{"id":461,"date":"2020-07-31T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=461"},"modified":"2020-07-31T10:32:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T18:32:56","slug":"theres-a-space-in-the-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2020\/07\/31\/theres-a-space-in-the-office\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a Space in the Office\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

I grew up in a household where, at any given time, there were a handful of cats and possibly a dog, and some fish, and maybe a few hand-raised rodents.\u00a0 Households had critters, that’s just how it was.\u00a0 <\/span>As an adult, and a writer, it always seemed essential to me to have a cat (or two), for office companionship.\u00a0 <\/span>But I haven\u2019t had a dog, one that was mine, <\/i>since college.\u00a0 <\/span>My life – travel and housing – really didn\u2019t support it.<\/p>\n

Until, a few years ago, it did.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as though I didn\u2019t have opportunities since then to adopt. For the past several years, I\u2019ve been volunteering at my local animal shelter, and my friends started taking bets on when I would end up bringing a dog home with me.\u00a0 <\/span>But other than the occasional week-long fostering, I resisted – mainly because I had two cats at home already, one of whom was older and in ill health.<\/p>\n

We lost that elder cat a few months ago, and I thought that – between Covid-19 and moving from a rental to my own place, maybe I should just wait before thinking about getting a new animal.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe my remaining cat would like<\/i> being an Only for a while, after all.<\/p>\n

Well, no.\u00a0 <\/span>He really doesn\u2019t, if the way he keeps going to the door and demanding to be let out so he can look for his missing buddy is any indication.\u00a0 <\/span>And when I took in a foster pup for a week…the door-demanding stopped.\u00a0 <\/span>Only to return again once the foster pup was adopted.<\/p>\n

Okay then.\u00a0 I mean, the cat’s insisting, right?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Normally, this wouldn\u2019t be an issue.\u00a0 <\/span>I volunteer at a shelter!\u00a0 <\/span>Finding a new companion would be easy!\u00a0 <\/span>But the shelter is closed, the volunteers on hiatus, and most of the animals out to long-term foster homes already.\u00a0 <\/span>So.\u00a0 <\/span>Time to turn to the internet like everyone else.<\/p>\n

I opened up an adoption page for cats, and started to skim through the available faces.\u00a0 <\/span>And quickly discovered that, um…nope.\u00a0 <\/span>Just the thought of adding another cat to the household made my entire soul seize up, and my heart ache.\u00a0 <\/span>That space still belonged to my elder cat, however gone he might be.<\/p>\n

So.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe it was time, finally, for me to have another dog?\u00a0 <\/span>Writers could have dogs as well as cats, I\u2019d been assured.\u00a0 <\/span>And one of each would balance the household nicely.<\/p>\n

But. When the country first went into Lockdown, knowing that they\u2019d be home all the time, and finally had no excuse to delay, people raced out and adopted dogs like crazy.\u00a0 <\/span>Which was great for the dogs, and also great for shelters, who now had fewer animals to care for, with their reduced staff, but \u2026.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, adopting a dog is almost as difficult as adopting a human baby.\u00a0 <\/span>Especially since I can\u2019t take just any pup; they have to be cat-friendly.\u00a0 <\/span>That rules out a lot of possibilities.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

For several weeks, I\u2019ve been haunting the petfinder page the same way I\u2019d haunted the real estate pages months before, looking for a face and description that tugged at me, and said \u201cthis one is maybe meant to be mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019ve applied for seven different pups.\u00a0 <\/span>Three have been adopted out from under me.\u00a0 <\/span>Two, the waiting period has come and gone without contact, so I\u2019m assuming they didn\u2019t think I was a good match.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m still waiting on the remaining two – and inching slowly back to the shelter pages, hoping that a new face has been posted.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we have a short-term foster pup in the house for the weekend.\u00a0 <\/span>And the cat has stopped demanding to be let out to look for his lost buddy.<\/p>\n

(tune in next month for Further Adventures of Pupper Hunt)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up in a household where, at any given time, there were a handful of cats and possibly a dog, and some fish, and maybe a few hand-raised rodents.\u00a0 Households had critters, that’s just how it was.\u00a0 As an adult, and a writer, it always seemed essential to me to have a cat (or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,56],"tags":[36,57,92],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals-pets","category-life-experiences","tag-covid-19","tag-laura-anne-gilman","tag-pets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}