Shrek WHAT?

I can't believe this is an actual concept, but we are living in a strange era. What is the world coming to? Lol. Of course, she is not overreacting; this could very well be the modern version of Carrie, except the protagonist in this story doesn't have telekinetic powers (that we know of). The mindset behind this trend is so bizarre I can't even begin to comprehend. It's like he wants to date prettier girls, but according to him, those same pretty girls ask for too much (maybe they're asking to be treated as human, god forbid), so he is lowering his standards. But also, what does he get in exchange for lowering his standards if, in the end, he gets the attention of a girl he doesn't care about? Is it all about power and control? It's honestly kind of psychopathic, and I don't understand the logic around it, perhaps because I'm not a monster lol. Anyways, shout out to this girl who got up and left. I'm worried she still wonders if she overreacted, though.

Losing your soul cat is hard. Losing 3 in quick succession is even harder. But all it takes is one tiny kitten to claim you as their hooman to help you believe in love again.

Something no cat pawrent likes to think about is the rainbow bridge. We all want to live in a beautiful dream, in which our cats will live exactly as long as we will, and not a second longer or shorter. But that's not reality. To care for a cat is to give it the best life you pawssibly can and prepare yourself for their eventual crossing over the rainbow bridge. If you're not ready to face that reality, don't get a cat. 

Nothing can prepare you for it, and it doesn't get any easier if you've experienced it before. The months after can feel devastating. It might even feel like you don't have room in your heart for another cat again… ever. But Binx's story below proves to all of us that it doesn't take much to learn how to open your heart again.

George Brown lost his 3 childhood cats in quick succession, the youngest being only 3 years old. After a while, his now ex-wife took him an hour from home on an "errand", which turned out to be a foster home for cats, where George was supposed to pick out a black cat to adopt. The only black cat there, however, wanted nothing to do with him. He was about to leave when he felt a sharp pain climbing up his leg and onto his shoulder - a black kitten stared into his eyes, screamed at him, then licked his nose. His name was 'Osirus', but George would soon name him 'Binx'.

He's not angry, he just has RBF (Resting Boss Face).

Just when you thought your boss was the worst, this little feline came along to give you your purrformance review, and it's not looking good. Everyone knows that the size of one's mustache directly correlates to the strictness of one's purrsonality. And this cat might have the bushiest, most beautiful mustache we've ever seen. He gives Ron Swanson, Tom Selleck, and even Freddie Mercury a run for their money. He's like J. Jonah Jameson from the Spider-Man universe reincarnated.

We're no stranger to cats with facial hair. You might even say it's something of a specialty of ours. We love all cats equally, but we do love to search for cats with rare and unique fur patterns, and this corporate kitty cutie definitely fits into the box of "unique". From cats with hearts or numbers in their fur to vitiligo kitties, we love searching for any feline with an unusual marking or pattern. However, none of them would be fit to give you a purrformance review like our RBF (resting boss face) cat below.

Your job may be on the line, but at the very least, you'll get to be fired by this fluffy feline and his seriously silly 'stache. He might even let you cuddle with him after he breaks the bad news, so you have that going for you. Bring some cans of tuna (he has been known to accept bribery on occasion) and a cardboard box because even if you do get fired, at least you'll get fired with a smile on your face.

Some bosses are really awful leaders.

As a manager, you aren't only a boss. You are a team leader, which means not only managing employees but also helping them succeed in their careers in the internal ladder of the company. This is not something that many bosses know. They usually believe they just have to boss around and control them, but it is far more than that. A good boss would actually make an effort to make sure their employees are actually exceeding their expectations and capabilities, that they are doing their 100% for the company. 

Instead of that, it seems as if some managers were jealous of their employees. Afraid they are going to exceed them, be better than they are, take their place. But the truth is, if you are actually a good boss, you aren't afraid that the people you are in charge of are going to upstage you. In this Reddit story, the boss felt threatened by the new employee with great qualifications, and instead of putting in a bigger effort herself, she decided to just make it seem as if the new employee was less than they expected. Why put so much effort into making somebody else look bad instead of trying to be better yourself? Wasn't it easier to just improve yourself? 

This is the thing with bosses. You can't really go over their requests without getting fired. So, with all this scheme that this manager put up, it became impossible for the employee to show his value and skills. He just got stuck in a role that wasn't what he was hired for. Leaving him with no real purpose or even a reason to stay in a company that was simply lowering him more and more every day. The boss may have looked like a better fit for the role, but for that, she had to demean a good employee who was going to bring real value to the company. 
 

The tiny voice telling your cat, "Do it," has never once been ignored.

One second they're peacefully sitting on the windowsill, and the next they're somehow halfway up the curtains. Nobody knows what changes in that tiny feline brain, but the decision is made in an instant. Whatever intrusive thought just popped into their head immediately becomes their next mission.

Cats have an incredible talent for turning perfectly normal moments into unforgettable ones. They'll stare at a glass of water for five minutes before suddenly deciding to slap it off the table. They'll spend ten minutes carefully studying a shelf, only to launch themselves onto it with the confidence of an Olympic gymnast and the accuracy of someone who definitely skipped practice. Sometimes they make direct eye contact before causing the chaos, almost like they're giving you one last chance to stop them. Other times, they don't even bother with a warning.

Once an idea enters their head, there's no second-guessing it. Climb the highest bookshelf? Absolutely. Sprint through the house at full speed because of a dust particle? Makes perfect sense. Stick your entire face into a shopping bag and somehow get stuck? Worth a shot. Knock a pen onto the floor just to watch it fall? Scientific research.

And somehow, no matter how ridiculous the plan was, they always walk away acting like everything happened exactly as intended. If something crashes, clearly it was the shelf's fault. If they miss a jump, everyone else simply witnessed it incorrectly. Their confidence never takes a hit.

Cats don't waste time wondering whether an idea is good or bad. If something sounds interesting, that's reason enough to give it a try. Their confidence is unmatched, their timing is usually terrible, and their commitment is nothing short of impressive. Every once in a while, those intrusive thoughts lead to absolute chaos, but they're also the reason cats keep us laughing day after day.

Is it worth it to put your job on the line because you think you know better?

In some cases, people don't know when to put their heads down. In life, it's hard to determine whether something is worth fighting over or if it's just better to let it go completely. In the workplace, the same thing can happen, but as a general rule, it's usually easier to yield to what your bosses are asking from you. 

Reddito says in  r/TalesFromRetail that a vendor from the store he worked at got herself in trouble for not following company rules. She was so sure she knew better and refused to follow instructions that eventually the company decided to retaliate against her for being problematic. 

Sometimes ego can get in the way and be an issue. The way someone behaves at work will depend on whether or not they need to keep a job or have other options. And if they think they are irreplaceable, that might lead them to act arrogantly and do more harm than good. 

If you ask us, the goal should always be keeping the peace and the job. No one wants to make it more difficult for themselves or their coworkers. On the contrary, ideally, everybody does their best to contribute to the company and function properly and without any incidents. Some people might not have that kind of consideration towards others, but that doesn't mean that kind of behavior should be considered the standard. All actions have consequences, inside and outside of the workplace. 

Whatever decision someone makes, they must be willing to pay the price for it, for better or for worse. If they actively choose to ignore instructions and do what they want, it is to be expected that management will notice and take action. Sometimes it will be a write-up; in others, to fire the employee on the spot. The way someone reacts to being called out will be tied to their intention to stay or leave.

She already had six cats, but one more kept pulling at her heart.

It only took one trip to the animal shelter to turn six cats into seven. Anyone who spends time scrolling through Reddit's r/blackcats subreddit already knows how often black cats get passed over in favor of younger kittens, and this story is another reminder that some of the sweetest companions are the ones people keep walking past.

The rescuer had just adopted an adorable cat two weeks earlier and figured that was the end of their shelter visits for a while. But there was one face they couldn't forget. An older black cat sat in the kennel next door, quietly watching kitten after kitten leave while he stayed behind. Every day during lunch, they checked the shelter's website hoping someone had finally chosen him. Every day, he was still there.

Eventually, they couldn't take it anymore. One more visit turned into one more conversation with their husband, complete with promises not to adopt another cat and even joking about signing a notarized affidavit to prove it. His counteroffer? Buy him Whataburger, and he'd think about it.

That was all the encouragement they needed.

Buddy finally walked out of the shelter and into a home filled with six other cats, two dogs, and people who already adored him before he even arrived. Judging by the photos, he settled into family life without missing a beat.

He may have been overlooked at the shelter, but Buddy's clearly making up for lost time. Between six feline siblings, two dogs, and humans who couldn't stop thinking about him, it's safe to say this sweet senior found the family he was waiting for.

Sometimes we can't speak at the right time

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about when it's the right time to express ourselves. Sometimes, a problem arises, and we speak too quickly, at a time when everyone involved is defensive and nobody understands what's really going on. Other times, we decide to speak when it's too late, and we hurt someone for a long time with our silence. I think this is what happened to this Redditor, whom I believe didn't have the courage to speak in the moment and let everything be, under a false pretense of an ability to let go that actually covered cowardice. What do you think? Should we let everything be, always? Or should we make an effort to repair when we think our relationships are suffering?

Landlords as a species have developed a very specific skill: treating "I hold the lease" as if it also grants access to your Tuesday afternoon, your shower schedule, and your general vibe. Ownership of drywall is somehow rebranded as ownership of a whole human being's peace of mind, which is a serious piece of "value-add" nobody signed up for

When the timeline is rougher than you would like it to be, one thing is always here to uplift our mood, and that is a bunch of gentle cat memes. 

We know the timeline has been a mess lately. We see it every day as well. You log onto social media, hoping to see some cute pictures of cats to brighten up your day, and instead, you get bombarded with a whole bunch of things that you wish you had never seen in your life. And it's like this every single day lately. We don't get breaks. When everything on the internet has become about clickbait and ragebait, when that is what the algorithm keeps pushing, then it's no surprise that this is all that we see on our timelines. And we, personally, are not okay with that at all. And at least here on ICHC, we can do something about it. 

ICHC, for us and for many other people online, has become a kind of safe space. You can log onto this website at any time of the day and not see all the things that you don't want to see. All we have here for you are adorable and silly cats and an endless supply of funny cat memes. All the things that you actually want to see on the internet without all the madness that usually surrounds them. You can feel safe coming here, unlike basically any other place on the internet. Every day, we bring you the most wholesome and funniest cat content on the internet, and not only is it pawsome for us, looking for this kind of content every day, but we also know that we're here making other people's days better by brightening your hearts one purr at a time. Have a good day, friends!

Is it ever appropriate for a manager to yell at their employees?

Even though we share a lot of stories about bad bosses and entitled managers, we don't come across many stories where a boss actively raises their voice at their employees. Not only is it really extreme to even get to a point where raised voices are required, but managers who do that don't generally get depicted as good at their jobs.

We don't know about you, but we would feel much worse from a disappointed look or a stern conversation than we would from a yelling match. It's not professional, it's not beneficial, and it definitely wouldn't make us respect our manager any longer. Yelling simply seems like the worst way to handle any situation, especially in a workplace.

The fact that there was no valid reason for this manager to yell at her employee makes it even harder to accept and proves even further that yelling truly doesn't help.

It all started when a customer came up to the register and pointed out that the price that was marked on the sticker was lower than the price showing up on the register screen. We've all been there, and we all know that the store is required to commit to a price if it is clearly marked on an item, so the cash register employee knew they had to fix it. However, they didn't have the authority to change the price on the register, so they had to call the manager. The manager, apparently, didn't know how to make it happen, so the employee simply took the supervisor card themselves and pressed the buttons necessary for the price change.

After the customer left, the manager decided she had to yell at the employee for "making her look stupid" in front of customers. She claimed that the employee was throwing her under the bus to make themselves look good, and proceeded to publicly shame the employee for basically doing the right thing.

Not only did the manager yell, but she did it without any acceptable reason other than to protect her own ego… Luckily, the employee didn't stay quiet after the yelling fest ended.

What's one non-cat food your cat is willing to risk it all for?

One thing that you learn about cats after becoming an actual cat owner yourself is that all cats are weird. They're just- weird. All of them. Without exception. Some of them might fool you for a while, seem normal, simple, flawless. But that will only last for so long. One day, out of nowhere, as you are having the most common and normal day of them all, your cat will surprise you. It will show you its true strange colors. And you know what? You will only fall in love harder. 

Cats have the strangest habits. Some cats choose the most uncomfortable places to nap on. On purpose. They seek out plants, books, egg cartons, anything that isn't a fluffy bed, and they spend hours on that thing. Some cats yell at closed doors. For no reason. With no explanation. They just sit there sometimes, staring the door and yelling. And you can open that door, and it won't make a difference. They will be just as bothered by that same door being open as they were when it was closed. 

Some cats sit in sinks or on laptops or on puzzles. Other cats like singing at 3 in the morning or exactly when your work meeting starts when you're working from home. Other cats have emotional support items, ranging from blankets to carrots. But all cats - every single cat in the world - has at least one non-cat food that they are obsessed with and that they will risk everything to get. Every cat is weird about a food like that. And we knew that our audience knows what we're talking about, so we asked you guys to tell us about it - about the strangest, silliest non-cat food that your cat loved, and your answers, as always, did not disappoint. 

To have a guilty conscience

The most ridiculous part of this story is that the supposedly betrayed part is not even angry. The only one who's freaking out is the one who has a guilty conscience. It's sad how you can find out, years later, that not all of your friends have the capacity to have an honest, heart-to-heart conversation. Maybe you used to keep them in your life because you thought they could; maybe it was because they were never put to the test. This friend was apparently put to the test and failed it miserably. The sad part is that no one was going to attack him if he were upfront about what he was doing; the only thing against him in this situation was his own mind. Would you have had the courage to confront this situation?

What we want more than anything is for every stray cat that we feed to find a home. We just wish we could know about it when it finally happens. 

As hard as it is to believe, there is a limit to how many cats one person can have in their home. I had to learn that from personal experience. Once there are too many of them, their relationships get complicated, the personal space each of them has gets diminished, and their quality of life gets worse overall. That's why I feed stray cats. Because I can't make all of them not stray cats on my own. And feeding the stray cats around my building is one of the constant highlights of my days. But as nice as feeding stray cats is, what I want more than anything for each and every one of them, is for them to find their forever homes. The problem is that I can never know about it. 

You hope and pray that every cat you feed gets adopted someday, and it does happen sometimes, but to you, the person feeding them, they just disappear one day. If you're lucky, the person who adopted the cat knows you've been feeding it, and they come tell you about the adoption. But, like the kind person who shared their story on r/Straycats found out, most people have no clue who you are, and they adopt the cats with no way of letting you know about it. I wish what happened to this person would happen to me with every stray cat that I feed. I hope that every once in a while, I will see these cats through the windows of my neighbors, chonky, fluffy and living their absolute best lives just like itty-bitty Dusti is. 

Going through an extensive interview process just to get rejected after all. That sounds like poor planning on the company's recruitment team's part. 

Interviews can be awful and stressful, but the complete interview process, well, that's just lunacy. You're going to 3 or 4 rounds of interviews with different recruiters that expect different things from you. You take tests, start to study your future job, spend weeks, all just to discover they end up hiring someone internally. How is that possible? Does the recruitment team just like to torture unemployed people seeking a stable job? Is the company trying to justify the salary of the recruiters? Are they just pretending they are hiring so the company seems to be growing? I just think it proves that these people don't care at all about their candidates or future employees. 

Everything was easier before, without job-looking platforms and elevated tests. Before, you just went directly to the company to leave your resume, or just checked which companies were hiring from the newspaper. One interview or even none, and they call you to tell you that you got the job or not, easy peasy. When I read stories like this one with people being so frustrated about the job market, I think that maybe the industry is wrong. There is some big change we need to be doing, going a little bit back to the basics. Not forcing unemployed people onto a several-week trial. 

Maybe there is a reason for things to work like this, but, from my perspective, this doesn't seem fair. It seems like a manipulative scheme that makes you believe that you got a job when you didn't. Is unfair, and it dehumanizes the candidates who are putting so much effort just to get a chance to get a job position.

 

Should future renters have to pay before they are allowed to read a lease?

A couple found a beautiful townhouse they wanted to rent, and immediately contacted the landlord. The man asked to be paid in advance the $600 security deposit fee, as well as $300 for a pet fee, before sending them the lease. When the couple got the paperwork, they backed out since the lease was full of red flags and strange things. The landlord, however, is refusing to return the deposit since the property was taken off the market, and the money was to make up for the lost time.

Now, we all know every state is different, and some things change when it comes to renting a property. However, nothing sounds as strange as this fake security deposit that's not refundable because the house was taken off the market when the couple showed interest. In most cases, the money is sent once people can read the lease and agree to it. Not the other way around.

The thing that I found to be the weirdest is that the landlord states that keeping that amount of money "is common practice" when renting properties, a thing that the renters never heard about. Also, they had to pay to read the lease and didn't sign a thing that could lead them to lose that money. They followed the instructions that the landlord said, and found themselves in this crazy situation.

The community in r/Renters was helpful and gave the couple some good information on how to proceed. Most of them confirmed they should go ahead and contact a lawyer to have this situation legally reviewed since there's nothing that could prevent them from recovering the money. Scroll down and find out what happened.

Corporate America has found a new way to fire people without technically firing them: math. Not real math, obviously. The kind of math where the answer is predetermined, and the numbers are just there for flavor, like parsley on a cafeteria tray

Fortune 500 companies are rarely ever the good guys in any story, and naming names is really my thing, so let's just get into it inc.

Here's the plot in its purest form. You take a job where you talk to strangers on the phone, strangers who are, by definition, calling because something already went wrong in their day. Then you tell those strangers to grade you on a scale of 1 to 10, except secretly it's a scale of 1 to 2, because anything below a 9 counts as a personal betrayal. It's like a restaurant handing out comment cards that say "rate your meal 1-10" but quietly shredding every card that isn't a 9 or 10, then telling the chef he's fired because people "hated" the food, using data that's mostly confetti.

The genius of this system is that it doesn't measure whether you're good at your job. It measures whether a random assortment of humans, some of whom are having the worst day of their month, felt sufficiently delighted by a phone call to leave a rave review. It's the same energy as expecting a five-star Yelp review from someone whose car just got towed, except the tow truck is also somehow your fault now.

And the real punchline is the sample size problem. One cranky customer, one dropped call, one guy who apparently couldn't tell a man's voice from a woman's, and suddenly you need to go collect dozens of flawless report cards just to break even. It's less "customer service metric" and more "escape room designed by someone who hates you," where the exit door requires forty consecutive strangers to unanimously agree you're a delight, on a day when your hours got cut in half.

When one door closes, another one opens. 

It's never consoling in the moment, but it's true. Everyone experiences a loss of some sort in their lifetime, but it's important to remember how things could turn out. In Reddit's r/CatDistributionSystem, a man experiences first hand what it feels like to have the cat distribution system laughing at you. He had a 20 year old cat, Manx, and it was his best friend and soul cat. 20 is really senior for a cat, so after Manx crossed the rainbow bridge, the person didn't want to adopt again for at least another year, but the distribution system had something else in mind. 

He wasn't ready for another cat so soon, but he got one anyway. He had already put his old things in storage, when he ends up rescuing a 12 year old Norwegian Forest cat from the streets. He initially takes him in as a foster, but after forming a bond and connection with him, he realizes he can't give him up. The little guy is a good boy who didn't deserve to be hungry outside, covered in dirt and fleas, and finally has a good home. They get him cleaned up at the vet, and the rest is history! 

Why would someone explicitly say to their current boss that they are actively seeking a new position elsewhere? That would just get you fired.

If you were to hate the current place you work at, what would you do? Probably seek another job, right? And once you got that new position, you would most likely resign as soon as you possibly can, right? You probably are thinking that all this is obvious. Well, it is, for anyone with common sense. The problem is that, as we have seen in multiple of these Reddit stories, common sense is not really a quality most bosses have. They usually think that everything is some kind of attack. 

Instead of looking at it as a great opportunity that a colleague got, they see it as the employee trying to ruin them. As if they weren't leaving a toxic company that didn't value their efforts and didn't even pay accordingly, and instead they were just trying to ruin their boss's career by leaving without much notice. I don't really understand how they take it so personal, is obvious that if the employee isn't valued, they are going to leave someday. Especially in this story, where the manager knew that they had asked for a raise and that was "still being processed" after months. 

And what is all this drama even for? They are going to leave anyway. Unless the company offered an amazing salary increase (and maybe even that wouldn't work), the employee is not going to stay somewhere she isn't valued. So let it be. As a manager, don't take it personally. Try to look for a solution to your own problem and let the employee leave with a good image of yourself, where you don't seem like a dramatic boss that can't understand the idea of bettering yourself. 

Accept it and move on! Somebody else is going to take that position soon, and everything will be fixed. For a moment, you just need to congratulate your colleague for their good work and say bye nicely. 
 

Sunday silliness of cat memes just in case you're feeling on the chaotic side today. 

Imagine if you could shrink things so small that they could fit in your pocket? How easy would it be to park! You'd never have to drive around looking for a parking spot, spending $20 for that two hour movie, and another 30 minutes parallel parking. We'd be able to sneak someone on a flight with us by just putting them in our pocket. But I guess TSA would catch them in those cameras, and then you'd have a lot of explaining to do. But if we could shrink things to be bite sized, miniature, and teeny tiny, it's obvious we would put our cats in our pockets. 

How insanely cute would it be to take your cat wherever you go? You could bring them around like dog owners can bring their dogs everywhere. They could sit with you at work, purring on your lap as you type away. They could join you at that new fancy fish restaurant, and of course you have to order the big salmon for them. And we could take them to our friend's homes so that they can have a cat play date, even if your cat isn't the very social type.

Our imaginations can really run wild, and that's why this cute collection of curious cats will spark joy and happiness into your day, even if it's for a tiny amount of time. Take this pocket sized phone and scroll away your worries with cat memes that will make you go from worried to carefree.