The Bean's Sister the Cat

The Bean has a "sister" who’s a fluffy white cat named Mo. She helps to make our home a more cuddly place.

If you ask me, cats get a bad rap. They are always characterized as aloof and unyielding. As preferring to be by themselves rather than around people. And, for some reason, people love to tell us that they’re baby-killers. You know what I’m talking about, statements like:

“Oh you better keep an eye on that cat or she’ll get jealous and smother your baby.”

Really? No, I mean, really?

First of all, our cat loves to be around people. Even when we have parties (okay, HAD parties) she was in the middle of the action rubbing on feet and nose-diving into purses. When Allison and I get home after being out for a few hours she always greets us at the door. And, it's torture when Allison and I are in different rooms for any length of time. She just doesn’t know where to go and ends up trying to position herself in the middle so she can see both of us.

However, if left to her druthers she will attack cuddle us in the nighttime.

Attack Cuddle: verb \ə-ˈtak\ \ˈkə-dəl\ : The act of crawling onto a person’s chest while they are sleeping and 1. purring profusely or 2. rubbing your cold wet nose on their face until they pet you.

Unfortunately for Mo, attack cuddling a baby could prove problematic and therefore she has been evicted from the bedroom during the nights or nap times. (Ollie sleeps in a co-sleeper in our bedroom.)

There have been other changes too. She’s no longer the star of all photo shoots, we don’t scoop her up for cuddling quite as often, and her cat house keeps getting shuffled around the apartment to accommodate our latest configuration of baby stuff.

Having The Bean may actually have sparked some maternal instincts in Mo. She loves to lie at my feet whenever I nurse the baby. When he’s having a crying spell, she sits with us and, as of late, she’s taken to rubbing her face against him (when he stops moving long enough.)

So, even though she’s been bumped down a slot around here, near as I can tell, she’s not spending her extra solitude plotting ways to go all Freddy Krueger on the baby.

Mostly she snoozes.

Probably because she’s the only one around here smart enough to sleep when the baby sleeps.