These kittens are 3 months old, same age as Nimai when I found him. They seem a little bigger (and higher-jumping) than I remember him being at that age. They were almost killed at the pound! We are all lucky they narrowly avoided that.

Here are some fresh videos.

Sounds like kittens are going to Tokyo next weekend, where someone has agreed to adopt them. I'm sure they will be excellent and wonderful cats! Melody is less independent, more cuddly, louder purring, more fragile-seeming (smaller and got ringworm much worse). Valerie is more independent but still friendly (she keeps me company at the computer by sleeping on the desk rather than on my lap), more adventurous. She is plenty cuddly but they will probably both be less cuddly and purr-filled as adults; I think all cats are. Both of them are picky about having their litter box kept clean. Compared to when they first came, they are bigger, better at using the litter box, more fungus-infested (but in all likelihood Melody had it already and it just wasn't noticeable yet), and less prone to fluffing up their tails at every little thing. Melody is also a little more vocal, I think.



Nimai and I will miss them, but I am making out like a bandit, really--I got to spend several weeks with intensely adorable kittens without making the commitment to keep them for 10-20 years, and as a kitten foster I can have kittens every year, whereas if I adopted kittens for myself I could only have them at intervals of several years if I didn't want to drown in cats. Grown cats are awesome and beautiful and I love Nimai, but kittens are cuddlier and purr more and get a baby-animal bonus when they roll for cuteness (I guess that is like a +15 to charisma).

So I thought it was odd that the extra classes today covered topics we had already covered to death, and it turned out they were optional review for people who still didn't get those topics, not mandatory attendance-affecting classes. So I stayed through the first one and worked on my summer break assignment, and then I went and got lunch at Cafe Prana. I had intended to get the tofu donburi, but it doesn't start until 2, so I got the big set with curry:



Everything was good except that I didn't care for the little thing with corn in it, or the bowl o' mushrooms. I couldn't eat them all. Mushrooms are vile. I do not feel like I am missing out on them at all.

Now I have time to do the kittens' laundry. I think my human laundry will wait for tomorrow.

( And here is something from Cafe Millet )

Kittens remain cute! Here they are playing with my computer bag.



And good old-fashioned kitten wrestling:

I love this announcement about not videotaping movies in the theater.



I also like the Taka-no-Tsume movie-watching-manners clip (you know, not talking on your cell phone, no kicking the seat in front of you) but I don't see it on YouTube.

Today was one of those lectures that Important School Guy gives. They are always really terrible, but I'm getting to the point where it's interesting to see what terrible thing he will say next. Today he said that Alpha Centauri is 100,000 light years away, asked students really sadistic questions, gave bad psychiatrical advice, and told us how the following types of people suck: people who are not masochists, messy people, talented people, people who do things that they are good at, people who do not accrue long histories of failure. Then at the very end (after I missed something about getting women to do your laundry or something because I was checking if I could verify that Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away in my electronic dictionary--I couldn't, but it is) he said, for the first time ever, something I actually agree with, which is that good leaders focus on what their underlings can do rather than treating them like idiots because of the things they can't do.

Link via mislih on Twitter: Canadian researchers found those with low self-esteem actually felt worse after repeating positive statements about themselves.

THANK you, BBC! I hate those ridiculous "I am so frikkin' awesome and perfect" statements, because they just remind me how completely not true they are, which is depressing! [Edit: Until now, I thought this made me come off as an overthinking freak who is determined to be miserable because being miserable is just so much fun, although from my point of view I just am not desperate enough to place blind faith in any statement no matter how ridiculous in the hopes that I can deceive myself into feeling happier. Thanks to Canadian scientists I found out that I am actually normal!] I do think the article could stand to not come off so "People with low self-esteem are unemployed losers with no friends, and if they just stopped being that they would totally have lots of self-esteem," because that is kind of blatantly false a lot (low self-esteem can indeed affect people who are not total losers by such measurements).

[Edit: I also hate when manga protagonists have some somewhat horrible thing happen to them, then feel down about it, then see someone else not feeling down (possibly because they are a complete moron, but that's okay because completely unjustifiable optimism is always ultimately justified in this stupid genre) or are told to quit feeling down (often very rudely and demeaningly), and then they go on a long rant chewing themselves out for feeling down because feeling down will doom them to Hell forever or something, and how grateful they are to the person who reacted differently or told them that they were a moron for feeling bad, and how that person is so much better than them in every way. Sure, this rant is directed at the character him-/herself, but what does it very strongly imply about everyone in the world who is not an unrelenting optimist? That they are total losers, of course! A weekly shounen comic did this recently and dropped right off my "buy when it shows up at Book Off" list.]

[Edit: Like this article better; it gives the name of the study, too. This "backfire for the very people who need them the most" quote is annoying, because why would people need something that doesn't actually do anything but harm them? In the abstract of the official study article there are scarequotes around "need" and that improves the phrase tremendously. Also, it's not so much about self-help books in general as it is about "affirmations," so it is stupid that all the article titles say "self-help books." I guess most people don't know what affirmations are. Or "positive self talk." It would apply to that too. I hate that crud.]

The other day, I dreamed that I went to New York and saw a bunch of lemurs, mostly sifakas, and they were playing with my dog or something.

Today I dreamed that I stopped to help some people who were trying to translate things in the middle of the sidewalk near my apartment. Then I went with them to the mall where they had this restaurant with a cute bird mascot and a silly name, and nothing vegan except the unflavored Thai crackers (the other ones had shrimp) and then there was this rock band out to get them and close their restaurant, led by Michael Jackson. D'oh. Then I found this box with an orange momma cat and two kittens, one orange, one black. It was right outside a house and there were boxes of cat supplies around it so I wasn't sure if they were abandoned or not. Eventually the lady who lived in the house came out. She and her son wanted to keep the kittens but her husband hated cats. The mom cat's name was Garfield. I told her I would help if she couldn't find homes for the kittens.

Speaking of homes for kittens, real life foster kittens might be getting adopted soon. Good news!

Kittens are getting big.

Went to Cafe Millet today. Pumpkin croquette, homemade tofu, oniony light-colored miso soup, tomato and cucumber salad, carrot-broccoli-okara salad (this is my favorite okara salad so far).



And special for abiona_sashenka I asked how they make the okara salad.

It requires three things:

1. Okara. If the okara is too dry, mix in some soymilk. (Ultimately it should be wet enough to cake onto the vegetables.)
2. Vegetables. Cut them up. Rub some salt into them. Some may require boiling because they are too hard to eat raw. But if they are wet let the water drain off.
3. Dressing. I don't get the impression that she uses very much of it, but she says to mix the okara with dressing before adding the vegetables. What kind of dressing? I ask. Like, you know, whatever dressing. It should contain a small amount of oil, and also things that you put in salad dressing, such as soysauce, or umezu (plum vinegar), and maybe sesame seeds or shiso or something. Then mix it with the okara before adding the vegetables.

I will have to try it sometime. I have never cooked with okara.

If Nintendo really wanted me to exercise regularly, they'd make a treadmill or something that gives you free legendary pokemon for using it x times a week for x weeks. And it could give you interesting non-legendary pokemon every day too, like once you had been doing it a while, it would give you lv50 pokemon with good move sets (with TM moves and egg moves and stuff) and later it would give you evolutions that are hard to get (like Milacros). I would like them to have random names, too, except the legendaries. Actually, make it DDR instead of a treadmill. Pokemon DDR, yes! This thought brought to you by the humiliation I am willing to endure to get legendary pokemon (i.e. seeing Pokemon movies by myself) combined with the fact that I really could not deal with Wii DDR today.

Also, a kitten is licking my toe.

Today my productivity is lowered by a persistent sense of worthlessness.

Cats were cute yesterday.

EXTRA EXTRA Kittens are still cute.




Melody is hogging the remote?

Some of you might be interested in women's shelters accepting pets.

This Onion article is unintentionally hilarious, because they seem to think that P.E. teaches kids things like building muscle or increasing flexibility or improving balance. Ha ha! P.E. doesn't teach you anything, it tests you on whether you can already do things they assume all kids can, and then grades you on how enthusiastic you are about mandatory public humiliation. The only thing it teaches is hatred of exercise and sports and your own body. At least that's how it worked at my school.

Kittens like the cat tree.

So the other day I wanted to get on the elevator, but you know the elevator always closes its doors before anyone has a chance to get on unless someone is holding the door open button. But, sometimes you can get it to reopen its doors by pressing the call button before it leaves. However, I have previously experienced NO SUCCESS AT ALL in getting it to stay and open its doors again when I actually want to get on it, as opposed to when I want to summon another elevator because that one was full. So I thought, I will hold the call button while the people get off and then I will not miss the magical time in which the elevator actually pays attention to the button. BUT NO! The elevator left while I was holding the call button. Perhaps if you POUNDED on the call button the entire time the elevator would not leave before anyone could get on. Perhaps the programmers did a super crappy job.

Also, I hate K class, it is full of stinky giggling people.

Here are some photos that are of kittens.





And also a fuzzy video of them biting each other's paws.

Kittens are getting bigger and more climby. Here are some photos that are not of kittens!



Cafe Millet lunch from last week. Some kind of hamburger style thing, pasta, okara salad, bread, and hijiki salad. Usually I don't like hijiki but this is one of those times when it was pretty good.



Cafe Millet lunch from today. Tandoori konnyaku, basil tomato salad, soymilk stew all very good, although the stew had a lot of mushrooms. It seems they have an okara-and-something salad all the time, and they are kind of weird--not bad, but I could do with a bit smaller serving. I tend to put them on the bread and make an impromptu open-face-sandwich, because the bread doesn't have any toppings or anything.

It was a really hot day so the cats all stretched out and napped.

Valerie found a cool spot under the bed:


Nimai sprawled across the foot of the bed:


Melody slept next to me while I read:


Cats are cute. Kittens are super adorable, but they also make me appreciate what a big fuzzy teddy bear Nimai is and how easy he is to take care of.