Seven in German handwriting has an additional line.

The guitar cat got me.

Can you control the time when a calendar notif hits? Could changing that time help?

Except some agents go against explicit instructions and delete the prod database. You know your argument doesn’t hold, we’ve all seen the news.

Sticks may be something that he has been hit with before - or maybe it’s the position above his head of something that scares him. You never know what a former stray experienced.

In my experience toy type matters a lot too. My current cat goes crazy over feathers at a rope that you can whirl around with a stick - I guess the sound the feathers make trigger her hunting instincts? Our other cat gets scared of that but hes always been sensitive to noise.

He loves those little snakes that are attached to sticks with a rope though. Leaves the feather cat completely cold. Catnip was meh for ours, but both lost their shit with Valerian, totally drugged up for five minutes (then the effect wears off and the cats won’t feel the same even with fresh scent). Where I live it gets used to help people sleep so we buy a whole bunch at a pharmacy, fill it into an airtight container (that shit stinks, it could make me vomit) and marinate cloth toys in their that we give them every now and then.

At the end of the day, all cats are different and trial and error is best. Also, if you found a cheap toy that works, stock up - often it’s not easy to get replacements once they break.

Wait you wouldn’t take your cat? After a week of you rarely being available you consider not being home at all for two days and a night?

I would strongly recommend against that. I’m worried that this may cause behavioral issues with the cat getting bored, depressed, feeling caged…

Possible consequences could be urinating outside the litterbox, willfully scratching your furniture/walls and more.

I’m not sure if with your work and travel habits a pet would be a good choice. Maybe one that doesn’t need social interaction?

I would advise against. A house is not a good place for a cat to be alone, and 40h per week is a lot. We have an old cat (17) and my roommate is at home all day and our cat still is super needy for attention.

There may be more aloof cats, but from my experience with cats they are most likely the exception and your cat would likely be understimulated.

Also, most cats do not handle traveling well. It is possible to train them but that works best when they are young and young cats should never be alone in a house for 40h/ week. My mom has taken in cats from an animal rescue organization where the owner was out for long hours too and she got depressed and overate so badly she had lifelong issues, even when she was with my mom and lost weight again. She also was incredibly anxious about my mom leaving her and would get stressed out if she had to be alone.

Despite what you may hear, cats are social animals and need interaction. If you are away from home 40h/week (and that’s not counting going to work), it’s better to get a bonded pair so they can play and interact. In rare cases you may find an old grumpy cat that will be fine - but you will probably never have a close bond with that kind of cat, and often they are used to going outside.

The cat violently displaced the Panda.

I mean that’s a black hat hacking forum. That alone would make me question what they were doing with their domains x)

Similar here, except I suggested a course and they accepted and paid for it (Software Testing). The programming is what I enjoy and want to pursue.

For me the commitment part was the issue. I’m still working on figuring out how to trick my brain into cooperating with commitments. Having a team that was looking forward to my suggestions and ready to rely on it ended up being the one thing that worked. But this is obviously not easily replicable.

I tried that several times but it never worked out for various reasons. For me I really started growing once I was working and had a team that was happy I wanted to learn more and answer my questions.

I’m like that and one of my friends as well. We’re both not diagnosed but strongly suspecting AD(H)D, and I’m also diagnosed with autism.

I can’t count the times I started trying to learn programming and ended up quitting for that very reason - but every time I did I knew a little bit more. So I just tried to learn my way and next time I wouldn’t need to look up asuch and got a little farther. But I also have the luck of having programmer friends who don’t mind trying to answer my sometimes very unusual questions, and over the several attempts I’ve learned enough to be able to work in test automation.

If you have patient and encouraging people around you you’ll eventually get there :) don’t go for ui at first, look for console programs so you can get to things like conditions and loops quickly. That’s where the meat is for me.

In Germany? :o

As a diagnosed German I can tell you not much changes, there’s virtually no therapy for adult autistics. I understand why your doc said that.

Though there was one large benefit for me and it’s that after we applied for disability the Arbeitsamt got much more lenient with me and was actually useful in helping me find a job.

In the end, if you can’t let go, seek the diagnosis, if not, take from autistic communities whatever little tricks help you, discard what doesn’t and call it a day. Much less trouble :)

There’s one thing in your post that I haven’t seen you mention yet it’s all over the place: depression.

I don’t know anything about you but this post, and I’m not a professional, but from very painful personal experience I’m almost sure you’re severely depressed, maybe even to the point where you need hospitalization.

Depression fucks with your head. It makes you not-do things you’re looking forward to and you don’t understand why. It makes you unable to see anything positive. You cannot get out of it without help after a certain point, and you cannot trust your own thoughts anymore.

These days, after years, I’m better. For me it’s never going completely away, but I recognize patterns, I know how to break the spiraling (and most importantly, no one shames me for how I’m doing it anymore) and I can say " this sounds like depression speaking, let me do something else and return to this thought tmr and see how I feel."

But it took years of therapy and several months of hospitalization. If you’re at the point where your outbreaks scare your family, maybe it’s time to look into that.

Another thing: depression in men is critically underdiagnosed, because most docs look for physical reasons if a man comes to them with symptoms of depression. If you haven’t been diagnosed yet, it may be that it didn’t occur to your doc, maybe because you’re masking well or because he’s just not used to seeing men with depression.

However you go on, I wish you all the best. I hope that you can find a way, with or without meds, to live in peace with your brain.

That smug face.

I love it, Ty!

If you want to convince people it’s up to you to bring the evidence. I’m not doing your work for you.

Besides, there have been studies shoing that autistics among themselves don’t have the same communication breakdown as they do when interacting with neurotypicals. So if Japan was truly an autistic culture it should be easier for autistic people, but it’s not.

Besides, I’m very curious to see how you are going to apply diagnostic criteria for a neurodivergence to a culture. Like, how do you even begin? Is the culture averse to bright lights? Loud sounds? Does the culture go into hyperfocus moments? Does it suffer from PDA?

The only way you could do this is if you were to take stereotypes about how autistic people behave and try to somehow match them to cultural traits.

Link to those studies?

Edit: me being autistic make everything I say useless? Really?

I really admire your ability to mental gymnastics. No matter what anybody says, you always find a way to tell them their opinion doesn’t matter. Must be nice to be so secure in your own superiority that nothing can convince you otherwise.

As an autist who studied Japanese and gave up when I realized I just couldn’t connect with any of the Japanese people I met - even the ones where it was obvious we wanted to be friends - I can assure you the culture is even more impenetrable for autistics. And I don’t have such issues with other autistic people usually, no matter the culture.

Don’t mistake your stereotypes for reality and tell everyone people call you out because of political correctness. You’re just plain old wrong in this.