yeah I am like on the fence about vegetarianism I think I should just get used to cooking luxe veggie shit lots of pestos gravys sauces etc will keep me motivated hahaha just had a red pesto fried chick peas its one of my favs and I am like oh maybe this isnt so bad you wont waste away into nothing lmao

 

 

The terrible last days of George IV read less like the end of a monarch… and more like the slow collapse of a man who had spent a lifetime consuming everything around him—including himself. By April 1830, the King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, the man who had outlived Napoleon Bonaparte and staged the most extravagant coronation in British history, was barely able to function. His once-commanding presence had faded into something fragile, swollen, and broken. He could no longer sign his own name. Ravaged by gout, his hands were so damaged that a servant pressed a rubber stamp of his signature onto royal decrees—an empty ritual few still believed in. His body was failing in every way imaginable. Twice a week, doctors punctured his legs to drain fluid. He could not lie down without his lungs filling with water, forcing him to sleep upright in a specially made chair—a living sensation of drowning. And yet, his appetite endured. Before midday, he consumed pigeon pâté, multiple glasses of wine, champagne, port, and brandy—only the beginning of his daily indulgence. To dull the relentless pain, he relied on laudanum in staggering quantities, far beyond what most could survive. This was the end of a king who had once embodied luxury and excess. Born George Augustus Frederick on August 12, 1762, the eldest son of George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, he was destined for power from the very beginning. But where his father ruled with discipline and restraint, the son rebelled through indulgence. From a young age, he drank heavily, accumulated enormous debts, and lived a life defined by pleasure. At 21, he secretly married Maria Fitzherbert, a union forbidden under British law. Though never officially recognized, it remained the most meaningful relationship of his life—one he would repeatedly damage through his own excess and selfishness. In the end, his story became a warning written in flesh rather than ink. A man who treated his body like a kingdom to exploit… only to discover, too late, that even kings cannot escape the consequences of their own rule. #GeorgeIV #BritishHistory #RoyalHistory #DarkHistory #HistoricalFigures #TrueHistory #LifeOfExcess #Monarchy #19thCentury #HistoryStories

 

How far can crows identify us? Much farther than we imagine. 🖤 From the powerful raven spotting humans kilometers away to the sharp-eyed jay observing from a distance, corvids prove their intelligence isn’t just a myth—it’s science. They don’t just see us… they remember us. They don’t just fly… they observe and learn. In the quiet sky, their eyes track stories we never notice. Nature’s most intelligent birds are always watching—closer, smarter, and farther than we think. #Crows #Corvids #BirdIntelligence #WildlifeFacts #NatureLovers #AnimalBehavior #SmartBirds #Raven #CrowLife #NaturePhotography #DidYouKnow #WildlifeScience

 

A stray cat nursed a dying kitten for 9 days in a cemetery. She wasn't its mother. She had never had kittens. She had no milk. She held it against her body 22 hours a day and licked its fur until it was raw. The kitten survived. The cat's tongue was bleeding by the end. In the first week of November 2023, a groundskeeper at an old rural cemetery in the misty lowlands of County Cork, Ireland, noticed something between two headstones in the far northwest corner of the grounds. A cat. Gray. Thin. Lying in the narrow gap between the base of a limestone headstone and the iron rail of a grave border. Not unusual — strays used the cemetery regularly. It was quiet, sheltered, unbothered by traffic. He'd seen dozens come and go over the years. But this one wasn't moving. Not dead. Not sleeping. She was curled into a tight crescent around something. Her body was tense. Her eyes were open. She was looking directly at him. Not afraid. Not aggressive. Protective. The look of something that has drawn a line around itself and decided no one crosses it. He stepped closer. She didn't run. She pressed tighter around the shape beneath her. It was a kitten. Black. Impossibly small. Eyes sealed shut. Maybe 6 days old, maybe less. Its body was limp and still except for a faint, irregular movement in its chest — breathing, but barely. Its fur was soaked — not from rain, but from saliva. The cat had been licking it. Obsessively, continuously, for what appeared to have been a very long time. The kitten's fur was plastered flat and raw pink patches were showing on its sides and the back of its neck where the skin had been worn thin from relentless grooming. The groundskeeper was experienced with animals. He assessed what he was looking at and made two immediate determinations: One — the kitten was dying. Dehydrated, hypothermic, and likely abandoned by its birth mother within hours of delivery. Its breathing was the shallow, mechanical rhythm of a body running on its last reserves. Two — the gray cat was not the mother. She was too small to have recently given birth. Her abdomen showed no signs of nursing. Her nipples were flat. She had no milk. She had never had kittens. She was, by every biological indicator, a cat with no connection to this kitten whatsoever. She was a stray caring for someone else's dying offspring with the only thing she had — her own body heat and a tongue she had worn raw trying to keep it stimulated and alive. The groundskeeper called a woman in the area who was known for informal animal rescue. She arrived within the hour. She assessed the kitten — critical, temperature dangerously low, severely dehydrated, unresponsive to touch — and said they needed to get it to a vet immediately. When she reached for the kitten, the gray cat bit her. Not a warning snap. A full bite. Canine through the web between her thumb and index finger. Blood immediately. The woman pulled her hand back. The cat didn't hiss, didn't arch, didn't make a sound. She just repositioned herself tighter around the kitten and resumed licking. The woman — who had handled hundreds of strays over two decades — said later: "I've been bitten by scared cats. I've been bitten by feral cats. I've never been bitten by a cat that was calm. She wasn't frightened. She wasn't angry. She just... refused. She had decided that kitten was hers. Not biologically. Not by instinct. By choice. And she was prepared to bleed me to enforce it." They eventually retrieved the kitten by gently lifting the gray cat with a towel and separating them for a few seconds. The kitten was rushed to a local veterinary practice. It survived the first night. Barely. IV fluids. A heat pad. Syringe feeding every 90 minutes. The vet gave it a 20% chance. The gray cat was brought to the same clinic. She had refused to eat anything offered at the cemetery. She was underweight — 5.8 pounds — with signs of chronic malnourishment. Her coat was thin. Her teeth were worn. She was estimated to be around 7 years old. She had lived outdoors her entire life. But it was her tongue that stopped the veterinary team. The surface of her tongue was raw. Not irritated — raw. The papillae — the tiny barbed structures that give a cat's tongue its rough texture — were worn completely flat across the front third of her tongue. In several places, the tissue was cracked and actively bleeding. She had licked that kitten so continuously, so relentlessly, for so many days, that she had abraded her own tongue down to damaged tissue. The vet estimated, based on the degree of tissue wear, that the cat had been grooming the kitten for a minimum of 7 to 9 days. At a rate of approximately 20 to 22 hours per day. The math was staggering. Up to 198 hours of continuous licking. On a tongue that had been bleeding for at least the final two to three days. Every stroke hurt her. And she did not stop. The vet said: "The licking wasn't affection. It was medical. Cats stimulate neonatal kittens by licking to promote circulation, respiration, digestion, and waste elimination. Without a mother, a kitten that age will die within days because its body can't regulate any of those functions on its own. This cat — who had never been a mother, who had no hormonal drive to nurse — was manually performing every function a mother would. She was licking that kitten to keep its heart beating. She was licking it to make it breathe. She was licking it to make it digest whatever residual nutrition it had. She did this for over a week with no food, no assistance, and a tongue that was falling apart. I have been a veterinarian for 19 years and I have never seen anything like this." The kitten was in critical care for 11 days. It was touch-and-go for the first four. On day five, it opened its eyes for the first time. On day seven, it latched onto a bottle nipple without assistance. On day 11, it was stable enough to be moved to a foster environment. The gray cat was kept at the clinic during the kitten's treatment. She was in a kennel in the same room. For the first 48 hours, she did not eat, did not sleep, and did not look away from the incubator where the kitten was being held. She sat at the front of her kennel with her face pressed against the wire door. Watching. Her damaged tongue hung slightly from her mouth because fully retracting it caused pain from the cracked tissue. On day three, they placed the kitten's incubator beside her kennel. She pressed her nose through the wire, made contact with the incubator surface, and began to purr. She ate for the first time 20 minutes later. They were fostered together. Then adopted together. A retired woman in a village outside of Cork took them both. She was told the full story. She said: "I wasn't looking for a cat. I certainly wasn't looking for two. But when they told me what that gray one did — what she gave up, what she endured — I couldn't separate them. Whatever bond was formed in that cemetery, it isn't mine to break." The kitten — now a healthy, energetic black cat — is 14 months old as of January 2025. He weighs 9.4 pounds. He has no lasting health effects from his first days of life. He plays. He eats voraciously. He tears through the house like a small hurricane. The gray cat — estimated now at nearly 9 years old — has slowed. Her tongue healed but retains a smooth, scarred section at the tip where the papillae never regrew. She grooms the black cat daily — gently now, in short sessions, a few strokes at a time. She no longer needs to do it to save him. She does it because it is the language she built between them, and she has not stopped speaking it. Every night, the black cat — who could sleep anywhere in the house, who has beds, blankets, chairs, a full window ledge — walks to wherever the gray cat is lying and presses himself against her side. He tucks his head under her chin. She rests her scarred tongue against the top of his head. And they stay like that until morning. She had no milk. No kittens of her own. No biological reason to care whether that kitten lived or died in a cemetery she had no connection to. She simply found something small and dying in the cold, and she made a decision that had nothing to do with instinct and everything to do with what she was willing to lose. She gave it her warmth when she had barely enough for herself. She gave it stimulation from a tongue that was bleeding. She gave it nine days of her life — hungry, exhausted, in pain — because something in her recognized that this small thing needed exactly what she could provide, and that was enough. Not instinct. Not hormones. Just a stray cat in a cemetery who looked at a dying kitten and decided: not on my watch.