{"id":3600,"date":"2019-08-02T03:31:14","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T11:31:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/?p=3600"},"modified":"2019-08-02T03:31:14","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T11:31:14","slug":"frivolous-friday-when-the-humans-are-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/?p=3600","title":{"rendered":"Frivolous Friday \u2013 When the Humans Are Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Before leaving for our four-day trip to celebrate Dennis\u2019s mother\u2019s 98th<\/sup> birthday last week, I picked up all of Lily\u2019s animal toys. She scatters them around the house, you see\u2014mostly in the hallway leading to my office and also to my bedroom. Sometimes she\u2019ll drop one in the kitchen for us to stumble over. But I scooped them all up and put them away. When we returned home, not a stuffed owl, otter, or kitty-cat was in sight. They remained tucked away in the toy box.<\/p>\n

Within minutes of us being home, however, Lily went\"\" to work dragging out a tiny bear, then a baby possum, lion, eagle, lamb and hedgehog and depositing them each at my office door as I caught up on a few things.<\/p>\n

This tells me that she does this for me. What I still don\u2019t know is whether she\u2019s showing off her hunting skills, bringing gifts to please me, or maybe she\u2019s marking her territory. There\u2019s some speculation that female cats will carry things around in their mouth because they\u2019re frustrated mothers\u2014never had a \"\"chance to become a mother and they have some latent motherly desires. This cat will also put all of her \u201ckittens\u201d in the same general area\u2014gathered together to keep them safe.<\/p>\n

But most experts seem to consider this more of a hunting behavior, especially when the cat loudly announces her arrival with her “catch.” However, she’s obviously not hunting for herself. It’s for me–either to teach me or to show off her hunting skills.<\/p>\n

This is the first cat I\u2019ve had who did this, so it\u2019s been kind of interesting to watch. Our house certainly has a unique d\u00e9cor with Lily on the job. But I learned over time that if I want the house to stay tidy, all I have to do is leave because Lily\u2019s toys stay in the basket when we\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before leaving for our four-day trip to celebrate Dennis\u2019s mother\u2019s 98th birthday last week, I picked up all of Lily\u2019s animal toys. She scatters them around the house, you see\u2014mostly in the hallway leading to my office and also to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3601,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3600\/revisions\/3601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matilijapress.com\/catscapades\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}