MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
Life with a Kitten
We have a new kitten in our house, just arrived three days ago, a beautiful little gray tabby with a little round face. In fact, he’s sitting in my lap as I type this (I would have included a photo but my camera is on the fritz). We haven’t had a kitten around for 15 years, since our beloved late Leon was a kitten, and I have forgotten how much care and attention they require. Rather like a human infant.
This little guy, whom the kids have christened Milo, loves attention. He’s very sociable and loves to be held. A lot. Luckily, you can’t help sweeping him up into your arms just to hear him purr and feel him knead your sweater, but in the last day or so, I’ve been hearing chitchat among family members about how we’re maybe spoiling him with too much attention.
“He’s a baby,” I find myself saying. Am I the only mother here? “We’re not spoiling him. He needs our attention while he adjusts to life in our house.” Shades of Dr. Sears. (I still recall the conversations about why we needed to move Leah into her own room when she was three days old.)
But come Monday morning, when everyone had gone off to work and school, I had to get some work done. Right. That old adage of working with your baby nearby doesn’t work with a kitten either. Milo careened around the house meowing at the top of his lungs until I put him on my lap to work. He tried to climb on my keyboard, up around the computer, down around my feet, and finally, meowing the whole time, he somehow ended up in the desk file drawer. Apparently it has a back entrance I knew nothing about. I didn’t realize he was in the drawer until I opened it to find him squashed in with the various desk detritus—envelopes and such.
Okay, tough love here, buddy. If he were my human baby, I would have had to stop work altogether, something I used to do all the time when my kids were infants. But the beauty of a kitten? I shut him in the bathroom with his food and litter box, where he promptly went quiet. The conservative parent experts would have been proud.
The best part about a feline baby? Milo came toilet trained and hasn’t had an accident yet. If only it were so easy with all babies…
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