I’ve got one sitting on the doormat as we speak. Winter is over around here, and Bruce Willis is back to work at the ripe old age of 14 or 15, nobody knows.

Oddly enough Bruce was recently diagnosed with high blood pressure, so he takes a statin now. We thought he was just getting old and slowing down a bit, vet caught it, we’ve been doing meds, and he has returned to his old self again, with a touch of senility, a lot of meowing and nothing. But yeah, hopeful it’ll help avoid a stroke.

I had two cats, one who goes out often, one who went out once in a blue moon. The tenses tell the tale here.

And I don’t mean to suggest your statistics are incorrect, just that I find it funny to have experienced the opposite. Bruce Willis lives on, and it’s entirely possible his life ends outside due to any number of reasons, but he just craves the outdoors, to the point of being really annoying about it.

And it’s weird, I always attribute it to my wife having found him and our other cat on the streets, they were both 2-3 years old, but Rudi took to mainly living inside (maybe she’d hang on the porch from time to time, or sat some grass), whereas Bruce yearns for the neighbors’ shrubberies. He’s 14ish, and hopefully we get another 14 out of him, despite him clearly going crazy.

I want going to be so forthright, but nail on head.

We’ve got the Lemmy/Reddit worldview out in force. We should shut down vital infrastructure, risking life safety of many, for a cat. I say this loving cats: that’s silly.

We gave my cat a bath one time he came home and absolutely reeked, dunno if skunk, or if he got peed on by some predator making an example of him or what. Absolute ammonia nasty smell, terrible. He seemed completely unfazed by it because he’s an idiot, maybe he’s even a fetishist, I dunno, but he needed to get bathed. We got special shampoo and all that.

And despite looking like the cat in the picture on the left, he didn’t look anything like the cat in the picture on the right.

I was looking at the plant because I thought it was catlike.

My cat can be 50/50. The times it doesn’t work is at the vet. He’s the chillest cat in general, but unscruffable at the vet, and they have to purrito him.

I also call him Douche Willis sometimes, because he can be a douche. But yes, I agree. I totally respect his vibe. He is just living, doing what he does. Sure, he complains for food, but he doesn’t need anything. Sure, he stabs me demanding pets, but then he also completely ignores me when I try to play with him. Nothing but respect from me.

My cat is also a wanderer. My wife picked him and his sister (now deceased) off the streets of Asbury Park. It’s funny because she was there working with the homeless population and came home with homeless cats, she really cannot help herself.

Rudi was a homebody and a mess of an individual, diabetes, mean but also always up in your business. She died after she swallowed something and it got stuck in her intestines. $10k for a surgery with a 10% chance of success wasn’t it, unfortunately, so I had her put down in our home, which I like to imagine was easier for cat who hated getting in cat carriers.

Bruce Willis is an animal and has fought remaining indoors since we brought him home. If it’s raining, or if it’s too sunny, or sometimes not sunny enough, he will stare out the open door and then walk back in the house. He will also scratch at the door from the outside to come in, I will open it, and he will wander away. But every neighbor knows him because he just goes to everyone’s houses. Some people feed him, it is what it is. He’s not fat so whatever.

He is uncollarable so he is just a black cat that roams, and has been for the last decade plus. He has outlived, as far as I can tell, the rest of the stray/other neighborhood cats that we used to see, grey cat, big black cat, orange cat. He used to fight them. Sometimes he comes home injured. I dunno, it’s just the life he likes to live. If he’s inside at night, you can bet he will wake me up sometime between 1 and 3am to go out, and will not take no for an answer. So when it’s between outdoors or just locking him in the basement, the basement seems cruel. I know people will say he may meet his demise this way, but I honestly think he’d rather that than wilting away in the basement, although he absolutely wilts away in the basement on the couch all day, just not at night.

We had two cats. Fed them the exact same way. One got fat and had diabetes, and eventually died because she swallowed something that was not food that got stuck in her intestines. The other cat, he has always maintained a healthy weight. I think it all came down to some kind of feline anxiety though, where she was always seeming anxious, right down to being overprotective of food, and he’s incredibly chill and always has been, except when neighborhood cats wander on our property.

We always opted for Fancy Feast pate, had looked them up when the diabetes first showed up, and they’re apparently high protein, low carb, and they served us well enough. We mix in some other stuff from time to time for variety, but that’s the bulk of it. I’m interested in this Primal though, definitely going to have a look. He is now somewhere in the 13ish range, dunno for certain since he was a street urchin when my wife found him, but we’re trying to let him live a long, healthy life, in spite of his urge to die on the streets somewhere.

Sky’s too bright, this shit starts at like 4am.