To bring out the soft cutesy side you have.

In all the stories we read online, we see all the drama that can surround a couple. People are always posting about fights and discussions they have about a lot of different things. It can go from not replenishing the toilet paper when it runs out to being unfaithful or disrespectful. That may seem as if relationships are always complicated, but they aren't. In healthy relationships, most of the time everything is fine, calm, and loving. The idea of being in a couple is not to be fighting all the time, is to have someone you really love and respect by your side, showing you support and love during good AND bad times. Is someone you trust and like spending your time with. Is someone you want to have a future with. Is someone that makes you happy.

All that does not mean that in a healthy relationship everything is always perfect, because it is not. Discussions are normal between people, especially when you spend a lot of time together. What matters is how you resolve them. Screaming and talking badly to each other is a HUGE red flag, but communicating assertively and listening to each other is actually helpful for the relationship to evolve and to avoid the same topic of discussion being a problem again. You can have disagreements, but not all the time. In a healthy relationship, you have to want to be with the other person.

This thread of cute animal memes is a way to show you love one and that you love them and think of them. A form of love that showcases that relationships aren't problematic or full of disagreement. They are actually just two people loving and caring for each other, being and supporting each other. Relationships are the human way to show love to someone, to make them know you want to spend your life together. 
 

Getting your first job is a big deal. It's a step toward independence and responsibility. No one would expect that a family's first reaction would be an immediate suggestion that their daughter's new paycheck should be shared with a younger sibling who didn't earn it. 

The situation is very unfair. Why should part of that paycheck become her sister's allowance? The parents' suggestion is confusing because the younger sister already has access to money through them and earns something through chores. So this isn't a situation where a younger sibling needs help with her necessities. It sounds more like the parents want the older daughter to share just because she is now working as a cashier and earning money. But that's a decision that the older daughter herself must make. It's her money.

Besides, earning money doesn't mean losing the right to decide what to do with it, even if it's your first job. The cashier explains she had been trying to get a job for a while, and now that she finally got one, she wants to save it for college. Incredibly responsible goals for a young woman. I would have spent it all on food. But she's already thinking about retirement early, college, and maybe eventually helping her family's finances.

Helping family can be a really nice gesture when it is voluntary. Buying your sibling a treat, helping with college, or contributing to family needs when you can do it can feel very satisfying. But that's really different from being told that your paycheck belongs partly to someone else. 

So the cashier isn't wrong for saying no. Her sister is not entitled to a cut of every paycheck she earns just because she got hired. She is setting a reasonable boundary around the money she'll earn with her own time and labor. And that's an important part that her parents are ignoring. 

Why should a childhood promise determine your wedding day?

This writer asked for advice in the Reddit community for the difficult situation she's involved with her mother. Apparently, when she was a kid, she promised her mom to wear her wedding dress if she ever got married. She did this because she had a complicated relationship with her and only wanted to please her. Fast forward, now she's a bride-to-be and doesn't want to wear that dress.

I'm sure this is a tough situation to be involved in. And especially if you had a complicated bond with your mother growing up. As kids, we would do whatever it took to gain our parents' recognition and approval, and promising your mother you'd use her gown if you ever got married sounds like it.

But it's totally understandable that, decades later, your taste changes and that you may want to have your own wedding dress for that special day. Any normal parent would agree that seeing your kid happy while planning their wedding is what they would want. Well… not for this mother.

When the bride told her she wouldn't use her dress and would like both of them to go dress shopping, the mom broke down in tears and felt totally betrayed. She even mentioned how her deceased dad would've loved to see her in that dress…

I'll let you dive into this complication by yourself, and let us know in the comments your opinion on this topic. Is it okay to break a promise you made as a kid?

Move over, upstanding citizens, cats on their hind legs are here to take over.

It seems like sometimes cats forget they are mammals, which mostly walk on four. Sure, you might know more than one insanely weird cat in your life, but for the most part - cats are just chill. Until they are not. And that's where their absolutely unhinged behaviors enter the chat. Cats can get very weird, very fast - and every cat pawrent with at least one cat knows exactly what we're talking about.

Every cat is a strange little creature in their own right, but some of their weird behaviors are shared across the board. Even the calmest of cats will get the 4 AM zoomies, you know? But zoomies are not where the collective cat weirdness ends. A lot of cats, for example, like to be held upside down. Most don't, but the ones who do probably share exactly one brain cell. Other cats, for another example, climb on the most unclimbable furniture. Just ask the nearest cat parent what the highest place they've ever found their cat in is - you'll get "above the curtain", "on top of the bathroom heater", or "literally in the ceiling", most likely.

And some cats just stand there. Not as in "standing doing nothing, staring at a blank wall" (although some cats do tend to do that), but as in "standing on their own two feet", even if they're technically paws. They just… stand there. For various cat reasons, we assume. Check the hilarious evidence for yourself. We think these will be some of the tallest cats you'll see, even if it's just a hind leg illusion.

Cat adoptions are somehow always surprising, and we're just happy watching all these happy endings with a twist only cats can create.

The internet is full of Cat Distribution System adoption stories - these cats who suddenly appear in a person's life, and the cat-to-human match seems so unbelievably purrfect it's hard not to think it was made deliberately. That's where the constant stream of CDS theories comes in, because… who are they? What are they? Is it a "they" at all? Who or what is this entity, body, or institution that constantly matches the cat in need to the right person who will give them a forever home, and does it all in an emotional twist?

To be honest, despite being the almighty I Can Has Cheezburger, we have no clue. The CDS is a mystery to us just as it is to any other cat person, even if we are the online cat content pillar of the internet. Our guess is that it doesn't matter how much of a cat person you are, the Cat Distribution System will remain a secret for you forever. But we also think that this is their secret to success. It makes every cat adoption very special. And we prefer a unique happy ending for cats over our curiosity to know what stands behind it.

So with this in mind, we are once again stunned by another ameowzing cat adoption story, this time by Kelly Eden on Facebook - she found an abandoned kitten who looks just like her childhood cat. Some might call it destiny, others call it fate, and some other people will say it was written in the stars. But we, cat people, know it's the intricate work of the Cat Distribution System, that knew (somehow) to send this cat right to the arms of the person who will for sure take them in. Was this a coincidence? Maybe. But was it meowgical? Absolutely.

One thing is giving away something because you want to, and another is being told that something you bought suddenly belongs to a family member who wants it. That difference matters when it comes to a $1000 laptop you paid for yourself. 

This 18-year-old bought the laptop using her savings when she was around thirteen. She didn't receive it as a gift. She worked out a way to pay for it herself, then took care of it for years. Now that she is starting college, she's getting a new computer as a graduation gift. Suddenly, her parents are seeing her old laptop with new eyes. They want to give the laptop to her 7-year-old half-sister. 

Getting a new laptop doesn't erase the fact that the old computer still belongs to her. The parents think of this as basic math: we are buying the new college laptop, so that should count as payment for the old one. But those are separate things. A graduation gift is a graduation gift. An old laptop is an object that this teenager bought herself in the past. And as long as I'm concerned, a graduation gift is not the same as buying someone's used property from them. 

Besides, a 7-year-old is not exactly ready for the responsibility that comes with owning a laptop. And she already has an iPad, which has already brought problems. So, handing over another expensive device might be a bad idea. 

The most important thing is that being related doesn't allow you to claim someone's belongings for free. If the parents want the younger child to have a laptop, that's fine; they can buy one. But they shouldn't pressure the older daughter into absorbing the cost because she happens to own something useful. 

90% of the time, having a cat is peaceful. The other 10% are complete and utter chaos. 

Something that every cat owner learns sooner rather than later is that cat ownership is completely misrepresented in the media. I learned this literally the night that I adopted my kitten. It's supposed to be easy. Cats are supposed to be low-maintenance, peaceful, and simple. They're not. 

My kitten, the night I got her, showed me this. I had never owned a cat before. And I was so scared to make a mistake. She was so itty bitty, she fit in the palm of my hand. And my first night with her, she used her itty bitty claws to crawl up my giant mattress into bed with me. My fear was that I would turn and squish her, so I put her back down in her bed. But a few minutes later, she came back to me, sticking her claws into the mattress and fighting her way up. Again and again, until I caved and let her stay. And to this day, 11 years later, and much, much larger, she sleeps with her face tucked into my neck. 

Life with cats is full of itty bitty crimes like this. Tiny moments of stress and wholesomeness, of chaos and simplicity. Some days, your cats sunbathe on your balcony, and that's it. And other days are full of knocked items, scratched furniture, random screaming, and running directly into walls for no apparent reason. And nothing captures these moments better than cat memes. Nothing at all. It's why, no matter how many of these silly cat memes we see, we never get sick of them. Because we never stop relating. We never stop thinking about our own chaotic fur-shedding machines at home who are just waiting for us to come back and cuddle with them. 

Teaching someone to use a laser cutter is supposed to produce a competent employee, not a tiny tyrant convinced he's been handed a management degree

Eighteen years old, and somehow already certain that the problem with forty badly cut plastic units wasn't his hands, it was everyone else's math. It's the workplace equivalent of teaching a kid to ride a bike and having him immediately demand a redesign of the road.

Some people mistake confidence for competence, and nothing exposes that faster than a teenager deciding he's now a plastics expert.

No new cat will completely fill the hole left in your heart by your cat when it passes, but maybe saving a cat in need will help that hole start mending. 

A lot of cat owners could probably relate, but my worst fear right now, as I'm looking at my precious 11-year-old senior cat napping in the spare desk chair beside me as I'm typing this, is having her cross the rainbow bridge. And I know, logically, that 11 is not that old for a cat, that she might have many, many more happy and healthy years in front of her, but… Anytime would be too soon. Tomorrow will be too soon. Ten years from now would be too soon. She's my soul cat. My family. And I can't imagine anything filling the hole in my heart that she'll leave behind. But stories like today's, and like many others shared on r/CatDistributionSystem, give me a little bit of hope.

I want to continue helping cats forever. And right now, it's easy. Right now, with my soul cat beside me, I have no problem making room in my heart for a foster or a hungry stray cat. But when she'll be gone… how do you do it? I guess like this. I would like to believe that if I found a cat that needs help after she's gone, I'll have the ability to take them in and help them. I hope the desire to help, the happiness of helping a kitty in need, will be greater than the pain of the memory of losing my girl. It's hard to think about now, and I refuse to put cat-related negativity out into the universe, so I'll just say this: thank you to the people who already do what I would like to one day be able to do. Thank you. 

Two wrongs don't make it right

Two wrongs don't make it right, but at least we're even. Sometimes, in relationships characterized by disappointment, and even more so when disappointment always comes from one end, we have to revert to something more than words to set a boundary. I mean, when we are already tired of talking, and it falls on deaf ears. We can always, of course, leave our partners over something like this, but when we are in love, things are not that simple. Sometimes, it's time to level the playing field and then get a chance to breathe and plan our next action. It seems that this girlfriend is getting ready to do that, and we are here for it. What else would you advise her to do?

How does "on time" also mean "late?"

Every responsible adult does their best to do their job right. They show up on time, they're polite, they don't fight with their bosses. All to be able to keep a job and make ends meet. No sane person goes around nonchalantly forgetting their assignments or showing up late on purpose. Still, sometimes it gets hard to keep the bosses happy when they simply state random unwritten rules that make no sense. 

Redditor u/Budget-Baseball3675 was surprised to find a new manager at work who had an interesting definition of what "on time" meant. The new manager came along to change everybody's shifts, including hers. Her schedule changed to start at 2:30 pm, so she showed up at 2:30 pm. That's when the manager went on a rant about how late she was, and how she was supposed to be there thirty minutes earlier. He even threatened to fire her!

This had me reconsidering the definition of "work ethic." In a customer service type of job, I understand getting there a few minutes early, especially if you have to change into a uniform or do the shift change with some other co-worker. But wouldn't 10 minutes be enough? Of course, this depends on the place's rules. Some ask you to be a few minutes early; others are fine with you showing up right at the time when your shift starts. It all depends on the restaurant or business you're tending to, and they will tell you what they expect. For instance, my boyfriend worked at a restaurant, and he was used to showing up thirty minutes earlier. Always the first one in and last one out. The boss never explicitly told him to do so, but never really thanked him either, there you have a loophole. But what can I say, he liked his job. His boss, on the other hand, not so much. 

Still, whether they show up an hour earlier or right on time, yelling at an employee for not following an arbitrary rule that no one informed them of is a stretch. If they wanted her to show up thirty minutes earlier, they should have said so. And she was absolutely entitled to answer "show me the money" in a Tom-Cruise-in-Jerry-Maguire style, because no one should work for free. In the meantime, just be nice to your co-workers, we all need it.

Taking your cat to the vet is often a picture-worthy experience. 

Look, we all hate going to the vet's with our cats. I hate it, you hate it, our cats hate it. It's the worst. Going to the vet is generally not a fun experience for anyone. So, we try to make the best out of it. In whatever way we can. We talk to other cat owners in the waiting room, and we end up hearing some insane cat at the vet stories. We ask the secretaries about the silliest things people have paid thousands for in their clinic. And of course, we look at the other cats. 

Generally, in the waiting room, the cats are just kind of stressed. We know that the real chaos happens inside the exam room, when the carrier is opened and the little fur machine is out. Some cats enjoy vet visits, but most of them… hate each and every second of it. And as difficult as it is to see as the owner of said stressed or angry, it is also sometimes worth a picture. Because in retrospect, some of the things that they do in there are definitely worth documenting. 

Cats hide at the vet's office. Cats run around, losing their minds, looking for an escape route in every corner of the room. Cats look at the vet as if they are their worst enemy. And it is hilarious. It just is. It is so hilarious that when one person on Twitter shared a picture of their heckin' grumpy cat at the vet's office, thousands of others came in with their own photos and created one of the funniest cat-related viral Twitter threads that we have seen in a long, long time. We promise, this is one that is 100% worth a scroll.

Bad bosses and their awful habit of expecting their employees to be available 24/7.

What is the problem with these bosses who want to contact their employees ALL THE TIME? It doesn't matter if it is 10 p.m. on a Friday, 7 a.m. on a Sunday, or even Christmas Eve. They want to control their employees all the time, no matter what their real shift is. They want their employees to be robots that don't stop and don't have a life to attend to, as if they were automated to only work and work all day, every day, for life. They cannot comprehend the idea of breaks, free time, or vacation time. They are so incredibly selfish that even if you take a sick day because you can't stop throwing up, they are going to call you and ask you to send them a document, and they are going to word it as if it's the most important thing when, actually, they could just have waited till the next day.

They always have this urgency in their voice that can be even put into emails. It makes employees feel like it's the most serious situation even if it's just a message saying "we need toilet paper". What matters is not really the situation, but the fact that they need it, and your main priority is to fulfill their needs. They act as if the act of doing something that they need is not only the most important thing in the world, but also the purpose of your life. Well, it's not.

Stories like the one in this Reddit post make me hopeless. There are millions of employees who go through this same situation. A boss who believes that has the power to contact you at any time and day, and they actually don't. There has to be a way to put a stop to this. A revolution of some kind that may make this desperation that bosses have towards their employees doing them favors disappear once and for all. 
 

Cats are silly…it's time to embrace your own. 

Some days demand more from us, they're filled from morning till night with responsibilities that we'd rather not be doing. They're just a sequence of images that deplete us with their monotony. Some days might feel like that, which is why it's important to have an easy medicine to combat said days, and that medicine is silly, happy cat memes. The serious conversations, meetings, and productive organized plans can wait for a moment. Today is the day where tomfoolery breaches the threshold of your own silly capacity. Today is for tomfoolery. The kind of pawsitively packed tomfoolery is just the kind of thing cats are capable of. They're silly in ways that other animals can't be, because they take themselves so seriously. This dichotomy adds to the absurdity, which is the purrfect bereavement to boredom. 

They run, jump, hiss, and meow and they don't know we're laughing all the time at them. They think they've gotten us with their midnight zoomies, or their morning shouts for tuna, but we're the ones reaping the benefit of their chaos. Their behavior has us laughing, busting up with mirth, unable to control how much we're reeling in their silly craze. They're not always known to be happy animals, but they are. They're delightfully unpredictable, and their mischief is more like an entertaining art form. 

Gifted baked goods

Sometimes gifts come with weird expectations attached. Well, they're not exactly 'weird', but one typically assumes that a gift is a gift and it doesn't have a receipt, but it does. In the majority of cases, it most certainly does. This is one of those stories in which, to me, both parties are equally in the wrong; therefore, they're also equally in the right, if you know what I mean, so I will dedicate my time to elaborating each sister's perspective (or at least my idea of it, of course). Still, I think one of them lost the cool battle by getting carried away by her emotions, although she had good reasons to do what she did. Which side are you on?

Let's all take a moment to acknowledge this special and adorable little lady, and celebrate her 21 years! 

All we can ask for with our pets is that they're happy and healthy, and that they're afforded the most years on earth possible. It's the flipside of some of the most beautiful relationships we can have. When it comes to our pets, they're like these perfect beings that just love us, but their lives don't last as long. In Reddit's r/SeniorCats, a woman reflects on 21 years with her best friend. It's not everyday that a cat lives that long, so when one does it's definitely a celebration. This heartfelt woman describes their first moments together, and all the life changes they've been through. She's always been her rock and shadow. It was 21 years ago and the woman was leaving a friend's house, she came across a litter of four kittens that were abandoned in the driveway. She decided to take one home that night, and it ended up being the best decision she ever made in her life. 

Looking back, she wonders how things would have panned out without her cat, and knows how special their connection is. The little kitty is 21 years and counting! She's still spry and chipper, her personality is fully intact, and her health issues are slim. Here at I Can Has Cheezburger we're wishing Puss Puss a very happy birthday, and a healthy future, and years to come! An uplifting story of a cat's long life is exactly what we all need. Enjoy the photos below. Happy birthday! 

What happens when an employee finally checks what the market is actually paying?

An employee asked his managers for a well-deserved raise for three years, but always got the same answer: that he was already at the top of the band for his position in that industry. He believed them. For three years, he thought they were telling him the right thing, and didn't say a thing since he felt it was annoying. 

However, that third time clicked something for him: they could be wrong. How come during the past three years his salary was still at the top? No way. That same weekend, he did some research and found out the obvious: he was way at the bottom of the salary band. He gathered all his evidence, went to his boss, and ended up landing a 28% raise. Without a doubt, a wonderful success story.

For me, just a wonderful story to read this morning. It's just so great when a regular employee can stand his ground and demand something that he's entitled to: a raise that he deserved more than anyone. It really surprises me that his bosses were lying to him about his income: telling him he was way above the average, when in reality, it was all the way around.

I'm glad the employee was empowered and did the research that landed him his raise. Although in the end, he states he accepted the raise too fast, since he found the same position in another company that even had a higher salary, I think the overall message has to do with claiming what is right to you. It can apply to your job, but also to every other aspect of life: feeling confident and, with all due respect, asking for those things you want, especially if you think you deserve them. 

I see this guy's true colors shining through a home insurance policy now that the bushes are gone. I see his true colors and that's why I don't like him. Sing it!

Watching a grown man discover deep feelings for bushes he never once watered, right after his insurance company tells him his dirt bikes aren't covered anymore, is impressive. It's also a beautiful, deeply stupid transformation, and his sorrow arriving fashionably late and suspiciously well timed, landing right on someone else's doorstep with an invoice attached, is a fine hint that he doesn't really want a fence. He wants a scapegoat with a mailing address.

With summer in full swing it is becoming more and more common to see the kitties of our local community laying out in the sun, soaking up its warming rays. But what you might not have known is that our fluffy felines are doing so in order to bring their heartwarming and healing energy into our lives. So if all you want is a purr machine to sit atop your chest and melt your worries away, we suggest finding yourself a feline who is fully charged.

The theory that cats are solar powered is one that has circulated in the cat community for a while now. Though many pawrents and feline fans a like have taken to considering this charging behavior to mean that a cat is reupping on their clawminal tendencies and that they will strike out against their families with the vengeance of a thousand burning suns. However, we like to think rather differently about this behavior. We believe that this is our cat child's way of bringing us warmth and love, that they use the heat of the sun to comfort us and fill us with pawsitive energy.  

Now yes, this is all theoretical, but if you take a moment to consider that cats are warm blooded and so do not specifically need to sunbathe. And then add to that the fact that cats tend to be rather docile and delightful once they have arisen from their sunbathing nap. And you have a recipe for a cat who will more than happily curl up next to you, still warm from the sun, putting out purrs like a jackhammer, healing your heart one breath at a time. And we hope that this cute collection of lounging cattos will do the same for you. We cannot all be lucky enough to have a sunbathing feline who wants to cuddle and purr, but we can all enjoy these kitties curled up in the sun.
 

I think a lot of us have probably had a real good, long, and hard think about moving out into the country and away from other people. Especially as we have gotten older and grown increasingly tired of the hustle and bustle. It's sort of that "inside you there are two wolves," but one of those wolves wants to pay a fortune to live in the center of the city and to chase fortune and fame, in some misguided thought that living in a studio apartment for $4,000 might give you a chance to bump into the right person who can actually afford to live in the area and who might give you an opprotunity. 

Once you've lived out that Hallmark fantasy and after spending your 20s insisting on living in the center of the city close to the "pulse," you inevitably reach a point in your late 20s, and certainly by your 30s, where you start pulling up real estate and browsing rentals out of the city. 

And, upon seeing just how much space you can get outside of the city, or in another state entirely, that other wolf starts to win out. Before you know it, you're weighing just how bad a longer commute would really be or considering quitting your job altogether, as that second inner wolf pulls at you to go and isolate yourself in a cabin in the woods like Henry David Thoreau and never talk to another human soul again.

I don't know about you, with the way things are going with social media and AI, that cabin in the woods is sounding more and more appealing.