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October 13, 2003
October 12, 2004
Here Kitty, Kitty …
I love pretty much everything about living in NYC. Except the mice, (and a few of the nasty-ass sights and smells that have accosted me on the subway. But I digress …). Toby and I disagree on this, but I don’t think we had any “visitors” when we first moved into our apartment and that they began to appear en force towards the summer. He thinks they were here from the time we moved in. It doesn’t really matter who’s right, the fact of the matter is we had a BAD infestation for a while.
We tried EVERYTHING to get rid of them. We sealed up the holes they chewed in various corners of the floor. They found other ways to get in, and chewed NEW holes in our lovely hardwood floor. We put out “snap” traps, but that kind of freaked me out, especially because of the curious little fingers that happen to be attached to the arm and body of my greatest treasure here on earth. So, we tried “sticky” traps (which the aforementioned curious fingers DID in fact discover, but were thankfully unharmed, despite being quite alarmed at how very sticky said traps were). These worked for a little while, and we were able to cut the mouse population down by about 6 or 7. But mice are smart, as small as their peanut brains are, and they learned to maneuver around the traps and continue on their merry frickin’ way.
Have I mentioned the poop? Oh yes, an overabundance of mouse poopies have been littered around our humble abode in the past few months. As my Mom put it, “Having a vacant house to occupy for a week sounds like mice party heaven, with dancing on your counter tops”. This is exactly what happened while we were in Spain. Toby says this isn’t possible, but I believe little mouse party flyers were sent out far and wide from beneath our home, saying “Week-long rave at our place. Come eat and CRAP to your heart’s content!” I can’t even begin to describe the evidences of said party when we got home. (Btw, lest you think I have a dirty home, we made sure to keep our floors, counters and pantry as clean as possible, but a lack of obvious mouse munchies did little to deter the little buggers).
The crap-fest that we discovered when we returned from Spain was the final straw. The mice, as cute and furry as they may be, had pushed our last button and their fate was sealed. This spring I sent out an inquiry to our neighborhood asking how to permanently get rid of Mr. and Mrs. Squeakers, and the same answer came back over and over again. Get a cat.
“GET A CAT?!” I had said to Toby. “We can’t get a CAT! My Dad and brother are deathly allergic to cats. I’M allergic to cats, on occasion. We CAN’T get a cat!!” So we didn’t get a cat.
That is, until we came home from Spain to find that a miniature Studio 51 had been resurrected on our countertops. THEN we decided to get a cat (after 409ing, Lysoling, and then hot-water scrubbing every nook and cranny of our home). Actually, we decided to get a kitten, but from what I understand, these usually grow into cats.
And so, ladies and gentleman, we are now the very proud and happy owners of a 3 month old male tabby cat named Brooks (short for Brooklyn). We adopted him from a local shelter, where we fell in love with him at first sight. We looked at no less than 40 cats of all shapes, sizes and ages and he was by far the best choice for our family. Not only is he young (I really wanted the pleasure of having a cat from a young age), but he is VERY sweet and affectionate. Brooks was the ONLY cat who “showed off” for everyone at the shelter, reaching his little paws out to touch passersby (with NO claws out, ever) and making great eye-contact with anyone who came by his little cage. (There were a couple of cats who HISSED at us. Apparently they hadn’t read the “How to get yourself adopted” brochure, which is very unfortunate as I don’t think the shelter keeps them around forever, if you know what I mean.)
The clincher for us was when we reached into Brooks’ cage, and he began purring before we could even pick him up. This little guy loooves to be held and cuddled, and is just the sweetest cat I’ve ever seen. More importantly, he is very, very tolerant of Aidan. We let Aidan hold him at the shelter, and while some of the other kittens were obviously nervous around him and tried to climb over my shoulders to get away from Aidan, Brooks calmly sat in Aidan’s lap, purring away, and hardly flinched when Aidan tried to stick his fingers in his ears.
Don’t get me wrong … it isn’t always easy having a young cat in the house. For the first couple of days, I had a knot in my stomach from worrying that Aidan was somehow going to hurt the cat, especially b/c we brought him home the same day that he was “snipped”. The first night was also a bit rough, when Brooks absolutely flipped out after I closed him in the office to sleep. He would have nothing to do with it, and I ended up sleeping on the couch with him curled up between me and the pillow. I’ve also emptied almost an entire water bottle on the dumb cat, as he stubbornly refuses to stay off the kitchen counter and Aidan’s high chair (I read somewhere that this is a humane way to teach them to stop inappropriate behaviors).
Other than that, we are totally in love with our kitty. Aidan asks to see him as soon as he wakes up, and immediately calls for him when we walk in the door when we get home. We’re teaching him to not hold the cat upside down, and Aidan is quickly learning how to be gentle and careful around Brooks, a lesson I think we’ll all be grateful for whenever we introduce a new baby into the mix. I think we all knew we would enjoy having a cat in the house, but Toby and I have both been surprised how MUCH we really like having him around.
Oh, and lest I leave out the most important benefit to having our new kitty … we haven’t seen a SINGLE poopy since he arrived!
Mission accomplished.
Meow,
Rebekah and Aidan and Brooks
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