today’s ride 🚋

i've been thinking about patience lately, mainly because a 1.5-year-old cinnamon ragdoll named oso has been teaching me a masterclass on it every damn day and i fear i will never graduate. (nor do i want to!)

oso, whose name means bear in spanish, is my first real pet. ever. (well, my family had an albino rabbit when i was younger but that was mainly the family pet, and it really only liked my dad so other than that we just had fish). mar and i had been mulling over what animal to bring into our apartment for a longtime, and with my allergies to both cats and dogs, the only real options were a ragdoll cat or some kind of doodle.

when the opportunity for mar to go pick up oso on freakin’ mothers day turned up, well… some fates write themselves. a drive to scoop him up and come back, and suddenly, we had the tiniest little ball mewling and crying in our apartment. mar grew up in a home full of cats and dogs, so she was ready. me? i took a look at oso and thought you’re so cute! then i thought oh shit. i gotta clean your 💩.

let's talk about the logistics of raising a kitten, for the uninitiated. there's the scooping the litter, multiple times a day because imagine you had to take your third pee of the day and your toilet was full of crap. then there's the feeding, and oso gets an immaculately prepared bowl of wet food, broth, supplements, and little treats TWICE a day. and also there's the brushing. oh my the brushing! ragdolls have this gorgeous coat, and the coat has a price, and the price is mar wrangling him and swishing out a second cat’s worth of hair, while i’m vacuuming roughly every other day. some days, we’re tired! life does the life thing. work makes us exhausted, maybe we’re sick, maybe we’re knee-deep in a video game. whatever it is, we don’t get an off-day. we chose to be the guardians of this creature who cannot fend for itself or feed itself, so we must be the ones to keep his little life going.

oso can't tell me anything. he can't say my stomach hurts or my litter is too dirty or you’ve been on your laptop for too long can we play? all he has is a few assorted meows, some soft paws, a swishy tail, and a vocabulary of ear positions i'm still trying to decipher. and with that, we must still keep him both alive and happy.

but oso knows he must reward my service. and how does he choose to melt me? by doing the thing™. at night when it’s time for bed and mar and i are tucked in, he’ll trot over and hop into the bed, flopping his body heftily against my leg, and then goes completely limp, like someone cut his marionette strings. (that's where the breed gets its name, they tend to be like little ragdolls.) he trusts me with his entire body weight. he doesn't know what a lease is or how inflation is eating into the salary that pays for his extavagent life. he just knows mommy gives him the best cuddles in the morning, and daddy is where he can curl up his tiny little cat body at night.

i used to think love was something you felt. now i know that a lot of it is something you do, over and over in these small boring ways, that sometimes feel tedious. but that tedium is what has earned us oso’s undying affection. his little trills when it’s time to eat or his ears back in airplane mode when it’s time to play, his love is as boundless and floofy as his paws. whether we leave for a trip, or accidentally step on his tail (because he has a penchant for running under feet), or scold him for his many, many crimes, he comes back to us with cuddles and headbutts.

i'm not going to pretend a cat is a baby (although he is. he is thee baby boy™). but he has taught me so much about love, and forgiveness, and patience. i’ve always been terrified of being a dad because i’ve always been scared i’d be a bad one. but maybe, maybe i’m not so bad at this after all.

from our last haiku, one of you said:

"i love this! i always miss my partner when i’m traveling solo for work.”

same, my friend! same. i don’t travel a TON for work, but it’s still more than i have at many other jobs, and tenmonthsummer is (humbly) one of the most successful bands i’ve ever been in so we’re on the road a lot more than i would have ever expected.

combine that with the fact that i am betrothed to literally my best friend and the most amazing person in the world, that makes for a bit of a tricky equation!

at the least, i know that however many days i am away, i have many, many more to sidle up next to her and melt into comfort.

(send in your questions to [email protected] and maybe your question will be the star of the next newsletter!)

this week’s song is "lula on the beach” by canadian pop punk rockers, seaway.

oso is only a year and a half old, which hopefully means i'm at the very beginning of this cat-dad life. if the universe is kind (and oh how i beg it to be), i get a decade and then some of these morning headbutts and midnight games of tag. i'd be lying if i said i don't already think about the end of these little rituals (shocking, i know). but for now, i’ll settle for filling up my storage with pics of them being teeny little loafs. 🍞

them? yup. we actually adopted a second, older cat. pato, our little duck. you’ll hear more about him next week. 😉

if you don’t want to send in a question for deep dish with nish but still have thoughts, comments, concerns for my mental well-being after seeing this existential spiral caught on keyboard, talk to me! i love mail, even when it’s ‘e’.

liked what you read? tell someone about it! that beats me vageuposting into the void trying to fight an algorithm! 🤖

as always though, thanks for being here. 🙏

is this little bit not enough?

subscribe for one more slice below or follow my band on twitter for more idiocy