{"id":167,"date":"2004-07-10T01:26:04","date_gmt":"2004-07-10T05:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/07\/10\/the-cats-meow\/"},"modified":"2011-06-18T23:30:17","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T03:30:17","slug":"the-cats-meow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/07\/the-cats-meow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cat’s Meow"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

While walking home from Harvard Square this evening we came upon a
\ncat that had been hit by a car. It was lying still in the middle of
\nPutnam Ave, and two guys who had gotten there a little before us were
\ntrying to figure out what to do. We decided to move a traffic barrel
\nthat had been on a nearby sidewalk in front of the cat to prevent it
\nfrom being run over again. While we were doing this, the cat began
\nmoving. At first it gave some soft meows<\/span>, but as it woke from unconsciousness it began to cry. The noise was almost human, very evocative, and truly horrific.<\/p>\n

We left the scene soon after the people who believed they had hit
\nthe cat returned. I kept thinking about that cry. Why should the cat
\ncry? It made no sense<\/span>. In the
\nwild, a greviously injured animal crying would simply signal to the
\nworld where the next fresh kill would be. Why should an animal cry at
\nall?\n<\/p>\n

Kittens cry to seek comfort from their mother. Was that all this cat
\nwanted? In some instinctive way was the cat simply calling for its <\/span>mother?
\nAfter all, on the brink of death, an animal’s behavior would hardly
\naffect its species’ evolution — the individual animal is already
\nweeded from the gene pool. So perhaps the cat was crying for comfort
\nbecause there was no hope for survival, anyway.\n<\/p>\n

When we pray to God, are we also not invoking the memory of our parents’ comfort?\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While walking home from Harvard Square this evening we came upon a cat that had been hit by a car. It was lying still in the middle of Putnam Ave, and two guys who had gotten there a little before … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44935],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-massachusetts-boston-cambridge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}