{"id":34,"date":"2006-01-13T12:54:01","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T17:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=34"},"modified":"2019-12-26T14:05:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-26T19:05:33","slug":"in-addition-to-a-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/in-addition-to-a-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"In addition to a dog,"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have two cats. Actually, one is most certainly a cat. The other, I’m not so sure about. I think he may be an alien.<\/p>\n

Nobody ever saw his parents. My sister discovered him, bawling under a bush outside her house. She lives on a crossroads in the country, which may make you think, “ah, the sort of place where numbskulls slow down & pitch kittens onto the berm saying ‘you’ll be happy here'” but consider this: from the air, a country crossroads looks like “x — land here.”<\/p>\n

He is gray. He has narrow hips, and swaggers. He amuses himself by destroying things — not maliciously, but out of a showy carelessness, as if to say “I’m not from this planet, this vase is meaningless to me.” Swat. Crash.<\/p>\n

He is rapturously affectionate. He can’t bear to be parted from me. When I’m home, he follows me around the house. When I return after being out, I see him waiting on the windowsill, as if he’d been listening for my car. Then he jumps down so he’ll be at the door when I come in.<\/p>\n

The other day, the basement door got pushed shut so he was down there for quite awhile in the afternoon. Several hours, I suppose–I lose track of time when I’m working. Then that night, when I put down his dish of food, he refused it. I returned to the dish–he followed me–I tapped the dish to make sure he knew the food was there. He still wouldn’t eat. He followed me again when I stepped away, looking up at me.<\/p>\n

Then it struck me, he hadn’t had any lap time all day.<\/p>\n

So I scooped him up, and cuddled him, and murmered nonsense into his fur.<\/p>\n

Set him back down. He went straight to his dish.<\/p>\n

The cat would rather love than eat.<\/p>\n

I’m mad about him.<\/p>\n

\"Cat\"\/<\/p>\n

[tags]cat friday catblogging[\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have two cats. Actually, one is most certainly a cat. The other, I’m not so sure about. I think he may be an alien. Nobody ever saw his parents. My sister discovered him, bawling under a bush outside her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cats"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4939,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions\/4939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}