Cats always make things in their own time, on their own terms. They're independent to a fault at times, but they compensate for that with intelligence and knowing when to ask for help.

It's known that cats have one of the most notorious reputations, to say the least, for being independent animals. And it doesn't exist for nothing - they evolved as solitary hunters and self-domesticated rather than being bred for strict obedience. Unlike pack animals, cats manage their own territory in the wild and rely on instinct for survival, viewing humans as safe co-habitants rather than pack leaders. And such an independent cat was Whitey the stray, before he decided on his own that help is welcome.

Like many cats, this big guy refused to receive help even at his lowest point. We'd say that's such a man move, but he's a cat - so that's more acceptable. But even with that, even with Whitey being unbearably independent and stubborn, even he accepted help in the end - to a roaring applause from the shelter people who were trying to catch him for months. He just eventually let them, of his own accord. Which is a Very Cat thing of him to do, setting the stage for his rescue completely on his terms.

They say it's impossible to help someone who's not willing to help themselves. Men, take notes - even a cat did it.

With all this independence and stubbornness, when a cat does decide that a human is allowed to show them love and care, it's a gold medal win. They didn't just win the right to care for the cat, they also won his heart. And winning the heart of a cat is worth everything. And that was especially true for Whitey, who ended up with one of the most glorious cat glow-ups we've seen recently. Seriously, Whitey, we're rootin' and tootin' for you so hard. You're doing great, sweetie.

From shelter hold to harness training, Lionel Richie is owning his new adventurous life in the Pacific Northwest like the champion we always knew he was.

I can relate to this new pawrent for a couple of reasons: Before making my transition into being a cat purrson, I was a dog guy. In my house growing up, we had a plethora of dogs rotating through at all times. Rescues would come in and out as they found furrever homes, and we always had at least one or two dogs of our own to keep the pack stable and manageable. I always thought I would emulate the life my parents raised me in: one full of wagging tails and slobbery tongues. 

But then, I met my first cat. She was a tiny kitten, so helpless and smol, and I took her in, and never looked back. She convinced me that cats were really the pets I wanted all along. She walked with me in a harness outside, slept next to me at night, and the best part was that it all came so naturally. I didn't really have to train her, she just went along with whatever I was doing because she wanted to do everything with me.

Some cats are just like that, and Lionel Richie is one of those cats. Our new pawrent was a professional dog boarder for 10 years. He went to the shelter one day to adopt a senior doggo, but Lionel Richie, a 5-month-old black tabby kitten, stole his attention (and his heart). He convinced his future pawrent to adopt him, and their story sounds a lot like ours did. Lionel Richie goes on harnessed walks, attacks his toes at night, and is showing him that cats aren't so meowsterious after all. 

Are they different than dogs? Absolutely. But are they inferior to dogs? Absolutely not. It all depends on where you are in life and what you want. A good cat will give you the best parts of a dog without most of the downsides of dog ownership, and with just as much, if not more, love, straight from one soul to another.

If you're a new in-law, you better be on your best behavior.

Meeting your significant other's family can be a big deal. You probably want to put your best foot forward and make sure that you make a good impression on them. First impressions can be a big deal, and that can follow you throughout your relationship with somebody. Odds are, you want a good relationship with your in-laws. Even if you don't see them that often, it's probably important to you that they hold a high opinion of you and you hold a high opinion of them. Even if you don't always get along all the time, and you have different outlooks on life, you still want to be in each other's lives. If they're important to your partner, then they should be important to you. And it's on you, as it is in law, to meet them halfway. You don't have to believe everything they say, or even be on the same page about basic life stuff, but you do have to respect each other. Respect is the bare minimum for anybody that you encounter on this earth. The sister-in-law in the story didn't even have that, though. She, for some reason, had a very tense relationship with her future mother-in-law, and she was not doing anything to make that better. 

I know celebrating a wedding with not much savings is hard, but don't make it harder for everyone else.

Weddings are a complicated matter. They are extremely expensive. You have to take care of a bunch of things, and you need to have everything organized to the T. The bride in the story below had some problems with that last thing. She wasn't particularly organized or planned ahead. She made a last-minute decision and decided it would work out. She decided to have a wedding reception at a restaurant. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is if you don't notify the staff and simply make 4 separate reservations at the same time without letting them know, and the guests you invited as well.

When this friend told the story about this bride, a lot of people had a lot to say about it. All along the lines of "this isn't going to work at all". And I get it. It sounds kinda insane. Too many people, one restaurant, nobody knows about this crazy plan. But it didn't have to end in disaster. As a matter of fact, it didn't. Everyone was so sure this was going to be the worst wedding reception that they forgot the part where social media isn't real life.

When somebody does something wrong in the socials is usual to see a bunch of anonymous people go to their throats to cancel them or remind them of the mistake they made. But that doesn't happen in real life. When you do something wrong, your friends won't come at you to reprimand you. They will just tell you. And people you don't know aren't going to care about the mistake you made. With all this, I want to say that everyone was so sure of how bad this reception was going to be that they forgot that in real life people go out of their way to help each other. When the restaurant heard that it was a reception, they did everything they could for it to go as smoothly as possible. And that is why social media will never be real life. 

In a world of instant gratification and constantly seeking new sensations, take a meowment to enjoy the things that matter most to you - your cats.

You've probably heard this before, maybe even already today: "I want this now". Purrhaps your boss said it to you, demanding you finish your product or get them the results immediately. Maybe you said it to yourself when you passed by McDonald's on the way home and decided that you deserved a purrfectly binge-worthy snack after a stressful week. The thought definitely crossed your mind when you accidentally spent hours scrolling through TikTok instead of reading a book.

In today's world, we're always looking for the next thing that will bring us joy. But those things are fleeting and unsubstantial, leading us to constantly be on the lookout to consume more. There is one thing in your life, however, that will always bring you happiness at any time of the day. That thing is your favorite feline, your fluffy companion, AKA, your cat. 

Sure, cats are a lot of work. They can scratch up your furniture, have accidents outside the litter box, wake you up at all hours of the night, but they also bring you unconditional love, unlimited meowments of wholesome hilarity, and unrivaled cuteness. They're with you from the second you wake up to the instant you fall asleep, and then, even when you're tucked away in dreamland.

But there is one fatal flaw… they won't be here for furrever.

Our time together is limited by the cruel hands of fate, which is all the more reason to cherish every meowment with your cute kitties. As you scroll through these heartwarming friday felines below, we hope they inspire you to stop when you've finished and enjoy some weekend warmth with your pets. Snuggle them, kiss them, snooze with them, pet them, and tell them you love them until you can't anymore. They are precious, and too often, we look for love elsewhere, when it has really been right in front of us this whole time.

Would you spend thousands of dollars on vacation while your family is struggling to pay rent?

After losing her finance job, this mother has stretched her savings, taken odd jobs, and relied on relatives to keep her family afloat. Meanwhile, her husband works part-time and now insists on spending thousands to attend a destination wedding. With rent already behind and borrowed money covering bills, she cannot understand why a tropical vacation is even up for discussion.

Let me confess that when I read this story, I couldn't believe my eyes… how crazy people can be sometimes. In this case, the "husband" (with quotes, because he doesn't even deserve that title) was so infatuated with going to this wedding that he even forgot that the family didn't have any money to pay the rent on their home. Not having enough to cover basic costs has to give you a sign that things are not going in the right direction…

I do understand that we all deserve good things from time to time, and that's okay to enjoy a tropical vacation and a wedding… but not if the family cannot afford it. According to the story shared in r/relationship_advice, the only reason as to why the family was not evicted from the house is because they managed to get some money from friends to cover rent and basic taxes. And somehow, the husband insists he goes on this trip and spends thousands of dollars.

Honestly, how can he be so selfish? They have two kids to feed, and their unemployed friend, by the way, is also staying in the house with them. Sometimes, life teaches hard lessons from time to time, and this is the time when they should be ready to make a life change and to make good decisions when it comes to their finances.

If you get told that your cat only has a little time left, keep the heartbreak forever. Use the time you have to make them as happy as you can. 

It is much easier said than done, of course. Our cats are our everything. They are not just small and cute fluffballs living in our homes as decoration. They are our family. Our cats have personalities, they have hobbies, they have opinions. They make their opinions known. They live full lives, and they fill our hearts and our homes with more joy than we can even describe. Being told that our cats only have a little time left is our absolute nightmare. It is something that we don't even want to think about. Complete denial. For now, our kitties are happy and healthy and safe, and it is our duty to keep them happy and healthy and safe for however long they may have. And that is true until the very end. 

When the cat owners in today's story were told that they only had a few days left with their cat, they were just as heartbroken as any of us would be in that position. But they knew that they had a duty to their cat. They couldn't spend the cat's final days crying. Our cats feel our pain. They would know that something was wrong, and they would spend their last days stressed and worried about us. What this family did had to have been so difficult, but it was so, so worth it. Instead of sitting at home and crying, they took their kitty outside one last time to help him do one of his favorite things in the world - watch the sunset. And you can see in the kitty's eyes not only how happy he was that day but how happy he has been with his owners his whole life.

Office affairs play out like a daytime soap opera written by someone who has never met a subtle person. The boss, the young woman, the wife asking questions, the assistant caught in the middle. Everyone is playing a role in the drama, and the script is painfully obvious

A 27-year-old from logistics decides the director is her new main character. She ignores the chain of command like it is a suggestion box. She makes his coffee before the actual assistant can get there. She books his trips. She brings homemade desserts. She brags about lunch dates outside the office like she is collecting achievements. The boss entertains it because having a personal fan club is apparently part of the job description now.

The only unexpected, and also great, part of this is that this woman asked r/whatdoIdo and pretty much immediately decided what's right for her.

Even the "meantest" stray cat is one that can be won over. 

Cats are smart creatures, especially unspoiled stray ones. They know what is best for them. There is a reason that cats have domesticated themselves, that we didn't need to be involved in that in any way. They saw us, humans, realized that we have a soft spot for anything small and cute, and they knew that we can provide them with food and adoration without even making them stop doing their itty bitty crimes. And they took that deal. Because who wouldn't? And this self-domestication is not something that only happened in the past. It is something that happens every single day to this day. Every day, out in some corner of the world, a cat walks into a person's house and stays - furrever - leaving the stray life behind. 

Of course, some cats make that decision quickly, other cats never make that decision and stay strays forever, and other cats take their time deciding. That's the story of today's cat. And it makes sense. He was the rough man in the neighborhood. He had a reputation as the "mean" cat, the cat who breaks up fights between other cats. It was a cat not to be messed with. But of course, a human saw him, took a liking to him, and tried to gain his favor. Didn't work. Nope. But the cat knew that the option was there, and the day that he got too injured to keep fighting was finally the day that he decided to give humans a chance. 

Just like that, everything changed. Another cat being spoiled is a wonderful thing. And now that Shadow knew what it was actually like to live with and be loved by humans… he decided to share that joy with his stray friends. 

Financial support turned into an expectation, and saying so ended their six-year relationship.

After years of helping his girlfriend with business expenses, family needs, and other costly requests, one man finally decided his savings needed to come first. He wanted to invest and eventually buy a house, so when she asked for another large sum, he said no. Her response was immediate: she ended their six-year relationship and blocked him everywhere.

It's normal to take things for granted when they go on for a lot of time. In this case, we have a girlfriend who has been receiving money from her boyfriend in order to financialy sustained her business. At first, he was happy to help as he felt that he was also a part of it. As time went on, the requests for money increased, and even her family demanded money from him, which he paid.

However, after six years of lending money and a lot of struggles in the relationship, he decided to cut it and never give the woman money ever again. Of course, she felt betrayed and sad, causing her to end a six-year relationship that had been going on since they were kids. They even did long-distance for three years, meaning there had to be a stronger bond between them that went beyond money… but this was not the case.

Although he did well not giving more money, which caused him to lose this woman, I can see if he feels betrayed himself. Because he was. If that were me, I couldn't help but wonder if all along the relationship was only "working" because of the money, rather than love or compassion. Life taught him a good lesson here, and now we hope that he can find a girl who's willing to be with him for what he is, and not for the money he can provide.

All's well that ends well. Right?

After missing two shifts during his first two months at an Idaho stocking job, an hourly worker faced a mandatory meeting… and questioned whether he would be paid for attending. Luckily, it all worked out for the best when he received a job offer 40 minutes before the meeting was to take place.

It can be hard to manage your life in places of work and industries that have draconian attendance policies. Where any missed shift or calling out from work can become a negative impression, a black mark against your name, in the eyes of a begrudging manager and ownership. And once you're there, it's really hard to come back from it. Even if you have a good reason for missing work, it's going to be seen as absenteeism. 

This can get hard when a few things in life inconveniently string together, be it personal pressures like several family emergencies, or other personal misfortunes, or just that seasonal flu you can't seem to shake. They might all be good reasons, but plenty of managers are going to start giving you proverbial glares over passive agressive texts messages as soon as they perceive a "trend."

Definitely, the worst thing you can do if you don't have reliable trust built between yourself and an employer is reveal too much information or insight. Trying to overexplain yourself will:

1. Make you look like you're exaggerating in order to justify the missed work, or just straight making up an excuse.
2. Not going to be interpreted in the way you want it to be.

Everyone has a different opinion of what constitutes a "family emergency" or hardship, and just because your family is insisting that helping your aunt move is a vital and collective family effort doesn't mean your boss, who hasn't talked to their own aunties in 30 years, is going to see it that way.

See the employee's original account of events, and the screenshots of the exchange with his boss that he shared below. Then we'll take a look at the employee's own summary he gave and some of the advice others shared before talking more about these issues.

Is there any better way to decompress than letting cat memes knead the stress right out of you?

It has been a week, hasn't it? A long one. An exhausting one. And honestly, we're pretty sure we've said that about almost every week for the past six years. At this point, we're starting to think maybe that's just how time works now. The world has been weird, the internet has been even weirder, and somehow there is always a new thing to be stressed about, a new thing happening online or in the world that we would rather just… not see. 

And in the middle of all that, the things we actually want to see online — cute animals, silly stories, funny cat pictures — can feel a little harder to find. Instead, we're constantly being served clickbait, ragebait, bad news, and approximately one million reasons that make us want to get off the internet basically forever. No thanks. We are online here for cats and for the cats alone. Specifically, we're here for cats being adorable, ridiculous, and completely incapable of taking anything seriously. You know, just cats being cats. 

That's why we've made it our mission here at ICHC to create a little corner of the internet where you can come whenever you need a break. Somewhere you don't have to doomscroll your way through endless nonsense just to find something that makes you smile. All the cutest cat pictures, the silliest stories about cats, and, of course, the one thing that can always brighten our day - some purrfect cat memes - are all right here for you. So forget the internet wasteland for a while. Come hang out with some cats instead. We promise that it is much, much nicer here. And you really do deserve the break.

Maybe don't go around accusing customers of stealing if you want them to return.

I wouldn't return to a store that not only had an employee watching me the whole time I was shopping there but also accused me of stealing without showing me any proof they had to think that in the first place. And I most definitely would never buy anything from a place like this, and if I did, I would return it immediately. With this series of affirmations, you can realize that I completely agree with the actions the customer of the story below took. This person had an awful experience shopping because of the employees working there. People who, without any kind of proof, decided that the customer was a robber. We always talk about customers behaving incorrectly and giving employees a hard time. But we don't talk enough about how some employees seem to have as their job description to make the customer have an awful time at their store.

Customers can be annoying, entitled, completely lack manners, and be disruptive. I agree with that, 100%. But that doesn't excuse employees from mistreating every customer just in case they are one of those. We can see online a thousand stories about an entitled customer, but stories like this one don't usually make the cut. They aren't that common, but it is really sad when they happen. Employees are the face of a store. If they treat you well, you will return. If they don't, you won't. Is pretty simple. Hiring an employee who's apathetic or very serious can cause problems for the business, as the customers don't feel welcome, and the business starts to decrease till it has to close.

For your business to thrive, especially given the recent social climate, you must treat customers right. A lot of entitled customers have started to use the phrase "the customer is always right" incorrectly. It doesn't mean that anything they ask for has to be done. It means that you have to treat them the right way, with respect. After all, they are the ones keeping your business alive by spending money on it. 

Cats are everywhere and everything – from the name of a famous novel, a finger game of string shapes, to an internet sensation.

Cat's Cradle isn't just a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut or a string game – it's also a list of hissterical cat memes! Cat's Cradle as a novel was first published in 1963. It's sort of a science fiction anthem of classic literature, where dark humor and philosophy blend with truth, technology, and meaning, all before the world of artificial intelligence. The harsh themes juxtapose the light tone of the detached narrator. People in the novel are careless, easily distracted, and prone to self-deception. Apocalypse can arrive alongside absurdity. And just like the novel's absurdity, the list of absurd cat memes below mirrors that lightness, silliness, and pawsitivity in spite of everything going on in the world. 

Feeling down and out isn't a problem when you have the privilege of cat memes to cheer you right back up. Whether you're out of a breakup, fired from your job, or simply feeling the cold winter blues, you have every right to try and lift those shaken spirits with the spirit of cat memes. Let their innocence guide you, their joy teach you, and their catness give you a different purrspective on life. 

Perhaps a job interview is a popularity contest in more ways than one.

Interviewing for a role is tricky by design. Not only does a candidate have to put a lot of effort into selling themselves and making sure they look like the best fit for the job, but they also have to face all the potential tricks that an interviewer might play to trip them up. As if the pressure of multi-stage interviews and pre-interview tasks wasn't stressful enough, facing a potential employer in conversation can prove to be playing office politics in expert mode. It takes experience to succeed, unless you already have your foot in the door.

Even those who have earned their stripes in the war of the job search can find that it is possible to be surprised by an interviewer. They are always finding novel and interesting ways to make potential employees feel uncomfortable in their decision to apply to a job. While it is important to challenge a job candidate who wants to take a role with a company, few are going to feel good about being employed at a place where playing psychological games is the norm from the interview stage onwards. It sets a bad precedent.

Fate is everywhere, let the cat distribution system lend itself to you. 

No one likes getting dumped, or dumping someone else for that matter. Breakups are some of the hardest things to go through. Even if you know it's for the best, or even if you stopped liking the person or fell out of love, it's just immensely hard to go through breakups. It's a severance of lifestyles, a sunder of familiarity and routine. It's letting go of the hope or the image of a future. There's suddenly a void where there once was a person, a hope, an idea, or the beating of a heart. There's no right way to do it, but there's certainly wrong ways. Texting someone with an ending is just disrespectful, and in this story that's exactly what happens. 

She's just been dumped over text by her boyfriend, and she thought the world was crumbling around her. A few days later, she spots a lost kitten. A black cat is wandering around and chooses her, and she finds the cat all too adorable to say no to. With the help of her coworker, the two sneak the cat into her work so that she can take the little girl home. She now has a new roommate, Pandora. When one door closes, another opens. Who needs a stupid boyfriend when they have an adorable kitten for comfort? This is a cute story, and a reminder that life always works in waves, ebbs and flows of good and bad, losses and gains. 

Job descriptions are not buffet plates you can load up with as many things as you want, but that doesn't stop some managers from trying to pile on tasks they want you to do and pretend the rest of the menu doesn't exist

Their goal is always the same. Get one person to do the work of three while swearing the contract says so. This time it's a developer who joins a team that is already hemorrhaging people. No projects land on the desk. Everyone twiddles thumbs and comes and goes as they please. Then someone higher up asks what the team is actually doing. Suddenly, busy work floods in like a dam broke.

One last annoying inconvenience before he leaves for good!

It can be easy to start feeling secure in your place at your company. After all, if you're meeting or exceeding your targets, your company has no reason to lay you off, right? 

There are different types of employees in a company's structure, and some of them have very good reasons to feel secure in their jobs. If you have been working the same position for 20 years and never ask for more than the slightest raise, if you even ask for a raise at all, you have cause for security. A company isn't going to get rid of a loyal and cheap employee for no reason, unless they suddenly decide to axe the entire department and replace it with AI! But that would never happen to a good old reliable employee, right? 

The other type of "secure" employee is the striver. They work hard day in and day out to ensure they do the best work possible and do more than was ever expected of them. They might assume that because they are willing to do everything for their company, their company will be willing to do everything for them, and that's just not true. 

The employee in this story, u/rockpaperblr thought he meant more to his company than he did. He seemed to do everything right, but that didn't stop him from losing his job to layoffs. He took to the internet to share the story of his last day at the office and some wisdom he drew from the experience. 

With all the worry, woe and despair in the world is it nice to know that a good and simple kitten rescue story still exists. The kind that you can comfortably cozy up in your comforter knowing that all will be well from start to finish. This story is one of those and we are proud to present the tail of the kittens who had no momma.

We are lucky enough to be sharing this tale with you thanks to the Cat Distribution System that made this whole thing possible from the get go. By working their mystical meowgical ways they brought together a worthy pawrent and two cute kittens who were so desperately looking for love and a home. It all started when a cat this lady was feeding started bringing her kittens along with her. Gaining familiarity momma cat felt confident leaving her young behind in this hooman's yard. But as time wore on, momma was seen less frequently and the kittens began to be more and more alone. But they were not totally alone after all, they were under the watchful eye of their pawrent to be the whole time.

This pawrent to be waited two long weeks to make sure that momma was not coming back before inviting her abandoned young to come into her home. A move that is critical in the case that she was coming back and her kittens still needed her. No one can replace mom. But safe in the knowledge that she had released responsibility of these tiny felines, our pawrent to be officially became a pawrent and was instantly smitten by her two tiny arrivals. All the while this woman had been searching day and night through kennels to meet her feline match, each time returning empty handed, all because the CDS knew what was coming her way.
 

Cats have convinced us they're mysterious little creatures, but from time to time, they reveal a very important secret... They all work at the same bakery. Nobody knows where the bakery is, who owns it, or why production only seems to happen at bedtime. 

All we know is that the shift starts the moment a cat finds something soft enough to stand on. A blanket will do. A hoodie works too. Your stomach is acceptable workplace equipment as well. Their dedication is impressive. Cats can't make one or two biscuits and call it a day. They have to settle in and make tons of batches in a row. As soon as they get moving their tiny paws, the purring starts, their eyes drift closed, and they completely lock in. Watching them is so relaxing... until one claw reminds you that this bakery has never heard of safety regulations.

I've always wondered what goes inside a cat's mind during all of this. Are they trying to meet a deadline? Have they been promoted to Head Baker? They look determined to carry the entire business on their shoulders. The best employees don't limit themselves to one workstation, either. Every soft surface deserves a quality inspection. Your pile of warm clothes, the couch cushions, your favorite blanket that you were literally about to use. Cats don't ask for permission, they just decide production is starting there, whether you like it or not.

Nobody questions them because the whole ritual is comforting. A purring cat making biscuits is one of those little moments every cat owner loves to witness. If a cat is kneading, that means they're happy, they're comfortable, and for whatever reason they've decided you're part of today's shift. One detail still bothers me, though. Cats have been running this bakery for years, yet nobody has ever seen a finished biscuit. Not one. At this point I'm starting to think the bakery only exists for the kneading. Yeah, production numbers must be terrible. Anyway, no one's filing a complaint. The fluffy employees are adorable, and they clearly love their work.