And the Silver Spoon

Scott brings Trinket home to the houseful of dogs. Buddy is feeling better and everyone is smothering Trinket with the kind of attention she’s never had.

Since she is just a wee little thing, and there are 3 big dogs around (OK, two. Charlie is sort of pint-sized but still outweighs Miss Trinket by 10 pounds), Scott assembles a large dog crate for her to live in while all the people are out of the house.

She has a bed, food and water dishes, a litter box and a toy or two. (This is a very large crate…)

She hates it.

So the girls let her out to play as often as possible. She’s a chatty kitty. Meowing at everything. Scott calls her Miss Meowypants. She loves all the attention. She follows them around. She climbs the giant climby thing Snickers ignores. She sits in the window (when the dogs aren’t howling at it) longing to run after the smorgasbord of birds and squirrels and bunnies.

What she doesn’t do is eat. She is as skinny as skinny can be.

In the mean time, I make a surprise announcement to my children that we are getting a pet. Hillary is thrilled beyond the point of no return. Patrick not so much. He would prefer a dog. Or a snake or a lizard or a turtle or a potty belly pig. Anything but a cat.

Uh-oh. And I can’t exactly return her to the pound. I hope Scott was serious about taking her to Green Acres. It would be a hard sell to keep a cat that one person is allergic to and doesn’t want in the first place.

And Patrick is quite perturbed about the surprise. Wishes he’d been consulted. Has never even thought about a cat much less wanted one. He thinks he’s allergic. It seemed like I was disregarding him on several levels. Putting him in a position to be the one to hurt Hillary when we can’t keep the cat. Not concerned if he is stuffy-nosed and runny-eyed all the live-long day. Not caring if his preference were really for some other animal altogether. Is it really his pet at all?

Thank God I have good command of the English language. It took quite a bit of conversation to convince my son that this was an act of inclusion, of family, of bringing us together to care for something cute and special and completely dependent and ours to love. And frankly a matter of lifestyle. We are simply not home enough for a more active or more dependent animal. It is really a cat for us or nothing at all.

By the end of the night we are all looking forward to our new friend and are planning to go to Scott’s to get her on the weekend. Incessant meowing and all.