{"id":18562,"date":"2013-06-25T13:25:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T18:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmcelroy.org\/?p=18562"},"modified":"2013-06-28T02:57:18","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T07:57:18","slug":"goodbye-sonny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=18562","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Sonny"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sonny<\/a><\/p>\n

I was heartbroken to discover Tuesday morning that Sonny, my favorite cat, had died during the night. I have no idea what killed him, but I found him spread out in one of his favorite sleeping spots, so I assume he died in his sleep.<\/p>\n

I’ve only had Sonny for a couple of years, but he had become my favorite of my current group of cats. He was the most friendly and loving of all the ones I have now — and one of the most loving and trusting I’ve ever known. He was constantly at my elbow and in my lap — always wanting my attention.<\/p>\n

I never like to lose any of them, but to lose this one really, really hurts. Even though I only had him for about two years, it feels as though he’s been here forever, just because he had quickly played such a central role in my everyday life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s odd now some animal deaths are harder to take than others, depending on how much that particular cat or dog meant to you. There’s no way I could tell you how sweet and loving Sonny had become since he transitioned from feral street cat to happy indoor cat. I’ve only had a few over the years who were this loving and trusting. They don’t come along very often.<\/p>\n

I’ve never yet cried about the death of a human being, but I do cry about deaths such as Sonny’s. Dogs and cats mean more to me than most people do. They’re more loving and trusting than most people are — and they need us, too. There’s a symbiotic bond between certain animals and people that’s hard to recreate anywhere else in life. And this particular death is going to shake me up for awhile.<\/p>\n

The only good thing I can say is that he had two years of a very good life. He had lived on the street as a stray before I took him in, so I know what he’s had was better than what he had before. He was a very, very happy cat. He had someone who loved him and spent a lot of time with him — and he acted very content.<\/p>\n

That will be more consolation later, but right now it just hurts to have lost him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was heartbroken to discover Tuesday morning that Sonny, my favorite cat, had died during the night. I have no idea what killed him, but I found him spread out in one of his favorite sleeping spots, so I assume he died in his sleep. I’ve only had Sonny for a couple of years, but Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-18562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-4Po","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18562"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18620,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18562\/revisions\/18620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}