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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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Sounds good!
One thing I get a certain naughty kick out of is the way domestic cats (originally African wildcats) startle so easily when they see snake-like objects in the area. Makes perfect sense to me, though, as they'd be natural prey to various snakes across the greater range of their habitats.
OTOH, on our end, we seem to be unusually scared of some animals, such as spiders, even though spiders for the most part are natural allies, especially in our homes. We so silly...
Those poor cats get spooked by those cucumbers... 😂
The wife and I have reached a peace deal with spiders. She knows I leave them in the house, I just need to make sure she doesn't see them.
My coworker and I have both been ensuring spiders get moved out of high human traffic areas.
Excellent!
There's also the fact that most spiders have mouth-parts completely incapable of breaking human skin, so a little diagram or example of such might be worth finding and sharing with the wife?
Now, whoever's reading may hate me for this, so go ahead and hate, but there's some interesting ideas here I wasn't aware of: (includes a boatload of high-quality supporting links, not unlike a good Wikipedia entry)
https://chatgpt.com/share/6a876492-d118-83ea-9835-17f1868c8248
This seems to be what she falls under. 😅
She understands they are good, she just does not wish to knowingly share space with them due to her mind categorizing them as creepy-crawlies.
Much like with most of my other friends, she's happy I have them, but she wishes to spend no time with them. 😂
And it's good to have friends like that, yeah?
As in, those able to entertain competing ideas in their heads without cracking up, or painting you as the weirdo, etc.
Hmm, question-- how much do / does your wife and friend-group get impacted by your animal-focused life? Do they 'catch the fever' to any certain extent? Do they follow your online work on the Fediverse or wherever else..?
We're all just a little peculiar in our own ways. I used to be a lot more self-centered and angry before I got diagnosed with major depression, and the people that are left have always stuck by me even when I didn't deserve it many times.
My wife and I many times don't see each other much during the week. She works many 12 hour shifts, and her actual days are the weekends and alternate Fri or Mon for the third day, but she picks up lots of extra shifts for the overtime. I work my clinic shift on Sundays. She's always gone, and it gets my butt out of bed so I don't sleep the weekend away as I'd otherwise probably do.
We both enjoy animals, so she's down to go to the zoos and aquariums I want to see when we travel, and she was actually the one that wanted the behind the scenes adventure on this trip, which surprised me. I didn't expect to actually touch anything, so that was a great experience for the both of us.
My other friends will often enjoy a story of 2 and they think it's cool I do it, but I don't think they care too much otherwise.