I’ve come home from my afternoon walk and shoveled the back deck for 2 days now – Monday and Tuesday. I cleared from the sliding glass door to the front of the BBQ, and a path to the stairs and railing. Like I would for Smokey. But not as much as I would for him, but started. Plus cleared about 1 foot off the giant pile that was his. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s been the first time I’ve gone out there since he left me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got very sad yesterday after doing it so decided not to do it today. I decided that already on my walk. But I still looked out there tonight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I saw them. The paw prints. In the newly-shoveled, topped-off snow pile. So I went out there. The snow was soft, so I know they were new. I touched the snow – yep. Soft. But paw prints all around. I looked at the pile of snow on the stairs and see them there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know they are not Smokey’s. I don’t live in a fantasy world. I would imagine a coyote. Although that seems odd since that has never, ever happened and they are so skittish. But with Smokey gone, and a snow pile highway right up to the deck, maybe they smelled a buried treat and felt brazen enough? Smokey loved to bury his treats so I am sure there is at least 1 out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know they are not Smokey’s. But I am not going to lie and say that when I first saw them, I didn’t look around for that milisecond before my analytical brain kicked in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or maybe they were Smokey’s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve come home from my afternoon walk and shoveled the back deck for 2 days now – Monday and Tuesday. I cleared from the sliding glass door to the front of the BBQ, and a path to the stairs and railing. Like I would for Smokey. But not as much as I would for him, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[543,86,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-silly-thoughts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11111,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11109\/revisions\/11111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/a99kitten.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}