VILLAGE MAYHEM: I misgendered my cat

Breaking news from the Edward Institute for Village Studies

Susan and Sabrina looking very judgmental as they lounge on top of the stove

It’s been almost a year since our last VILLAGE MAYHEM post, which makes no sense because it’s basically non-stop mayhem in the village.

Time for a long-overdue MAYHEM update.

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More baby goats (“Oh my gosh” — Edward)

A few days ago I was minding my own business in the goat pen when suddenly a new goat appeared.

We’re best friends now. He likes nibbling on my beard.

Two more goats from a different goat-mom were born a day earlier. But I wasn’t present for their delivery so there’s no placenta reaction video, sorry.

The goats are also very fond of Potato the Dog.

Head Mistress of the Edward Institute Farm, Irina, documented how she feeds the baby goats and any nearby puppies that might also enjoy some milk:

There’s still one goat that is massively pregnant and is due any minute now. I’ll keep you posted.

That covers all the baby goat news.

Wood status: Stacked

In November I expressed regret that I had spent the summer tunneling instead of splitting and stacking wood. This is a typical rookie mistake if you’ve ever lived in the village.

The good news is that after a few days of stacking I was able to accumulate considerable reserves in my wood shed.

I also made an emergency stash of unburnable wet wood behind the banya. Just in case.

The logs that I was too lazy to split were used to construct a woodpile rotunda.

The rotunda at night

Now that all the wood is stacked/arranged in impractical ways, it’s time to prepare for next winter.

Can’t wait to break out the ol’ handsaw!

Smarty the Calf joins the Edward Institute

I was summoned to the barn at 3am on February 23. Gavryusha the Cow had given birth.

He was able to drink milk from a pot with minimal human assistance so we named him Smarty.

We now have rivers of cow and goat milk. Soon we’ll be swimming in cheese and butter.

A big thank you to the milk-producing animals for making it all happen!

Anyway. Welcome to Team Slavsquat, Smarty!

Introducing: The Cob-400

You are probably already familiar with the Cob, a highly flammable device made of cardboard toilet paper cores. For centuries, villagers have used Cobs to ignite their stoves. We wrote about it.

But what if I told you there was something even more flammable than a Cob?

What if someone combined the world’s two most flammable things—cardboard toilet paper cores and birch bark—to make the ultimate stove-igniter?

This is not a hypothetical question. This is the top secret science behind the Cob-400, the surface-to-stove missile recently invented by the Edward Institute for Village Studies.

A Cob-400

A pathetic normal Cob (left) and an instant-inferno Cob-400 (right)

The Cob-400 in action:

QED.

I misgendered my cat

In May the Edward Institute adopted a kitten that was advertised on the internet as female. We named her Susan because she was a girl-cat and she looked like a Susan. There could be no other name for this adorable little female kitty. She was Susan. It was the perfect name.

I was proud of my female kitten named Susan and so I posted revealing photos of her on the internet. Everyone loved Susan. Everyone except for one black-pilled commenter, who pointed out that Susan had man-parts.

Happy Coder will receive a free paid subscription for being the only Susan TRUTH-TELLER on the Internet

After reading the above comment, Ekaterina and I spent an entire afternoon looking at cat vaginas on Yandex Image Search.

Our findings were inconclusive. And because you need a preponderance of evidence to change a kitten’s gender, Susan remained a girl.

Time passed …. Things grew.

Eventually it became abundantly clear that something was amiss.

Oops.

SUSAN IS A GUY.

Sorry about that, Susan. But we’re not changing your name. You are forever Susan.

Susan and Sabrina posing next to our newly redecorated wall, which now features an old map of the Soviet Union that I found in an abandoned dacha, and a sampling of Edward’s Rickey Henderson (RIP) baseball card collection.

Until next time.

— Riley

Edward Junior relaxing on a haybale with his furry friends.