i really believe that God uses pets and the caring of pets to help teach us about parenthood.*  many of you know that our beloved ball of fluff the berkeley is high-maintenance.  the dog has needs, besides the normal canine types of feeding, bathing, pottying and such.  he requires pills daily to help the achiness of his back since he has cartilage that are compressed.  he is a lhasa apso so he needs a haircut every 8 weeks or he’ll look like a poofy unruly mop.  we must give him drugs on stormy nights to alleviate pantings and hyperventilation.  and there are several other nuances that i just think are part of his quirky personality.

well, saturday afternoon, while jon was mowing along the back fence row with tall overgrown grass, he discovered a kitten. a very little kitty.  he couldn’t find its mama, but he wasn’t sure how the poor thing ended up in the middle of our backyard.  silly jon that he is, he dragged me out of the house to see it.  BIG MISTAKE.  i automatically had to bring it into the house to care for it.  it’s an orphan kitty! what would happen to it outside without a caretaker.

Yoshibut back to the point of my post, as i’ve been acting as foster kitty mama to a 2-3 week old kitten that seems healthy and barely can walk, i realize how much work such little creatures are.  i know nothing about cats.  except that i am allergic to them and jon isn’t too fond of felines.  it cries like a sick seagull.  it can barely nurse on a bottle (which took me 2 days to figure out how to get it to use the nipple of a bottle as opposed to my knuckles and hands).  it needs manual assistance to pee & poop (which i learned baby wipes really help from messes allover my hands and arms). it wakes up every few hours to potty, nurse, burp and fall asleep again. did i mention that it wakes up every few hours?

what i am learning from this experience is the following: i really am not a cat-person… i adore this little kitty who i named Yoshi…  i am able to get up every few hours to feed the need of a crying baby… the berkeley will have a rough time adjusting to another being in the house (especially if it ends up stealing one of his toys)… and i am as ready as i can possibly be for a human baby – long nights, frequent bottle feedings, bodily fluid messiness, taking 2 1/2 hrs to get ready to leave the house as opposed to one hour, and a great appreciation for baby wipes!

hopefully we can locate a nursing cat to help with Yoshi.  it really needs a mama of its own kind.  i’m beginning to think it imagines the berkeley’s stuffed dinosaur to be its mama or worse yet, me. 

See more Yoshi pics here.

*disclaimer – i know that pets are not the same as human children, i know it’s not the same, but i also know pets take A LOT of work! *

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