(no subject)

[glorious_spoon]

It's both hilarious and kind of tragic, teaching my son how to interact with animals. With my daughter, it was never really an issue; she's the first grandchild on both sides of the family, so she was absolutely swamped in adorable stuffed animals from day one, most of which she ignored. She and the cat reached a fairly civil détente early on, and he now sleeps on her bed when I kick him out of my room for gnawing on himself right next to my head at 3 AM.

She was never that interested in adorable fuzzy things, is my point.

My son, though. Oh. Everything that is fuzzy is his favorite thing. He has approximately two dozen favorite stuffed animals. He has pilfered most of his big sister's stuffed animals and stashed them at the foot of his crib (she doesn't give a shit). He barks at neighboring dogs. And he ABSOLUTELY LOVES our cat. This cat is his absolute favorite being that exists in the universe. He worships this cat.

The cat fucking hates him.

I mean, I don't blame him. He's a cranky elderly rescue cat who has spent most of his life being thoroughly pampered by my spouse, and now here's this loud, cheerful, 25-pound cannonball of a toddler pulling his fur and smacking him on the head and shoving handfuls of smushed bananas in his face. I'd be annoyed too, if I was a cat. sometimes I am annoyed anyway. Generally, if he sees the kid coming, he flees like his ass is on fire. We've been trying to teach concepts like 'pet nice' and 'don't grab kitty's face' and 'dude, if you keep doing that he's gonna smack you and you're gonna deserve it, leave him alone', but the learning curve is... steep, to say the least.

My daughter takes her big sisterly duties very seriously, though, and I came downstairs this morning to see her with her arm around her little brother, pinning his right hand against his body; with her left hand, she was gripping his wrist, guiding his hand over the spine of the cat, who was lying on the coffee table with a resigned air, his tail twitching. "You have to pet NICE, or he's going to SMACK YOU. Now you try. No, no, NO, not like that. Like this, see? Try again."

I feel like my kid and my cat have made an unholy alliance for the betterment of toddler-animal relations.

Comments

[muccamukk]

Yeah, we had a cat that never forgave use for being toddlers. I couldn't pet her until the day she died.

[glorious_spoon]

I mean, I get it. My child is frequently very aggravating for me, and I outweigh him by more than a hundred pounds. I can't imagine how trying it must be to be in the cat's position.

[umadoshi]

I couldn't pet her until the day she died.

Oh, my heart just broke a little. ;_;

[muccamukk]

If I wanted to pet kitty, I shouldn't have been an asshole to kitty when I was 2.

[umadoshi]

I think this is very reasonable from the cat's perspective! But I remember bits of what I was like to my family cats when I was very small, and while they would've been entirely justified in steering clear forever, I can imagine how devastated I would've been when I got older. :/

(What my childhood cat never forgave me for was moving to Toronto. When C and I came home to visit, and even after we moved home after only two years, my Jenny-cat just refused to sit with me or purr or anything. ;_; My mom kept trying to claim the cat didn't remember me, but Jenny was always friendly to strangers, so it wasn't convincing.)

[umadoshi]

That all sounds rather difficult. :/ I sympathize a lot with your son's yearning to SNUGGLE THE FLOOF, but oh, poor put-upon cat. I don't blame him either.

I hope your daughter's efforts to train her brother mediate bear fruit.

[glorious_spoon]

It's so tragic. He tries SO HARD, but he's just... so bad at it. His sister picked it up pretty easily, so hopefully she can get it across to him.

[rosefox]

This is perfection.

We taught Kit "gentle pats for gentle cats" from day one, and they are mostly good about it, but the cats are still very grumpy about them existing, though getting less so as Kit has started bringing tins of cat food over to X at random times of day and insisting it's time to feed the kitties.

Alas, Kit has decided that they want to be a kitty, and this requires being a kitty anthropologist and studying the kitties very closely in order to determine how they do things. So Sophie will be eating and Kit will drop to hands and knees and put their face right near hers to see how she laps up food from the bowl. This goes over as well as you would imagine.

[sholio]

My sister and I used to want to be cats and ask to be given bowls of food on the floor and that kind of thing. This eventually morphed into its opposite: when we started learning to read and write at kindergarten age, we felt that the cats also needed to learn, and this led to hours spent painstakingly trying to get the cats to hold markers and draw their letters. This, too, went about like you'd imagine.

[rosefox]

That's an incredible image. I love it.

We read a book about taking care of cats, which included giving them toys. Cue two weeks of Kit eagerly offering the cats teddy bears, wooden blocks, etc.

On the bright side, we can get Kit to eat just about anything by saying "here kitty kitty!" and feeding it to them by hand, like sneaking people-food treats to the cats.

[glorious_spoon]

This is the most amazing image, thank you for that. :D

[sciatrix]

Oh that is totally sweet of your daughter!

I did not have childhood cats, but we did have small dogs--admittedly, Jack Russell Terriers--and my parents were very firm about mistreating dogs meaning that the if the dog bites you, it will be your fault, and you must be nice to them. That... worked okay. It probably helped that they were young dogs, confident in their own immortality, and both appeared to hold different standards for young children versus adults.

[glorious_spoon]

The cat does seem to hold the baby to different standards--there have been a few times where he's been full-on tackled before we could grab the kid, which would definitely earn a claws-out smack to an adult or older kid. He's never actually smacked the baby, though: he just flees.

[yalumesse]

That's adorable and hillarious.

[minoanmiss]

That is the most awesome image, your daughter teaching her brother how to pet the long-suffering cat. OMG. I am blessed by this image.

And hey, good luck. When E started to walk our cat said, "NOW THERE ARE TWO WALKING HUMAN KITTENS. PEACE OUT." and ran away.

[glorious_spoon]

Oh no!

Our cat has occasionally tried to run away. Usually he gets as far as the front yard before he's all 'Ugh, there is MUD out here, and DOGS, and NO FOOD DISH' and climbs the screen door yowling to be let back in.

[senmut]

This is adorable to read, but probably a little frustrating in practice, especially for the cat.

[booksarelife]

Oh I love that mental image of your kids and your cat!!