{"id":9039,"date":"2024-10-30T00:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T07:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/the-cat-is-both-alive-and-dead\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T22:44:29","slug":"the-cat-is-both-alive-and-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/the-cat-is-both-alive-and-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The cat is both alive and dead\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Schr\u00f6dinger<\/a> aside, this title is referencing us. Dawn and I don\u2019t have kids, we have a cat. Our agreement was that if we ever divorced, the person who asked for it would have to take custody of the cat.<\/p>\n

We kid, of course. We loved the little furball for all of her 21(!) years with us, even if her kidneys had been slowly failing her over the past few. Up until fairly recently she was still running and jumping and meowing, if not with the spryness of her prime years. Hey I\u2019d like to see a human over a hundred years old (relatively) free climb or clear their own height in a standing jump, even if she\u2019d started to sometimes miss her mark.<\/p>\n

She had always been skinny in a world of chonk, but more and more we felt her bones through her skin. She couldn\u2019t seem to lift her tail anymore, or even sit down comfortably. Epileptic seizures had started, about once a month, and cat epilepsy is a scary thing because their brains short-circuit but they\u2019ll still try to run.<\/p>\n

Still, it wasn\u2019t until her latest episode that she finally seemed to go away, mentally speaking, and not really ever come back. So with great sorrow, we made the long delayed decision to have her euthanized. Even knowing she\u2019d had a long, good life, even with the long forewarning that she was on her way out, onions were being cut.<\/p>\n

We had already decided that another cat would be adopted when the current one went, but not the timing or circumstance beyond that we wanted a rescue pet. After coming back from the vet, Dawn figured she\u2019d want to wait awhile.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t last a day before changing her mind. Despite all the interruptions and the fur in her oil paints and innumerable other consequences of being both artist and pet owner in a small dwelling space, she woke up the next day to a catless house and it was, in her words, \u201ctoo quiet.\u201d And then a mutual friend of a friend sent us pictures of a new kitten just out of fostering at our local humane society. We went over that very day, and long story short, came home with a new mew. He is a handful (literally and figuratively) and also absolutely adorable and probably the best possible medicine for the loss we felt, we\u2019re just in the process of figuring out some things like, right at the moment while I type this, \u201cno trying to go to sleep on Dawn while she\u2019s drawing.\u201d It was the saddest of times but also it is the best of times.The cat is dead. Long live the cat.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Schr\u00f6dinger aside, this title is referencing us. Dawn and I don\u2019t have kids, we have a cat. Our agreement was that if we ever divorced, the person who asked for it would have to take custody of the cat. We kid, of course. We loved the little furball for all of her 21(!) years with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ERFy-2lN","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9037,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/looking-forwards\/","url_meta":{"origin":9039,"position":0},"title":"Looking forwards\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"December 11, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019m not a \u201cfive year plan\u201d kind of guy, for the most part. I guess Zombie Ranch might be an exception just based on it existing for 14 years and counting. We\u2019ve slowed down considerably but haven\u2019t stopped, which is more than I can say for most of our peers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9035,"url":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/blog\/host-of-cowpokes-past\/","url_meta":{"origin":9039,"position":1},"title":"Host of cowpokes past\u2026","author":"dawn","date":"December 25, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Hot take nearly half-a-decade past its prime: Red Dead Redemption 2 is turning out to be quite the good video game. I didn\u2019t buy it on its release in 2019 and continued not to buy it all through COVID. Maybe after The Witcher I just wasn\u2019t down with another epic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/files\/2024\/12\/20241224004424_1-Yk9Bwk.jpeg?resize=1400%2C800 4x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9039"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9053,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9039\/revisions\/9053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.labreject.com\/clint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}