We are currently three in our house, Mike being on a work trip to Rhode Island and Maine. I am amusing myself in the evenings by watching Sopranos DVDs, spending too much time on the internet, and doing laundry. Life sure is exciting! I have to limit myself to two episodes of Sopranos at most per evening because otherwise my adrenalin levels are so high I need to eat something just so I have dishes to wash.
Anyhoo.
I got us a cat! Poor Mike. A college friend has had kittens (well, obviously, her cat had them, she only feeds and shelters them), and had offered us a kitten a couple of months ago. I thought about it, and talked to Mike, and he thought about it, and neither of us was willing to make the decision. Getting a pet is a pretty big decision, really.
Going back a bit further, like, uh, to when Amy was about 18 months old, she developed a paralysing fear of animals. We went to a friend’s house one day for coffee and playtime, and Amy and Ethan ran to the door and rang the bell. The friend’s daughter opened the door without thinking and their large labrador cross leapt out straight into Amy, barking loudly and jumping excitedly all over us. He was just happy to see us, but he towered over poor Amy and she has never been the same since. It’s slowly getting better, but for a while she would see a dog across the road and start whimpering and trying to literally climb my legs to get away from it. Now she will stop and think, and sometimes she will try commanding a barking dog to BE QUIET! but if it turns towards her she does the whimper-leg-climbing thing again.
So I knew we needed to give her plenty of experience with smaller, gentler animals to help regain her confidence (obviously caution is good, but not in such great doses), and the kitten seemed ideal. But then there’s toilet training, behavioural stuff (kids and cat), what happens if we go on holiday, etc.
With Mike away this time for slightly longer than usual, and the kids being tired and cranky and sick for part of the time, I have been tired and cranky and stressed off and on as well. They’ve actually been great, really, but they have the usual periods of grump and fighting and whingeing and in the evenings I collapse, too tired to do much else but dread the next day.
So we got the cat, who is now about five months old, housetrained and children-trained. She has been here for just over 24 hours and we have only lost her once! This morning I made the executive decision to let her out to explore the section, and she immediately disappeared next door (who would’ve thought?). We went to find her and she turned out to be stuck up a cabbage tree and only came down in the end because the back-fence neighbours started a car right below her perch, which scared her half to death. She hasn’t been outside since. She is asleep beside me, and having a cat to snuggle with and pat and be nuzzled by, and for the kids to talk to and amuse, has given us all a much-needed distraction while Mike is gone. Amy is still nervous if the cat approaches her, but happily follows the cat around the house, making cootchie-cootchie noises at her. Ethan is putting into practice things he has been learning at school about caring for pets and reminds me that our cat needs food, water, sleep, and cuddles.
