Must love cats

You know when you first start dating someone, you really WANT to find out all kinds of good things about the other person.  Of course there's some things you find you can overlook, and some things you find that you can not.  And then you get married and it's all out the window anyway.

When I was dating my now-husband, Jim, I was very upfront with him: I told him I had a cat.  Now, I knew he was not a cat person at all, but I left it up to him to decide if the cat would be the end-all, be-all of our relationship.  He decided he could live with my beloved Mel, after all - how much trouble could one little kitty make for him?

The answer to that question is - in my hubby's world: A LOT.

My cat is the jealous type.  It happens.  Jim has been in my life for 7 years now and the cat and he still do not see eye-to-eye.  When Jim moved in, the cat scratched up the underside of our bed and the couch cushions.  She insists on sleeping between my ankles - on the bed.  If Jim left a glass of milk on the counter for too long, Mel swooped in and finished it off.  She also perched above his head one night while he was sleeping, and swiped at it repeatedly, leaving quite a mark (ouch).  Even so, I begged Jim to not make me get rid of Mel.  Believe me, that was not easy.

When we had our son Ryan and brought him home from the hospital, the cat went into some type of manic phase where she spent half her time sniffing and staring at the baby, and the other half peeing in his carseat and tearing up his favorite blankets.  Jim's mantra the whole time was: "Oh, she is SO worth it!"  And he told me if the cat EVER scratched/attacked the baby we'd get rid of her.  I (sadly) agreed.

Now, Mel has done a complete 180 and is in love with Ryan - and Ryan is in love with her.  He follows her around the house, shreaking with delight as she bounds through his toy piles, and not once does she scratch or attack him (I have to give her the fuzzy eyeball sometimes, though, as we've had some close calls.)  But Jim is another story.  Or at least that is what he claims.  The other day I caught the two of them like this:

Now I'm not saying Jim is a crazy cat person (neither am I... seriously, I'm not.  I do not collect hoards of cats nor have cat trinkets all over my house NOR sign all my letters with a cat stamp - now that's some crazy stuff.) - but I do think he secretly likes having her around, even if it's just so he has something to complain about.  I even spied him feeding her once.

So in the end, the cat is staying.  Sure, she throws up her breakfast once in awhile (Jim didn't even notice when she puked in his shoes... Or was that because I forgot to tell him?  Anywhoooo...), still scratches the couch cushions (but those are replaceable!), and drinks from our milk glasses on occasion (someone forgot to put them in the dishwasher!) - but she's part of our family.  Our kid enjoys her.  And let's face it - she's still a lot cheaper than having a second child.  (Not to say I'm opposed at all to having more children... but I'll save that for a later post.)