There is a fish and chips food truck that visits Fernley around once a month. For some reason, I typically get notifications of them coming here after they've already moved on to a different city. This time, I knew they would be here today, stopping at Big R Ranch & Home. As it happens, I needed to go there anyway. The water pump on the swamp cooler has stopped pumping. I think there's just been too much hard water build-up in it. Also, the pads into which the water is pumped have too much build-up in them. It's easier to just replace the pump and pads than to try and clean them. So I went over to Big R, bought the swamp cooler parts, and went outside to get some fish.
Cats are truly the undisputed champions of nap-taking and they're not picky about where they snooze. In fact, if there's one thing feline friends have mastered (besides judging you from across the room), it's finding the strangest, silliest, most illogical spots for a catnap. Why sleep in a comfy bed when you can curl up in a salad bowl, shoe, or even the bathroom sink?
Whether it's a loafed kitty stuffed between couch cushions or a floof passed out inside a cardboard box that's clearly two sizes too small, these purrfessionals of sleep defy logic and gravity alike. You might be wondering if your cat is broken. Fear not. They're just on their regularly scheduled nap mission to test every odd surface in the house for maximum coziness.
It's like they have a secret checklist: laundry baskets? Check. Keyboard mid-Zoom call? Check. Fresh pile of clean clothes you just folded? Big check. There's no place too weird, no position too twisted. If it fits (or doesn't), they sits… and naps.
At this point, we're convinced they're just trolling us. But honestly? We wouldn't have it any other way. Long live the nap lords.
Soft corals produce diterpenoids, chemicals that could be used to treat human disease. Now, scientists have identified the genes that make these important chemicals, opening the door to creating a limitless supply that can be used to produce and test new drugs.
Volkswagen has added an eight-seat option to the new Multivan lineup, turning its passenger van into an even more capable people-mover. While the eight-seat option won't be on offer in the new California camper van range, there will indeed be an eight-seat camper option. So owners will be able to shuttle around an entire starting basketball team, plus the coach and sixth man, during the week, then enjoy a properly comfy hard-wall van camping experience on weekends.
Every cat deserves a purrfect birthday bash, and our feline friends sure know how to pawty in style. Whether it's turning one or entering their golden (and slightly grumpier) years, birthday cats love being the center of pawtention.
Some cats prefer a more low-key celebration: a cozy nap in a sunbeam, extra treats, and maybe a new box to sit in like royalty. Others go full party mode, bouncing off the walls with their feline friends. Either way, these kitties are living their best nine lives.
Gifts range from new scratching posts to fancy collars, though most cats still end up playing with the wrapping paper. And let's not forget the birthday outfit! An adorable bowtie or tiny hat which will promptly be removed after 3 seconds of dignity lost. The hooman, of course, is furiously snapping photos while singing a slightly off-key rendition of "Happy Purrthday."
In the end, it's all about making our whiskered companions feel loved. Because birthdays may come and go, but the meowments we share with our cats are truly furever.
As unspent antibiotics pass from our bodies into the environment, they contribute to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Scientists are addressing this problem with a new technology which causes such drugs to only become active upon exposure to green light.
Cats are known for their confidence, composure, and the firm belief that they rule the house. But nothing shatters that royal illusion faster than betrayal, usually delivered by the very hoomans they trusted most. Whether it's the ol' treat-bag rustle that turns out to be vitamins, or the classic "we're just going for a car ride" that ends in the vet's office, the look of utter feline betrayal is both dramatic and hissterical.
One minute, a kitty's curled in your lap purring like a tiny motorboat. The next? You've picked them up mid-nap and plopped them into a bath. The audacity. The pawsitivity is gone. The stare is ice cold. And the silent judgment? Meowgnificent. Even routine activities like vacuuming or rearranging furniture can feel like personal attacks. "How dare you move my sunbeam," their eyes seem to say. "I trusted you."
Still, these fluffy drama queens never hold a grudge for long, especially if snacks are involved. A crunchy apology or a soft blankie is usually enough to restore the peace. Until next time, that is. Because a cat never forgets. Or forgives. (Unless there's tuna.)
Ahh, Friday. It's finally the day you can wholeheartedly state that the weekend is just around the corner, and you'll be correct. It won't be some random sentence you tell yourself or your friends in the middle of the week, just to try and help all of you feel better. So no, the weekend is literally just around the corner, and that's such a relief.
And now, adding only a little delightful dose of cat energy can make this feeling a thousand times better. Adding some cats to your Friday, to welcome the weekend, is a great addition that's full of fluffy feline energy - which is the best energy to open the weekend with.
But what if you don't have around 20 cats surrounding you, like a crazy cat lady? Well, then the answer is easy. We know not everyone is a cat pawrent (even though they should), but you can always get that delightful dose of cat energy from some feline funnies in the form of memes.
For a poet capable of almost any extravagance in coining adjectives in -fer and -ger, Ovid appears to have been remarkably sparing with adjectives in -ax. The following are securely attested in the Metamorphoses: audax, capax, edax, fallax, ferax, fugax, loquax, minax, pugnax, rapax, sagax, tenax, vivax, and vorax; all of these appear as well in the elegiacs, along with emax, mordax, procax, and salax; sequax and uerax occur once each in the double letters of the Heroides, which are probably late compositions if genuine but whose Ovidian authorship is not beyond doubt.20 Virgil, though not lavish in using these adjectives, is still the probable inventor of pellax and sternax.21 Ovid, on the other hand, has no clear example of a new adjective of this kind; all those just listed had already appeared either in prose or verse, and usually in both.22 Perhaps formations of this kind struck him as disagreeably archaic, or else he found them stylistically inappropriate: many of the bolder experiments of this type are found in passages of comic abuse, such as Plautus’ procax rapax trahax (Pers. 410) and perenniserue lurco edax furax fugax (421) or Lucilius’ manus tagax (1031 M) or the pejorative term linguax attributed by Gellius to the ueteres along with locutuleius and blatero, while others appear in “low” (i.e., commercial or banausic) contexts, like Cato’s precept patrem familias uendacem, non emacem esse oportet (Agr. 2.7) and Gaius’ description of an ideal slave as constantem aut laboriosum aut curracem <aut> uigilacem (Dig. 21.1.18 pr.).23
20 In Her. 4.46 sequacis is a variant for fugacis. This list was compiled by searching the works of Ovid currently available on compact disk for the relevant endings (-ax, -acis, etc.) and by reading through the remaining works (Heroides 16-21, Ibis, Tristia, Ex Ponto). I am grateful to Richard Thomas for encouragement and technological guidance.
21 Virgil seems also to have introduced uivax to elevated poetry; it occurs before him only in Afranius 251 R². I am grateful to Wendell Clausen for information on Virgilian practice and for alerting me to the work of De Nigris Mores cited in n. 19.
22 Bömer on Met. 8.839 notes that uorax is not found in Virgil, Horace, or the elegists, but does not mention the word’s prominent appearances in Republican literature, cf. Catullus 29.2 and 10 impudicus et uorax et aleo, Cic. Phil. 2.67 quae Charybdis tam uorax?; both passages appear as quotations in Quintilian, and the latter was recalled by Ovid in Ib. 385 Scylla uorax Scyllaeque aduersa Charybdis.
23 Ovid’s only use of emax (Ars 1.419 f.) clearly exploits the word’s commercial flavor: insitor ad dominam ueniet discinctus emacem / expediet merces teque sedente suas.
“The work of De Nigris Mores” is S. De Nigris Mores, “Sugli Aggettivi latini in -ax,” Acme 25 (1972) 263-313.
I’ll have to remember linguax, which the Oxford Latin Dictionary defines as ‘loquacious, talkative.’
Sometimes when I talk to people about these blankets they ask me if I ever get tired of thinking them up, if it’s tricky to come up with a different blanket for each baby in this family and Finn, let me tell you this – it is never. You are so unique and special to me that your blanket ideas came as quickly as they ever do- even if your blanket didn’t. (Sorry about that, your birthday bunched up with another baby blanket that needed knitting, then you were early, and your blanket was late and then Canada Post/PostNord Denmark both have some answering to do.) When I thought about you and your parents and family, it was so easy to dream up a blanket as special as you all are.
You, sweet wee Finn, are the baby in this family I am the farthest from, have ever been the farthest from. I am here in Canada and you are in Denmark, and the stitch pattern I chose for the centre of your blanket is my attempt to reconcile that. Some people see a flower, others a bee, and I bet a few years from now you’ll have your own ideas – but I see (and knit) Polaris, the great North Star, a symbol of what the places we live in have in common. I was just going to type “did you know Finn…” and then I remembered you are new here and certainly do not know, so I’ll just tell you.
The North Star sits over the celestial North Pole (and Santa’s house, we’ll get to that later this year) and because of this, the way it sits at the top of the world, it appears mostly stationary in the sky – all other stars appear to rotate around it and it makes it easy to navigate by if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. Find that star, and straight down from it is true north.
This made me think of you because that’s the way it goes in families, for a time now while you are little, you are the star around which we all rotate, and then for the rest of their lives, you will be the most important point your parents navigate by. From the day you were born everything changed for your mum and dad, and from that moment forward they need only look at you to know the way. Further to that my sweet guy, though you are far away you are a child of the North like the rest of us and somehow that makes you feel closer.
Around that is the ring stitch – and this little Finn, is the only stitch that has appeared on every blanket that I have ever knit. It is a circle of tiny perfect rings that goes around the whole blanket, meant to be a symbol of your family and their love around you. If you need help any day of your whole life, look no farther than your amazing grandparents, great aunties and great uncles, your aunties and uncles and your cousins and everyone else in this family by birth, or because they belong and we chose them. They are a team that is always here for you. (Btw I’m great at unusual solutions to problems, and your great uncle Joe is absolutely who you want to call if you’re in jail. Don’t worry about the Denmark thing, he’ll figure it out.)
Around those little rings is a border you share with your cousin Maeve – the last baby in this family who felt far, far away to me. (By the time Sasha came along, I was a bit more used to them being all the way across Canada.) It’s suns and moons, a little nod to the idea that no matter how great the distance is between you and the rest of us, it’s still the same moon we look up at, still the same sun we play under. That you share a border with Maeve also turns out to be a bit of kismet, since it looks as though she may love you more than almost anybody, something I hope is a hint of a fabulous bond down the line.
Past that (your blanket is as big as any of them ever have been, despite my attempts to restrain myself) a border that means something to me, though I have as much trouble articulating it now as I did when I sketched it. There are large motifs with nupp centres and larger circles, giving way with each generation to something less complex, until the last round has just an encircling of little nupps. My idea here was to stretch and try to represent the unique moment your larger families are in… so many generations. Your maternal Great-grandmother counted her progeny for me one day before I knit this, noting that you would be the 28th person in her family because she and Old Joe got married and I tried to visualize all those people, and I know that your dads family brings so much more complexity to this – all these people who you come after because of dates and dreams and accidents and effort. You are the icing on an almost 60 year old cake, and you and your cousins are that newest cute little generation of nupps at the last. It’s a snapshot of who your family is right now and how remarkable that is.
After that (I told you it was big, we’re almost done.) A little chain of daisies – because like your dad Adam you are Danish, and that’s Denmark’s national flower. Also partly for the synergy between your mum and your aunt Savannah and all their Canadian summers trying to make daisy chains. One way or another the two of them will have you in a field with these flowers in your hair sooner or later, and when they do you and your dad can beam with nationalistic pride.
Finally darling Finn, the last border. Like so many of these blankets… it is a wave. First for the wave of love that welcomes you, for the waves of strength that encircle you, for the wave of luck that brought your parents together, but mostly for the wave of strength in your mum, my niece Kamilah, and the wave of water she brought you forth on, sweet and strong and rather obviously no longer the little girl that skips in my heart when I think of her. Your border is knit in garter stitch, and not to geek out in the knitting department too much, but the symbolism in that is safety, strength, comfort, resilience, endurance and shelter. You’ll find a lot of garter stitch in your blanket if you look for it Finn – and it’s there for a reason. I hope the magic of knitting acres of it brings all those charms to your life and more.
Although we haven’t met, my little darling… I hope that every time you are wrapped in your blanket or it is laid over you on a cool day, every time it is spread beneath you so you can watch the leaves flutter or see the birds swoop by – I hope you can feel so much love in all the stitches.
Welcome wee Finn. You are a most wanted, hoped for and dreamed of child. You are perfect.
Love always,
Great-Auntie Stephie
(PS. Please thank your talented grandmother Kelly for taking the beautiful pictures of you enjoying your blanket. You lucked out in the grammy department.)
Take a deep breath. Hold it for a few, serene seconds. And let it out slowly. Now let your cat climb on your lap, settle in the most comfortable position, lie down, the purr deeply. What a great moment to experience. Having a calm moment with your cat is like a beautiful boost to any cat pawrent's mental wellness. Any cat pawrent should relax with their cat every once in a while (but honestly, we wish we could do it 24/7). Cats should be registered as an anti-anxiety treatment. Such cute and fluffy feline friends.
While you're at it, petting your napping and purring cat while having this relaxing meowing moment, you can complete the experience with some funny cat memes you can easily lose your focus to. Just let your mind wander to Catland, full of fluffy feline friends and lots of cute smol kittens prancing around, meowing their soft little meows. What a funny and cute moment it must be. What magic cats are.
One of our favorite facts about cats is that cats domesticated themselves. Did you know that? Humans didn't have to do anything. Cats just saw all of that comfort and free food and decided that being a part of that sounds much nicer than having to fight for scraps outside. And we can't blame them. But what's even cooler than that is that we are not talking about something that happened thousands of years ago. Cats continue to domesticate themselves to this day.
Each and every day, somewhere out there in the world, a cat decides that it is done with outdoor life, that it is time to be adopted and spoiled. And it doesn't matter where they are, it doesn't matter what age they are, the meowment that they make this decision, the universe seems to just… provide. And you, as the human, will be blessed with the kitten in the most unexpected ways sometimes - even if that means finding a kitten under the hood of your car.
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