{"id":3004,"date":"2012-04-04T07:43:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T15:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2012-04-04T07:43:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T15:43:30","slug":"bog-meet-internet-internet-bog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/?p=3004","title":{"rendered":"BOG, meet Internet. Internet: BOG."},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
 <\/p>\n

Russian for “God”, I’ve been told. Phonetically at least. Also British for “toilet”.\u00a0 But here, now, it’s an acronym:\u00a0 Big Orange Guy<\/em> or Beloved Old Goof<\/em> or Barrel O’Greatness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He is not, as you can see, a great beauty. He may in fact be the homeliest mammal in all of southern Ontario. And we sure as hell weren’t shopping for another cat, not with a huge Banana-shaped hole<\/a> dug so recently into our hearts. But one of Caitlin’s students sent her this facebook link: an unadoptable old stray over at Toronto Cat Rescue<\/a>, tagged with the cruelly-ironic handle of “Gorgeous”.<\/p>\n

And then we saw the list of features that came standard:<\/p>\n

Old and beat-up, check. A life spent on the street, check (he lived at least eight years in an abandoned car! In a junkyard<\/em>!). FIV-positive, check. Scabs, ear mites, “shaved veterinary clearcuts”, check check check. Frost-bite, check. (See that slight twist of the left ear, at the tip? Not nearly so extreme as Banana’s, but then, whose is?).<\/p>\n

Purrs desperately and volubly when shown any affection whatsoever: check<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We weren’t looking for another cat. I myself wasn’t ready<\/em> for another cat. But sometimes, creatures in need can’t wait for us to be ready<\/em>: and in a world overflowing with mewling symmetrical kittens, who’s gonna take a chance on a sick junkyard ginger already on the downhill side of life?<\/p>\n

That was a rhetorical question. The Gang of Fur now has a new member, so Banana-like in so many of his behaviors that Nurture must have totally kicked Nature’s ass. I think there’s something about street life that causes feral rescues to converge on a common behavioral template (call it the “Can’t Believe I Won the MegaMillions” mindset).<\/p>\n

In fact, I may have only met one more<\/em> pathetically-grateful feline in my life (and that was at the same home where I met BOG): a small formerly-feral Persian whose eyes had been so massively infected that they literally ruptured<\/em> before her abductors could get her to the vet. The sockets filled in; the fur grew over the holes, leaving no trace; and now she is a flat-faced eyeless monstrosity sheathed in black fur. Think of a bonsai version of the alien males from Attack the Block<\/em><\/a>, only with a pink toothy maw instead of a blue fluorescent one.<\/p>\n

We probably would have taken her too, if she hadn\u2019t already been adopted.<\/p>\n

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  Russian for “God”, I’ve been told. Phonetically at least. Also British for “toilet”.\u00a0 But here, now, it’s an acronym:\u00a0 Big Orange Guy or Beloved Old Goof or Barrel O’Greatness. He is not, as you can see, a great beauty. He may in fact be the homeliest mammal in all of southern Ontario. And we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3022,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions\/3022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}