Not knowing for sure if I was over my cat allergies, I knew that getting a cat would score points with my husband. Why did I want points, you ask? Because I wanted another baby. Yep. I wasn’t thinking properly, and my husband said that a house wasn’t a home until you had a cat by the fireplace, and technically I agreed. I just didn’t want to suffer. But I decided to take a chance.
My husband thought that as long as we had babies and toddlers around, he would never be able to do anything. (This included godly things like going on missions trips, to his credit, so he wasn’t just being selfish.) We were both so tired with four tiny children under the age of five, three in diapers. My husband thought subconsciously that he couldn’t have anything he wanted until we stopped paying so much money for diapers.
To prove him wrong and show him that he could have outrageous things even when we had babies, I got him the cat. He was very pleased. I didn’t tell him the real reason I got the cat. Instead I mentioned the mouse and the squirrel as valid reasons, plus I’ve always loved cats.
The cat ripped everything to shreds, jumped into the indoor plants and shoveled dirt onto the carpet, and if that wasn’t enough, she dropped marbles on the landing at nap time and during the middle of the night.
I had a newborn at the time. I needed rest badly. So I grabbed the cat during nap time and forced her onto a chair. I looked her dead in the eyes and said, “You’d better obey me. Take a nap now.” She knew I meant business. Within a few days, I had the cat trained to take naps. Sometimes I would see the cat jump up on her nap chair; I would look at the clock, and it was exactly one o’clock. The cat’s internal clock was programmed to nap at one.
To make a long story short, we never had another baby. I went through all that for nothing. (At least I didn’t suffer allergies.) When I told my husband the real reason I had gotten the cat, he laughed.
(Stay tuned for Part 3…)
