Pets and Parenthood

If you or someone you know have ever been pregnant, you know that the mere announcement of said pregnancy seems to always invited plenty of advice. Some of the advice is welcome, some of the advice is annoying, some is offensive, but usually it's well-meaning. I say "usually," because I don't see how sharing every last gory detail of a horrible, painful, 96-hour long labor can ever be meant well. But that's just my opinion.

The reason I've titled this blog "Pets and Parenthood" is because of one piece of advice I think every mom to be hears about 1,000 times during a pregnancy: "Sleep now, because you won't be sleeping when the baby comes!" I've heard this one a lot, most of the time from patients in the office where I work. Most of them will also tag on some bit about how I have no idea what's coming, and how nothing can ever prepare you for motherhood. I disagree. Don't get me wrong, I know that you're never truly "ready" for parenthood, and nothing can fully prepare you for the experience, but I've found one thing that can come pretty close: owning a pet.

People (usually non-pet owners) tend to roll their eyes when I say this, but in my experience, it is beyond true. Adam and I got married on June 30, 2007. On January 20, 2008, we decided to adopt a cat, Smokey. We'd only been married six months, and we hadn't lived together before getting married. As much as I thought getting a cat would be a field of daisies, it was a shock to my system. I'd only ever owned two betta fish, and a frog named Freddy who didn't live all that long. None of these pets required much maintenance, and they couldn't wake you up in the middle of the night. Smokey, however, was different. The first thing I noticed what how, all of a sudden, our life together wasn't our own anymore. It wasn't just Adam and me, me and Adam. There was this other little life wandering around our tiny apartment, knocking things over, and generally being very much a little boy of a cat. Most people had told us to try to keep the door to our bedroom shut at night to keep out the cat, but he would have none of it. He howled, meowed, and scratched at the door for hours on end until we opened it. For 2-3 months, I didn't know what to do with myself. He was the sweetest cat, but Adam and I couldn't sleep, we were both grumpy, and Smokey was probably a bit stressed out himself.

My breaking point was when Adam, bless him, said we could surrender him to the animal shelter if I thought I couldn't handle it. I remember the next day, sitting on our couch, looking at this sleeping kitty (currently annoying no one), and I burst into tears. I pictured his little gray face and his big yellow eyes watching us walk away, and I couldn't take it. We'd adopted this little boy to give him a better life, and that's what we were going to do. Surprisingly, once we stopped closing the door to our bedroom and let him come in, he calmed down a bit. He marched back and forth over our heads for a couple of nights, but after that, he'd just come in, survey the room, maybe sleep at the foot of our bed for a while, then leave. He was a different cat, just a cat with a rule against closed doors.

Much like parenting a newborn (perhaps not quite as intense), we experienced months of sleepless nights, and we had to learn to live in a way that supported this little guy - our life revolved around him now. His litter box needed cleaning, his belly needed feeding, he needed to be played with, etc. Honestly, the thought of being "up all night" with a newborn doesn't scare me so much now that I've been through it with a cat.

You may be rolling your eyes right now, especially if you've never owned a higher-maintenance animal, but I really do think that the best preparation a couple can have for parenting is to adopt a pet. Owning an animal forces you to put yourself and your own comfort aside as you acclimate a new little furball to your home. One of the things I've heard a lot from new parents was how it was very strange to bring a baby home from the hospital and find that suddenly, you're not alone. Something else, someone else, is there, breathing, making noise, eating food (albeit a different kind, from a different source), and generally disrupting the way of life to which you'd become accustomed. While I know I'm going to have some major adjustments (and perhaps a bit of mommy shock) to make when we bring our little girl home, I am so thankful that I've had the last 3 years of hanging with Smokey to prepare me for having another life form depend on me for everything.

Now, I know that nothing still compares to parenting a child, and I know I'll never be truly ready for what's to come in the next two months and beyond, but I think that the very best experience in my parenting preparation thus far has been the owning of Smokey The Cat.

Speaking of Smokey, he hopped up and lounged next to me for a while as I was typing. He's lounging in the sunshine now, but I think he knew I was talking about him. I'm sure I'll come back in a few months and write a blog about how parenting a newborn is NOTHING like owning a cat, but for right now, I'm going to let the comparison stand.

Here's to living well, living passionately, and being a cat person. :)