{"id":2243,"date":"2014-05-26T08:31:13","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T14:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2014-05-26T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T14:31:13","slug":"cats-in-paksworld-and-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=2243","title":{"rendered":"Cats in Paksworld (and Elsewhere)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of you have noticed that both cats and dogs are not prominent in Paksworld…and yet, they’re there, they just haven’t been emphasized.\u00a0\u00a0 Crown <\/em>has a cat who moves plot a little, in one area.\u00a0 And there’s a hound someone recognizes.\u00a0\u00a0 But that’s pretty much it.\u00a0\u00a0 Cats in Paksworld serve the same purposes as they do here, in those farms, ranches, and towns where vermin cause damage and spread disease.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Cleo-and-rat066\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleopatra, our current cat, with a hispid cotton rat she killed.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cleo came to us as a stray–I thought she was a feral, to start with, but apparently (since she jumped into a friend’s lap, rolled on her back, and said “Save me” in cat body language) she had been owned, but also trapped in a building for some time.\u00a0 She was terrified of enclosed spaces, including the house, for years.\u00a0 She was a superb barn cat–this was, as far as I know, her last successful hunt, last summer, when she was already quite old and stiffening up.\u00a0\u00a0 She brought it up to the porch and presented it, then ate the whole thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Hispid cotton rats are the common field rat around here, much appreciated by cats, foxes, coyotes, hawks, and owls. \u00a0 We have other rats (including the house rat kind, though it’s not the main one) but the hispid cotton rat is everywhere. \u00a0 She also took mice of all kinds (we have several) and young rabbits.\u00a0\u00a0 Once I watched her kill a snake–a harmless rough green snake, which she pounced on, exactly like the mongoose in Kipling’s story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.”\u00a0 Jumped on from behind, bit behind the head, sprang away.\u00a0 When younger and very athletic, she would jump up on the van, and from there to the rafters of the carport, where the old Folbots are stored, and den in there, safe from coyotes and other problems.<\/p>\n

She has transitioned to “mostly house cat” over the past two years; this winter was the first time we could convince her to stay inside all night, and now she considers me her ideal sleep partner, draping herself over me, or lying next to me, when not complaining that I turn over too often.\u00a0\u00a0 The vet tells us she’s remarkable healthy for a cat her age (guesstimate of 19-20; she came to us in 1997 and the vet considered her probably 2 to 2 1\/2 when we took her in.)\u00a0\u00a0 She still wants out at least twice a day, to go drink from the artificial stream (fed with untreated rainwater from our rainwater system) and wander about. In cold or wet weather she comes right back in; in warm weather she may lounge in the shade somewhere for hours.\u00a0 She gets to do pretty much what she wants to, except that I consider the kitchen table a NO CATS zone and she does not.<\/p>\n

Cats in Paksworld are in the size range of domestic cats, and everyone with a barn or stable has one or more (usually more).\u00a0\u00a0 Some people let them in the house and some don’t.\u00a0 Most cooks do not want them in the kitchen, though they will feed them scraps at the back door (whatever counts as a back door.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If there is an animal to be milked, that family’s cats learn to “catch” some milk squirted at them.\u00a0\u00a0 They don’t invade theology (that I’ve noticed so far)–they aren’t considered evil, no matter what color they are, and are not considered divinities, no matter what color or shape they are.\u00a0\u00a0 I ‘see’ most of them as having medium to short hair length (no real longhairs) and a variety of colors and markings.\u00a0 But nobody (that I’ve met so far) breeds cats in Paksworld–they’re prolific all on their own.<\/p>\n

So here’s the cat topic, for those who want to talk about cats…<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of you have noticed that both cats and dogs are not prominent in Paksworld…and yet, they’re there, they just haven’t been emphasized.\u00a0\u00a0 Crown has a cat who moves plot a little, in one area.\u00a0 And there’s a hound someone recognizes.\u00a0\u00a0 But that’s pretty much it.\u00a0\u00a0 Cats in Paksworld serve the same purposes as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,53],"tags":[108,112],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-background","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2245,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions\/2245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}