Tried staying up in the front room where Badger flips out and meows me to after his morning meal and honestly he seems a little embarrassed to be seen

Huh, now that Badger’s getting up by my pillow he stays like that after I get up rather than following me to the parlor, I guess my smell is all the comforting presence he needs

Badger has fully internalized that if he gets on the bed next to my pillow I won’t disturb him rolling over and it’s been nice waking up with him

Realizing I can just feed Badger the fatty bits of a steak and he’ll stop trying to eat the rest has been a game-changer

Badger seems to be responding well to clearing out the house; seems it was mostly not stuff he misses, rather just taking up space he can now use

ikura don

kontextmaschine:

Getting warm enough I can wear my short pajamas all night and go out in the yard in them even before the Portland day’s heat settles in at 2

Badger’s getting that shaggy look he does when the coat coming in is different from the one he had

maximumsunshine:

Dearest Tumblr. Please show me your darling baby kitty cats? I’ll accept shittens too! Here is one of mine in trade! A darling good boy named Ash!

The thing is my good relationship with Badger doesn’t just turn on being a loving provider but also being harsh and angry sometimes, without which it would have progressed to different failure states

kaziusklasterzoroaster:

kontextmaschine:

Looking at Badger asleep. We have developed such a good relationship already in what’s probably around 1/3 of his lifespan, I’m thinking at the ½ or 2/3 mark I really want to get another cat and try to continue building and passing the accultured part on

man, that’s fucked up, what if your roomate just randomly made you live with another guy so that you could teach that dude how to be as much like you as possible – all on the idea that when you died in a few decades, he wanted a replacement roommate? 

I mean, yes, I host his presence and introduce stimuli into his life in service of fulfilling my own desires for companionship, that’s kind of the concept of pets

Looking at Badger asleep. We have developed such a good relationship already in what’s probably around 1/3 of his lifespan, I’m thinking at the ½ or 2/3 mark I really want to get another cat and try to continue building and passing the accultured part on

Badger has settled on “next to the pillow” as where he can curl up next to me on the bed without getting knocked around when I shift my body; some days I wake up (second time, after first feeding at 9) he’s been there. (Which means I have to check for him before getting up now)

When I first got this 3-level cat tree Badger only hung out on the top level. Now he only uses the middle (for much of the dead hours between crepuscular periods). He’s never been in the bottom barrel.

Badger & my relationship now so good that if he starts meowing an hour before dinner I’ll just be like “ah, bugger off” and in 5 minutes he will and only come back 15 minutes before

Realizing one of the important things about my relationship to Badger is when he wanders over to check out some new situation and sniff around I can impute intelligence to his investigations but if he was a human child capable of speech I’d recognize how dumb his inquiries were

Looking at Badger, who just turned 5, thinking about how he’ll almost certainly be here in good condition at 10, might be around in declining health at 15, and will almost certainly be gone before 20

He doesn’t pose looking out the front door anymore, but it’s Badger’s 6th birthday today.

The blaze on his nose is really too thin for a badger’s coloration but in my defense when I came up with it he had woken me up by standing on my chest and I was looking at him crosseyed

Like I don’t know that my cat “loves me” per se, but he definitely sees me as a distinct entity he both cultivates a positive relationship towards and expects one from, using a core vocabulary of basic cat behaviors as modified in accordance with my demonstrated preferences