At first Badger’s friend Leo would run away if I looked out the window at him in the yard, then he would just freeze but run if I got closer; his comfort distance has been slowly closing since then, lately he’d jumped up to my windowsill a few times and as of this week he’s coming inside to unoccupied rooms

Dunno how I feel about that; I guess I’m vaguely flattered but for one I think Badger comes inside to not have to deal with him sometimes, and for two I think he’s started using the litterbox that Badger gave up on when he started going outside, and the fuck I’m gonna start scooping shit to maintain a public cat restroom

Coming home at night Badger led me (darting ahead & looking back to make sure) on the route I used to put him on my shoulder and walk him

And he showed me all the cool stuff he’d found since, most of which I was like “that’s someone’s yard, Badger, I’m not following you” like a PS3 open world game hitting invisible walls, but some was trees to climb

kontextmaschine:

It’s his first birthday.

It was the second anniversary of his adoption

this week Badger became first a vertebrate and then a bird ace, delivering me 3! birds including 2! in the same night, on top of 2 previously confirmed bird kills and 2 rodent kills

suck it, Jonathan Franzen

after like 3 weeks of being tetchy, Badger’s calming down into his regular patterns again

when he finally flopped down on his side to get skritched it was striking how tight his muscles were, not hard or stiff by-the-day but just realizing how much a regular kneading counts for

the one thing he seems to have picked up on his sabbatical is tree-climbing, I just went to the bathroom and saw him outside and drummed my fingers on the window like always but instead of acknowledging me or roundabouting through the bedroom window he tried to climb a tree towards me

and before out putting down mulch I saw him climbing a tree three branchings further than I expected and was like “dude could drop to the roof”

and then 6 minutes later looked and dude was on the roof, and I hoped he could get down but 15 minutes later out of sight apparently

Badger’s been pissy and snappy and wanting me to stand vigil while he ate these past two weeks

and today he was whining enough I went to settle him by hanging out in the backyard

but then I heard some rustling and a chorus of yowls from the local cat, like, militia, and Badger jumped up and ran off

and there was yowling and it curled around our yard and I followed it towards the street with Badger alone like, hissing off a raccoon 3 times his size

and then after walking the perimeter he came back and I pet him cause I’m kinda proud but it’s like learning your cat’s joined the IRA, like “no, just stay here and be cuddly maybe and not this hard bastard shite”

This is Badger with Leo, his closest cat friend, who comes into the yard and meows for him to come out.

it’s gotten warm enough again that Badger and I can switch from winter schedule

(I close the window when he comes in after 0415, if he’s really complaining [i can tell] I’ll let him out once more and close next time

he meows when I drift out of heavy sleep, I feed wet if this is after noon and he takes one bite and walks back to my bedroom window to meow until I open it

next time he comes back he meows until I pet him for ~2min, he goes back out

next time in he meows until I wake up enough for me to walk into the kitchen and watch him eat the rest of the wet)

BUT NOW

with me keeping the window open

he goes out and comes in with the morning crepuscular cycle

I feed him or not when I wake up around noon

when I wake up for real later he’s been sitting curled/loafed up by my shoulder or ankles for several hours and calmly becomes active in rhythm w/me

So when I picked my pants up off the floor to put on today, I found Badger had helpfully left a dead mouse inside

If I don’t know where he is I can literally close my bedroom door and Badger will pretty reliably show up from outside or down in the basement or whatever and try to get through in some direction

The other day he was meowing at the basement door and I’m like “you know there’s a cat door in that, I’ve seen you go through it several times” and he was stretching up and pawing at the lever knob and I was like “fine” and opened it and while it was open he climbed through the cat door

there’s a better pose but my lens was all greased up

yo since Apple’s been using machine learning and cutting-edge nudge tech or whatever they learned from the Newton to span the gap between actual input and desired results

and with the touchbar that sorta autofill thing’s spread from iPhones to laptops

you think they could write something so if 12 keys get pressed at once they know to ignore my cat and not rename my important files like “mm;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;”?

me: by getting a fresh kitten and bonding with him every day I'll cultivate a cat perfectly matched to me
my cat: ::does impressive stuff out of sight and wants to be valued and comforted for it whenever he damn well pleases::
me: what the hell

Got this big floor pillow for Christmas and it took Badger a bit to get comfy with; I think the way it gave way to his paw it maybe read as loose sand to be avoided

my iPhone just made me a video w/longing music of all and only the best photos of my cat this year, I wonder what Steve Jobs would think

So, a hot minute ago I heard some catfight noises out the open window so I yelled and pointed a flashlight out, eventually two pairs of eyes came running and Badger scrambled in with a pursuer hot on his tail

And so I went to find and comfort him, and I was petting him like “it’s ok, it’s ok… ooh, your tail’s dirty, it’s ok, it’s WHAT IS THAT SMELL”

apparently the other cat ambushed him in the middle of taking a dump and he fled with his shit smeared on his ass, I had to chase him around the house with TP to wipe it off while he hid under things and hissed

Badger’s been dealing with cabin fever now it’s the rainy season

When he flopped down again I was like oh nows a chance to rub and soften up your outside rough paws

But i confused Bag Balm with Tiger Balm

And he licked it, and sorry for that but also as a a novel stimulus we got to relate outside our usual rituals