u/dhds83

Ahh, I see you saw that I had unblocked you so you decided to continue attacking me.

I had specifically noted several comments you had made that were indeed laced with obscenities and personal attacks, and they were deleted by the mods with their standard "Please optimize contributions for light, not heat." response. It is quite amusing that you keep trying to gaslight me and keep calling me a liar. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, but I don't need to try to understand someone acting in bad faith or merely trolling.

I'm not sure why you tagged me and claimed I don't like facts and am circlejerking anyone for posting about the utility of user tagging in RES to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of reddit. That said, I have long had you tagged as an argumentative and generally biased/unobjective poster, so your opinion of me means nothing to me. This kind of response shows me yet again that your contributions are easily skippable as pure wasted space in this subreddit. I would tell you to do better, but I suspect you know what you're doing and just enjoy arguing in order to rile people up.

Here's a hint: try reading before responding. Overdose deaths rise during the holidays, and so do deaths from any number of other causes. Overdose deaths and all-cause mortality are correlated. The rise in overdose deaths is a tiny fraction of the rise in overall mortality however, so a rise in overdose deaths is not the cause of the rise in overall mortality. Read and attempt to understand your own studies.

To repeat myself: you are mistaking correlation for causation.

Speaking from personal experience taming multiple adult feral cats, you are very much closer than you think. The next step I would suggest is just sitting nearby while he eats, so he gets used to your presence nearby. Day by day, just settle yourself a little bit closer to the food before he eats, but do not move, make noise, or even look at him while he eats. It should not take more than a few weeks at worst from this point until you can sit just about arms' reach from him, as long as you do your best not to push it. It can be time-consuming, but just be patient.

At that point, with every cat I have tamed, I just waited until they weren't looking and very nonchalantly reached out and (very) gently brushed their shoulder with the back of my fingers while not making eye contact or even looking in their direction and immediately pulled my hand back to my lap. No sudden movements. Every single one, they acted shocked and ran off the first time, but they forgave me and came back after some time. (This method is loosely based off of some horse-taming techniques, btw.)

If you do that a few times, you will very quickly notice an almost shockingly sudden change in how he reacts to contact with you. I had an adult feral who literally tried to claw through a wall to get away from me a year earlier suddenly sigh and lean deeply into my hand the third time I touched her, and that was that. She became an incredibly affectionate cat once she realized that I could be trusted.

You can think of many feral cats as though they have been abused and have PTSD. That is definitely not easy to change, and there will be lasting effects; but trust, once earned with difficulty, flows deeply and earnestly.

I have found taming feral cats to be one of the most personally rewarding things I have ever done, so I applaud the work you have done to get to this point!

In the interest of avoiding drama, I'm done responding to you. You're clearly just a moron or a troll. I hope that works out for you.