{"id":214,"date":"2012-03-15T09:25:41","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T15:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2012-03-15T10:56:02","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T16:56:02","slug":"the-crazy-cat-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/2012\/03\/the-crazy-cat-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"The Crazy Cat Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/2012\/03\/the-crazy-cat-lady\/copy-of-img_1401\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-215\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-215 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Copy-of-IMG_1401-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Copy-of-IMG_1401-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Copy-of-IMG_1401-600x450.jpg 600w, https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Copy-of-IMG_1401.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Do you ever read an account of some bizarre bit of human behavior in the newspaper and, while everyone around you is bemused, think to yourself, \u201cThat could be me?\u201d I had that experience recently when I read an account of a 95-year-old woman found passed out in her front yard. When the first responders went into her house, they found 40 cats.<\/p>\n<p>Lately I\u2019ve become more aware of the thin line between being \u201ca lady who likes cats\u201d and \u201ca crazy cat lady,\u201d and I have to tell you, it\u2019s getting thinner. I wasn\u2019t always so attracted to cats. We owned and loved two Golden Retrievers and I remain to this day a &#8220;big dog person.&#8221; When a cat entered a room, I would instinctively put my hand to my throat, because I was sure it was just looking for an opportunity to go for my jugular vein. After all, they looked like miniature tigers. How could you trust them? All I can tell you is that, as with most biases, knowledge dispelled my fear and increased my understanding and appreciation. And getting to know one cat invalidated the generalizations I had accepted about all of them.<\/p>\n<p>So how many cats would I like to have you (and my husband!) might ask. That\u2019s hard to say. After having at least one cat around for the last two dozen years, I\u2019ve learned to truly appreciate their unique personalities. At the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region all the cats available for adoption are categorized according to one of nine \u201cfeline-alities.\u201d (I think they should have called them purr-sonalities.) For example, our cat Molly clearly fits into the Personal Assistant category. If anyone is wrapping a gift, working on taxes, or flipping through a cookbook to come up with something for dinner, she\u2019s right there to lend a paw. Our cat Beau, however, would be classified as the Leader of the Band, a cat who does everything in a big way. Although he does love to cuddle, he\u2019s especially big into adventure and couldn\u2019t care less what we are doing unless he sees one of us go outside. Then he waits right by the door for us to open it again in hopes of blowing this boring baby boomer abode for some real excitement!<\/p>\n<p>So you see, that leaves seven cat purr-sonalities I\u2019m missing! What about the Private Investigator, the Secret Admirer, the Love Bug, the Sidekick, etc.? By my calculations, I only need to add 1.2 cats per year to reach 40 by the time I\u2019m 95. That doesn\u2019t seem excessive, does it? (Although I\u2019m not sure what one feeds a partial cat.)<\/p>\n<p>Actually, just writing this has been therapeutic. And there is one really good reason I\u2019ll just continue to enjoy Molly and Beau and won\u2019t go over into the \u201ccrazy cat lady\u201d lifestyle. You see, I have a pretty good idea why that woman (who was fine, by the way) was passed out in her front yard. It was the smell of 40 litter boxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you ever read an account of some bizarre bit of human behavior in the newspaper and, while everyone around you is bemused, think to yourself, \u201cThat could be me?\u201d I had that experience recently when I read an account of a 95-year-old woman found passed out in her front yard. When the first responders [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,11],"class_list":{"0":"post-214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-back-porch-break","7":"tag-cats","8":"tag-crazy-cat-lady","9":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyparkerbrummett.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}