cats and kiddos

I had grand housekeeping plans today, but I sliced open a capillary or something on a chipped plate this morning while trying to wash the dishes and that just shot my focus all to hell. It didn’t hurt much, but my finger bled all over the damn place for about twenty minutes, ruining the dishwater, dripping on the counter and down my arm as though I has some sort of ghastly slicing injury rather than an innocuous nick. That set me back by about half an hour, because the thing would not stop bleeding. I had this moment of wondering if I could possibly experience harmful blood loss from a nick on my finger, and then I grew up enough to put on a Band-Aid and awkwardly finish the dishes. Then I went running, ate lunch, took the overflowing recycling to the Wal-Fart recycling center, bought groceries, and came home, and here I am, the afternoon practically gone, and only half of what I wanted to do accomplished.

Also, I am getting an enormous zit under my nose.

The bloody finger did give me an excuse to empty out the cache of stored-up profanity that backlogged while the wee squirts were staying here. Suze and the kids left this morning, after visiting for four days and some change. When they pulled up, Wednesday evening, Suze rushed to the door first without the kids to get some cleaning supplies for Daniel, who had mercifully waited until five minutes before they arrived to hurl all over himself and the back seat of their spanking new Prius. We headed back out to the car, armed with paper towels and wet rags. I braced myself for the sight of cranky, pukey toddlers. But when we opened the car door, Daniel, still strapped into a car seat and covered with his own vomit, beamed and held up both his index fingers. “Aunt Teffnie you have TWO CATS!” he said.

Oh, man. Daniel luuuuurves the cats. As for the cats…they think he’s okay. You know, for a little human, I think they find him relatively inoffensive. Daniel is a quick study and a gentle soul, and with some coaching, he learned to approach the kitties delicately, particularly Her Royal Fragileness. Djuna spent the first two days crouching in the basement, then sort of got over it and ventured upstairs now and then, where she sat on the blanket that wraps Eric’s beer fermentation carboy. Bless her, she thinks she’s invisible there. Daniel imitated me: “She’s little shy,” and “Well, hi Djuna!” and “You’re okay, Djuna!”, and eventually, she allowed him to pat her. Bonzo is less phased by small children and can allow himself to be patted without it being some huge personal issue, although he tends to look colossally bored and so done with the whole thing.

We thought the cat love might get old after a day or so, but it did not. The first thing Daniel said to me every morning was, “You have TWO CATS!!” And randomly throughout the day: “You have TWO CATS!” And when Suze was trying to get him interested in food or sleep: “You have TWO CATS!!” Always with the two index fingers. “What are their names?” I would ask. “Djuna and BONZO!!” “Djuna has black stripes!” “Bonzo scratch carpet get sprayed water!” “Bonzo in window jump high!” “Djuna not jump so high!” “Kitties go crunch crunch!”

When it got too much for Djuna, we would go visit her in the basement. This, we learned quickly, was best conducted as a strictly with-grownups-only activity. The first night we made the mistake of letting Daniel stay down there by himself, because we were bored out of our gourd watching him watch the cat crouch on a filthy pillow and glower. We sat upstairs for awhile, drinking beer or whatever, until Eric popped down to check on the laundry.

“Oooh…boy. Uhh…”

“What?” Suze called.

“Uh…You don’t want to know,” called Eric.

“TELL ME,” Suze said.

“TELL HER,” I said, just to be helpful.

Litter boxes do sort of look like sandboxes, and litter scoops do sort of look like sandbox toys. We learned. From then on, Eric and I took turns spending time with Daniel in the basement and coaxing him to give Djuna a wide berth so that she wouldn’t go wiggy. He was actually wonderful at this. He would crouch down at her level, a few yards away from her, and coo, “You’re okay, Djuna. You’re okay.”

Anya is still getting my number. The first time she met me, back in November, her face lit up and she held out her arms to be picked up, a reaction to a stranger unprecedented in the History of Anya. But I’m pretty sure she had me confused with her mother, who was at a rehearsal at the time. Suze and I are first cousins, and resemble one another so strongly that we would probably make a good heist team of some sort. (After this incident, the family took to referring to me as Fake Mom, until I got cranky about it.) There is, however, a limit to the heists one can pull on one’s own daughter. The gig is more or less up come feeding time. I can safely say that at no point in the last four days did Anya believe me to be her mother. However, I would like to think that she believes I do a very good wrinkly nose face. Goofy faces are, for the time being, the basis of our relationship.

“Why you live so far way?” Daniel asked me about fifty times. I don’t know how to answer that, sweet boy, but I miss you all already.