Memory Monday: Pets Before Kids

Me, my husband, and our daughter

PETS BEFORE KIDS

We did not plan it that way, but I glad it happen. My husband and I were married nine years before we had any children. We had raised two generations of cats in that time of B.C. (Before Children), and we learned some very, very valuable lessons about child rearing from our experiences.

With our first cat, Molasses, we were very strict. We taught her how to behave, not to get on the furniture, not to scratch the doors, and, definitely, not to get on the kitchen cabinets (in fact, the only time she did get on the kitchen cabinets was when she had been outside, chased by a dog, came streaking in, leaped on the counters, raced across the hot griddle, and cowered in the corner). We taught her and we disciplined her.

Two years later, she got her grandson, McArthur (by way of a neighbor who had taken two of Molasses's kittens). By this time we were more lax in our raising of this little kitten. We were not as careful with our training—we did not enforce our discipline as consistently; we just did not bring up the second kitten as well as we could have because we did not put as much into it as we could have.

We had lots of fun with both of them. They made our lives richer for having them, but the best thing about them—the very best thing—is the lesson we learned about the responsibility of raising a living creature from infancy to adulthood.

In a relatively short span of time (about 4 years), we saw what the results our proper training (and lack of proper training) with them could lead to. Molasses was well-behaved, sweet, gentle, and hardly ever in "trouble." McArthur, on the other hand, was constantly having to be disciplined—he would scratch the window ledges, get on the furniture, climb on the kitchen counters, tearing open the bread if I forgot to put it up. We loved McArthur (the grandson cat) just as much as we loved Molasses (even though they had such different personalities—one was gentle and quiet, the other was rambunctious and playful), but we made life so much harder for everyone all the way around by not raising McArthur right, by not giving him the time and teaching that he needed.

I am so thankful that we had pets before kids because we learned some very valuable lessons in miniature. My husband and I would often discussed the results of the way we had dealt with our cats and the results and we tried to learn from them as to what we could do differently when we had children. We learned that we needed to be consistent. And if we weren’t consistent, there would be results (and those results would not be good). We learned that just because the older one knew the right thing to do, the younger one would not automatically do it also—each one must be taught individually. We learned that each one that we raised was different, and we had to take those differences in to account in the way that we dealt with them. We loved our cats (they were 17 and 18 when they finally died), and my husband and I will always be thankful for the lessons we learned from them about child raising before we made some of the mistakes we could have made with our own children.

P.S. That all happened over 40 years ago. A few of years ago, we got our next generations of cats—MacIntosh and Malcolm. With them, we are not nearly as strict in disciplining them, much more patient, more indulgent—definitely more indulgent. They are everywhere, on everything (except the kitchen cabinets and table), they get their way in just about everything they want, and we bought them all sort of toys. Yes, thanks to the training of this new generation of cats, you can already tell: my husband and I are going to be wonderful grandparents.