Me-Ow-Mie Dearest

It's morning and I wake up with a claw attached to my upper arm. Whenever Mooch wants food, he gives me a jab. So I get up and go to the kitchen cupboard, grab and open a can of turkey and liver, and put some in his dish. Mooch looks at it , licks it a few times, but doesn't eat it.

I ignore him and go to the bathroom to wash up. Afterwards I head to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal-while Mooch follows me. He gives his whiskers a lick, then meows with a whining tone.

"What?! I already fed you!", I yell at him. "If you don't like the food, then that's too bad. Stray cats would kill to have it." I am feeling irked, like a mother with a child who willfully refuses to eat vegetables. So I add, "Liver is good for you. Eat it or starve."

As a cat mom, I know I need to express affection, so besides scolding Mooch ("Get off the kitchen counter!"..."Quit knocking over the garbage can!"), I make sure to spend about fifteen minutes of one-on-one quality time with him each day. This means that I'll sometimes sit down with him, pet him and say "What a sweetheart!" and "You know Mama loves baby Mooch" and sometimes he'll roll over and purr. On other occasions I'll play games with him, which includes dangling something for him to hit like a tether ball, or playing chase by running around the apartment.

As a cat mom, I also want to be on good terms with Mooch and remain friends with him, so if I start to feel that I yell at him more than I play with him, I remind myself that I need to exercise self-control and that I need to demonstrate more appreciation. (After all, children are loveable.) Still, parenting can at times be trying. As author Franklin P. Jones puts it: "You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance."

Even though Mooch is not my biological child and one might say I'm just a "cat mom", having the experience of raising him for almost two years has taught me something-namely, what it's like being a parent. Since Mooch is a rascal, I've had to develop more patience. And along with it I have also discovered that my heart happens to carry more love than I previously suspected.

Check out Jean Soohoo's website at http://www.cafepress.com/rainbowsmiley