I believe that I’ve exhibited more patience than I ever have in my entire life during the past few months of sharing my living area with these cats, affectionately called Scooter and Milkshake. They remained inside even as they ripped holes in Cara’s new comforter and scratched the paint off the freshly painted door frames. I tolerated the rearranging of doll furniture in the dollhouse I’d spent months building and carefully gluing each shingle on its Victorian frame. I did lose my cool when they shattered an expensive vase by pulling everything off my dining room table. In the middle of the night while picking shards of glass from the floor, Andrew begged with chocked up voice, providing ideas to prevent it from ever happening again.
I watched as they began to destroy my house as my children became more creative in their excuses and their solutions to the problems. Looking at their longing faces, I couldn’t bring myself to remove the cats from my house though they ripped through every material surface I’d redecorated with.
That is until this past weekend when I finally put them out. So what finally made me decide that our inside pets would become outside pets? That would be the decision of our pets that they were too delicate for the litter box and the bath tub would be much nicer.
This was the final straw. After several days of this, I gave fair warning to my children that I was moving the cats to our patio. The days leading up to that move was filled with more begging and guilt trips than I care to mention.
The day of the move was tear filled, and I may have given in to stop the water show if the cats had not reminded me that morning with the bath tub. I moved them outside. They didn’t appreciate it however. The cats continually tried to sneak back in every time the door opened, and several times Saturday, Andrew chased one or the other through the house. His concern means that every twenty or thirty minutes he checks to make sure they are still there (side effect being that he gets out from in front the television more).
Cara broke down into sobs when Andrew told her that her cat had run away. (It had not.) So though I did not change my mind with the waterworks, I was feeling pretty guilty.
I decided to take them to the skating rink for the first time. My daughter had recently gone for a birthday party, and she’d been asking daily to go back. My son had never been on skates and had slipped and said he wouldn’t mind trying (This is my code to move ahead at full speed and get him to do it since he never tries anything).
I had not worn skates for over ten years, but I found myself promising Andrew that I would do it with him. The whole time I was convincing him it would be okay, I was also thinking that the floor would be much further down than it was the last time I’d skated.
I did it though just to get Andrew to put the skates on.
I didn’t fall, but I also didn’t remember how to skate so it made for a very anxiety- filled and unnerving experience. I also learned that though I’m looking for adventure this year, my son is not. It seems that though my daughter leaps into adventure, my son needs to be given more time to decide on his own to try something… or not. There is no leading him into adventure.
So I’m not sure how many of my experiences he will be participating in the future. It’s best that I stop pushing so he doesn’t drive me mad. I did get him to put on the skates, but he quit as soon as he fell, which was before he even made it to the rink.
I did succeed in getting their minds off of the cats for a few hours though. Of course, when we returned after dark they were crawling around outside searching for their hiding and sleeping cats.
The cats remain outside. The only one thanking me is the house though.
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