Meowtweet!

My little girl adores cats. In fact, sometimes we go over to the local animal shelter and just love on the stray cats for fun. They have an entire room full of kittens and an entire room full of adult cats. She always claims that one of the cats fell in love with her but hasn't ever asked to bring one home. We already have two kitties, Jo-Jo and Yogi. Shawn has been in charge of cleaning the litter boxes ever since I was pregnant. He continues to this day and has always said that while he is the "litter box man", we will not become a three cat family.

Last night E was talking about the kittens up at the pet store and finally asked if we could get a kitten some day. I told her that if she starting cleaning up the litter box then daddy might agree to getting a kitten. Her eyes started dancing! She said, "You mean, if I learn to clean up the poopin' box, I could get a kitten?"

She was suddenly over the moon with delight. Shawn and I then reminded her of the horrors of the litter box. She got very quiet as she considered it. There was much discussion of Yogi's talents in this area and the boys enjoyed that part of the conversation immensely.

As the kitten conversation continued, N was getting more and more out of sorts. He wants a bird. More than anything else in the world, the boy wants a bird. He knows that one of the factors standing in his way are the cats. Now we were talking about getting another furry face and he saw his bird dream fading. Suddenly he was coming up with every reason why getting a kitten was a horrible idea.

"It will claw the drapes!" "It will break the vases!" "Yogi will beat it up!" "It will run accross your face at night!"

None of it was making a dent in Emily's brain until he said, "It will claw and bite you."

"Mommy, is that true?", Emily said.

"Yes", I replied.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She said, "I wouldn't like that. I don't think I can tame a kitten."

I thought, "Well, that's the end of that." And so did N. However, this morning she came running down the stairs.

"I'm ready to learn how to clean up the litter box, mommy!"

Nick looked crushed.

Anyone want to place your bets on how long it takes us to get both a bird AND a kitten? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, eh? Maybe we need to find a hybrid. A Catbird!