{"id":4444,"date":"2021-01-25T20:43:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T03:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/?p=4444"},"modified":"2021-01-25T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T03:44:17","slug":"the-last-bath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/2021\/01\/25\/the-last-bath\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Bath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>I bathe the cat in the bathroom sink, so light, his little feline spine sharp with the thinning of time\u2014twenty years. Hold him by the belly in the right hand, baby shampoo with the left. More soap for the diaper area. Careful of his eyes, looking so far away these days. Squeeze the water down his tail, his legs, all bones. Towel off, gentle, gentle. Murmur assurances that it\u2019s almost over. Sit down on the couch, hold him in the towel. Is he ok? Movement\u2014a gasp, he\u2019s fine. Then my tear fell in his eye. He didn\u2019t blink.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>From Guest Contributor Brook Bhagat<\/p>\n<p>Brook\u2019s poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and humor have appeared in Monkeybicycle, Empty Mirror Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Little India, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and other journals and anthologies. She and her husband Gaurav created Blue Planet Journal,  which she edits and writes for. She holds an MFA from Lindenwood University, is an assistant professor of English at a community college, and is writing a novel. Her poetry collection, Only Flying, is due out Nov. 16, 2021 from Unsolicited Press. See more at brook-bhagat.com or reach her on Twitter at @brookbhagat.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I bathe the cat in the bathroom sink, so light, his little feline spine sharp with the thinning of time\u2014twenty years. Hold him by the belly in the right hand, baby shampoo with the left. More soap for the diaper area. Careful of his eyes, looking so far away these days. Squeeze the water down [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9802,814,7532,2751,4499,835,9545,1863,4213,3588,7625,2837,9068,6431,2100,1554,4343,2769,9785,9801,1109,9803,177],"class_list":["post-4444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100words","tag-baby-shampoo","tag-bathroom","tag-belly","tag-bones","tag-brook-bhagat","tag-cat","tag-diaper","tag-eye","tag-feline","tag-gasp","tag-hibah-shabkhez","tag-legs","tag-movement","tag-right-hand","tag-sink","tag-soap","tag-spine","tag-tail","tag-the-left","tag-thinning","tag-time","tag-towel","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4446,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4444\/revisions\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/blogs\/100words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}