Stop and buy supplies of course! Even most grocery stores carry disposable litter pans, or just a plastic bin, along with food. Even a paper bowl will work for water.

One of our cats had a serious medical issue (we think a tick bit her, but we don’t know for sure), and after she recovered, she attacked her own tail one night. Woke up the next morning to find blood all over the house. Poor kitty ended up having part of her tail docked. :(

We keep one of our cat carriers out because one of our cats likes to curl up in it.

We had to take another cat to the vet a few weeks ago, so I went to grab it… Nope, occupied, with the wrong cat. Rather than deal with that, I just got a different carrier.

We have two that are getting up there in age. They’re both active, but the signs are there. One has irritable bowel syndrome and asthma is on medication for both. His black fur has faded in some spots, too - not much, but there are definitely spots that are a bit more brown in his legs.

The other seems healthy, but his urine had some protein and there is a slightly elevated number in his bloodwork for his liver (I think). The vet isn’t sure what those mean yet, and they want him to get an ultrasound (they just told us yesterday, and we haven’t had the chance to schedule it yet).

It’s possible he also has IBS, which would at least mean we’re used to dealing with it. He’s already eating the right food.

Odds are good we have years with them yet, but it’s a sign they’re getting older, and a reminder that some day they’ll be gone. :(

I meant including gas.

Looks like there’s one, the Nissan Versa.

I mean, are there any cars available in the US for just $20k? I’m pretty sure a base Mazda 3 was more than that when we bought ours five years ago (before the pandemic, and ours is a higher trim model). I don’t think they’re making the really small cars any more (like the Toyota Yaris).

Short version, I’m skeptical of this price point for even a small pickup. Great if they can do it.

You actually can nearly do that. Facebook inexplicably showed me how a few weeks ago. If a friend reshares something, you’ll see it, but it removes all groups, etc. It was stunning how little content actually comes from friends.

On the Facebook site (I’m sure it can be done via app, too, but I didn’t look), click on the menu near the top right, then click Feeds (under Social). Then click on Friends on the left.

Oh yeah. “You’re safer being ejected from the car in a crash. My cousin’s ex husband’s sister’s daughter survived a crash that way!”

I’m a little surprised Trump hasn’t signed the “Asbestos Fibers Are Our Friends” Executive Order.

He caved.

Spread the word, irritate red hats everywhere.

Mine managed to hit the power button on the top of the case a few times. I like that location for the power button, but it’s not so great with cats. I now have something over the button so he doesn’t press it.

Does this sound like a man who had all he could eat?

I’m not sure I have just one.

First there was Snowball. Adopted him as an adult from a rescue, and apparently he’d been returned a few times. Food allergies, likely irritable bowel syndrome. Over the next 12 years I cleaned up a lot of cat vomit. Seriously - we have three cats now and it’s still far less than he produced. Eventually cancer got him.

But he was my best bud for those years. When my girlfriend (now wife) moved in, she knew we came as a package. One time she said, “I don’t think your cat likes me.” And I was like, “Are you serious? He loves you!” She just didn’t get cat language.

Late in Snowball’s life (we didn’t realize how ill he was at the time), we adopted a female tabby we named Minnie. She was so cuddly. She’d come up to me at night, and I would lift up the covers, and she’d curl up under the covers with me for a while. She was spicy, as one vet tech put it. But she was so fun too.

She had multiple medical issues that tended to interfere with each other, and she spent quite a bit of time in the animal hospital in her later years. We put her to sleep when she was 7 because she just wasn’t getting better, and even if she had survived that incident, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be back in a few months with the same problems. I miss her so much. At least Snowball got a long life, he was at least 13 but could have been as much as 18.

These days two of the three are pretty cuddly with me. Stitch tends to curl up on my feet at night, though my wife has spotted him in my arms while we sleep too. Nibbler usually curls up on my lap and arm when I’m in the comfy chair in the living room. I’ll miss them both so much someday.

And lately Stitch has been showing signs of old age, he has a few medical issues of his own, and his black tuxedo fur is fading some, so I fear he’s older than we thought. (We’ve had him since 2016, and they thought he was about a year old then, but they really can’t tell - he could be 5 or 6 years older than that.) I’m not ready…

Cats are great examples of adaptation.

One of our cats ended up having a few inches of her tail docked. She was the same cat though, as active as ever, didn’t care about the tail. It made me think about us humans and our reactions to disabilities.

The tunnel beast is adorable!

Or, do what the nearby horse farm does, just head to my neighborhood and leave the horse shit all over the trail and the road and people’s yards!

Seems kind of rude to me, but what do I know.

Three days is the (generously calculated) time until civil defence will have soup kitchens up and running

Wonder if that’s still true with the budget cuts to FEMA here in the US.

I have a computer in the basement that I pretty much only use for Zwift (an online cycling game). For whatever reason it doesn’t have that TPM chip, despite the fact that I bought it in 2021 or so. So it won’t upgrade to Win 11.

But…it turns out Zwift runs great under WINE…so now it runs Debian with WINE. (Which probably wasn’t my best choice - should have gone with something a little more up to date - but it does work.)

Good point. It’s still an odd term to describe fighter planes.

I am a native English speaker. It sounds like something someone who was translating from another language would say. “Soldiers” is the really common term.