Our first babies

Finally, a post dedicated to the other citizens of Jack-land. Our first babies.

Before Jack's arrival, Tom and I were way into our cats. Like almost creepy cat lady into our cats. Even though I had sworn I would never be the type of person who would refer to herself as her pets' "mommy," that's exactly what I did.

I adopted Echo and Emmy from a friend who was mistakenly told that her cat was fixed. She realized she had been misinformed when the cat had three kittens on her bed. Echo and Emmy were two of those kittens. I was 20 years old. Two years later, I started dating Tom. Two years after that we got married. My cats have seen us through my graduation from both college and grad school, too many humiliating jobs to mention, one cross-country move, three subsequent intra-San Diego moves, and of course the birth of our first child.

While I was pregnant with Jack, we used to wonder what we would do if the baby turned out to be allergic to the cats. I said I thought that, unless it were a fatal allergy, it would be something the baby would have to learn to live with. The summer before Jack was born, I worked for a woman whose cat died. She was understandably upset, and I was so sympathetic. She told me that a co-worker of ours said that she used to be that into her cats too, but then the kids were born and they basically stopped caring about their pets. I was horrified. Tom and I swore, we would never be like that.

Well, fast forward to the present. There is definitely a caste system in Jack-land, with Jack obviously occupying the Brahman class. Echo and Emmy are nigh Untouchable. Literally. Maybe I would have felt differently if they had shown an interest in Jack from the beginning. Though the cats have always been cuddly with Tom and me, they understandably kept their distance from this squalling little tyrant that had taken their mommy and would only venture out when we finally put him down to sleep. But after being attached to Jack all day long, the last thing I wanted was another living creature even touching me. So laps were no longer welcome kitty nests; they eventually got kicked off our bed, because their patrolling, licking, purring, and meowing at night would steal precious moments of much-needed sleep. It is a state of affairs that has continued to this day.

Someone once told me that, after you have children, your pets go from being your babies to being just animals. We have definitely found there is an element of truth to that. Now that our time, attention, and patience is stretched so thin with our human baby, there's not much left for our feline ones. I do feel guilty about it, especially when the cats look so reproachfully at us, like, "What did we do? Why don't you love us anymore?"

We still love them, but honestly the main reason we still keep them around is because we'd feel too guilty otherwise. I know I'll be sad the day they finally go to the Great Ball of Yarn in the Sky, but I also know that we won't be rushing out to get another pet any time soon.