Tag: important

PSA

momma-cry:

cheshiethevalkyran:

tinysaurus-rex:

theroyalfrogman:

Please don’t let your cat outside.

Please don’t let your cat outside.

Please don’t let your cat outside.

Cats decimate bird populations.

Cats can get lost.

Cats can be hit by cars.

Cats can get into fights.

Cats can get diseases.

You may say your cat is different.

Your cat is NOT different when it comes to instinct.

For the love of God. Please. Do. Not. Let. Your. Cat. Outside.

Alternatively:

Harness train your cat

Build a cat safe enclosure outside

Give your cat more of your time for play and training

Get your cat puzzle feeders

Create a cat room with all kinds of enrichment from outside like grasses, rocks, things to climb on, hides, scents, etc.

Play nature sounds on a radio

Set up a 10 gallon betta tank with a filter and heater (only healthy, happy, active fish will entertain your cat, don’t just toss a fish in a bowl)

Look into kitty play dates

Get a u-pet carrier or other carrier that you can take with to bring your cat on adventures

Consider rehoming your cat if you can’t give them proper enrichment without putting them and wild life in danger by letting them outside

It got better

Perfect!

Cat PSA

snakeoftheday:

Over the course of running this blog, we have received a few messages about outdoor cats bringing home wild snakes. So, while this is certainly not the first post to bring up the issue, it bears repeating that outdoor cats are extremely damaging to the environment. 

A number of studies have shown that outdoor cats, along with feral cats, kill billions of native birds, mammals, and reptiles and have even contributed to or outright caused the extinction of entire species. While some, like the Lyall’s Wren, are and were particularly vulnerable due to their limited range, outdoor cats pose a significant threat everywhere. You probably live within the range of an endangered, threatened, or protected species without even knowing it. 

You can instantly and permanently improve the health of your local ecosystem just by keeping your cat indoors. This isn’t even to mention that outdoor cats live statistically shorter, more stressful, and less healthy lives. So, for the sake of your pet and the lives of many vulnerable creatures, don’t let them roam. 

If your cat needs to be outside that damn badly then it better be supervised or you better have an outdoor enclosure of some sort. Cats kill things for the heck of it and most of the time don’t even eat what they kill, so it’s not like they’re even hunting for food. Just because you haven’t seen yours bring prey home doesn’t mean your cat isn’t still a natural hunter.

why-animals-do-the-thing:

sitta-pusilla:

This is your periodic reminder to stop feeding, petting, grabbing, and otherwise harassing the wildlife. In addition to the danger you put yourself and other people in, when you habituate a wild animal to human food or contact you set them up for disaster. A fed animal is a dead animal.

Pretty much this. This situation happened because the sea lion was habituated to people and brave enough to start looking for food to steal (my best guess is the edge of the kid’s dress looked like the paper wrapping on a sandwich). Don’t fuck with the wildlife, because it fucks up the life of the wildlife. 

Source: sitta-pusilla

ultrafacts:

According to the CDC, in 10 percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch the child do it, having no idea it is happening. Drowning does not look like drowning—Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene magazine, described the Instinctive Drowning Response like this:

  1. “Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled before speech occurs.
  2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
  3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
  4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
  5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.”

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble—they are experiencing aquatic distress. Not always present before the Instinctive Drowning Response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long—but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water:

  • Head low in the water, mouth at water level
  • Head tilted back with mouth open
  • Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
  • Eyes closed
  • Hair over forehead or eyes
  • Not using legs—vertical
  • Hyperventilating or gasping
  • Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
  • Trying to roll over on the back
  • Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder

So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks OK—don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, “Are you all right?” If they can answer at all—they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents—children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Source/article: [x]

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DON’T FEED DEER CORN IN WINTER

lizaliveunenchanted:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

animalsustainability:

I know a lot of folks feel sorry for deer in the winter, especially when it looks like there’s not much for them to eat. I also know that some people, having seen deer eating gleanings out of fields, think it’s helpful to leave some corn out for the deer. As a nutritionist, I beg you, DON’T. 

Deer are ruminants, which means digestion relies on microbes in their gut to help break down forages. These microbes undergo seasonal changes, and in winter, fiber-digesters are the dominant type. If deer suddenly eat a large amount of starch-rich food, like corn, what few starch-digesting microbes are in the gut quickly get overwhelmed, and acidosis develops. This can lead to a quick, painful death. What started out as kindness becomes cruelty.

Deer take 2-4 weeks to adapt their guts to changes in diet.  In the wild, this happens as the seasons change, and the deer are fine. But if you overwhelm their gut with energy-rich food in a time of the year when they’re living a lot off of high-fiber food and their own fat reserves, it can lead to sickness and often to death. 

Even if it doesn’t kill them, congratulations, your yard is now a place where they expect food. You may have deer fighting for access to the food, or spreading disease. And things that eat deer now know they can find food near your house.  This can be dangerous to people who let their pets outside – coyotes may view small pets as a snack, as can feral dogs. Not to mention the last thing you want is those same predators getting used to people. Increased deer in residential neighborhoods also increases the risk of deer-car collisions.

In the winter, deer are usually living off of the fat reserves they built all year. Unless it is unusually cold and the county is putting out food, best not to. Deer can handle themselves.  

Acidosis is exactly what it sounds like: an imbalance of acids and bases in the bloodstream. I know we feel like we should help feed animals whose habitat we’ve destroyed, but if deer are persisting in your area they’re already finding enough to eat and your kindness could kill them. 

Also inform yourself on your local deer population. Are they multiplying like crazy because they are living off of suburban ladies gardens? Or are they truly starving? What predators do they face? Also if u have a dog keep them away from deer. Deer harbor ticks which carry Lyme disease which could kill ur dog and also spread to u. Plant some shrubs of u really feel bad for the deer as young trees and shrubs are their fav.

theinkstainsblog:

hurleyforsocialjustice:

radicel:

radicel:

fuck it

i dont want girls sexualising mlm relationships anymore. at all

i dont want them fetishizing our relationships bc they think it’s sexy

i dont care if its a “way for them to express their sexuality”. that aint right and its messed that they can say that they want men in the porn industry to stop fetishizing wlw relationships, only to do the same bc its “fandom”

can yall please reblog this actually ??

bc like. im a boy attracted to boys. and this is making me uncomfortable and i want it to stop

and im not the only one ? a handful of people have agreed with me and im sure there are more

please dont ignore this bc you want to keep writing/drawing/reading m/m porn…. or bc im a boy and you dont care what i have to say….. especially if you disagree with the treatment of wlw in the porn industry its a double standard and this is important to me and i dont want it to be swept under the rug

Add on: you can still write, draw and read about mlm without fetishizing them. By fetishization, OP means that you only see these relationships as sexy and sinful instead of just seeing it as average everyday relationships.

Nearly every girl I’ve met within fandoms with mlm ships has only focused on the men having sex or calling them ‘my nasty gay babies’ and that’s just gross.

We’re all writers here so I thought it important that y’all see this and take note. 

americanpsycho1991:

i’m now seeing posts that are basically accusing therapists of being the same as ““““neurotypicals”””” who tell you that doing yoga will cure your depression

and it’s fucking killing me because ???  the idea of being annoyed by people telling you that stuff is because those people honestly think that doing yoga and “looking on the bright side” will magically cure your depression, because they can’t imagine happiness not coming as easily to someone else as it does to them.  the idea isn’t that getting exercise and practicing positive thinking are useless ways to treat depression.  but that’s what i’m seeing a lot of now and i just want to say…. i got some fucking bad news, cause that is the treatment for depression.

therapists telling you to get good nutrition and exercise are not the same as your yoga-instructor aunt on facebook posting pictures of the sunrise and wondering how anyone can be depressed when the world is so wonderful!!! thats not just an anti-recovery attitude, it’s an anti-treatment attitude, and it’s unbelievably ignorant.

there’s sort of this interesting circular form to dealing with mental illness, where you start in a place of “i just need to think positively and push myself out of this ditch” and then you move to step 2, which is “depression is a real and very serious illness and it’s not my fault that i’m tired all the time, stop telling me to just “think positive” all the time.”

But then there’s step three, which is where you size up your situation and say “look, i understand how serious my illness is, and i’m no longer blaming myself for it.  And it sucks, and I don’t “deserve” this, and I didn’t bring it on myself.  But regardless of how unfair it is, the truth is that I’m the only one who can actually do anything about it.”  And so in a lot of ways, you end up with parallel ways of thinking as before, but this time you’re coming from a completely different source of understanding.  People who don’t know anything about mental illness say “depression is a choice.”  People who are fed up with being depressed and realize that wallowing in the comforting embrace of self-pity is useful to erase guilt, but ultimately won’t help them lead a better life say, “recovery is a choice.”

The first group means that if you’re depressed, you can just magically decide not to be depressed.  The second group means that depression is a crushing weight on your back determined to make your life as miserable (and as short) as possible, and that you didn’t do anything to cause it, but that ultimately you have the choice of giving up and accepting being depressed for the rest of your life, or you have the option of making an effort to improve your quality of life.  Similar statements, totally different meanings.

But I think a lot of people are sort of seduced by the comfort of giving up, and with the good intention of creating communities of understanding and non-judgement between mentally ill people, social media has unwittingly created communities of mentally ill people encouraging each other to give up.  To just accept that this is the way their lives are, and there’s no possibility of getting better.  And that’s how it’s gotten to the point of people dismissing actual mental health professionals as being no different than some ignorant person who doesn’t know the first thing about psychology and thinks an avocado smoothie will solve all your problems.

Avocado smoothie people are coming from the first perspective, that being depressed is a free choice that you can easily opt out of.  Therapists are coming from the second perspective, where mental illness is a horrible reality, but given that you’re seeing them, a provider of mental health treatment, of fucking course they’re going to give you advice on how to treat your mental illness!  Your therapist isn’t going to sit around and say “yeah man that sucks, haha look at this funny meme about how much you want to kill yourself.”  Your therapist is going to give you recommendations of activities and habits that will help you recover.  And they understand that these activities are not easy!!!  They get that!!!  The reason they’re there is to help you introduce these activities and ways of thinking into your life!!!  Otherwise they’d just hand you a pamphlet and walk out!!!

But you can’t access that kind of help – the kind where you say “getting out of the house is a real problem for me, I never have the energy to get out of bed” and your therapist says “okay let’s figure out how to break this down into small steps, we’ll set a small goal for this week, and next time we meet you can tell me if it worked out, and if it did then we can figure out what the next goal will be, and if not then we can figure out why it didn’t work and try a different approach” – if you immediately dismiss any mention of recovery as “neurotypical bullshit.”

Anyways please please please take your healthcare seriously, get treatment, and realize that giving up and normalizing your depression/anxiety/etc as something that will never ever get better (yes, even if it’s a chronic condition that you’ll never fully cure, you still need to treat it) is not okay.  Try to get good nutrition. Try to get sunshine and exercise.  Try to be social.  Making an effort to do things that will help you is not the same as thinking mental illness is a switch you can easily flip.  Getting treatment is not the same thing as pretending your mental illness doesn’t exist or isn’t serious.  On the contrary, getting treatment is taking your mental illness seriously.  I’m not saying you should never make a joke or reblog a fucking meme or anything, I’m saying don’t use social media as your mental health care provider.  Social media can be a way to vent, but venting is not the same thing as recovering.

Honestly it can take a very long time to get to that “step 3″ perspective but it’s a vital step.