{"id":418,"date":"2011-03-02T17:58:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T17:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/?p=418"},"modified":"2011-03-05T10:41:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T10:41:05","slug":"cats-rodents-i-have-known-madison-j-holdsworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/cats-rodents-i-have-known-madison-j-holdsworth\/","title":{"rendered":"<del>Cats<\/del> Rodents I Have Known &#8211; Madison J. Holdsworth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nI remember, quite vividly, carrying home a little gerbil from the pet shop in New Eltham (now long gone) in a rather flimsy little cardboard box. As a voracious reader of Dick King-Smith&#8217;s books, I decided to name him after the eponymous parrot in <i>Harry&#8217;s Mad<\/i>, whose full name was Madison. I have grown up convinced that &#8216;Madison J. Holdsworth&#8217; was a former US president, a notion that Wikipedia has just disabused me of. I think Madison the parrot was named after the 4th president, James Madison, and the family in the book are the Holdsworths, and so I arrived at &#8216;Madison J. Holdworth&#8217;. As far as I can remember, the &#8216;J.&#8217; never stood for anything, I just thought it sounded American and cool. I don&#8217;t know when I started believing that the whole name was presidential; memory is such a strange thing.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nMadison was a lovely little gerbil, although he never properly got used to being handled. He did everything you expect of a small rodent: running in his wheel; scurrying through, then gnawing, toilet roll tubes; looking cute when you give him a gerbil treat to chew on. I think of him with affection, despite his occasionally fractious behaviour, but remain resolutely <a href='http:\/\/www.monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/208'>a cat person<\/a>. The only other time I&#8217;ve lived with a rodent was many years later, with a darling hamster called Katie&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I remember, quite vividly, carrying home a little gerbil from the pet shop in New Eltham (now long gone) in a rather flimsy little cardboard box. As a voracious reader of Dick King-Smith&#8217;s books, I decided to name him after the eponymous parrot in Harry&#8217;s Mad, whose full name was Madison. I have grown up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}