{"id":171,"date":"2010-03-04T22:23:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T22:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/?p=171"},"modified":"2012-02-14T16:07:05","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T16:07:05","slug":"new-contender-gerrard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/?p=171","title":{"rendered":"New Contender: Gerrard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/Gerrard.jpg\" alt=\"help\" \/>Name:  Gerrard (Identity confirmed)<\/p>\n<p>We, of course, know <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/?p=157\" target=\"_blank\">Gerrard<\/a> very well. We remember him running away. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/?p=161\" target=\"_blank\">We remember him coming home again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re very pleased to have the opportunity to welcome Gerrard into the Meowseley family. Not that we&#8217;re related to cats. Nor are many of the cats related to each other. It&#8217;s a figurative family.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Agility &#8211; 4\/10\n<ul>\n<li>Gerrard, apparently suffers from vertigo. \u00a0He gets the fear when he climbs on a table. He&#8217;s a cat.\u00a0This is a very poor display indeed. On the other hand he can fight in the style of <a href=\"http:\/\/dogtanian.net\/i\/desktops\/Desktop-07.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">Dogtanian<\/a> whilst balanced on a wall as thick as your hand. We don&#8217;t know what to believe. We love the idea of a cat pretending to be a cartoon dog in pre-revolutionary France. In fact we love the idea of cats standing on two legs and pretending to be people. Overall the vertigo story sounds entirely more credible so a paltry score is awarded.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Health &amp; Vitality &#8211; 3\/10\n<ul>\n<li>We respect you too much to make any outlandish claims about Gerrard&#8217;s health and vitality. Look at him, he&#8217;s clearly been engaging with healthcare services. On the plus side we&#8217;re reassured that anything that is wrong with him is purely down to fighting. Over the years he&#8217;s had abscesses and a torn retina. We do agree that he seems to have a very shiny coat so we gave him a bit for that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Home invasion &#8211; 9\/10\n<ul>\n<li>Gerrard&#8217;s previous home\u00a0invasion antics have been plastered all over the local (cat related) press. Having heard more detail of other\u00a0occasions where he&#8217;s been &#8220;visiting&#8221; we&#8217;re beginning to wonder if he has finally crossed the line between natural curiosity and running away from home. Our most favourite of stories is where he hid in a plumbers van for 100 yards. We assume that in cat society this would be considered equivalent to\u00a0\u00a0joining the circus. We also understand that he often visits another house over the road. Whilst we like to see cats getting about we are very concerned about which road this might be. We know the area and we know the dangers that lie in store for cats that haven&#8217;t been adequately trained (that&#8217;s all of them).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Meow &#8211; 6\/10\n<ul>\n<li>Gerrard&#8217;s owner believes he has a bog standard meow. There isn&#8217;t any such thing as bog standard meow. Every communication should be valued.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Fighting Ability &#8211; 9\/10\n<ul>\n<li>We were so tempted to go for full marks but we realised, at the last minute, that Gerrard doesn&#8217;t seem to have a great record at winning fights. We are intrigued to hear more about Rufus that recently beat him up. In our head Gerrard and Rufus are recreating seminal scenes from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome complete with a Tina Turner backing track. On the other hand Gerrard did systematically destroy a nest of baby mice before finishing off the parents. Classy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Overall cuteness &#8211; 7\/10\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s just stupidly subjective. What does cute even mean? \u00a0We&#8217;re not having doubts about the concept. Gerrard is cute and gets \u00a0a good score for it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Friendliness &#8211; 6\/10\n<ul>\n<li>If going round other people&#8217;s houses is any sign of friendliness then Gerrard is about the friendliest cat alive, today.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Dignity &#8211; 2\/10\n<ul>\n<li>Cats dressed as satellite dishes \u00a0don&#8217;t have any dignity left .<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Intelligence &#8211; 10\/10\n<ul>\n<li>This might be a first. Full marks for intelligence. Deciding whether or not this is a first would require some time consuming trawling through other scores which quite frankly we can&#8217;t be bothered to do. Now, it is claimed, that Gerrard can tell the difference between a diesel and petrol engine. \u00a0This seems quite fanciful, and we do lack some detail. We&#8217;re not sure whether this means he can read the words on the back of a car or has some aural power that is beyond imagination. We&#8217;ve never been faced with the proposition that we&#8217;d come across a contender who&#8217;s deductive powers outstripped our own.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Remaining lives &#8211; 7\/10\n<ul>\n<li>He likes a scrap. He seems to like losing a scrap. He spent Christmas round someone\u00a0else&#8217;s\u00a0house.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Summary: 63%<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a story of highs and lows. The giddy heights of abnormal intelligence balanced by a frankly rubbish ability to stand on a table. \u00a0On the plus side Gerrard is alive and that puts our petty sniping into some much needed context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Name: Gerrard (Identity confirmed) We, of course, know Gerrard very well. We remember him running away. We remember him coming home again. We&#8217;re very pleased to have the opportunity to welcome Gerrard into the Meowseley family. Not that we&#8217;re related to cats. Nor are many of the cats related to each other. It&#8217;s a figurative family. Agility &#8211; 4\/10 Gerrard, apparently suffers from vertigo. \u00a0He gets the fear when he climbs on a table. He&#8217;s a cat.\u00a0This is a very poor display indeed. On the other hand he can fight in the style of Dogtanian whilst balanced on a wall as thick as your hand. We don&#8217;t know what to believe. We love the idea of a cat pretending to be a cartoon dog in pre-revolutionary France. In fact we love the idea of cats standing on two legs and pretending to be people. Overall the vertigo story sounds entirely more credible so a paltry score is awarded. Health &amp; Vitality &#8211; 3\/10 We respect you too much to make any outlandish claims about Gerrard&#8217;s health and vitality. Look at him, he&#8217;s clearly been engaging with healthcare services. On the plus side we&#8217;re reassured that anything that is wrong with him is purely down to fighting. Over the years he&#8217;s had abscesses and a torn retina. We do agree that he seems to have a very shiny coat so we gave him a bit for that. Home invasion &#8211; 9\/10 Gerrard&#8217;s previous home\u00a0invasion antics have been plastered all over the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contenders","tag-gerrard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p48Cd2-2L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":350,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meowseley.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}