{"id":36,"date":"2026-08-27T06:08:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T06:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/?p=36"},"modified":"2026-08-28T01:37:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T01:37:28","slug":"familiar-felines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Familiar Felines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">My street has many cats<br>The brindle one hides at home<br>The tabby sits quietly<br>like it doesn\u2019t have a care in the world<br><br>The tuxedo cat<br>sits on its front step unmoving like a statue<br>except the ever-slow movement of the tip of the tail<br>slowly swishing in the afternoon sun<br><br>The sleek tabby<br>from the bottom of the street<br>slinks up the road in the afternoon<br>searching for another cat\u2019s meal to purloin<br><br>Then there\u2019s John<br>almost white with light grey highlights<br>A big cat<br>Hides around my garden most of the day<br><br>He is supposed to live across the road<br>He wanders home when ready to be fed<br>If I wait quietly in my driveway<br>He approaches warily before he scampers past<br><br>Mia is my favourite<br>She sits on my sandstone letterbox<br>In the sun, a signal of fair weather<br>On lookout up and down the street<br><br>I felt them purring once<br>That deep staccato purr of satisfaction<br>Broadcasting their mood, requesting attention<br>A hint of their primeval heritage<br><br>An eye was removed after a fight<br>With one of the other local cats<br>Mia was not happy for a while<br>They aimlessly wandered the street<br>Screeching a plaintive meow<br>Were they demanding their eye back?<br><br>Before Mia was Austen<br>Dark grey, fluffy and intensely curious<br>He liked jumping into my car<br>and running into my house<br>to scurry off and head back home<br>as soon as he realised where he was<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Written July 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a9 Matthew Johnson. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My street has many catsThe brindle one hides at homeThe tabby sits quietlylike it doesn\u2019t have a care in the worldThe tuxedo catsits on its front step unmoving like a statueexcept the ever-slow movement of the tip of the tailslowly &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/?p=36\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,9],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-poetry","tag-whimsy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewjohnson.id.au\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}