{"id":2711,"date":"2009-01-07T13:30:14","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T18:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=2711"},"modified":"2009-01-07T13:30:14","modified_gmt":"2009-01-07T18:30:14","slug":"extreme-ailurophilia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/extreme-ailurophilia\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme Ailurophilia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gingerbread<\/a>Cats tend to push people to the outer limits of response; very few people I know can simply take ’em or leave ’em.<\/p>\n

The Missus and I are squarely in the cat-loving circle. Except that she developed severe respiratory allergies to cat fur and dander in recent years, we’d probably still be hosting nine or ten of the little beasts instead of letting the supply, well, dwindle. (We’re down to two now.)<\/p>\n

The current issue of a local magazine<\/a>, though, has a story (not yet online) about someone who really<\/em> cares about cats. His name is Craig Grant, and he’s the proprietor of something called Caboodle Ranch: a 30-acre chunk of the North Florida woods functioning as a sanctuary for feral or otherwise unwanted cats.<\/p>\n

Grant is a retired builder who’s turned his talents and, well, pretty much his whole life over to several hundred cats. (The photo above is the so-called Gingerbread Lane — a street of cat-scale houses, picket fences, and so on. More photos of the ranch’s facility are available at its LiveJournal photo gallery<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

One thing that really got to me was a quote from Grant at the very end of the article, comparing his pre-Caboodle life to what his 14-hour seven days a week are like now — when he owns nothing which isn’t cat-related:<\/p>\n

I had the biggest house on the street when I was raising my family… All show. I had a Corvette. My wife drove a Volvo. I had a new truck for the business. I had everything, but I was miserable. Now I’ve got nothing, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been. Isn’t it amazing?<\/p>\n

I think I was too busy trying to make it perfect with money, thinking I could buy my happiness — and all of a sudden it showed up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(This is seriously reminiscent of a post<\/a> at literary agent Janet Reid’s blog a couple days ago.)<\/p>\n

Among the other gems available at the Caboodle Ranch Web site<\/a> is this video, of Grant doing one of his big feedings. (Every couple days he loads up a wheelbarrow with cans of cat food and makes deliveries all around the ranch. While providing nourishment for the cats, these rounds also enable him to do an informal head count, to see who’s injured or outright missing.)<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

As an aside, note that it costs around $6,000 a month to run Caboodle Ranch. And it’s pretty much a one-man show; no telling what will become of it — and its non-human majority population — when he’s gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cats tend to push people to the outer limits of response; very few people I know can simply take ’em or leave ’em. The Missus and I are squarely in the cat-loving circle. Except that she developed severe respiratory allergies to cat fur and dander in recent years, we’d probably still be hosting nine or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_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":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,94,405],"tags":[388,880,881],"class_list":{"0":"post-2711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-themissus","7":"category-02_in-the-news","8":"category-nature","9":"tag-cats","10":"tag-caboodle-ranch","11":"tag-ailurophilia","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-HJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2711"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2718,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2711\/revisions\/2718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}