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The Cat's Meow

According to a high level source in my house, Emma plans to ask for a kitten when she turns four. Although her birthday is still six months away, she has already shifted her lobbying campaign into high gear.

Her fundamental negotiating strategy is to demand immediate delivery of a kitten, while being prepared to bargain it down to a birthday present. In addition to this daily hammering at the bottom line, she is also running a sophisticated psychological operation (PsyOps, as it's known in the intelligence trade) wherein she periodically assumes the identity of Half-and-Half, the kitten from my dim and distant early childhood. Who told her about Half-and-Half anyway? Have I been talking in my sleep or did she hire a private investigator? This ruthless play on my warped sentimentality has been oddly unnerving, and I fear, effective.

Except that I still don't want to get a kitty. Right now, as in, this year.

I would have thought that Emma would have reached feline saturation long ago from the endless parade of dozens upon dozens of stuffed kitties through our house. I'd like to think that stuffed kitties are adequate pets for a person of her chronological station in life. In many respects, they actually compare favorably to their living, breathing, and shedding counterparts: Stuffed cats will not shred your furniture, making your best easy chair look like it's wearing furry chaps. Stuffed cats don't need food and can live indefinitely in a shopping bag it the attic should the child become bored. Stuffed cats do not lick themselves with brutal candor when there are dinner guests. Best of all, stuffed cats do not have to be rushed to the hospital when you step on them in the middle of the night, and neither do you.

Plus, they come in a fascinating variety of colors.

But no, Emma is fixated on the Genuine Article. The attraction to kittens seems to be hard-wired; there's no need for a TV ad campaign or animation tie-in. Besides being amply represented in children's literature and folklore, kittens in person are cute as the dickens, unlike, say, trolls or ogres. Kittens sell themselves, despite the fact that every last one of them turns into a cat.

I am quick to remind Emma that we already have a cat. Ninety-Nine (or, 99), named after the Barbara Feldon character from "Get Smart," is about 10 years old and is usually asleep. Although she is a pleasant cat in every regard, she is unlikely to react with giddy little spasms of joy at the sight of a ball of yarn. Somehow, I think that this whole "giddy little spasm of joy" thing resides at the core of what Emma perceives to be a positive and rewarding feline experience, and on this score, 99 clearly does not deliver the goods.

It's not that I don't like the idea of another kitten, it just that I don't think Emma is ready to take care of one. Let's face it, I'd be taking care of the thing. Emma is about as prepared to take care of a kitten as I am to play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the valve trombone.

Not to mention Stella, the Other Child. Stella will be fifteen months old when Emma turns four, which means that a kitten would double my housebreaking burden. I suppose I could kill two birds with one stone and teach Stella to use a litter box, but it's a longshot at best and would probably set the stage for embarrassing and costly family therapy down the road.

I can hear the cynics grumbling. "Homedaddy won't let his little girl have a kitten because he's afraid he'll have to put in a few more minutes of effort each week."

Well, in a word, yes.

In this rare moment of solitude, with both girls napping and Julia out meeting a client, I shall enjoy the fantasy of laying down the law. No new kitten! Anyway, not until I am haunted to near-insanity by the specter of Half-and-Half.

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© Todd Pinsky 1998-2002. All rights reserved.