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I think cats understand a lot more of the social and emotional content of conversations than they do words or logical connections.
So I could see Pica understand she was "being blamed" without knowing about what and getting offended about it.
Another example is Pica doesn't like being laughed at. (so I have to be careful because she can be funny) but it hurts her feelings somehow.
I have many friends who had parents who ... were not great. So, I'm thankful for that.
I sometimes have student where their parents worry me. Though mostly what I see is good.
Mathematician.
I have come around to liking her. But I think like a lot of people I couldn't stand her when I was a teen/early 20s.
But she has always meant well and mostly DONE well too. She is the most literal person I know though. Like never gets jokes, doesn't see the point of reading fiction, but if you explain something to her *with evidence* she will always change her mind.
This gave me very unrealistic exceptions for other people in my life.
Both she and Pica the cat think about shoes too much IMO.
Oh you meant my mom asking about shoes. Yeah, that's also strange. She saw something on the news about shoes and gangs or something I think.
"Who is Peter? How old is he? Does he do his homework? What kind of grades does he have?"
How would I know!
My pants seem to be the focus. But in the past she has had some ... concerning ... behavior re: shoes.
She likes to stick her face in them after you take them off. 
And then she rolls around with them and it... it's kind of indecent!
However Pica does not care.
It's like when I was a teen and my mom would start quizzing me about my friends "where do they live? what kind of shoes do they have? where does their mom work? on and on..."
Only it's just Pica reading the smells of this other cat. Now and then she will look up with her mouth open ... I think to huff the smells more deeply in some cat way.
I tried petting her but she ignored me and kept *smelling*
I spent some time with my sister-in-law's cat and #PicaTheCat has been *studying* my pants and bag with extreme intensity since I came home. It's the next day and she's *still* at it. Her whole body is focused. Like she's reading directions on a tax form.
How much information is she getting? I can't even smell anything there but she is deeply interested in the smell of the "other cat"
I don't think she's being jealous.
So that's NOT just to be annoying??
Mammals have two nostrils but they aren't really far enough apart for our sense of smell to have much stereo or sense of direction.
Why aren't nostrils on the side of the head so we could map smell in space more?
Ants do this with their antennae. Like sound, ants sense chemicals as coming from a direction.
I guess having your nose above your mouth (and connected to your mouth) helps with eating. But still seems like a missed opportunity.
Forget "it goes to 11" I want something that goes to whatever this is!
dude has drip.
This happened with phones too for a bit. Though I think they are getting over it now.
But I'm still not getting a new phone. I'm mad.
It seems geosmin is the compound the gives soil a smell, though there are many others, like a complex perfume.
Geosmin is produced by bacteria and humans are very sensitive to it. In small amounts it's pleasant, but too much and suddenly it's not. Consider how blue-green algae can smell gross. This seems related to how we decide if water is OK to drink.
The threshold where you can detect this compound is tiny.
Discovering how worms can make soil has forced me to come to terms with the fact that when you are in a forest and smell the wonderful wet, fresh but earthy smell of good soil it is probably some mix of fungi and worm poop.
But I suppose the human brain is set to process those smells as clean and nice since roots dug from such soil are nutritious and there are few pathogens that can harm us. While other kinds of waste are naturally repugnant.
Yes we have worm compost, vermicompost and I love it. I especially love how it smells. Which is what worried me most when getting started. "would it smell bad?"
I'm very selective about what I put in the worm bin only vegetables, very little starch and in small consistent quantities. NYC has industrial mass composting that takes everything from bones, to fat, to bad cheese. So, I sort the food waste, keeping the easy to compost raw greens and veg and letting the city do the hard stuff.
Like most artists he just has paintings ... laying around. It is very annoying in a way.
Charles Henry Turner
We found four of these caterpillars one year and I took them to school to keep as pets so the students could see them build their chrysalis.
This meant that there was a time when I went to Zabar's to buy organic broccoli raab for bugs.
My mother must never know of this.
(They loved that fancy broccoli so much. )