Ask me about blaseball and teaching in semi-rural New Zealand.

That first teaching job in 2019 was not in semi-rural new zealand. That happened because I got cold-called while wandering round a wildlife reserve in Wellington looking at takahe.

zealanda is great
everyone fawns over the takahe and the kaka but the pīwakawaka, toutouwai and other smaller birds are the best
what die hunde (ferg) doin?

Ferg's doing well. I was and likely still am the only one to give him anything approximating a regular brushing, which considering I lived three hours' drive from my hometown meant he'd get a drubbing-over every couple weeks if he was lucky. Still acts like touching his ass is an affront to god, even though that's where all the fluff accumulates.

One recent development (thanks to my mum who posts pet pics once in a while in the family group chat) is that him and our hermit cat, Betty, are finally getting along ok. Betty is very talkative and I generally greet her with "hello small black cat". She is of average size and all her roots are white, though she is relatively indisputably black at first blush and also a cat.

Betty's favorite person in the world is my mum, and I believe she would probably call me a pleasant enough acquaintance. She cohabits comfortably enough with the sausage dog, Bernadette. Mum claims it's cuz they're the same color and Bernie has cat energy, which y'know what fuck dude she sure does. Bernie's favorite sleeping spot is under the blankets of whoever happens to be reading or chilling in bed around the house, so if mum's in bed reading she'll have a cat in booping distance and a dog under the covers.

Fergus, meanwhile, is very much a dog's dog. He wants to play, but gets scolded when he looks at the cat funny. The cat seems warily interested, but bolts at the first sign of boisterousness and also they absolutely do not speak each other's "play language".

Hence why seeing a video from mum sitting up in bed, patting the cat while Fergus is chilling at the other end of the bed is a pretty solid development.