This is going to be a downer of a post. If you’re already having a bad day, I recommend skipping it or reading it later. It really doesn’t have anything to do with kink either, unless you want to take this as further proof that doms are in fact human and vulnerable. It’s also kind of a self-indulgent list of all my favourite memories of my kitty.

My cat recently got sick. Then she got really sick, then we took her to the vet, then she got even worse and we had to put her to sleep. I’ve never lost anyone I was really close to before, so I’m taking this pretty hard. We had cats when I was a kid, but we lived out in the middle of nowhere and they were outdoor cats. When they got sick (if they did get sick and not eaten by a cougar or something), they just slunk away and we never saw them again.

Ginger, on the other hand, died in my arms when it was clear that she wasn’t going to get better. The only thing she hated more than strange people was strange places – I couldn’t put her through any more time in the hospital. I wish she could’ve died at home, but at the end she was in such bad shape that she didn’t appear to know where she was, and putting her through half an hour in the car would’ve just been cruel. She was briefly lucid enough to recognize me, though. The vet was amazed she responded to me at all, but when I started petting her, she purred her little heart out with the last of her strength. After a few minutes of that, she seemed to lose track of what was going on. We put her to sleep not long after that, but I think she was really already gone.

When she got really sick, all she wanted was to be near me. She could barely walk, but she dragged herself to me. She knew something was terribly wrong, she was scared and she wanted me to make it better, but there was nothing I could do to fix it.

I miss her all the time. Missing her isn’t the worst part, though. It feels almost like a tribute to her, a price I’m willing to pay if this is what it takes to really love a pet. The worst part is the self-doubt and might-have-beens. Should I have taken her to the vet earlier? Was I good enough to her in her final days? Did she know I loved her even when I was annoyed that she was always under foot? Should I have blown off work and stayed with her at the hospital until the vet threw me out?

Ginger absolutely hated strange places. The vet’s office was the worst place on earth as far as she was concerned. And the vet never did find out exactly what was wrong with her. Maybe keeping her home until she absolutely needed medication to make her comfortable was the kindest thing I could’ve done. Then again, if I had known how quickly it was going to go when she got really sick, I would’ve found a way to have her put to sleep at home. But on the other hand, having a stranger poke at her while she was still strong enough to fight back would’ve been miserable for everyone.

Even though she was terribly sick, she still managed to bite two of the staff at the hospital. When she was healthy, she growled at and hid from strangers, destroyed furniture and carpet like it was her mission in life to make sure we never got our damage desposit back, chewed up anything plastic we accidentally left out (the zipper pulls on my backpack look like someone tried to stab them to death with a thumbtack), and regularly tried to make me trip and break my neck on the way down the stairs in the morning. When she was feeling crafty, she would even leave her toys at the bottom of the stairs for us to trip on.

Coming down stairs in the morning and coming home from work are the hardest times of day for me. She was so happy to see me in the morning, even when she was grumpy that I hadn’t given her fresh water recently enough. It’s hard leaving the bedroom knowing she’ll never try to trip me down the stairs again. Coming home from work is hard because we used to meow at each other when I got home. I picked up the habit from my boyfriend – Ginger would meow at me, I’d meow back at her, and we’d have a little meowversation while I put my stuff away and got settled. Sometimes, once I sat down on the couch, she’d come stand with her front paws on my knee, then reach up and pat my face with one paw. Then I’d lean down and she’d sniff at my face and tickle me with her whiskers.

It took her weeks to warm up to me when I moved in with my boyfriend, but eventually she decided I was an acceptable source of pettings. When I was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table my laptop lives on, she would just come stand on my lap, as if to say ‘It’s time to pet me, monkey. You weren’t doing anything important, were you?’. When I was lying on the couch reading she’d come stand on me too. For a very small cat, she could put a shocking amount of pressure right on my boobs. Sometimes she’d stand behind me on the couch, put her paws on my shoulder, and tickle me by sniffing at the back of my head and trying to chew on my hair. I guess the furry little weirdo liked the smell of my shampoo. She’d start licking me for no reason, too. I was always a little worried she was sizing up her food reserves in case some day the kibble stopped magically refilling itself.

The very first time I got a good look at her, I only saw her little face as she peeked around the corner. For a full grown cat, she was a tiny little beast. She got a look at me, then ran back upstairs and hid under the desk. Eventually she decided I probably wouldn’t eat her if she spent a little time in the same room as me, but trying to touch her was just not on. A while after that, she’d sniff at me suspiciously and let me pet her a little, but only if my boyfriend was around. When I had a relative staying with me for a little while, she told me that Ginger was much friendlier when I was around. I like to think I made her feel safe. She would hide behind my legs if there were strangers in the room, or if she could hear them outside. She was also my early-warning system for the maid service showing up – she liked to sit right on top of my feet in the morning, and when they parked in the driveway she’d start growling. It made her whole body vibrate just like a notification from a phone with the ringer turned off.

To hear me talk to her, you’d think her name was ‘terrible little beast’, ‘dammit cat, it’s like you want to get stepped on’ or catbeast. I’d ask her ‘Who’s a terrible little beast?’, she’d meow at me, and I’d say ‘That’s right cat, it’s you! Now how about you stop clawing up the couch?’

She absolutely loved laser pointers or any sort of bright light she could chase. My boyfriend tells me that when she was a kitten, she’d run after a laser pointer down the half flight of stairs to the door, back up those stairs, and then up the next flight to the landing, then back down over and over until she was panting. I’ve never seen a cat pant, but if any cat would run herself ragged trying to kill a laser pointer, it would be her. One day I came home to the most incredible racket, very much like a cat throwing herself at the wall. It turns out my boyfriend was using a cd to shine a light on the wall, and Ginger wanted to kill it so badly she was indeed throwing herself at it.

She also loved birds and bugs and basically anything flying around outside. She wouldn’t go outside, though, she just wanted to watch the birds very closely and chirp at them. We tried leaving the balcony door open for her, but she wanted nothing to do with it. She would sometimes poke her head around the corner when we came home and stare out at the terrifying land beyond the door, but as fascinated as she was by it, she flatly refused to go out there. When there was something interesting happening outside, sometimes she’d stand up on her hind legs to get a better view. She’d do that to bunt my hand if I was standing up too, it was the cutest thing.

I miss my kitty.

Or, how many things can Elise Sutton get wrong in a single article? There’s a lot of bad advice out there for submissive men, but I think Elise Sutton’s is especially bad.

In the very first paragraph of her article How To Introduce Your Wife or Girlfriend To The Female Domination Lifestyle she says:

All women are superior to men and all women are a potential Dominatrix.

The idea that any gender is magically superior is so stupid it’s just boring, so let’s move on to the other horribly offensive part of this sentence. The idea that all women are potential dominatrixes is bad and wrong on so many levels. First of all, it’s hugely insulting to submissive women, switches, kinksters who aren’t interested in power exchange, and vanilla women to act like their preferences and identities don’t count. I think that submissive men are the hottest thing since humans discovered fire, but that doesn’t mean I can’t respect other people’s desires for dominant/switchy/kinky but not into power exchange/vanilla men.

Not only is saying that all women can be dominant insulting, it’s just wrong. Not all women can be or have any interest in being dominant. Given that, it’s just cruel to give the submissive men that article is aimed at false hope. Even if the wife or girlfriend they hope to introduce to femdom actually turns out to be interested in it, there’s no guarantee that her interests will be compatible with his. What if she ends up really enjoying giving orders, but what makes him feel like a good submissive is knowing what she needs before she has to give an order? What if she gets into verbal humiliation and cuckolding, but all he wants is some bondage and a spanking now and then?

This is a little bit of an aside, but for fuck’s sake people, not everyone has to be kinky. Enjoying missionary position sex with the lights out doesn’t mean you’re unadventurous or unevolved or boring or whatever. It just means you enjoy missionary position sex with the lights out.

Therefore, if you are a submissive male who is married or in a serious relationship with a woman, you need to search no further for your Dominatrix. She is right in front of you. The challenge for you is to draw out her dominant nature with your submissive nature. This is not always easy, as most women have been programmed from the time they were born that they are to be in subjection to men.

The first part is just.. ugh, but the last part isn’t completely awful. It does take some time for women in particular to get used to the idea that being dominant doesn’t make them unlovable harridans.

However, if you seduce her dominant nature and draw it out of her, once it starts to come to the forefront then you can introduce her to some D&S and B&D activities. So how do you seduce your wife’s dominant nature with your submissive nature?

You begin by treating her like a Queen. You begin by serving her as if she was already the dominant woman of your dreams. Be humble and submissive around her. Don’t argue with her, don’t yell at her, and don’t give her any back talk. Your purpose in your relationship is to serve her. What she says goes, so be quick to agree with her.

Not every woman has a dominant nature! But moving on, don’t you think it would freak a woman out of her husband suddenly started acting ‘humble and submissive’ around her? Also, who’s to say your version of ‘humble and submissive’ has anything to do with what the woman who’s being submitted at actually wants? ‘Submissive’ is not the word I’d use for someone who does what makes him happy without asking me if that’s what I want. ‘Self-absorbed’ is what I’d call that. Agreeing with everything I say isn’t actually helpful either. If I come up with a plan, I really want to know if it’s a terrible plan. Just being submissive doesn’t mean a person’s input isn’t valuable.

Another thing that you can do to seduce your wife’s dominant nature is you can offer to give her foot and body massages.

Not everyone likes massages! Not everyone likes having their feet touched! It’s almost like there’s no dominant female hivemind.

Go and kneel next to her, take off her shoes, and rub her tired feet. As she relaxes in pleasure, work your massage up her legs and massage and lightly scratch her legs.

That’s awfully specific. Also, scratch my legs and I’ll slap you. I have extremely dry skin, and scratching it actually makes the itching worse. While we’re at it, a shoulder or neck massage would do me a lot more good than a foot massage since I spend my work day sitting down in front of a computer.

Eventually, you might take more liberty as you rub her feet. You might start to kiss and lick her feet. I wouldn’t do this the first time, but if she responds positively to the massages, then keep adding to them. You might work your kissing and licking from her feet, up her legs, and then to her crotch.

Not everyone likes having their feet kissed or licked! For that matter, not everyone likes having a massage suddenly turn into sexytimes. And that’s assuming the woman even likes oral sex, which not everyone does!

Kiss her body all over and make love to her with your mouth and tongue. Do not ever penetrate her with your penis, unless she requests it.

What if she doesn’t request it? Given the lack of communication this article assumes, I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to wonder what happens if this woman never feels comfortable requesting a particular sex act. Thanks to all of our culture’s myths about men and sex, she might even assume her partner doesn’t want to penetrate her and feel hurt and rejected.

Eventually, you might want to buy a vibrator or a dildo and you can please her with it.

Not everyone likes vibrators! Some women, like me, really really like bio cocks.

The goal is to get both you and her in the habit of viewing sex as being for the woman’s pleasure. It will be for the man’s pleasure only if the woman says so.

That’s a perfectly good goal if both partners get a chance to consent to it, but it’s kind of weird to just spring it on someone. She might be really turned on by her partner’s reactions, in which case sex that’s all about the man doing things to her could be boring and unsatisfying.

Whenever she give you permission to enter her or whenever she is giving you pleasure, always ask her permission before you climax. She will again probably be amazed that you are even asking, but eventually she will come to really like the idea that she controls your orgasms.

You’re not the boss of me, Elise! *stamps foot and pouts* I will not like orgasm control just because you say I should! Orgasm control also doesn’t work without fucking talking about it like grown ups. How is this woman supposed to know it’s okay to say no? How is she supposed to know how to handle it if her husband/boyfriend/partner gets frustrated? How is she supposed to know how much denial he can take before he needs an orgasm? I guess she’s just supposed to be psychic. Funny, I thought psychic-powers levels of anticipatory service were a submissive thing, not a dominant thing.

Still another way to seduce your wife’s dominant nature is to buy her little gifts, bring her flowers, and write poetry for her. Take her out to dinner or shopping. Perhaps you could even cook dinner for her and serve her dinner like a waiter. Another thing you can do is to prepare her a bubble bath, undress her, bathe her, then take her to the bedroom and orally service her.

Not everyone likes gifts, flowers, or poetry written for them! And again with the oral service. It’s almost like this whole article has more to do with what turns submissive men on than what might actually make their partners happy.

You could buy her a leather skirt or a pair of leather pants and compliment her on how sexy she looks in leather and how submissive seeing her in leather makes you feel.

Really? Dressing her up like a dolly is supposed to make her feel dominant? Also, I missed the part where the man explains what submission is, how he feels, and why she would want him to feel extra submissive.

Whenever she asks you why you are treating her so good or acting so submissive around her, tell her it’s because you love her and because you have come to realize that women are superior beings, and as such they should be treated like Queens.

Yeah, being told that my partner has suddenly decided women are superior beings wouldn’t make me want to head for the hills. That’s not creepy at all.

When do you bring up D&S and B&D? When she starts to respond positively to your submission and she starts to ask you more about Female Domination.

Not ‘if’ she starts to respond positively to your submission, but ‘when’, huh? It’s awfully convenient how absolutely all women can be molded to fit their male partners’ fetishes.

From this point on, slowly introduce her to D&S and B&D. Buy her some fetish clothes, and maybe a leather paddle or a whip.

Not everyone likes fetish wear! Not everyone likes impact toys! Not everyone who likes impact toys like whips or paddles in particular. Learning to use a whip takes some work, deciding for her that she’s going to take up a time-consuming hobby is kind of a dick move.

 Not every woman will react the same and not every woman will grow at the same pace. However, I believe that if you are persistent and consistent than your wife will eventually overcome her inhibitions and she will allow her dominant nature to freely flow out of her.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Damn straight not every woman will react the same way. Some of us aren’t dominant! What you call persistence that could convince a woman it’s safe to try to overcome her inhibitions, I call relentless nagging that a woman eventually gives in to so she can have five minutes of peace.

Then she will totally seize the reigns of your relationship and she will fulfill her potential as the dominant woman that she was meant to be. Good Luck.

Take your ideas about what women are meant to be and fuck off. Female domination is more than just another way for women to fail to measure up.

Having a ‘dominant personality’, being prone to taking charge in social situations, or simply being bossy have absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with whether you’re dominant in the kinky sense. Those are examples of social dominance. Kinky dominance, on the other hand, involves the desire to be in charge (at least some of the time) of the person (or people) you have that agreement with. Enjoying telling your partner to make your coffee so you can stay in bed a little longer, for example, has no connection with enjoying being in charge at work.

For fuck’s sake people, social dominance and kinky dominance are different things. Social dominance is about as useful as as a person’s hairstyle for predicting whether that person is dominant in the kinky sense.

Some of the most socially dominant people I know of are submissive in their personal relationships. Most of the kink conferences I’ve been to were organized by submissive women. If wrangling volunteers, speakers, catering, venues (and whatever else I’ve forgotten) for an entire weekend conference isn’t socially dominant, I don’t know what is.

There are also plenty of shy or quiet people who have no interest in being the boss at work or around their friends, but who are still dominant in the kinky sense. Those people’s dominance counts just as much as that of the people who happen to be dominant in both the kinky and social senses.

Given the stereotypes of what a dominant and a submissive are supposed to be it’s not surprising that people would conflate social and kinky dominance, but it’s still incredibly fucking irritating. I’ve been told over and over that it’s surprising that I’m dominant because I’m so quiet. The people who’ve said that meant well, but you can only be told how surprising and unusual you are so many times before you start hearing ‘You’re doing dominance wrong’.

No, I’m not doing it wrong. We’re just different. We could just as easily say that people who try to boss around everyone in sight are trying too hard and should just accept that they’re really submissive. We could just as easily say that ‘real’ doms (not that there is such a thing, but that’s another rant) are secure enough in their dominance that they don’t need to make a big show of how very domly they are.

If there can be sensual doms, sadistic doms, strict doms, low protocol doms, playful doms, 24/7 doms, and just in the bedroom doms, there can damned well be quiet doms too.

So, Jetpack makes this nifty little review page for the last year. Mine is here. The rest of this post will probably make more sense if you take a quick look at it.

I’m especially amused by the top search terms people used to find my blog. If you find my blog by searching for ‘Fetlife’ you must be a very patient person, I don’t see my blog until the bottom of the third page of results. It takes dedication to page that far 🙂

But even better are the people who find my blog by searching for ‘forced feminization’. I must have a lot of terribly disappointed one time visitors who think they’re going to find some hot forced fem porn and end up at my rant about ‘forced’ feminization.

Now for some nerding out about statistics. About half way through 2012 my views started climbing, as you can see in the pretty graph I swiped from my Jetpack stats page. It turns out posting regularly really drives up your traffic 🙂 So far I haven’t missed a week, although a few posts have gone out late. Let’s see how long I can keep it up.

That ‘best ever’ view count you see below the monthly views graph is from when Paltego posted about adding a number of links to his blog roll, one of which was my blog. To those 387 views in perspective, my average per day is around 160. When I started this blog back in 2011, my average was down around 50.

Last summer I went through a bit of a dry spell and hardly posted anything, thus the very low view counts. In July (at least, I think it was July) I started posting weekly, and my views started climbing in short order. You would think everyone would just give up on a blogger who doesn’t blog, but when I started posting again you all seemed to come right back.

Why yes, I am the sort of terrible nerd who obsessively checks their blog stats. It’s fascinating to me which posts get all the views and comments, and which ones just don’t seem to invite a reaction. My personal favourite post last year was Just a Nerd, which got nowhere near as many comments as ‘Forced’ Feminization. Of course, one of those was controversial and one of them really wasn’t, which does make the comment counts make sense. People love a good internet argument 🙂

Speaking of comments, the people who comment here are just awesome. There was plenty of disagreement with my post about forced feminization, but everyone kept it civil and I never once had to worry about moderating the discussion.

Finally, I’m terribly proud that I got my first ever internet proposal not long ago on my post Housework, really?. Thanks Tom 🙂