{"id":1543,"date":"2019-03-31T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T17:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1543"},"modified":"2020-05-07T15:59:02","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T22:59:02","slug":"despite-every-effort-cat-moved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1543","title":{"rendered":"Despite Every Effort, The Cat Moved In"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We used to have a cat, but we gave it away.\u00a0 We had a good reason.\u00a0 It turned out after we got it, that it was A Cat.\u00a0 As a result, we have been cat-less.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, our cat-less life came to a screeching halt.\u00a0 It began with a phone call from my wife \u2013<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a cat on the porch.\u00a0 It\u2019s meowing really loud, and it won\u2019t leave.\u00a0 Come home right now!\u201d The tone of her voice imbued the mild concern of, say, a DEFCON 1 emergency.<\/p>\n

By the time I got home, the cat had breached the front door and was sitting in the foyer meowing as if he were Lassie trying to alert us that Timmy had fallen down the well (again).<\/p>\n

I want to say ahead of time that I\u2019m not proud of what I did next.\u00a0 But I did it out of loyalty to my wonderful wife.\u00a0 So let\u2019s be clear, I am embarrassed to admit what I am about to tell you, but I would do it again if my wife asked (ordered).<\/p>\n

My wife developed the theory that the cat might live in a Victorian home two blocks away.\u00a0 Why, you ask?\u00a0 Because we live in a Victorian, and she surmised that the cat might have confused the two houses.\u00a0 It was already 10 o\u2019clock at night, and my initial inclination was to launch headlong into a lecture about how I doubted that this cat was versed in Western European architecture.\u00a0 Instead, I grabbed my coat.<\/p>\n

Off we marched down the street, the cat dutifully following us toward the Victorian.\u00a0 When we arrived, the cat showed about has much interest in the place as an aardvark being shown a violin.\u00a0 I even marched up the walkway (like an idiot) trying to interest the cat in following me, but he remained on the sidewalk with a feline expression of sour disinterest.<\/p>\n

After it was obvious the cat had no interest in this house, my wife suggested we walk around the neighborhood to see if the cat recognized any of the houses.<\/p>\n

Eight butt-cheek freezing blocks later, we arrived back at our house.\u00a0 The cat was still following us.\u00a0 When we got to our walkway, he couldn\u2019t race up the walkway fast enough.<\/p>\n

We resigned ourselves to the cat spending the night.<\/p>\n

The next morning, I made my next critical error.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have any cat food, so I looked around the pantry.\u00a0 I spotted a can of tuna.\u00a0 As my good friend, who for the purposes of this column I will refer to as \u201cJohn,\u201d because his name is John Kim, later explained to me, \u2018Jack, what were you thinking?\u00a0 No cat moves from a tuna house, back to a non-tuna house!\u2019<\/p>\n

We took the cat to the vet down the street to see if he had an identification chip under his skin.\u00a0 We learned three things: 1. He didn\u2019t have a chip; 2. He had never been neutered; and, 3. While he didn\u2019t have fleas (that they could find at the time), he did have \u201cflea dandruff.\u201d\u00a0 (This was new to me, I didn\u2019t think fleas had dandruff.)<\/p>\n

Our wonderful local animal shelter helped us look for his owner.\u00a0 But, alas, no one came forward.<\/p>\n

Finally, my daughter\u2019s boyfriend summed it up: \u201cSomebody dumped the cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

My wife snapped into action.\u00a0 Amazon boxes began filling our house. \u00a0UPS trucks began getting into UPS truck traffic jams in our driveway.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a taste \u2013<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A ceremonial \u201cscratching post\u201d to remind Rocky (his new name) to scratch our custom upholstered living room chairs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>An automated litter box built to handle a herd (three) of cats.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Enough cat toys to start a cat-themed amusement park.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGourmet\u201d cat food.\u00a0 (The cat\u2019s eating better than I am.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And, of course, a bed to perch on his favorite end of the family room couch.<\/p>\n

In short, here is our situation \u2013<\/p>\n

The bad news is, we are no longer cat-less.<\/p>\n

The good news is, (so far), the cat has allowed us to stay in his home.<\/p>\n

\n

WAIT! \u00a0You\u2019re not done yet.\u00a0 Earn good karma!\u00a0 Please comment and share on Facebook, Twitter or your other favorite apps.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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______________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Check out these great books:<\/p>\n

The Lawyer\u2019s Song: Navigating the legal wilderness<\/em><\/strong> \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2K41Tax<\/p>\n

Seven Rules for the College Playground –<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2IqXxgn<\/p>\n

Seven Secrets You Need to Know to Hire the Right Lawyer –<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/buff.ly\/2roFIov<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We used to have a cat, but we gave it away.\u00a0 We had a good reason.\u00a0 It turned out after we got it, that it was A Cat.\u00a0 As a result, we have been cat-less. Recently, however, our cat-less life came to a screeching halt.\u00a0 It began with a phone call from my wife \u2013 […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[764,766,767,765],"class_list":["post-1543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-cat","tag-cat-humor","tag-funny-cat","tag-kitty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2167,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions\/2167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}