I don’t usually do this but my cat, Merlin, needs emergency medical care. He’s got either a blood clot or a tumor in his spine, and we can’t figure out how to treat it (or what it is for sure) until we get him an MRI, which is about $5,000. He’s going to have to get his tail amputated, and is currently semi-paralyzed with limited use of his legs as a result of the pressure on his spine.
Tumblr is my only social media, so I figured I’d post this on here and see what kind of traction it could gain. He’s a rescue, only nine years old, and my little therapy cat. I love him so much.
Note: we’re trying to raise the money by Tuesday, May 30th, so we can get him in for treatment next week. We currently have $1300/$5000. Anything helps!
ICYMI, there was fear that companies were scraping public AO3 fics to train their AI without the consent of AO3 or its users. That fear has been confirmed.
![[ID: Let me want with a full throat / even of hopeless warbling. / Let You do nothing about any of it. / Let each desire form in this mouth / whose teeth You have taken from me.]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ade9c5de7f3cff89bc54811acbcc994f/3099812589c7acec-e2/s500x750/50cb03b5f89a9e7e43fab3145befa5251883b3a7.jpg)
![[ID: I learn girlhood as a litany of not: to flaunt skin, to travel / alone at dark, to exist in parks alone at dark, to have a body when alone]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2d7e4dd6f0231dfdc534be1aca27cbbb/98977a0836d60fa0-99/s500x750/78023279424c71071801127e99d95b4f4b60d6fe.jpg)
![[ID: Body, from the very first moment / have we been each other’s prisoners?]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e64a3381c0d74515868ee46e38abce71/85413ce4b5e5c666-16/s500x750/8b6a3127b174960a1250de62cc4d874f0382b7cf.jpg)
![[ID: I think about how difficult it is for any of us to / admit that we’re not who we used to be. / That something in us has been lost / over time and will probably never / come back. It’s so hard to / disappear without anyone / noticing.]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1b5a7e258a408574a2617c0ed98b6ef2/6f3cefda06b06c8b-fe/s500x750/ec71bebbd4f6442e0e4716b662442a9e88d12ce9.jpg)
![[ID: If I said I did not want to live anymore, / Would you understand that I meant like this?]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/e4579fe9694de57b333f6227c67ceab2/4db2a98c3f43f50c-28/s500x750/9694511826e904b22662e3a379c99b5a0237409c.jpg)
![[ID: If I could do girlhood again, I’d ask / to be scarier. Less whimpering—more pyromaniac / urges, more flirting with kerosene.]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/821b3b9e5b2c7fee8c35a6218b3deae8/f840be28e84cff11-e6/s500x750/e5b0dd27eaa00b58651b01334ac284aae5a21308.jpg)
![[ID: Four or five years ago I realized I could not remember the sound of my mother’s voice anymore—it’s sudden right? / But that was me. I had to bury her again. There’s going to come a time where I don’t remember the color of my mother’s eyes and I’ll have to bury her again. / So all I’m doing in my work—hopefully I’m not orbiting mortality—I’m not having some kind of existential temper tantrum. / I’m preparing myself for a series of ongoing burials because that’s what grief is and hopefully in doing so it’s preparing the people I love for the reality that they will have to do this for me.]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/0a93b730b2449cd24922bef0f49f023c/e116cf4fb5b71d98-ea/s500x750/e61972743392bc4ca2d75de0bf14414a599586a5.jpg)