MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
Life with a Kitten, continued
I fear we may have created some bad habits. We make Milo sleep in the bathroom at night. Every night. And now we can’t imagine how we will transition him to sleeping somewhere, anywhere else in the house (his choice) besides the bathroom. He now knows—learned quickly, it turns out—that when all the lights are off and he’s locked in the bathroom, it’s time to go to sleep. And he does it quite dutifully. Who can complain? The first night he meowed for about ten minutes, but every night thereafter his meowing decreased, till within three days he didn’t meow at all. If only babies were so easy.
But now it’s a month later, and we’re still carting his litter box and water/food bowls upstairs from the kitchen every night and wondering if we’ll have bathroom sleeper forever. We’re afraid if we don’t put him in the bathroom, he’ll sit outside Leah’s door and meow until he wakes her (we’ve seen him plant himself there after she goes to bed and try it). Corralling him might not, at first glance, seem like a big deal, but the downside is we’ve taken to holding it in the middle of the night lest we awaken his yowlie highness, and we find ourselves tiptoeing past the door in the morning. Most mornings, Curt succeeds in creeping down the stairs at 5:30am without waking Milo, but at 6:45am I have no such luck. Now I’ve developed the new habit of whisking him downstairs to feed him before he wakes the rest of the house.
Who knew a kitten could create such changes? While we can’t resist cuddling him—and we think his fascination with flushing toilets is hilarious—we all agree his meowing is a bit much.
And like a guilty parent, I can’t help comparing his loud ways to our late Leon, who never meowed about anything, not even when he was hungry. The most you would get was maybe a friendly fur rub around the ankles. Milo, on the other hand, sits at his bowl and aims his small, pink mouth upward to issue forth a cacophony of caws until you respond.
The vet’s advice at Milo’s last vaccination appointment? Ignore the meows to avoid creating a bad habit around demanding food. Only feed him when he’s not meowing at you.
“Sort of like not giving in to a toddler’s tantrums,” I commented.
“Just like a toddler.”
Only I thought I was done with toddlers.
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