Today has been a terrible day so far. It was a terrible day by 6:40 am.

Even in the face of how crazy and fucked up the world is. It feels both horribly selfish and horribly appropriate to feel that we are having a terrible day.

The tl;dr - the young cat didn't come home last night. This morning, after not seeing him, looked around - and out the bedroom window, saw his body lying in the road.

We have only known him a few weeks. He was here when we arrived a few weeks ago, having been a new recruit to the house. He was a male orange cat, five months old or so, super curious, super energetic, and happy to meet new folks. He adopted my wife immediately, although he remained a bit suspicious of me. He would sleep atop her, and greet her from a distance of three or four inches when she woke up, so that he could purr and then immediately demand to be fed.

He had started hunting in the past couple weeks, trained by the older cat bringing him prey. A few days ago, he caught his first critter, and brought it inside to show us, yowling enthusiastically. He wouldn't stop yowling until both of us had told him what a good boy he was, at which point he happily proceeded to eat it (although he left the head on the rug as a toy).

My family lost another orange cat years ago, in exactly the same way, in exactly the same place. Our house is on a curve, and we are the northernmost house in the village - so people coming in to town are busy slowing, and people leaving are busy speeding up.

It is clear he died instantly on impact. He looks almost untouched, eyes open. There is no doubt in my mind what happened - the past couple of days he had been in near constant hunter-vision, starting at noise and motion, so excited to hunt. He'd been spending nearly all his time outdoors. It's clear to me he was in pursuit of something or other, and didn't have enough attention to spare for traffic.

My wife and I, five or six weeks ago, put my long-time cat to sleep before coming up here. I'd had her 21+ years. My wife, not a cat person, had lived with her for a year or so, and we were both crushed but it was mitigated by the fact that it was clearly time, and we had lots of time to say goodbyes (and receive them). This is so sudden, and so jarring, it's just awful when combined with all the shit going on.

Other people are losing *people*. Other people are stuck in tiny homes with young children and elderly to care for. We have so much, and are so grateful, but that can't stop this pain; all it can do is make me feel guilty for feeling it, and that's not healthy.

His name was Fenrir the Magnificent, Destroyer of Flies.

Life goes on.

Unfortunately, my efforts to have sexual intercourse with a televangelist did not work out last night. I wrote him a check for six billion dollars (a drop in the bucket for me) and he then pushed my hand off his knee, rebuffing my overtures.

This is what is wrong with America today. You write a check in good faith and you get shafted. I thought I had a really good chance of getting it on with this wonderful televangelist and he totally screwed me over. It was a con job and I am sickened. Absolutely sickened. To the point of expectorating on many, many things.

We need to do something about this and fast.

I know you are with me on this. God bless.

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