Addicted

It is scientifically proven that caffeine is a real addiction. According to Joseph Stromberg from Smithsonian Magazine, caffeine is a chemical drug that has effects when you try to quit. If you are a regular coffee drinker, you can have light headaches, muscle pain, and lack of alertness.

No, I'm not addicted to caffeine. But Doug is. Doug enjoys the leftover coffee in anyone's cup every morning. It started when my Mom started to give it to him after she was done with hers. It's the very traditional story. One taste and he was hooked. He is very aware of what a mug is now and will jump onto the coffee table to get to any coffee he can. 

Courtesy of my phone

Courtesy of my phone

" I'm just so worried about him lately. He's been distant and really jumpy. I just want to get him help. You know? It's not healthy and he's going to end up ruining his life this way. One day he's going to overdose, and I just don't want it to get to that point. I really love him and I just want to get him the help he needs." -Kendall

(Just kidding. That was fake, I wrote it myself.) If you didn't know, caffeine is poisonous to dogs. When I researched it the effects on dogs were awful, one was death. How is death a side effect? It said that coffee is almost as poisonous as chocolate. Not that my family has ever worried about chocolate. Ed has eaten either Kendall or my Halloween candy each year, many batches of brownies, and even a five pound bag of M&Ms. So I'm not worried. My great grandmother fed her dog eggs and coffee every morning for breakfast, and that dog lived for almost twenty years. 

I'm not worried, but I do have some concerns. I don't know any dogs who like coffee as much as Doug. My Mother's boxer drank beer but that was a one time thing. Doug drinks coffee everday. One day he could overdose on coffee and fall over and die. Well, that actually couldn't happen. What would happen if we went on vacation? Who would give Doug his coffee?

While it's scary to think about what could possibly happen to Doug. I could never afford dog rehab, and I can use his addiction to my advantage. If you show Doug that there is coffee in your cup, he follows you around the house barking and jumping until you give him some. Perhaps, I could use this to get Doug to do anything I want. Coffee lovers don't even come close to Doug. He would go to the end of the earth for coffee. 

*Do not attempt to take Douglas to a coffee shop.

15 SUCKS

On Monday it was my birthday. In the morning I decided to sleep through first period, but as it turns out, I have really awesome friends. As I was enjoying the extra sleep I heard my phone ring in my bed. I sat up and shuffled through the pillows and multiple blankets on my bed (I love blankets!). Finally, I found my phone lit up with a name across the top. I answered the phone with a groggy, eyes-closed hello. Apparently, all my friends were waiting around my locker with gifts and cards for me. Feeling bad about not going, but feeling good about sleeping, I apologized many times. Then I went right back to sleep.

2014: courtesy of Mom

When I got up, my sister had made me cinnamon sugar ebelskivers for breakfast, which started my day off extremely well. If you haven't had ebleskivers, you haven't lived. Ebelskivers are danish pancake balls, that you fill with anything you want (yes, nutella). I ate those and slowly packed my school bag. Then I was dropped off at school, where I went straight to second period.

I received the gifts my friends brought me including a thermos that looks like a camera lens and a set of card that I got to open at each hour of the day. Each one had something nice written about me inside, which I know was probably not true, but it made my day anyway. After school I went riding and met my family for dinner at Sushi Blue.  To end the night we ate vegan vanilla cake, opened gifts, and took the traditional cat and cake photo that happens every year. (I only posted the previous years because I couldn't get this year's off facebook).

2015: Courtesy of Dad

Fifteen years old means that you get to legally drive a car, you are three years away from being an adult, and that there is a whole lot more pressure on you. Fifteen seems great until you are actually there. The morning of my first day as a fifteen year-old I put on my Mom's light blue sweater, and ran out the door with a bowl of strawberry oatmeal.

At school, it was put to my attention by Aysia that I had oatmeal all over the elbow of my sweater and my sweater was see-through. Luckily, I had a tank top. We went to the bathroom, scrubbed it off the oatmeal and I put on the tank top. By this time the bell rang and I headed to Mrs. Payne's room for math.

I sat down next to Alex and pulled out my homework. As we were working, she asked me to taste her hot chocolate to see how hot it was. I took a cautious sip and told her that from a scale of one to ten, the hot chocolate was an eight. Cool enough to drink, but also slightly scalding. As we worked on our class work, I studied her flash cards for the English test we had the next day. Suddenly, I was jumping out of my chair, yelping and waving my arms. The hot chocolate was spilled all over me, in front of the entire class. (Don't worry Alex I forgive you!) I then spent the rest of the day with a hot chocolate stained sweater.

During PE, we went snowshoeing. We hiked up a torturous and steep hill. At the top, we were allowed to choose if we wanted to go trail blazing or if we wanted to go down the same trail. I convinced my friends to go trail blazing with me. As it turns out, Alex and Elise are extremely good at trail blazing, while I am not. I slid most of the way down on my butt and I fell multiple times. I didn't realize that the tail of my sweater had been dragging in the snow the entire time. So all throughout Biology I shivered in my soaked sweater.

Now, I am nearly a week into fifteen. Which hasn't been too bad. Yet.

Anthropomorphize/Naked Cats

The word anthropomorphize may sound like it means-to transform into another animal, but it's actually the opposite. We don't realize it but everyday we anthropomorphize, whether you have a pet or not. The easter bunny is a notorious example. The word anthropomorphize is a verb that means to ascribe human features to something. When you talk about a thing or animal as if it were human, you're anthropomorphizing it. 

So why do we do it? According to Rick Nauert from Pysch Central News, An entity is more likely to be anthropomorphized if it appears to have many traits similar to those of humans (for example, through humanlike movements or physical features such as a face). Which is why we tend to anthropomorphize our pets. By giving animals emotions and personalities we make sense of emotions and relationships in our lives, without even realizing we are doing it. Some people do it out of loneliness. They cannot or will not connect with other people, so they end up creating relationships with their pets, like imaginary friends. Thus, the crazy cat lady is formed.

Winston and Ferguson Courtesy of Hollywood.com

It's not that your dog doesn't have emotions, he does, just not in the way you think. Pets feel excited, jealous, lonely, depressed. But they are not actually beyoncé's sister who loves pancakes. Their emotions are much simpler than we make them out to be. But this post isn't supposed to get you to stop anthropomorphizing your pet, it's actually supposed to inspire you to continue giving pet human emotions. I believe that anthropomorphizing is like therapy. It creates a stronger relationship with your pet, helps you understand different emotions, and combats loneliness. I'm not crazy but on days that I'm alone in the house, I bring my fish Joey to the coffee table and Doug onto the sofa, then as I watch television I make comments to them. 

In conclusion, anthropomorphizing is a good thing. It's fun and we should never stop doing it. Without it we wouldn't have pet instagram accounts and pet blogs. I hope that fifty years from now we still we continue to be closer friends with our pets, then some people that we know.

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Since these topics are both topics that I don't want to write a ton about, I decided to split the blog post in half to give me the opportunity to write about two short topics. The second topic I want to touch on is naked cats. 

I have always thought that hairless cats were the ugliest creatures ever. They were all wrinkly and looked like little ferocious people. Until last year. When I was scrolling the web like any normal teenager. When I came across one of the well-known hairless cats. 

My first thought was "ew", but then I looked more deeply into the eyes of the cat. I realized at that moment, that the hairless cats were most likely miss-judged. They suddenly didn't appear ugly or out of the place in the world, because I understood. They looked different from other cats, but maybe they were funny and sweet. So I looked more deeply into them. 

What a found was surprising. Hairless cats are actually a rare breed called the Sphynx. They don't actually get too cold and they have very low amounts of health problems. They are also sweet and friendly. For something so ugly, they are great cats. And they shed no hair, which works for anyone who is allergic to cats. Someday I plan to get a Sphynx and name it Voldemort or Smeagol, and we will live happily ever after.