Barnabas Monkeypants

There is a routine in the house. It’s a chaotic routine, one that changes as much as it stays the same, but for the most part things are going well.

Henry still decides that being fussy from 6:30 to 10:00 every evening is part of that routine, and we’re trying to break him of that habit. Luckily, nearly four hours of constant feeding, holding, bouncing, burping, and swaying meant that when he did finally fall asleep at 10:30 last night, he was kind enough to stay down for 5 hours.

Oh, glorious day!

Of course, as much as each day Kristen, Henry, and my life gets better and better (it really is quite wonderful having a baby in the house, the fussiness nothwithstanding), it’s not so great for poor Georgia and Cecil. As much as we try, there just isn’t enough time in the day to do all the things that we have to do and also give them the attention that they need and deserve.

Oh, we try. Georgia will sleep on the top of the couch when I’m sitting there with Henry, her face mere inches from mine, and Cecil gets extra tummy rubs every time I walk by. But it’s obvious, though, that it’s not enough. Cecil’s teenage years (I assume that 2 in cat is like 15 in human) means that he’s acting out a lot, getting into trouble, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and spending too much time playing video games and not enough doing his homework. Now, more than ever, we’ll be at one end of the condo when we hear some sort of crash at the other end and then see Cecil sprinting down the hallway, trying to get as far away as possible from the toppled glass or book that was pushed off the shelf.

It’s also a little maddening because as much as we have to do with keeping Henry in clean diapers and fed and happy, we’re not always as quick to keep things out of reach of the cats that we used to (those things being anything plastic). Cecil loves plastic. He chews on (and eats) plastic bags. He will gnaw at plastic wrap. And, lately, he’s been after Henry’s pacifiers. (It’s gotten so bad that we’ve given him one of his own to chew on and bat around as much as he likes. If that’s not the strangest cat toy on the planet, I don’t know what is.)

Last week, our friends Katia and Steve came over and brought their near-2-year-old daughter with them. Suddenly, Cecil found a new playmate, and as Zoe followed Cecil around the living room yelling “Say-Say”, the cat was more than happy to receive this new-found attention. He looked awfully sad when they left.

He’s got too much energy, it seems, and it’s really difficult for us to help him get it out. We considered a gym membership for him, but that would mean we’d have to drive him there and pick him up, and we just don’t have the time right now.

Georgia, on the other hand, doesn’t miss playtime that much (although she loved to play as much as any cat we’ve had), but it’s obvious she does miss sleeping with us. Each night, pre-Henry, we’d bring her into the bedroom and close the door (Cecil wasn’t allowed in the room because while he would sleep on the bed with us, it would last for maybe 45 minutes before he got up and started playing with a cell-phone charger or a penny mistakenly left on the floor).

After the lights were out and Kristen and I were settled into bed, Georgia would jump up on my chest, get a few pets in, and then settle down to sleep on the pillow that lay between our heads. She’d stay there the entire night, never moving. It was nice having a warm cat in bed with you (something I missed dearly since Frank died), and she really liked it as well.

Now Georgia has to stay on the other side of the closed door… with Cecil (who likes to run and play all the time, even at 3 in the morning when Georgia’s more than happy to be curled up on a chair sleeping).

I’ve tried to explain to her that in a couple of months, Henry won’t be sleeping in the bedroom with Kristen and I (I’ll be happy to get the unattractive — but extremely handy — co-sleeper out of the bedroom) and he’ll be moving into his own room. And then she’ll be allowed back into the room and between our heads.

And we may even get Cecil a nicer box to sleep in. Win-win all around.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Barnabas, Kitties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.