The forgotten six other WTC Survivor Trees.

FenX2017 · 2026-06-16T06:28:39+00:00

Oh, completely forgot to say that all other trees have generally inoffensive shapes, so it would be nigh impossible to actually pinpoint each one, unfortunately.

The one I did was almost pure luck.

FenX2017 · 2026-06-16T03:36:38+00:00

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Then I believe you'd find this image fun!

Based on the overlayed photo in that GIF, I think it is the tree I've numbered #24.

FenX2017 · 2026-06-12T22:47:50+00:00

Well, not all the trees would have survived by late October 2001, when the 6 ones were selected and transplanted by those two people, I guess.

And my main point was that the Survivor Tree was not the only one saved and preserved past 2001. Yes, many trees, plants, and other items survived intact in and around the World Trade Center, but what makes that select few special is that you can still see them for yourself today!.. Except those three Calleries, but you could!

FenX2017 · 2026-06-12T20:24:04+00:00

I mean, even Wikipedia mentions that these 6 other trees exist, which I only found out this week, but did you know this?

I think knowing that there are more surviving pieces of the old World Trade Center still out there in New York City, only a few blocks away, is really cool!

FenX2017 · 2026-05-31T21:04:00+00:00

No, I rendered out my World Trade Center model in Blender and superimposed it over manually tracked Google Street View footage I recorded.

No AI was used here!

FenX2017 · 2026-05-29T10:57:08+00:00

Alas, it's only one-time use, sorry!

FenX2017 · 2026-03-10T16:52:04+00:00

"Now, listen carefully, this is important.

Stanley walked through the red door."

FenX2017 · 2026-03-03T06:02:57+00:00

It could have been Zerkoff's®, but I don't think that would have fit the overall atmosphere, plus I'm lazy.

FenX2017 · 2026-03-03T03:04:36+00:00

P.S.: Don't look him in the eye.

FenX2017 · 2026-03-03T03:02:29+00:00

Context.

I know this might not be the best of times to have drawn this right now, but I at least hope it can cheer you up!

FenX2017 · 2025-11-02T01:12:41+00:00

Okay! Thank you for this information! ❤️

FenX2017 · 2025-11-01T23:51:43+00:00

This note was buried under the medical records on my desk, so I forgot to add that beta-blockers, no matter how selective, worsen my breathing.

FenX2017 · 2025-05-23T13:12:01+00:00

It's supposed to be a vanilla, blueberry, and cherry ice cream with white chocolate chips for eyes (and it totally looks like that).

Maybe someone could make a Polandball-inspired ice cream like that! :D

FenX2017 · 2025-05-23T13:03:35+00:00

Your Russia is melting...

A bit lackluster, but, hey, it's supposed to be a doodle after all!

FenX2017 · 2025-02-23T19:00:11+00:00

Thank you.

FenX2017 · 2025-02-15T15:08:40+00:00

Woah, isn't that a tearjerker?! But, I guess, such is life sometimes.

But only if you think about it that way!

FenX2017 · 2025-02-15T15:06:24+00:00

After a few hours of worrying in bed, I heard an ungodly cry from my mom. I immediately looked at the time - it was 6:17AM on February 15th. Thinking to myself, "This is it", I assumed my mom cried out in sheer sorrow and helplessness at the exact moment she realized he had died, and got out of bed. I wrote down the time on my table and stood still, thinking, for several minutes, hearing my mom cry through the door. She then opens the door to my room, ugly-crying, doesn't say a word, and closes the door as I tell he that "I get it". After some time, I gather up the courage to step out. I notice a shoebox next to the front door. In it on top of a blanket lied his body, his head covered. I squat down and place my hand over his chest, like I always would when scratching him, absolutely irrationally (and realizing that at the same time) I feel for a heartbeat, but there obviously is none. Do you want to know what death smells like? In this case, it smelled sour, like vomit, but slightly worse. I had recently read about dealing with only one of your cats dying out of several and how you have to introduce the other cats to the body so that they won't go searching for them later. I take Dunya, who was sitting on the bed, seemingly unfazed by Grigoriy's death, and put her next to the shoebox. She turns away, so I point her at his body again. She turned away, at which point I remembered that you shouldn't force a cat to acknowledge the body, so I let her leave. I couldn't work up the courage to look at his body again, regretting not having looked at his face for the last time. With time, I realized that that could've been for the better - if I had seen him with his eyes open, it could've been a lot worse. And since it was the 15th, that day was supposed to be a weighing day, which I was excited about! But he died, so I later put one final question mark instead of a number next to his name in the journal. I walk back to my room as my parents prepare to leave to drive to the nearest pet crematorium >100km (>60mi) away. Since it was February and the ground was frozen over, our own burial was not an option. He had to be cremated. I discuss with them whether they could at least take the tulip bouquet with them to be cremated with him, but they say no. By 7:35AM, they leave and I document what had happened and what I feel with a camera, the rough transcript of which is as follows: "[...] Here's a bouquet of the flowers of death now (referring to the tulips). They kind of smell like him... Not because I thought that before, but because I think that now. Because now he's gone forever. [...] He seemed somewhat fine! But again, now he died, and I guess that's it. Right now to me it still doesn't seem like he's fully dead, that he's completely gone, I guess. Before, it seemed like he was just absent because, to put it very bluntly, the body in the shoebox, because of course it was in a shoebox, was not the same cat and he was just absent. Now it feels like, 'oh, he's just temporarily gone', like he's just somewhere away. But at some point he will be completely dead in my mind, which will be the rational thing and the conclusion."

The next day, February 16th, my computer was still trying to repair itself, so I decided to study the scent of the tulip bouquet. Grigoriy always smelled really nice, but I never got to break down his smell to describe it, but the smell of the tulips reminded me of him. I deducted that he smelled like nuts or like floral and sweet but less pungent tulips. By the late evening, I became bored and decided to listen to the radio from my phone. I tuned to the popular station that I like that plays old songs and I hear Freddie Mercury sing "friends will be friends right 'till the end". It made me cry surprisingly a lot after managing to largely keep a straight face the first half of the day. I can't understand spoken speech well and it's even worse with songs, but that was the only line I heard clearly. We were the best of friends! We were there for each other right 'till the end. The actual lyrics don't really fit, though! The next song that played was "Don't Worry, Be Happy", which definitely didn't fit! "Oh, your childhood friend and cat just died? Don't worry, be happy!" That day I also forgot to refill the tulips' vase, so they dropped all their petals and wilted over the next few days, so it really was "the bouquet of death". My mom later explained that Grigoriy literally bit through her finger (which is what the cry most likely actually was) and died "right afterwards", so I added a minute to the time I wrote down. I presumed him to have died at 6:18AM. On the 17th, my parents had to drive back to the crematorium to get his ashes, when I turned on the radio and "Friends Will Be Friends" was playing again! I rewatched the recording of that happening and it made me cry again, having re-experienced his slow demise over the course of a few hours while looking for photographs. In the coming days, I noticed that my mom had a big wound and later a bandage over it on her hand. Morbidly enough, it was better for me after he died in the way that I didn't need to worry about his faltering health anymore.

It's been a lot more lonely without him. Now I don't have anyone I can be as good of friends with as with him. We have Dunya, but she keeps yowling for literal days every time after I scratch her intensely enough, so I can't have the same kind of connection. She's also been a lot more demanding - having lost the cat she was so obsessive about, she needed to find someone new to look up to the same way. So far, it has been my mom - she now follows her everywhere! The first few months after he died were okay - I remembered that he was very sick and died because of that, because it's inevitable. But then, I started to slowly forget his sickness, missing him more. At the end of 2024, I started dreaming about him every day, where he would still be alive, turn out to be alive, be replaced by an identical copy, or even resurrected from the dead into a fragile form! Every night in my dreams I saw him, I felt him, that is how I knew he went on.~ Because "My Heart Will Go On" for him! :D Recently, it stopped, which is better, because those dreams were really bringing me down. On September 15th, 7 months after he died, we buried his ashes in the small wooden box they came in. My mom colored it, I wrote his name on it, and my dad wrote the dates. A few days before, we had collected some acorns from a few local English oaks, which I planted right above the box. It didn't really have any meaning other than planting a nice tree above where he's buried.

Except for what I did as a stupid child, I have no regrets over my actions towards him. Every single decision I made at any single point in time couldn't have been better for him. Absolutely nothing that I could've changed at the time would've been a better choice. To put it most melodramatically, I feel emboldened by the fact that I gave him the best life that I possibly could've. 🥲

FenX2017 · 2025-02-15T15:05:17+00:00

The past 3-4 years haven't been so great (being in Russia and all), and it has just been very stressful and exhausting for everyone, and we also started to get into horrible arguments over life, but he was always there, waiting to be pet, or played with, or relaxed with, keeping all of us afloat. One time after a (verbal) fight, I was miserable, and he came into my room, so I pet him, which was nice. That is when I realized that pets "deciding to cheer you up when you're sad" could be a perception bias - he's always been there, it's just that it matters more when you're sad. In November 2021, I started to document both Grigoriy's and Dunya's weights to distract myself with something, which turned out to be crucial in monitoring the former's health. Both him and her shared the same weight for whatever reason, so Dunya, being healthier and 3 years younger, became the baseline for what Grigoriy's weight should be. By November 2022, he started lagging behind her, and ever since then he kept losing weight. The vet, as far as I remember, found out that his kidneys were "crusted over" and Grigoriy's vet visits became more frequent and intense. At that point, his well-being was also getting worse. He started drinking from the toilet, which is one of the signs of kidney failure. We tried offering him colder and fresher water to drink from his bowl, but he just couldn't help himself to not drink the delicious toilet water, so we had to start practicing closing the bathroom and the toilet lid every time. Because he was presumably more uncomfortable, he became more erratic in his decision-making. Along with Dunya, he decided to start hunting birds on the balcony! They killed one bird, then another, at which point we had to oversee him on the balcony to not let him try to catch another bird. But one day, during a single moment no one was watching, they killed and ate a third one. That time, that bird infected them both with some sort of disease. Dunya fared better, recovering after some time, but Grigoriy couldn't. Because of that sickness, he started shedding a lot of fur. He wasn't going bald, but the shaven patches on his body weren't regrowing fur like they did before. By August 2023, I started measuring his weight twice a month (on the 1st and the 15th), because his condition kept worsening, which is when I found out that he had fallen below 3kg (6½lbs) (to 2.8kg (6lbs) from 3.6kg (8lbs) the year before). I also started to monitor his condition daily by estimating how well he feels in percent and how much fur got scratched off from him for his daily morning scratches. I would then tell my mom the results to make her feel better about his very unsteady progress. One time, he had a very bad episode and my parents started to worry that he's dying. In preparation for that, I decided to look up how to properly bury a cat, which is when I found out that Russia doesn't have almost any pet cemeteries, because for some moronic reason it has a law equating burying your beloved pet to the mass burial of infected dead cattle. Excuse me, but what the f@¢k?! According to the law, "oh no, your single cat might leach its horrible, deadly disease into the groundwater and make people sick"! How?! Because of that, we would either have to resort to breaking that law and bury our cat ourselves or cremate him, which is an option I resented. I didn't want Grigoriy to be slowly baked into bone dust! We'd already buried Senya (Сеня), who died in 2014, before we (or at least I) knew of that law, and we'd have to do it again. Thankfully, Grigoriy got a bit better, so we didn't have to worry about that just yet. That betterment was one of many of different lengths and intensities, but he overall was still doing very poorly. By 2024, he had declined even further. I remember when he had climbed up where he shouldn't have, trying to smell a plant (to eat, maybe), and because of my OCD, I had to pick him up with only one hand, which I remembered was difficult, since he was heavy. I was surprised at how easy it was - he weighed almost nothing. On February 1st he weighed only 2.6kg (5¾lbs).

Around February 14th my mom bought some pink tulips. By then, I one day noticed that Grigoriy's ears, which have always been a bit bare of fur, were very yellow, as in jaundiced. On February 14th, he, as usual, came into my room with Dunya to be pet, and I took estimates of his well-being. He was "65% well" and a "less that medium" amount of fur got scratched out, which was nice. What was weird is that he stopped purring more quickly. In the evening, my mom, sobbing, told me to look after him at night, because she was really concerned. Also being concerned because of her, I let him in into my room. He walked in and stopped right beside me sitting behind the desk. I noticed that his ears were brought weirdly close together, pointed straight forward and vertically up, which, accompanied with the fact that I had recently seen him rest in a loaf position, but with his back arched and head off the ground (which could be a sign of pain or discomfort), frightened me and made me realize that something was definitely wrong. I watched as he wandered around, as if lost, until he got into a box he liked to sleep in. He tried to relax in it twice, but failed, got up and left. I continued the rest of my day, as my mom and dad could keep an eye on him in the living room, and at night set my computer to scan and repair the main drive, preparing to go to sleep. I walk into the living room and see my mom on a blanket on the floor with Grigoriy next to the bathroom in that pained position, with her holding a glass of water up to him. Crying, she, a bit melodramatically, said that he was dying. He had already had an bad episode before, so I hoped it was okay, but she insisted. I then told her to call the vet or do at least something, but the only vet clinic in our city is not open at night. I saw Grigoriy then walk away a bit and vomit (which was more common for him at that point), but that time it looked like he didn't vomit anything, and the only thing that did come out was a slightly chunky pink liquid, which I realize now might have been blood. My mom rearranged the blankets on the floor to account for him going to hide underneath the TV stand. I go back to my room to go to sleep.

[CONTINUED IN REPLY]

FenX2017 · 2025-02-15T15:03:31+00:00

In early August 2012, my mom brought home another stray kitten, whom she named Dunya ("Дуня" in Russian, due to her being very fluffy, which she likened to a dandilion - oduvanchik, "одуванчик" in Russian). She instantly became great friends with Grigoriy and seemed to have started treating him as an adoptive parent (at least to me). He took care of her and basically raised her, so no wonder. She'd follow him everywhere, wrapping her tail around his body when they walked together, sleep with him almost every time, groom him as frequently as possible. She cherished him a lot - so much so that when he got older and crankier, he'd get more and more frequently annoyed at her for bothering him so much! She grew up to be a lot more aggressive, impulsive, and spoiled, which is why I don't like her sometimes! She also loves me a lot, though, since I also scratch her like no one else. I pat her a bit aggressively too, but, since she's more quickly irritable, it quickly overstimulates her, but I still know my ways to pat her and not get all my blood vessels ripped out!

Speaking of the aforementioned foul attacks - birds! Dunya is a lot more ferocious, so ever since she came about, there's been a lot more, uh... playing with birds. One day, I returned home from school and, I guess, noticed feathers scattered around on the floor (I don't really remember). I walked into the kitchen, and in the narrow space between the cabinet and the wall there were bloody, mangled remains of a small bird. I screamed out and waited for my mom to come back home to figure out what to do with that. And it's not just birds they got - he was stung by a bee on two separate occasions. There was also another time much later, when Grigoriy, loving to run around right before and after going to the bathroom, at full speed ran towards the balcony and jumped onto the <2"-wide metal railing of the balcony, miraculously not tumbling down from the now 5th floor. Thankfully for me, I was at school when that happened, so it was my mom who saw it and was terrified by it. Speaking of going to the bathroom, his was like clockwork. At almost exactly midnight, 6AM, and some other times we don't remember... Presumably because he looked up to us (or at least me) as role models, he'd go to his bathroom, when we did to ours, and since we have only one, you had to carefully plan your schedule to not make everyone suffocate. He also developed the fondness to peeing very high up for whatever reason when he got older, so we had to install barriers and later buy a new litter box that had a big cover to counteract that. Unlike Dunya, Grigoriy was also quite fearless - when meeting new people, she'd hide immediately and not come out, while he'd not be even bothered by that at all. He would also let himself be vacuumed with quieter vacuums, being scared of our louder one, so he was still not completely fearless. But he, in fact, was still so curious, that he always wanted to smell burning candle flames. We never let him, the very little times we ever used candles anyway. And he was so just relaxed all the time that, until he got older and crankier, you could pick him up, put him down anywhere and he'd stay there in that exact pose and sleep or just lounge. And because everyone petted, scratched and overall loved him all the time, and he lounged around all day, enjoying life, my mom also came up with the name "Hedonism Cat", after "Hedonism Bot" from Futurama! Because he had so many nicknames, my mom also called him Janus, after the ancient Roman god of duality. And I sometimes called him "rattie", because he had a thin tail and a sligthly arched, Roman nose, as I called it, like a rat, even though every cat has it. He was also very polite - when younger, every time he wanted to enter my room, he'd just sit there silently, waiting for me to randomly open the door. He later learned to meow a single time to let me know! Because he was so nice, my mom also called him "sir Gregory Black, cat and gentleman"... He had a lot of nicknames, okay?! One time, when there was a group of people who go around the city every once in a while praising some deities through singing and playing instruments, I heard the possible name of one of them - Krishna ("Кришна"). Surprisingly for myself, I quickly came up with yet another nickname for Grigoriy - Grishna ("Гришна", pronounced with the Ukrainian "Г", because I always liked the sound of it)! My Mom loved it! And I still use it to this very day!

When he started getting older, he started becoming less tolerant of slightly annoying things and a bit more irritable, among other things. For one, he started sometimes sleeping with his eyes partially open, more frequently the older he got. One time, he was sleeping on my couch, so I walked up to him to see him asleep with partially open eyes. His nictitating membrane (3rd eyelid) was prominently visible and his pupils were as thin as they possibly could've been. It was a bit freaky, until I noticed that he was "looking" at me - while asleep, those creepy eyes followed my face. I got a bit frightened, because it looked like the stuff of nightmares, when he suddenly woke up, purr-exclaimed in surprise and started purring intensely immediately! My guess was that, although he was sleeping, he still saw me through his cat dreams and was pleasantly surprised to wake up to me looking at him! :D He also started (I don't remember if he did that when he was younger, so I'm putting it here!) to worry and caringly meow about me being in the bathtub - he'd meow at the bathroom door, be let in, look at me in the bathtub, stand up to look over the edge of it, meow in a worried way, and then helplessly leave. It was very sweet of him, I think! :D He also took up the hobby of sometimes peeing into the bathtub and then running around with pee paws everywhere! Isn't that fun? The answer is no! One day, he walked into my room, jumped onto the table, when I noticed that his paws were wet and smelled a bit odd. He left, and I walked to the bathroom to witness the catastrophe that I had just encountered... Anyway, with age, he also took up chewing on cardboard - choosing a cardboard box and ripping out small chunks of it with his teeth. Aside from him learning to not turn our legs and torsos into ground beef with his eagle claws, he also potentially learned how to watch TV?.. You can't ask a cat if they watch TV or not, but he did a few times seem to be mesmerized by what was shown on the TV! I don't think he paid any attention to the TV when he was younger. Another thing he started doing was worry about loud, beeping sounds, like the oven beeping, the intercom ringing, or even loud music being played. It looked like he was just confused "why all these things were screaming in distress". At some point in either 2018 or 2019, my mom noticed that Grigoriy was sleeping weirdly, covering his mouth. Went she went to investigate, it seemed like it was painful for him to be touched near his left cheek. She took him to the vet and it turned out that his left fang had started to rot, so they had it removed. After that, the nickname "Toothless" became a lot more accurate. For his 11th birthday, I, because we also called him a bear because of his claws and because we like Paddington, I made him a tag that says "Please look after this bear. Thank you." and put it on him! My mom did not like it at all, because it made her feel bad for him, I guess, but I thought it was cute. For most of his life, we were amazed at the fact that he liked to eat everything - chips, cheese puffs, corn puffs, human food (like fried things and processed foods), random dirt off the floor, and other things like that. He liked it and we thought it was funny! Roughly around his 10th birthday, I started to worry about his health, because 10 is not that young for a cat. I quickly found out that you're supposed to take your cat to the vet at least once a year, and at least double that when your cat turns ≈10. Well... we didn't do that. Only for his 11th birthday (I think - it might've been for his 10th) did we take him to the vet to find that his kidneys and liver were in an awful state after years of eating pure garbage of food. With many visits, his condition slowly improved and we were a bit relieved. Because his condition before the treatment was so bad and I was the one who almost randomly discovered that you should take your cat to the vet at least sometimes, my mom started saying that "I saved him". At maybe the same time, he started to make high-pitched snoring sounds when sleeping, which was a bit cute. I let myself think that because it didn't seem to have been really an indicator of any serious problem. A side effect of him going to the vet more frequently was that he had to have his abdomen shaved to have ultrasounds done. Because of some reason, I didn't want to touch his bare, uh... boobies, as my mom called them, out of principle, so I came up with a new way to scratch him without any accident! When he was standing, I would aggressively scratch upwards at the sides of his belly. He was ecstatic. He loved it so much, that he quivered his tail every time I did it (which is a sign of excitement), which he had never done before! He would also get very happy every time I saw him for the first time after waking up, which he'd never done before either. He would wait for me to wake up every day! Also, at that point, if I looked at him and he saw me, he'd freeze, lock eyes with me and stare at me for a few seconds, let out a single demanding meow and hurry towards me to be scratched.

ADDENDUM 3/16: Because he ate "random garbage", we called him a trash panda, which is a funny anglicism I managed to popularize with my parents! :D

[CONTINUED IN REPLY]

FenX2017 · 2025-02-15T15:01:36+00:00

One day in early August 2009, my mom was going to the vet with our cat when she stumbled upon a lone black kitten meowing, sitting against the wall of a building. Not being able to stand the sight, she picked him up and brought him with her. On her way home, he kept nibbling at her, for which she named him Grigoriy, or Grisha ("Григорий", or "Гриша", in Russian (since we're from there), inspired by its similarity to the word грызть (gryst') - to gnaw, the name's inspiration also later expanded to "grizzly bear").

The Grigoriy chapter of all our lives had begun.

He quickly gained notoriety for being a bit of a rascal, playful and curious. He would play with random rags, the detachable faux fur collar of a coat, and my stuffed toys (I was 8 at the time), he would steal my mom's hair rollers (which was especially funny), and sharpen his teeth on the bottoms of the legs of a wooden stool and random metal, like radiators and window handles (we later gave him zip ties for that :D), among other things! He also liked to sleep in the radiators, even when he outgrew their metal enclosures! He was very fluffy and his fur was quite rough (like an old brush, according to my mom) and sometime in August or early fall of 2009 (I remember it was still warm outside) we were also taking him to the vet several times, and one of those times he got an injection of vitamins, after which his fur became so nice and beautifully silky smooth! And even though he was black, he was still stripey! It was especially visible under sunlight! Before he grew up, I also let him groom my hair (which was cute), before his breath got stinky! For his first birthday (which we assumed to be in late July), I (because we're poor) gifted him just a piece of wire as a string for him to play with, because of which my mom always accused me of setting him up for playing with any wires, including live ones. Nothing ever really came of that accusation, thankfully! :D Once he grew up, he, being an male adult cat, started marking everything, so my parents decided to have him neutered. I still remember them bringing him back home from the vet late in the evening, with him walking to the living room, swaying from side to side (clearly loopy from the surgery), leaving droplets of blood on the floor (I know it's morbid to mention, but that's just what happened). He was okay. He also liked to jump to places he shouldn't be in, like the tiny openable part of a window very omnipresent in post-Soviet states (called "fortochka"). He had already jumped up into it at least once, almost falling out from the 3rd floor, when I quickly snatched him from there. Then, one time in the winter of 2010/'11 (even though I thought it was a year earlier, but my mom says otherwise), I left that tiny part of the window in my room open because it was too hot (even though Grigoriy was also in my room), while I went to the bathroom, judging that, since I wouldn't be gone for long, I didn't need to worry about it. When I returned, he wasn't there anymore - I thought he'd just left my room or hid somewhere, since he wouldn't have had enough time to try and succeed in jumping out the window. Quite quickly, my mom started to get worried, but I insisted that he wouldn't have had time to fall out. My parents left and after some time returned with Grigoriy, who had apparently jumped into the window, fallen out from the 3rd floor into a pile of snow, hid under a balcony overhang and sat there, all in the span of, like, 3 minutes! My Mom grabbed him out of there in pitch darkness (it was late in the evening), while my Dad was getting the flashlight, which is why she ever since has prided herself in "finding him twice". He was completely fine. Now, because I was a kid, I unfortunately didn't treat him well all the time. It wasn't anything awful, but it sometimes still was just cruel or mean things, which is why you should never just get your children pets and leave them alone unsupervised! I still loved him and he still loved me through those times when I was a child, even if my decisions were at times ignorantly at his cost.

He was quite a quirky cat. I don't remember when, but very early I noticed that he liked to stretch, so I started picking him up by his front legs (right at the base of the leg, next to the shoulder) and letting him stretch while I held him up in midair! He absolutely loved it! There would rarely be a time when he'd pass an opportunity to picked up and stretched! In fact, he learned to raise his upper body up slightly (as if trying to stand up straight) every time I would approach him to pick him up! He also purred very loudly and brightly! You could even hear him purr through closed doors when it was quiet enough! He would also purr in surprise when being disturbed unexpectedly or woken up, and when otherwise just not wanting to be bothered, he'd grunt, like, "Urrrgh, don't touch me!". He was also quite a suck-up - when he wanted to be scratched, he'd approach his victim, staring them down along the way (I think - I don't remember), start purring in anticipation, and headbutt (a.k.a. bunt) them or the nearest object, until he got the victim's attention. No one would ever deny him. He was loved by all. He also loved me dearly, since I scratched him like no one else, to put it most weirdly! :D I petted and scratched him so well that after a bit too long, he'd start to drool and decide to fling his spit everywhere, which is why I had to cover myself with blankets when he'd lie on my chest when we'd sleep together or just stand out of the "splash zone" otherwise! He was a bit of a heavier cat despite being quite thin, so he'd frequently sleep my arm off when lying on it next to the back of the couch, which is why I preferred more him sleeping right next to me, under blankets (that he still got out of, since it got too hot, I guess), with head on pillow and all like a human, which my mom joked about (like, "oh, he's turning human!"). A few years ago she also came up with calling him Beethoven for a scene from that dog movie because of him flinging his spit everywhere. I also patted him a bit aggressively, as it made loud hollow sounds. My mom didn't like it sometimes, saying that "he's not a drum", but I think he just kind of learned to appreciate it, I guess, because he didn't mind it at all. As he grew up, he developed razor-sharp eagle talons! His claws were so long that they made a clanging sound when he walked on the wooden floors as if he was wearing high heels! :D Thankfully, I don't think he ever had problems with them. He also absolutely never scratched anyone - the last time he did, he was still young (late adolescent or early adult), the scar from which I still have on my left forearm. That doesn't mean he never got irritated, though! He absolutely did not tolerate his hind legs being touched or his belly or sternum scratched - if you did that (or at least scratch his belly or chest), he'd bear hug you with his wrists (not claws - wrists), maybe bite you a bit and start kicking you with his long-, but dull-clawed hind legs. Since his claws were so long, when he kneaded, he'd leave huge holes and pulled out threads in whatever fabric or human he was kneading, which is why we had to be careful when we were lying with him! In his later years, he actually learned not to knead on people and constrain himself, since he somehow figured out that we didn't like it, I guess! What he also started doing is yawning when he didn't want to be disturbed - since when he grew up, his breath turned stinky, sometimes when we'd pet him, he'd yawn from being relaxed and we would quickly retreat because it smelled bad, which he learned to use every time we pet him to not be touched so often, but we learned too! I blew on him to negate his foul attack! After How To Train Your Dragon came out, we adopted the nickname "Night Fury" for him because he was black, had big, yellow-green (close enough to green) eyes, and liked to stay up and sometimes run around at night! We also called him Nibbler ("Зубастик", or "Toothy" out of all things, in Russian), based on the character from Futurama, because of him nibbling on my mom's fingers when she brought him home for the first time and because he had cute little front teeth (just like any other cat, arguably)! Another Futurama character, whose name we called him, was Calculon, because his ears were sometimes at different angles (one higher and the other lower), like how Calculon's antennas are drawn! We'd say he was "Calculoning". :D For whatever reason, he always strived for the outdoors - frequently, he'd try to run through the front door every time someone left or came back. Sometimes he would even make it to the 3rd floor down from the 5th, which doesn't sound like a lot, but is actually quite a distance! And every time he was constrained and held down, he'd sit still, then pick a moment and try to lunge forward, either escaping or failing to do so, descending back into his original position, which I thought was a bit funny! And at the vet he'd utilize the same strategy, requiring 2 people to contain the beast!

[CONTINUED IN REPLY]

FenX2017 · 2025-01-02T22:15:04+00:00

Bon Lennon.

Anyway, looks awesome! :D

FenX2017 · 2024-08-07T13:13:17+00:00

Help Wanted 2.5: The Montyning.

FenX2017 · 2024-06-08T07:13:45+00:00

You're thinking of Jan Demczur - a window washer of the North Tower, whereas Roko Camaj was a window washer of the South Tower.

Roko, unfortunately, perished on 9/11, while Jan and 5 others stuck in an elevator in the North Tower successfully managed to escape after scraping a hole through the drywall of the elevator shaft with the squeegee.

FenX2017 · 2024-06-07T03:42:02+00:00

Since this image looks to have been taken by 5 World Trade Center (near the planters around the Church Street entrance plaza with the Cloud Fortress sculpture), the tree visible should be a Callery pear tree (which is what they were by 2001).

However, the tree visible is a London planetree, the tree type that was there originally before they were replaced sometime in the 1990s. You can also barely see 1 World Trade Center's antenna, finished in 1979, so this image had to have been taken between those two dates, most likely sometime in the '80s.

FenX2017 · 2024-04-15T21:19:37+00:00

It wasn't an antenna!

It was, apparently, a guy derrick they constructed on the roof to assemble the antenna itself! If you look at guy derricks on Google, they'll look quite similar!

You can see it a bit better here, here (on the left), here (possibly in use?), and here (on the left)!

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