But I did want to clarify a few points I’ve made the last few entries on the  blog.

The first is about Cecil. When I wrote out that long history of how we adopted him (and in numerous other posts), I talked a lot about his terrific relationship with Henry. They do love each other, and the cat put ups with a ton of hair pulling and ear grabbing and tail tugging.

But make no bones about it: he’s a real bastard. This is not a cat I’d wish on anyone. He constantly is chewing on things that he shouldn’t, eats plastic like it’s going out of style, runs up and down the hallway so loudly it can wake up the dead, and his litter box is nothing but one of the smelliest spots on the planet. In fact, a few weeks ago Kristen talked about giving him away! (She was joking. But only a little.)

We don’t really know what to do with him. Henry loves him and he loves Henry. But that seems to be the only good relationship he has with a human.

The other thing I wanted to point out was me talking about how I’m dreading Henry growing up. Crawling, pulling himself up, all those things are signalling him no longer being a baby. And I hate that.

But, I have to admit, I can’t wait for him to get a little older. I want him to be 4 so we can go to a baseball game and he can sit and watch it (if  only for a few innings). I want him to be 2 so when we go to the petting zoo, he’s big enough to wander around and not have to be strapped into his stroller. I want him to be 6 so we can play catch in the backyard.

I constantly have to tell myself, “All in good time. He’ll be old before you know it and then, pretty soon, he’ll be so old he won’t want to do anything with you except for ask you for money.”

These are my dilemmas.

So we went down the street to a local no-kill shelter, Felines, Inc. This old graystone was two floors full of cat of all ages. We didn’t want to adopt an older cat for fear it would dominate Frank, and we didn’t necessarily want a kitten, because they always get adopted, and we wanted to maybe take one home that wasn’t a slam dunk.

Kristen and I start walking around the place, petting various cats, and one of the volunteers was there with us pointing out the various personality traits of each animal. This one was surly. This one needs to be an only cat. This one is on its last legs. There were cats there that, she admitted, were lifers, that were going to live at the shelter until they died.

Kristen fancied this furry gray cat that purred when she scratched him behind his ears, but he seemed quite indifferent to me. There was a tortoise-colored one that I liked, but Kristen thought that she was too old.

All the time that we were looking at different animals, this one, youngish black and white male cat kept on following us. He’d run circles around our feet, rub up against our legs, and prance on his tippy-toes when we reached down to pet him.

He was full of energy, and he was wonderful.

“He’s the one I want,” I told Kristen. (An aside: since Frank, Betty, and Sonja were all brought into the marriage by me, Kristen said that she was going to pick out the next animal. Uh… not so fast, woman.)

“He is cute,” she said. (And he was.)

“We’ll take him,” I told the woman.

Not so fast. You see, this cat — whose markings on his nose made him look like Jimmy Durante — was dropped off a few weeks earlier with his sister, and they wanted the two of them to be kept together. “Where is she?” Kristen asked.

“In here.”

“Here” was a cupboard above a sink where a small, furry cat was huddled. She was afraid of everything, especially some of the other more agressive cats. (They weren’t mean or nasty — just overly playful.) So the staff made up a small bed for her there and she was happy. Kristen picked her up, and the small cat curled up in the crook of her arm.

So we paid the adoption fee and took them both home. We named them Cecil and Georgia (for no specific reason), and after a few weeks of all of us getting to know each other, we’ve been a happy family.

Why am I writing this now? Because when we brought these two animals home with us lo those months ago, we both assumed that it was two cats. How wrong we were. One was a cat: Georgia. She’s sweet and loving and although she doesn’t always clean her butt as much as we’d like, she’s all feline.

The other, however, is a dog. There’s no doubt about it. Cecil does not run or prance or even scamper down the hallway. He bounds. Cecil will pick things up in his mouth, and run off with them. And most of all, he lets Henry beat him up.

Most cats I’ve known do not do well with babies and young children. But while Cecil doesn’t love Henry (as Henry certainly loves Cecil), he puts up with him. He lets Henry pull on his fur and tug at his tail and even (yuck) put his paw in his mouth. (That one was my fault. I was a bit lax on stopping that from happening, and it was only in there for a second or two.)

Surprisingly, Cecil was even okay with Henry starting to crawl. He was spooked a bit at first, but only for a moment. (He was spooked even more when Henry finally got into second gear, if you know what I mean, but that too was all in stride.) This is what dogs do, people. Not cats.

I still want a dog (a Bernese mountain dog, to be precise) and I’m sure Henry will want one too, but for now, Cecil will do just fine.

I try and tell her every day what a great person, wife, and mother she is, and, well, everyone knows it. Especially Henry.

One of the great fears we have is that, because Henry spends so much time with super-nanny Silvia, he’ll start to like her more. But, frankly, any time you see Henry with Kristen you know how far from the truth that is. Whenever Kristen walks into the room where Henry and I are playing, he’ll stop, look at her, and give her the biggest smile and loudest laugh (even more than when he sees Cecil the cat).

And today, he giggled and laughed for her from morning until night.

To sum things up, I love what Kristen and I have, and I love how Henry has made everything that much better.

Happy Mother’s Day, Bubba.

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.

On Saturday morning, I was worrying because Henry hadn’t had a poop for more than 24 hours. All I could think of was a clogged innard (to be gruesomely detailed by a baby gastrointestinal specialist), the surgery required, and all the terrible complications thereof. After 45 minutes of extreme worry (Kristen was none the wiser, thankfully), Henry decided that he would have the largest bowel movement in the history of bowel movements. It was fantastic, like he was attached to some poop spigot, so large that when we were changing him, he decided that he wasn’t quite done, and pooped some more.

I was quite relieved. Being relieved because you’re witnessing something like this is usually grounds for some sort of institutionalization, I think.

Soon after, we were allowed to go home, and Kristen and I were both quite glad to finally get out of there. We packed up all our stuff, I made a couple of runs to the car, and then we strapped young Henry in his car seat and headed home.

(I threatened to drive 18 miles per hour on Lake Shore Drive, but Kristen made me go the speed limit. I called her the lost Andretti child.)

It was extremely strange walking into our place with a baby. All of a sudden, it was real. Not that it wasn’t real in the hospital (it was, believe me), but here we were, no longer protected by doctors and nurses and people who deliver you food and take out your trash. There weren’t people there to come and take the baby for two hours so you could take a nap and not worry about having to change him. There was nobody.

It was just the three of us.

And the cats.

We placed Henry in his vibrating chair (it’s quite amazing… and soothing, too), and allowed Georgia and Cecil to come up and look at him and smell him and flinch when Henry decided to move his foot. There were several times when Cecil looked up at me with his head cocked to the side as if he wanted to ask, “He’s just here for a couple of days, right?”

We’ve let them in the room with Henry (always supervised, of course) a few times since yesterday afternoon, and it seems as if they’re getting used to him, or at least his smell.

They have to, because we’re keeping him.

It’s also the best position for a little bit of kitty snuggle.

Georgia loves to sleep on stomachs. When we go to bed, she’ll usually jump up onto Kristen’s gut. She’ll get all cozy, start purring, and then fall asleep, usually with a paw or two on Kristen’s chin (or, even better, she’ll creep up a little and rest her own chin on hers).

Then, after about 15 minutes or so, after she’s gotten herself as warm as she possibly can, she’ll get up, walk to the pillow between our heads, and fall asleep there, lasting until around 5:30 in the morning. (We’re hoping that Georgia will teach that to Barnabas quite quickly.)

However, last night, there was a difference. Kristen was on her side and her stomach wasn’t available for snugglage (that’s a new word and I’m working on trademarking it), so Georgia jumped on my stomach and fell asleep there. A revelation!

An aside: In the past we had attempted the extremely challenging tummy-to-tummy transfer (where a sleeping cat was surgically removed from one person’s stomach area and slowly and gently placed onto another person’s), but the success rate was extremely low (less than 5%). This procedure was quickly abandoned (really, let’s let the cat sleep undisturbed), and I was relegated to not having any real “cute” time with Georgia.

So there I was, cat purring on stomach, curled up and ready to sleep. I was in heaven. But I looked over, and saw Kristen squirming away, unable to get comfortable, and I felt like a total heel, my own kitty pleasure trumping her terrible back pain.

Of course, 10 seconds later, she put her paws on my chin, and Kristen was quickly forgotten. I mean, really. What else would you expect?

Along with Kristen, the only other member of the household to feel the kicks was one of our cats, Georgia. Georgia–precious, tiny, whiny–loves to sleep on Kristen’s stomach, which features the comforting warmth and roundness that she doesn’t seem to get from my stomach (unfortunately I’m neither at the right temperature nor do I feature the proper guttural arc, although I’m working on the latter).

Last night, however, I was able to feel him kicking for the first time, a swift blow to the right of Kristen’s tummy button, and let me tell you, it was a very exciting thing. Not as exciting as finding out Kristen was pregnant or that we were having a boy or the Giants winning the Super Bowl, but pretty darn exciting.

Now I just have to figure out if they make infant sized football cleats.

He could be a difficult cat. When Kristen and I moved in together he announced his displeasure by leaving a “present” on the couch (they quickly reconciled and became quite the pair). When he slept at my feet at night, he would bite my toes if I dared to move. He liked to sit on my chest at 4 in the morning to make sure that I knew he was hungry. He would sometimes (often, actually) overeat and vomit, leaving a nice mess to clean up. He enjoyed eating tinsel from the Christmas tree (let me tell you how strange it was cleaning out the litter box every December).

But we loved him. A lot. And when Sonja arrived in our lives 8 years ago, Frank took her in and made her welcome, and they were constant companions and enjoyed each others company as much as any old grumpy cat and a young shy one could. When Sonja died much too young last summer, Frank took it quite hard. (I know, I know; he’s a cat. And I’m only guessing. But I’d like to think he missed her as much as we did.) Our two new cats, Cecil and Georgia, never took to him: Georgia would hiss anytime she walked close to him, and as Cecil grew, he staked him claim as the dominant animal in the house and was a little rough with the aging Frank. I’m sure Frank wanted more than anything to have another cat to sleep with and groom, but no such luck.

Frank had been suffering from the common age-related cat ailment of kidney disease (the same thing that Betty had to deal with), and at a recent visit to the vet, the blood test results didn’t look good. He had lost a lot of weight, down to under 10 lbs. But he soldiered on.

On Wednesday night, he stopped eating. He had trouble moving his back legs, and he was unable to walk very far. By Thursday, he couldn’t walk at all, and Kristen and I both came to the same conclusion.

So we cried at home and hugged him and pet him. And then we took him to the vet’s and cried and hugged and pet some more. And as I type this, I’m crying even more, although I can’t hug him or pet him any longer.

Betty left us in June. Sonja in August. Now Francis in March. Our friends Katia and Steve have had a similar run of bad luck with cats lately. Maybe it’s something in the water in our neighborhood.

But I have to say, he gave us a wonderful 15 1/2 years. I’ll miss him very, very much, but I’ll never forget him.