture of wet and dry food so that he’s hydrated but also gets tartar protection. I even tried whole prey for awhile, but since I still had to cut it up and debone everything, it totally wasn’t worth it. But for the past two weeks he’s refused to eat anything but salmon patties. Not that I mind making them or paying for them every day, I’m not trying to cheap out on him or anything, I just hate to think about all of the other dishes he’s missing out on. My poor brave boy. He’s so shaken up that some of his hair is falling out! I hope that it’s just a temporary funk and that he hasn’t developed psychogenic alopecia. I would hate for Gregory to have to go back on his antidepressants. They made him so terribly groggy.

Scenario 2:

You saw one of the cats? Which one... not the shaved black one!? Oh, the gray one? Yeah, that’s fine. Wait. You didn’t go in the basement, did you? That’s his place. I mean, he lets my mom come downstairs every few days the change out the litter, but otherwise... Okay, I’m making him sound completely terrible, but he’s really not that bad, he’s just a little misunderstood. His name? Well we call him Diablo, as a joke, but his real name is Voldemort, just because we love Harry Potter and he has that weird scrunched up nose, not because he’s a supreme evil lord or anything, like, he can be a little naughty, but he really is totally fine for the most part. If you see him, he’s not going to suddenly attack you or anything, just do not, I repeat, do not ever pet him.

Well, he’s fine when he’s sitting there and sometimes he even looks like he wants you pet him, and I’m not saying that it’s a trap, but he’s just really sensitive and once you start petting him, he remembers how much he hates petting and he will turn on you in a second. But don’t freak out about sleeping tonight. You guys will be totally fine on the pull-out couch, Diablo has never bitten anyone while they were sleeping. You might wake up with him sitting on your chest, but he won’t claw your eyes out, just, like, don’t move. He’ll probably just stare at your face for a bit, but eventually he’ll get bored and leave. Well, he might go and kind of... mount? your leg and kind of... gyrate, a little bit. It’s just a little territorial/domination thing, but it usually doesn’t last that long, just, you know, don’t touch him while he’s doing it... because he will bite you.

Scenario 3:

Okay, man, we all set for tonight? Just swing on by around 8, it’ll be great to see you guys again. Huh? Oh, uhh, no, we’ll just have to hang out and stuff, like, it would be really cool to play Settlers of Catan, but Ginger hates board games. What? No. My girlfriend’s name is Jenny, Ginger’s my cat. Yeah, I think that it’s because it’s an activity that she can’t participate in at all? Like, if we’re all just chilling out, she can sit with us and she’s totally fine, like she’ll walk around with us and snuggle and everything’s great. But board games are just, like, not really an option, yeah, she’ll try to play with us, so she’ll, like, steal and hide pieces or else she’ll just kind of roll around on the board, and it’s really funny and stuff, but we can’t really play anything.

Well, sure you guys are welcome to stay the night, just maybe leave your stuff in your car? I mean, I guess I don’t know how she is about people sleeping on the couch, but every time Jenny stays here, Ginger gets, you know, normal cat territorial, and just pees on all of her stuff. Even the towel she uses in the bathroom. What? Yeah I know, it sucks, but what can you do? I mean, I get where she’s coming from. No, the cat, not Jenny, she can just leave her stuff outside in the trunk or whatever. I mean at least she can fix the peeing thing but doing that. The thing she really hates is how Ginger hates it when we fuck. Yeah. Well, I mean she just kind of hate-stares mostly, which I don’t think is that big of a deal, but Jenny isn’t really down with it. But if we lock her out of the room, she does that howling thing until we let her back in! So like, what choice do we have? Yeah, she just kind of perches on the nightstand. Jenny keeps saying she’s going to attack one day, but it’s like no way would my cat do that to me. Yeah. Ha, well yeah. Ok, see you tonight then.

I always win, Jenny. Always.

A Surprising Pop of Positivity

If you read even semi-regularly, you know that we’re not the sunniest people in the entire world. You could generously assume that our devastating humor comes from a dark place, it’s a coping mechanism as we deal with our deep seated issues in a decently productive way. You could more realistically assume that we’re just pretty fucking jaded for twenty somethings, and blame it on our upbringing/the state of the economy/our codependent relationship. Pick your (our?) poison! Regardless of the reason, it’s true that we’re not often brimming with optimism and love for our fellow man. But it can be exhausting spending so much time wishing people were better, you know? And we sleep the troubled sleep of the hopeful, despite our insistence that we’ve thrown in the towel on Everyone Ever.

So here we are, two desperately underemployed and underutilized young adults stuck in a place that prohibits us from starting our Adult Lives and Careers and Establishing Independence and things like that. You know your life is fucked up when your greatest joy in a week is that the token Self Righteous Christian from high school got knocked up by a dude whose “job” is online poker. So we’re changing shit up. We’re moving away and starting new things, and we plan to worry about paying rent instead of when we’re going to get out of this dead end situation. It’s nice to focus on whether we should put on ten pounds as a buffer for the poverty diet we’re about to endure, or if we should just let said diet run its course, leaving us looking like city waifs instead of tourists.

So, in the spirit of new things and sharing personal shit with you, dear reader, today we’re going to send you things that make us happy. Things that pull us out of the depths of despair, or just make us chuckle. Use them wisely! (That means frequently and with vigor). And don’t get used to this happy tone! We’ll be back with snark on snark on snark on Friday. Probably.

The Sound of Music

If you hate this movie, you are a Nazi. That is all. “I hate musicals, it’s so long, blah blah blah” NO. This entire film is a work of art, Julie Andrews is a force of nature, you’re a fool. The dialogue! Her voice! That part where the Captain gets all choked up singing “Edelweiss” before they flee “ALL the way to SWITZERLAND?!”? It makes us happy from start to finish, even the sad parts. Watch it when you’re doing just fine, watch it when you’re melancholy, watch it when your life is in upheaval. And enjoy that goddamn goat puppet show like the child you are.

Anya probably spent her lifetime allotment of her mother’s patience listening to this song on repeat.

“If I fits, I sits”

The more we see, the funnier it gets.

Somewhere along the way, this phrase got lodged into our vernacular. Not typically purveyors of the millions of cat pictures and videos on the internet, Anya literally woke up one day and had this dumb phrase stuck in her head. Now, every time we need a completely out of context giggle, it sends us into hysteria, no pics needed. No explanation for this one, folks, but we hope it works for you too.

British accents

"I'm just like any other regular mum."

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we may or may not be extreme Anglophiles. What began as a childhood obsession with Julie Andrews (see above), has grown and expanded into an enchantment for all things British, beginning and ending with those glorious accents. We love every damn ridiculous one of them, from prim and proper Lady Mary to scruffy little Eliza Doolittle and all the absurd Gwyneth and Madonnas in between.

Watermelon

The Fruit Demon of Deliciousness

Honesty time: Anya is a frequent puker. And a marathon puker. Some would consider vomiting a desirable way to deal with stress (better than eating your way through like six cookies and a Taco Bell meal in twenty minutes), but it’s not GREAT. And the only food that she kept down after a particularly nasty fight with the Stress Demon of Upchuck was...you guessed it, watermelon. Yes, watermelon has gotten us through some dark days...and you thought this one was going to be a paragraph extolling the vodka soaked virtues of a watermelon keg on a summer’s day, didn’t you? Sorry, not sorry.

Puppies (particularly of the corgi variety)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THAT FACE, CORGI?

Goddamnit. Look at that thing. You can just imagine how long we spent scouring the internet for a pic of a Corgi puppy. “Wait, there’s a couch full!” “That one is SLEEPING!” “Look at this costume!” “HE’S WINKING” etc. etc. etc. When we see one in real life, we become dangerous. Like knees giving out, pray to god neither of us are driving, dangerous. See Anglophilia above, for a partial explanation.

Witty puns

“You're an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top, and careful, Cherry, 'cause I'm the king of pop.”

None of the entries on this list (except for perhaps the watermelon one) should come as much of a surprise to you, this one being no exception. We always appreciate a well-placed pun and perfectly executed one has the ability to knock us out of commission for an entire afternoon (See: “NUNAVUT” tweet). Admittedly, you could make the argument that this is almost always a self-congratulating circlejerk of us laughing hysterically at each other (or to each other at ourselves), but... can you really blame us?

Sunshooooine

We all have seasonal depression (we, the denizens of Not Florida or California), and a bright day cheers us right up. Sure, they’re not made to order, and sure, we have a fifteen to twenty degree difference in temperature preference, but that Vitamin D really does do wonders for our mood. Plus, WAY more corgis outside in the sunshine. Plus it’s watermelon season, plus we can do our over the top Spike and Dru British accents. Really tying it all together here!

Anya Extends An Offer She May Bitterly Regret

It all started at an H&M, as these things are wont to do. Paul is shopping with Swiss Miss. Anya is at home mulling over which gold spray paint to use on her antique chandelier. Things are strange. Suddenly, the phone vibrates! A message from Paul.

“A customah!”

PAUL: There was this cat shirt I almost bought you, but then I remembered that you don’t like cats or H&M.

ANYA: Haha under the right circumstances I would accept both. Probably have to let go of that hatred since I rock their dresses so hard?

PAUL: It’s for the good of the planet!

ANYA: Basically. Also, I will regret this but I accept any and all animal clothes from now on.

PAUL: Ohohoh. (This is the first sign that he’s going to fuck with me).

ANYA: I could up the ante by committing to wearing them to work.

PAUL: Stop.

ANYA: I could send out an office email with my offer.

PAUL: Does this include mythical animals and/or fantasy hybrids?

ANYA: Absolutely.

PAUL: Creepy Lawyer will buy you a towel dress that says ‘PUSSY’ on it.

ANYA: I’ll write up a set of rules.

So here we are. Anya, a connoisseur of all things both wearable and animal themed (except actual fur OBVIOUSLY), is going to foolishly commit (what other kind of commitment is there, really?) to wearing any and all animal themed clothing and accessories that she receives. To work. The guidelines are as follows:

     - It can be any kind of animal, real or imagined, as long as its genitals aren’t featured.

    - Also, not dead.

     - It can be any kind of clothing, but she will not be wearing underwear outside her pants or other such nonsense.

     - It can be secondhand (except earrings or undergarments, she doesn’t care how well you washed it.)

     - She reserves the right to tailor these items, but will wear them visibly (not wearing pajama pants to work as actual pants, because she does need to stay employed, but will make them into a shirt/skirt/headband).

Texts from Last Year Pt. 4: In Which Anya Needs a Therapy Dog

Welcome back to a series that makes us laugh almost as much as it makes us cringe, the last of our 2012 collection. Thank goodness. Catch up on our dysfunction here, here, and here. Don’t be sad that this is the end of another’s year’s worth of nonsense...be happy because we never stop accruing insanely weird text messages, and we’re always willing to share them with you.

The only reason this doesn’t happen is because neither of us have a cat

Judge if you must, but mostly appreciate the relationship we’ve cultivated, which not only allows but necessitates the following:

Monday, October 29 3:55pm

The Office quote of the decade “when you’re with someone, you put up with the things that make you lose respect for them, and THAT is love”

Thursday, November 1 6:16pm
Haha right? Anya’s Mom could just make a vest for Dog. They have dogs for people with autism, they HAVE to have one for me.

He’d be more convincing than poor Justice

Tuesday, November 13 2:15pm
Paul. Paul. I’m pretty sure I told Married Guy about my dog as a lobster costume idea and THEIR NEW BABY WAS A LOBSTER FOR HALLOWEEN! Oh, the feelings. The confusion. Almost weirder if I didn’t tell him.

Wednesday, November 14 9:42pm
I need to live tweet my reactions to Twilight, the movie, and the book.

Anya starts asking Paul a million questions and expressing her disgust

Wednesday, November 14, 9:47pm

Nope, I quit. Don’t want to ruin it. My fans need my true first reaction. I need that dragon dictation shit. Also, not sure I can confine myself to 160 characters.

This is exactly how it works in my mind. Only in some fab sixties clothes.

Monday, November 19 11:37am
Ladybird Johnson had pet raccoons at the white house and everyone loved them!

Thursday, November 22 1:13pm
Just got teary over a fucking folger’s commercial. Life is not good

Wednesday, November 28 7:10pm
I hope thankstaking and gamlumpagus is everything you wanted and more

Thursday, November 29 1:23pm
Maybe I should have a kid so I always have a built in excuse to call in to work and get four day weekends.

Friday, November 30 5:10pm
Totally picturing No Boundaries’ voice/tone/fervent head nodding that she does when she’s saying something super crazy and wants you to agree. Watching Soul Sister try to gently be like “well, I don’t think it’s really like that...” was priceless.

Thursday, December 6 10:52am
BITCH WE HATE GOT LAID OFF HOORAY

Making me feel glad that I’m not you

Thursday, December 6 12:55pm
It’s hard to do nice things for you to make up for driving me everywhere when the people in my life are idiots and when you don’t eat! Haha food is my fav love currency

Friday, December 7 11:06am
No she’s staying for now? Idk I guess Faded Hippie has some over-the-counter meds for these things.

Friday, December 7 1:37pm
He’s just so fucking obnoxious AND his kids don’t like Harry Potter. I told him he was reading it wrong.

Friday, December 7 1:42pm
I mean, this is coming from a librarian who doesn’t like to read and loves burn notice, why am I even surprised?

Thursday, December 13 2:38pm
Also, kombucha tea: What. The. Fuck. Can we try it? Dare we?

Thursday, December 13 9:27pm
This is what happens when you leave me alone

Because I’m chocolate Lab levels of pathetic

Thursday, December 20 10:10am
Oh NO, No Boundaries hugged me! It’s over.

Friday, December 21 9:56am
Ummm That Guy invited me to lunch today

Thursday, December 27 5:56pm
Your Anya Mom moment of the day: makes very clear her disappointment that something “made me so messed up” about children/pregnancy and then buys my tights and lipstick for NYE.

Thursday, December 27 8:50pm
Haha closest thing to a sext I’ll ever get

Friday, December 28 9:47pm
HOLY FUCK DID YOU KNOW THE EXTREMELY RELIGIOUS FAMILY IN OUR COMMUNITY’S MOM IS A LESBIAN?! AND IF YOU DID I AM SO ANGRY YOU DIDN’T TELL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Things That Should Bump in the Night: We Continue to Defy Logic

Last week, we talked about some of the strange things we (mostly Paul) are afraid of. Catch up here!

Spoiler! This adorable creature makes him shudder

Now we’ll have to get back to Anya, whose fear of being attacked by one the perps of SVU only kicks in when she is alone, in the dark, trying to get to her car. Not so crazy, in this day and age. However. She has a few other deep seated phobias that make much less sense. You can guess from our twenty somethings tagline, that we are children of the 1990s. Great. (Someday that will fucking shock people. “You were born BEFORE the year 2000?!!??!” No time for that crisis right now, but damn.) So we all saw Free Willy, right? The inspirational tale of a troubled young white kid who starts hanging out with an orca that lives in a sad, dirty park and the mysterious old tribal dude who trains him.

When Anya first saw that movie (as a small child), she was totally on board with the whole “abandoned kid living on the streets resists his foster parents until a spiritual connection with a whale helps him become a functioning human and connect with other people” thing. Not so on board with the part where said kid is cleaning graffiti from under the tank (why?!) and the fucking orca POPS UP OUT OF GODDAMN NOWHERE! It probably doesn’t even happen that way, but as a child she did NOT see that coming. To this day, she hates that noise of deep water that you hear in movies. You know that weird gurgle that always happens when submarines/marine life/etc. is submerged? Hates it. Can’t watch the beginning of Titanic, she hates it so much. Can’t deal with Flipper, Jaws, or anything that involves people diving. That part in Skyfall where they were under the ice? UGH.

Conducting the Google search for this picture was physically uncomfortable, that’s how much I hate it.

We’ll wrap it up with what is perhaps the most far fetched fear of all. We all watched The Magic School Bus, right? Remember that episode where Arnold’s stupid cousin comes with them and Ms. Frizzle takes everyone through the solar system and he takes off his helmet on Pluto and comes back with a bad head cold? That might have started this one. Anya is deeply horrified by outer space. This is possibly (probably) also stemming from that time she watched Armageddon in fifth grade and Bruce Willis fucking got left on that goddamn asteroid. No amount of Xenon: Girl of the 21st Century could assuage her concerns, and she has stated more than once that if the world gets into a Wall-E type situation, she will just stay on Earth with the landfills and the sad robot. Not fucking flying into outer space. Ever. Something about the idea that you could just float away...forever. And suffocate on your own air. People do not fucking belong up there!

Except no. Not impressed.

So we’ve both got some questionable hang ups, fine, great, moving on. What is probably worse and more telling than the things we are afraid of, is the things we aren’t afraid of.

We love the wacky people we call “those Victorians” in our best wistful/condescending voice. The Victorian era was a time of some truly terrifying shit, but we’re strangely okay with the vast majority of it. If you’re unfamiliar with trends in Victorian era photography, google that RIGHT NOW PLEASE. Maybe you’re sufficiently horrified by the fact that they made a habit of things like hiding mothers in the background under tapestries, taking pictures of dead people (especially kids), and playing around with exposure times to make themselves look headless. Aren’t they hilarious? We’re not even close to horrified enough.

Anya was spending some quality time browsing collections of these photographs and playing “which kid in this picture is dead?” while at the Libertarian’s house the other day:

Anya: Oh my GOD, they opened its eyes back up, how CRAZY!

Silence.

Anya: Are you seeing this? How many candles are in this picture?? (counts 21) That coffin is going to catch on fire!

Silence.

Anya: Seriously are both of these kids dead? I love this. Oh my god the headless ones! Look how funny they think they are! It’s like old timey memes! Look at this grouchy old lady holding her head under her own arm!

The Libertarian: I don’t know if I can look at the headless ones, it’s kind of making me sick.

Anya: Just a few more! Or you can go over there. Sorry!

Not fooling anyone wearing that, girlfriend

(If you’re interested in looking at the exact pictures this conversation was centered around, they’re here).

Alright, so we’re pretty down with all of those creepy pictures of stern looking women you see in horror movies. One thing we can’t handle from the Victorian era? Fucking hair wreaths. No joke, that shit is not ok.

You’ve already read about Anya’s unfortunate affection for feral animals, and you know Paul hates raccoons as much as she loves them. Some people might say she lacks a healthy fear of the various critters that wander the forest (or city) at night. You should have seen her cackling with fiendish delight at this scene from the hit television series, Bunheads:

You might be shuddering with horror when you see that opossum hissing at good old Sutton, but Anya was honest to god all “awwwwwwwww look how precious!” (which is also how we assume Spacey Secretary would react, speculating on whether or not Sutton had ham in her bed). It’s a problem. Especially a problem when you live someplace that they could be hanging out in your backyard at any given time. Especially when seeing them squished on the road makes you sincerely sad for the rest of your drive, and this occurs probably every three miles on the highway. That’s some misplaced motherfucking empathy.

We’ll leave you with this gem: while brainstorming for this post, Anya asked Paul to add anything to the lists of fears and should be fears that he thought was missing. Without even looking at the draft he immediately responded “things we should be afraid of but aren’t: dying alone”. Little did he know, the first and only thing Anya had added to that list was...dying alone.

Minds. Melding.