Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

You are here: Home / Books / Open Thread: Sign of the Apocalypse #3,485,752

Open Thread: Sign of the Apocalypse #3,485,752

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Via Paul Constant: Amazon solicits Kurt Vonnegut fan fiction.

Okay, back when ‘fan fic’ was being invented and I was an irresponsible young college student, I committed a few Trekkie stories. But Star Trek was (is) a television franchise, an ever-evolving collaboration between the creator, the scriptwriters, the actors, and the suits in marketing. By its nature, there are no end of loose threads / missed chances / untold backstories waiting to be exploited. Kurt Vonnegut, on the other hand, is a writer with a style all his own; trying to re-create that style isn’t ‘fan fiction’, it’s pastiche.

Vonnegut invented Kilgore Trout as a prolific hack with a mind so empty and a soul so vacant that aliens could use him as a loudspeaker. I don’t think he’d have been pleased by the concept of “fans” attempting to channel their inner Kilgores, but I’m sure he’d have taken a certain sardonic satisfaction in the attempt.

Reader Interactions

118Comments

  2. 2.

    Belafon

    Can’t wait for Fifty Shades of Slaughterhouse Five.

    //

    I don’t know anything about Vonnegut, having never met the man. Do you think he would have really cared?

    And I really suspect Vonnegut, like almost all people, is one in a million. That would mean about 7000 of him today.

  3. 3.

    smintheus

    Anybody have experience taming feral kittens? We just captured several that are 7 weeks old and they already have a lot of feral characteristics. We’re wondering whether they can be tamed to the point where they can be adopted, or if they’re already so feral it’s losing cause. We’re working with a local cat shelter, but so far they haven’t given us a lot of clear guidance.

    We brought their tiny mother in on monday to be fixed, tested, dewormed, and brought her home to adopt her. Somebody had dumped her out in the country this spring. We thought her kittens in June hadn’t survived because we never saw/heard them. But the mother was increasingly anxious to get back outside, so we did another search and found them living under a shed. Now we have 5 times as much to worry about.

    Don’t know if we can even re-unite the mother with kittens. The cat shelter insists we can’t do it or they’ll all stay feral.

  4. 4.

    FridayNext

    I think Philip Jose Farmer already did this. He published Venus On A Half-Shell in 1975. As I recall Vonnegut gave reluctant permission.

  5. 5.

    Sierra Nevada

    If you think Vonnegut created Trout as an “empty” minded and “vacant” soul, I don’t think you do reading very well. In Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut goes out of his way to point out that Trout is the only character Vonnegut created with the brains and imagination to understand that Trout himself is a fictional character.

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    Rejoice! The door is now open for the literary genius who will be to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. what E.L. James is to Stephenie Meyer.

  9. 9.

    Ted & Hellen

    Since this is an open thread….

    Does it drive anyone else to the brink of madness that all of the voicebots and almost all of the guests on NPR use the phrases SORT OF and KIND OF with insane frequency?

    It’s tossed into sentences as a sort of vocal tic that doesn’t seem, you know, to serve any kind of purpose other than sort of add a vague sort of imprecision to whatever the sort of topic is; and perhaps signal a kind of solidarity with other sort of MSM and intelligentsia types, all of whom seem to use the phrase sort of incessantly whether they are the interviewer or the interviewee.

    Anyone else notice this? Anyone else annoyed by it?

    Why do they do this?

    Along with the network’s kind of complete capitulation to the Bush administration after 9/11 and sort of leading up to the Iraq War, this sort of obnoxious in club kind of habit is the main reason I listen to NPR 90 per cent less than I did before 9/11.

    There’s also the deliberately precious and affected vocal styles many of the reporters/correspondents use to distinguish themselves and signal their uniqueness and hipsterishness. Of course with everyone signalling these qualities, the purpose has been defeated. Perhaps the WORST is the “vocal fry” many of the female reporters affect. Obnoxious! Stupid.

    Mostly love This American Life, but Ira Glass is the worst at this type of faux hipster voice thing, and I blame him for much of the rest.

    Thoughts?

  10. 10.

    Belafon

    @Amir Khalid: I had to laugh out loud when I saw your comment. That’s why I hate patents: It really is conceivable that two independent people could come up with the same idea at the same time.

  11. 11.

    Trollhattan

    @FridayNext:

    My first thought. And to a lesser extent, the “Bill the Galactic Hero” series.

    Oh well, it’ll get more folks to discover Vonnegut.

  17. 17.

    catclub

    I thought this was going to be a post on the dismembered cows in Missouri.
    The police have not eliminated aliens as an explanation.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ted & Hellen: I have noticed that several NPR reporters, male and female alike (both sides do it!), regularly begin sentences with “So….” Makes me crazy.

    I can hardly bear to listen to Ira Glass. Can’t stand his voice. A shame, as TAL is a wonderful program. But the NPR reporter whose voice just sends me up the wall, across the ceiling, down the other side and out the window, is the Paris-based Eleanor Beardsley. Sacre merde but that woman has a horrible voice.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @Violet

    The skeins of Fate crossed that day, the day Billy Pilgrim and Kilgore Trout met at the Ilium broney convention…

  26. 26.

    Trollhattan

    We are well and truly screwed. Good work, Koch bros et al, you’ve stalled us just enough.

    Climate change on pace to occur 10 times faster than any change recorded in past 65 million years, Stanford scientists say. Not only is the planet undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and Chris Field report that it’s on pace to occur at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period. Without intervention, this extreme pace could lead to a 5-6 degree Celsius spike in annual temperatures by the end of the century.

    http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.html

    Meanwhile, across campus at the Hoover Institute, they’re working on their ironclad refutation of such nonsense. Condi is playing the piano.

  27. 27.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ted & Hellen:

    Does it drive anyone else to the brink of madness that all of the voicebots and almost all of the guests on NPR use the phrases SORT OF and KIND OF with insane frequency?… Why do they do this?

    It’s supposed to be a way of establishing rapport with their listeners.

    And, yes, it seems like HuffPo woo-babble, but it can work. Since the male/female establish-bonds vs. trade-data social standard Deborah Tannen wrote about has broken down in the ensuing generation, NPR speakers of both genders need to use more “feminine” language to connect with The Youngs. Presumably they aren’t doing it very deftly — like all skills, it takes practice — or else you’re just not comfortable with the unspoken attempt at inclusivity?

  28. 28.

    Hal

    @SiubhanDuinne: waaaa??? I think Ira Glass has a perfect radio voice. To me it fits TAL perfectly, but I guess I can see where some people would find it off putting.

    Now that I think of it I was listening to and NPR correspondent the other day who had this accent that sort of sounded like Sarah Palin mixed with Frances Mcdormand’s character from Fargo. Harsh to listen to.

  29. 29.

    Foregone Conclusion

    Jim Messina has agreed to work as a consultant on David Cameron’s re-election campaign. The UK left is freaking out, as you might expect.

  31. 31.

    kc

    @Ted & Hellen:

    I had never heard of “vocal fry” until just recently, and then I started noticing it everywhere, and now it bugs the hell out of me.

    Thanks a lot to whoever discovered this and wrote about it!

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    @smintheus: So the kittens are all rounded up? If Mom is friendly, she can be a good influence. Sometimes, though, the thinking is that Mom will keep them from bonding because when they are lonely they will go to her. What’s her state of mind?

    7 weeks is really small. If they are in a room, lie flat and still on the floor and see if any approach out of curiosity. These would make good prospects.

    I did come up with a game that a few shelters tested for me. Normal cats did not spark to it, but ferals and cats with deficits just loved it!

    The Game that Saved Reverend Jim

    You need a special toy; I linked to a teaching website to get some.

  36. 36.

    Anne Laurie

    @Trollhattan: James Tiptree, Jr. wrote a short story, “Beaver Tears”, positing humans as the pawns of superintelligent aliens who use us to create desolate, carbon-poisoned environments that the aliens find comfortable. That was back in 1976…

  37. 37.

    The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge

    I nourish a fair amount of animosity for science fiction writers like Vonnegut, who when they achieve a certain amount of mainstream success, immediately start denying that they ever were a science fiction writer, and ridicule the field for the rest of their careers.

    I much prefer the attitude of late Hugo and Nebula winner Richard McKenna, who said all of his work was science fiction—in The Sand Pebbles the science was social anthropology.

  38. 38.

    Trollhattan

    @Hal:

    Am still gobsmacked he’s cousin to Philip Glass. Anyhoo, TAL wouldn’t be TAL w/o Ira’s particular voice and delivery quirks–the pauses for emphasis and such. Never realized how much until hearing stories narrated by others. Now, if you don’t like that style, then you’ll not be able to listen because it can’t be filtered out.

  40. 40.

    Trollhattan

    @Anne Laurie:

    Now that’s comforting as all hell. ;-)

    Do you suppose if we convinced Republicans this was the case, only the superintelligent aliens are Mexican, that we might get some action out of the louts?

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    With all due respect to commenter Bill E. Pilgrim (who doesn’t seem to come by much any more) Slaughterhouse-Five seems a little too obvious a choice for fanfic. How about The Life and Times of Mr. Rosewater, or an elaboration of the tenets of Bokononism?

  42. 42.

    Trollhattan

    @ranchandsyrup:

    Headed for the local nanobrewer tonight and yeah, I hope they’re well stocked. You and I (and a lot of others) have to face our kids and explain/apologize for the mess we’re leaving them. I don’t have the words.

  43. 43.

    Anne Laurie

    @The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:

    I nourish a fair amount of animosity for science fiction writers like Vonnegut, who when they achieve a certain amount of mainstream success, immediately start denying that they ever were a science fiction writer, and ridicule the field for the rest of their careers.

    Well, yes, but as Vonnegut explained: “Once you’ve been tucked into the drawer labeled ‘science ficition’, publishers want to keep you there. And critics keep mistaking the drawer for a urinal.”

    Things have gotten easier for sf writers in the years since Vonnegut wrote that essay, and part of why it’s easier for sf writers to get respect (sometimes) is that some writers like Vonnegut insisted their work had to be taken seriously even if it did involve time-travel and alients.

    And, frankly, he wasn’t wrong about some of the genre’s True Defenders — young men (paraphrased) “who want stories that tell them they’ll be the heroes of the future, acne, virginity, and all”. You know, the guys who read Heinlein & Ayn Rand for the philosophy…

  44. 44.

    smintheus

    @WereBear: The mom seemed to really love being adopted, at first. We’d been feeding her for weeks and she always danced around us and would nearly let herself be petted. Once we brought her back from the vet, she decided she loved being petted and made over. But she still remained anxious to get outdoors.

    We tried to get her into a cat carrier today (to lure her newly discovered kittens out), but she went crazy and wouldn’t have it. A few hours later, she has sort of calmed down but remains a bit wary of us. She doesn’t know yet that we’ve gotten her kittens.

    They’re hiding in the back of their cages, haven’t touched their food or responded when we talk to them. One mewed a tiny bit at first, but they’ve otherwise been silent.

    Will think about something like your dice game. We still need to get to the point where they’re not terrified of us, I think.

  45. 45.

    WereBear

    @smintheus: Ah. There’s hope. Now, I’m just giving you my own experience, and this is simply what I would do. If the shelter is not helping and you are on your own, I totally understand reaching out for help. Those sites Anne Laurie linked to are very good!

    I would let them all hang together in the tiniest room you have. In this case, Mom is only anxious because she doesn’t know where her babies are. Her happiness, and modeling that love of humans, is what you have going for you.

    The babies should be happy seeing Mom again. Now, if Mom was feral, the shelter is right; she would model fear of humans. But it seems like Mom is thrilled to get human help — people toss out these cats thinking they will revert to a wild state, and a pregnant female who doesn’t know how to hunt that well is in a constant state of freak out. Bless you for helping her.

    So you have everyone re-united again in the little room, with food and a litter box and toys and you spend as much time as you can in the room, with your scent getting all over everything and associating it with happy Mom and good food and fun times.

    If you make eye contact with any of them, do the slow blink of Cat Kisses. This is how I tamed James Bond. And he turned out to be so affectionate… he Bonded.

  46. 46.

    Skerry

    Kitten made it through surgery. There was a large mass on the spleen that had begun to bleed. We’ll find out next week if it is benign or not. Next 24 hours are critical. Appreciate warm thoughts for Roxy. We aren’t ready to let her go yet.

  50. 50.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Pardon me, but what the hell do you expect from a Ferengi slimeball like Jeff Bezos?

  54. 54.

    gogol's wife

    @smintheus:

    We adopted three kittens from our back porch. We had a visitor staying with us when they appeared, so we weren’t able to trap them for about a month. By the time we got them, they were past the point when they would have had to be handled by humans in order to be fully tame. The two females hid behind the washer and dryer for two days, then one of them moved to live behind the books on my bookshelf. Anyway, to make a long story short, they became loving and affectionate, but they are EXTREMELY difficult to get into a carrier and take to the vet. Once they’re at the vet, they’re fine, but they will draw serious blood from us when we’re trying to get them there. We had no idea what we were doing (I’d had several stray cats before, but they were all tame), but we love them so much (Masha died of cancer, but Louis and Sasha are still with us).

  56. 56.

    smintheus

    @WereBear: Thanks. We’ll let the mother have another few hours to calm down, then perhaps allow her in to see her kittens, and reunite them either tonight or tomorrow in her room. We’ve got to keep the kittens in cages, though, at least for the time being.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack

    @smintheus:

    I would (semi-) defer to WereBear on all feline issues, but I have some friends in Atlanta who have successfully tamed/civilized feral cats. (Blog is here, with some interesting stories and videos.) They worked with Alley Cat Allies to capture and neuter all the members of a colony living in the woods by their subdivision, and they have successfully adopted a few and made them indoor cats. There are some others that visit or hang out on the deck and are quite friendly.

    In short, I’m not sure I buy the “once a feral, always a feral” line. I’m sure there are some Tasmanian devil cats that would furiously resist any kind of civilizing, but I doubt they’re in the majority. Cats are social animals, and they respond to how you treat them and socialize them.

    Here is a good video of the “visitor” deck ferals. They are quite friendly, because my friends put food out for them every day and make an effort to interact with them.

  61. 61.

    smintheus

    @gogol’s wife: The mother (we’re calling her Aster for the moment) drew a little blood while I was trying to get her in her carrier. I’m certain that if we let these kittens out now in the main part of the house, they’d disappear behind furniture and live and lurk as ferals inside our house for months or years. They did not like to be caught.

  63. 63.

    Beatrice

    @smintheus: I adopted two kittens who were trapped from a feral colony when they were a few weeks older than yours, and they have grown into wonderful affectionate cats, so it is most certainly not a lost cause yet. Mine are still very shy with strangers but with just me they are maybe the sweetest cats I’ve ever had. I can’t add much to WereBear’s advice, as she knows more about these things than I do. But the one thing I would say is try not to let them go for too long as a pack, as then they do seem to bond with each other instead of people. I have another cat who has lived with me for more than 10 years and is still feral, which I think is at least partly because her original foster home left the whole litter together for the first 10 months or so. The sooner you can get them to depend on a person for food and attention, rather than each other, the better, I would say.

  64. 64.

    gogol's wife

    @Trollhattan:

    I don’t really know the source material, but the Allen imitation is good. For a minute I thought it was Katie Holmes playing Diane Keaton/Halle Berry and I got seriously confoozled.

  65. 65.

    Beatrice

    @Steeplejack: I also know of a full-grown male feral cat who decided one day to be tame, walked into his new home, and is now completely indistinguishable from a hand-reared kitten. So yes, I would never say never.

  67. 67.

    smintheus

    @Steeplejack: I think that’s right. At the moment, the mother is more friendly to my wife and suspicious of me because I was the one trying to put her back in her box. The kittens will probably warm up to us soon enough, once they associate us with food and, we hope, play.

  72. 72.

    Morbo

    @Southern Beale: Someone else has helpfully labeled the site as “human flesh bbq”. Translating the Russian it looks like Unfinished Camp, Denisovsky Region, Qostanoy Oblast, Kazakhstan… rather boring.

    It’s pretty metal, though. \m/

  73. 73.

    WereBear

    @smintheus: Oh, yeah! That’s why you only let them loose in a small, bare, room.

    That’s awesome stuff, Steeplejack! My colony experience is certainly not as extensive as these folks; it’s mostly “last fella left and it’s you or the shelter” and I’ve had good success with that.

    For example, we got Tristan from a very similar situation from Aster and her kittens; but he was three weeks old. His sister, rescued at six weeks, was also quite tame. The second batch, which we trapped and tamed, are slower going… Mom was more savvy then, and they were four months plus.

    I agree. Never say never.

  75. 75.

    cckids

    @smintheus:

    Anybody have experience taming feral kittens?

    We adopted a litter of 3 born feral kittens when they were 5-6 weeks old. They were the first cats I’d ever had, so I was working blind, with some advice from a local rescue group. We kept them in a bathroom for the first week, to keep them away from our overly excited Pomeranian, and spent as much time as possible interacting with them. One person at a time, so as to not be overwhelming.

    We just would sit & let them come to us, letting them know that we were feeding them & loving on them. By the end of that week, the 2 boys were very friendly. The little female tortie took another week, but she came around too. I think the human interaction, without forcing it, is what makes the difference.

    Its been 11 years now, and they are still with us. The boys are still much more lovey than the girl, but that may be the typical tortie attitude you hear about. She’s a one-person cat for the most part.

    Good luck to you!

  78. 78.

    Steeplejack

    @smintheus:

    Have now read the whole thread (through comment 73) and see that you’re getting good advice. You might be overthinking this a little bit. I’ve had tame-from-birth cats that hatey-hate-McHate to get in the cat carrier, so I don’t think that’s a valid “feral” marker. I think it’s a good idea to reunite the mother and the kittens and let them be a family while you sort out their futures. I don’t think doing that will turn them into some sinister feral crime gang. Their stress level will go way down, and they will still be interested in interacting with you.

    I hadn’t watched my friend’s video in a while, and I was laughing because it reminded me that their biggest problem with the ferals is that some of them sit on the deck railing staring fixedly into the house at them with an “I want to be an inside cat!” look.

  79. 79.

    ruviana

    @smintheus: Others with more knowledge than I may weigh in but there seems to be a window for getting kittens to adapt to humans. If you can cuddle, snuggle and otherwise love-bomb those kittens they may be okay, though likely more standoffish than some cats. In grad school my roommate brought a sort of feral kitten home from the Navajo rez and it was always a bit feisty but was otherwise a hoot and very friendly. I adopted a feral kitten abandoned by its mother and it too adapted nicely but never became a lap-sitting lovebug. Just my own anecdata.

  80. 80.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ted & Hellen: Never came across the term “vocal fry” before this thread. But I went and listened to All Things Considered, and within 30-45 minutes or so I heard three different women frying away. I’ve been aware of it as an annoying phenomenon without ever having had a term for it. Now that I do, it is going to bug the shit out of me every single time. Thanks a heap, Ted & Hellen.

  81. 81.

    smintheus

    @cckids: Thank you. Two of the little ones managed to wiggle out of their crate. They were scared to be picked up again, but just a couple hours after we first trapped them they were remarkably calm while we were holding and petting them. They’ll probably be ok. They’re mewing for their mom, who is a room away and trying to figure out why she can hear her kitties who she thinks are outdoors.

  82. 82.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Hal: I didn’t use to mind IG’s voice as much as I do now. Not sure whether his vocal mannerisms have got worse, or I’ve simply become less tolerant. Maybe a bit of both.

  83. 83.

    smintheus

    @Steeplejack: I agree. We’re trying for the last hour now to convince the mother to come on into the kitchen where her kittens are caged. But that was where we tried to put her in her carrier, so she’s still wary of this side of the house…we’ll see how long it takes for her curiosity gets the better of her.

  85. 85.

    smintheus

    @ruviana: We’re going to be putting all 5 kittens up for adoption, so if you’re feeling like you’ll want another stray rescue and you live in PA, well c’mon over and we’ll set you up.

  86. 86.

    Heliopause

    I was an irresponsible young college student, I committed a few Trekkie stories.

    ‘Fess up, it was slash, wasn’t it. What was your favorite pairing? Hmm, I’d figure you for a Worf/Wesley gal. No, that’s not it. Did you write those Rand/Uhura stories? Those were awesome.

  88. 88.

    PeakVT

    @SiubhanDuinne: I noticed this a while ago among younger female reporters on NPR. For the most part older reporters of both sexes and younger men seem to avoid it, but to me the younger women all sound like less stupid valley girls. Not the main reason I’ve turned off the radio, but a minor factor. I can tolerate that speech pattern in the real world, but on the radio it just grates for some reason.

    /off my lawn

  89. 89.

    Steeplejack

    @smintheus:

    I say uncage them all in an enclosed space, e.g., small bedroom (with water and litter box), and let them chill and decompress for a while. You don’t have to drive the process every step of the way.

  90. 90.

    Trollhattan

    Here’s something for the open thread: a memo to California state workers.

    Consistent with the June 26, 2013 United States Supreme Court decisions, same-sex marriages are now legally recognized in California. Departments will now accept same-sex marriage certificates for benefit eligibility and enrollment without regard to gender.

    This’ll give Goodhair McBoom some more ammo next time he comes by to rustle him up some jobs for Texas.

  92. 92.

    ruviana

    @smintheus: LOL! I am actually not that far away but I’ve got four–a mom and her 3 offspring, one of whom was recently diagnosed with CHF so I’ve got my hands full! As it happens my male cat-the one with CHF–is a holy terror when the crate comes out, which of course it has a lot with his recent health troubles. And I had the family since the kittens were barely 5 weeks old. When the crate makes an appearance my male hides under a chair growling and swiping at me when I walk by, whether or not he is the intended patient. Pretty funny! Good luck with your kittens!

  94. 94.

    Johannes

    @smintheus: I’m a little late to the thread, and much what I would have to say has been covered by WereBear, but yeah, ferals can become great indoor cats–all three of the cats I brought to our menage were ferals–two that I found outside as kittens, and one adult male who led them into the house in a blizzard.

    Good luck, Smintheus!

  95. 95.

    WereBear

    And I wish to state for the record that the shelter is probably overwhelmed, undermanned & womanned, and not clear on the exact situation; we all know shelters do wonderful work.

    But that’s why the rest of us are glad to pick up the slack!

  96. 96.

    Beatrice

    @smintheus: “It’s going to be very time consuming individually socializing 5 cats.”

    Yes, that is why you pawn some off to your softie friends who agree to foster them until you find a good home hah hah hah.

  97. 97.

    Redshirt

    Vonnegut was one of the few authors who changed my life – blew my mind, really. It was “The Sirens of Titan” and I read it while homeless and starving in Albuquerque, and it just stuck with me. I promptly read everything else I could in the next few years. Love him.

    I could write like him for a while, by mimicry, but no longer. But I think it’s cool there’s a competition to get people to try. More exposure to Vonnegut is good for the human species.

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    @smintheus: One more tip, in case you don’t know about it already: Those little jars of baby-food strained chicken are kitty ice cream. Once they’ve tried some from a plate, lure Aster into licking a dab off your fingers, and the kittens will eventually follow her lead.

  99. 99.

    Anne Laurie

    @Steeplejack:

    I think it’s a good idea to reunite the mother and the kittens and let them be a family while you sort out their futures. I don’t think doing that will turn them into some sinister feral crime gang. Their stress level will go way down, and they will still be interested in interacting with you.

    Yeah, it sounds like mom Aster was dumped, she wasn’t feral-from-birth. So she can let her kittens know that “These people, at least, are okay, even if they spark your GIANT PREDATOR RUN AWAY instincts” rather than “Ugh, Giant Predators, now I must defend my babies to the death!”

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Violet: Indeed it has, and it’s always been beyond annoying. But until a few hours ago, I was blissfully unaware that there was a name for it. And, you know, once you name something, you own it.

  101. 101.

    Anne Laurie

    @Heliopause: No slash fic, sorry. I did once write the most obscene vignette I could come up with, but my friend the editor wouldn’t publish it. This was back in the mid-1970s, so it was strictly first-gen Star Trek, and you needed access to mimeo, ditto, or very expensive Xerox copiers to circulate your fan-fic — she was the editor because her dad let her use the machine in his office.

  103. 103.

    Ted & Hellen

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Sacre merde but that woman has a horrible voice.

    The first time I heard her giving a report, I thought it was some kind of spoof. But don’t you kind sort of/kind of suspect, as do I, that her horrid voice and delivery is a big reason why she has the job?

    NPR likes irritating voices. I don’t think everyone should sound the same of course, like robots, but I often wonder how much of this distinctiveness is put-on.

  104. 104.

    Ted & Hellen

    @Anne Laurie:

    or else you’re just not comfortable with the unspoken attempt at inclusivity?

    what the hell are you talking about?

    How does “sort of” and “kind of,” and I have counted instances of 10/15 uses in just a few sentences, make the speaker more inclusive sounding? Are you saying women in general say sort of and kind of a lot?

    If so, I did not know that.

    But yes, AL, my complaint is naturally based in my deep seated hatred for inclusivity. Yeah…that’s the ticket.

  105. 105.

    Ted & Hellen

    @kc:

    You’ll feel better if you don’t listen to NPR. It works for me.

    Believe me, I’ve cut it by 90% since 2000.

    Oddly enough, most of my illusions were shattered in the past decade…

  107. 107.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ted & Hellen:

    what the hell are you talking about?

    I was needling you. Ending a sideswipe-attack on a rising tone (the vocal Cavuto Mark) is the female equivalent of I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I LOL in boytalk. See how that works?

  109. 109.

    Steeplejack

    @Anne Laurie:

    All cats—even ferals from birth—are pretty malleable. They respond to kindness and good care, if their fear can be allayed or put aside. All those cats in the video I linked to above were feral from birth, but they responded to my friends’ patient, attentive care. Some responded more quickly than others, and there are always variations in personalities, etc., but it’s not rocket science. It just takes time.

    I will say that my friends had a hell of a time capturing the matriarch of the feral colony, because she was so savvy and street-smart (also apparently feral from birth). She was the one who kept dropping the litters, and once they finally got her fixed (and released) the problem got much, much smaller.

  110. 110.

    Anne Laurie

    @Ted & Hellen:

    How does “sort of” and “kind of,” and I have counted instances of 10/15 uses in just a few sentences, make the speaker more inclusive sounding? Are you saying women in general say sort of and kind of a lot?

    But seriously: Women (used to be) trained to use language that invited further participation from listeners. Men were trained to make Bold Statements. Since adolescents have to recapitulate cultural evolution, we still get teenage parody:

    Girlspeak:
    I think A is kinda like Y, you know?
    You think so? But what about X, isn’t A more like X?
    Really? Y? Or X? I don’t know….
    Yeah, I can’t even.
    A is sort of like Y, maybe.
    Or X could be better. If you think about it.
    Wait! Here is a picture of a kitten!
    Squee! That pic could only be more perfect if the kitten was sleeping curled up in a really cute shoe!

    Boyspeak:
    A is equal to Y.
    Are you fukkin retarded — A is the same as X, luzer.
    Being a retard, you would know one. Cuz Y is way better than A or X.
    Y and X both suck hard.
    Like your mom did me last night LOL.

    Of course, as group-oriented primates, we all swap modes depending on our audiences. But ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’, in the mouths of either gender, are intended to draw the listener into a discussion. It’s like the difference between a ‘news story’ and an ‘op ed’ — the boundaries are very fluid, but even experienced readers (listeners) can be misled.

  111. 111.

    PurpleGirl

    @smintheus:

    http://new.livestream.com/cassieskittenkastle/events/2246087

    Cassie’s Kitten Kastle. A foster mom in CT, currently working with 10 feral kittens from a farm. They were found in a raid when they were about 10 weeks old; they will soon be adoptable. They had various medical issues and were underweight. They needed to be socialized. She also has a facebook page.

    https://www.facebook.com/CassiesKittenKastle

    Her last group was a momma who took care of a group of 11 besides her own 7 and an ealy adoption by the momma cat. It is possible to work with older kittens.

    Do look at the FC page for pictures and stuff of the kittens she’s helped.

    They are not lost.

  112. 112.

    JoyfulA

    @smintheus: I adopted a 2-year-old (according to the vet) male alley cat who was ripping open trash bags in our walled-in city backyard (yes, I thought a rat was doing the damage). Everyone said he was too old and too wild to be domesticated, but they were wrong.

    He was my favorite cat ever.

  113. 113.

    lojasmo

    @Steeplejack:

    One of our cats was a former feral, and he adapted just fine. He had a long time in a shelter before we picked him up, though. I suggest you do whatever Werebear tells you to do.

  115. 115.

    smintheus

    Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions. The mother and kittens are much happier now that they’ve been brought together. I think both Aster and her kittens were stunned to discover after 4 days apart that the other was/were still alive. The mewing was terrific for the first half hour. But a few hours later they’ve greatly calmed down. The kittens are a lot less frightened of us now.

    It looks like there was or is a 6th kitten we haven’t found. Aster has started leaving her kittens and going over to cry out the window in the dark towards where she had the kittens hidden. She seems desperate to find the last one.

  116. 116.

    Anne Laurie

    @smintheus:

    She seems desperate to find the last one.

    Cats don’t count the same way people do. Aster wants to check under the shed to make sure there are no kittens left abandoned, because (as one writer put it) “If they’re not where she left them, they must be where (you) put them”. Don’t know that you want to risk letting her loose to find out — especially at night! — but she should give up the idea by morning, because the same instinct that’s driving her to check the nest will tell her that any leftover kitten wouldn’t make it through the night alone. Assuming, of course, that there isn’t another kitten, but it sounds like you wouldn’t have missed one!

  117. 117.

    smintheus

    You may be right, Anne. She’s much calmer today. The kittens have already socialized enough that they’re letting us hold and pet them without fear, a few are even purring while we pet them. They purr a lot more when Aster licks them or sits with them while we’re holding them. She’s also licking us, so she seems to accept that we’re looking after her kittens for her. The kittens seem to have barely any fear of us now, and Aster also seems to have lost her suspicion of us keeping them in cages.

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