My name is ?Mamama,? and I?m a recovering crazy cat lady.
It all started 11 years ago, when my university boyfriend broke up with me and, in my melodramatic, heartbroken twentysomething angst, I decided to become a stereotype and get a kitten, Milo, to ease my solitude. ?I want the spiky one,? I said after looking at adoption photos of two serene fluffballs and one skinny black runt with eyes that said ?I will piss all over your life.?
It was love at first bite.
Milo has been my constant cranky companion over the past decade, when I spent much of my time moving from city to city for work. No matter where we lived, he slept in my bed every night?something my eventual husband had to learn to embrace. (Not metaphorically, my husband literally had to embrace the cat every night to keep him from gnawing on any exposed flesh?Milo turns feral after midnight.) When I told my mother I was pregnant with her first grandchild, after she finished screaming, crying and jumping up and down, she lowered her voice?as if the cat lobbyists might hear her?and whispered ?And you?re going to get rid of Milo, right"? She spent the rest of my pregnancy sending me articles about the perils of cat litter and telling me that Milo would steal the baby?s breath.
Photo: Courtesy of Natalie Stechyson
?You won?t believe how quickly you stop caring about your cat once you have a baby,? a colleague warned me when I tried to show him yet another photo of Milo in a jaunty Christmas sweater. What a heartl...