Hello, Kitty … to stay, perhaps? (Plus briefs)

Those who’ve been reading the blog for a while know that our first attempt to adopt a new kitty – after the sad demise of 15 year old Watson when Lily was 3 months old – didn’t go so well. Lily was terrified of both cats and dogs at the time, and when we visited with a gentle old cat at the Humane Society, one on one, in February, Lily let out a piercing scream that sent volunteers running to check in on us.

Good times.

Since then, Lily, though still skittish, has gotten braver about petting dogs and cats, once she feels they’re not threatening. She’s still not wild about them looking her in the eye and approaching her; but if they’re settled somewhere, and she can gently pet their back or their ears, she really enjoys herself.

So two weekends ago, when we read about a nearby animal hospital that acted as one of several satellite cat adoption centers for the Humane Society, we stopped in to try again.

They mostly had very young kittens, which we aren’t so interested in – they’re nippy, and while this is done in a playful way, Lily would never understand the difference – but they also had an all-black five month old, who was very sweet and affectionate. Lily liked interacting with him on her own terms, though she still got nervous when he walked up and tried to rub himself against her legs, or stared at her.

But Joe fell in love, and the cat did seem a good fit for us. We thought it best, though, to bring Lily for another visit before taking the step of bringing him home – hoping in that time that we’d prepare things around the house a little in the interim as well.

What preparations have we made so far? Nada. I confess. But fortunately, because of Watson, we have much of what we need in the basement. I’d like to get a cat door carved out of the door to the basement, so we can keep the litter box there, but otherwise, there wouldn’t be much to do.

Yet life intervenes, as it always does. Though we intended to return last weekend for our second, and maybe last, visit, Joe felt terrible and our Saturday (the hospital isn’t open on Sunday) got filled up. And this coming weekend is overbooked before it even starts.

So I’m just hoping our little black cat will still be around when we get back to the adoption center. The employee told us that most folks come in looking for really young kittens, and that no one had been interested in the black one yet. Let’s hope that holds.

– In other news, I recently tried to check out a library book and got stopped because I owed $18 in library fees, and $15 is the limit before they cut you off from checking out more items. Oof. I used to be one of those people who walked around with due dates for library books and utility bills in my head, but now, with Lily, there’s no space for such things, apparently. We check out lots of books with Lily, and it’s hard to keep track of what’s due when. Still, this was a wake up call that maybe I need to check in online once a week and find out – especially since I didn’t have any money on me when this came up, and thus had to do the walk of shame back to replace the book I wanted on the shelf. Ah, the small humiliations…

– Relevant to my last post about mommy groups and communities, my sister-in-law sent me this, which I found pretty hilarious. Generally, I don’t like things that paint women as always being adversarial with each other, because I think that’s crap. But enough hyper-competitive parents are out there to make this kind of thing funny. (I particularly LOVE the exchange about vaccinations.) Enjoy.

– Lily’s been constipated for the last few days – painfully so, where she crosses her legs, turns red with effort, and cries pitifully – as well as suffering from a nasty cough that shows up when she’s been lying down for a few hours. Unfortunately, regarding the latter, she seems to have gotten what Joe suffered from last week, and what I’m suffering from now, which makes everything ten times worse. Not only was I lying awake at 2 a.m. this morning, listening to Lily cough, when I felt lousy, too, but I felt extra horrible knowing that I wouldn’t be able to take care of her as perhaps I should because of my own illness. Helplessness may be the most maddening thing as a parent that you can experience. Blech.