This story was written by my daughter, Teresa Bartock.
I’ve always been a cat lover. It was no surprise when I got a place of my
own that I soon had two kittens. They
were both domestic short hair. One was a
gray eight week old female that I named Shadow.
The other was a black six week old female that I named Midnight. For a little over a year, it was just the
three of us. I treated Shadow and
Midnight like they were my children.
They were very spoiled.
Two years later I got married. My husband and I didn’t really have a desire
to have any children. But since we were
both pet lovers, it didn’t take long for our two cats to turn into four cats
and two dogs. The additional two cats
were also domestic short hair: a white
male named Tobias (Tobi for short) and a black and white female named
Zena. Shadow and Midnight have always
been “my” cats. So it worked out quite
well that Tobi and Zena were closer to my husband than they were to me.
After five years of marriage, we
found out that we were having a baby. We
had the same worries that most first time parents have. Are we ready?
Will we be good parents? Can we
afford a baby? But we also had another
thing to worry about: How will our
spoiled cats react? I was especially
concerned about how Shadow and Midnight would react since I had given them so
much of my time and attention for almost eight years.
It didn’t take long for nine months
to pass by and before we knew it, we were bringing home our little bundle of
joy. We were the proud parents of a
beautiful, healthy eight pound baby girl.
I had always loved the name Katherine.
Since my husband and I didn’t agree on any boy names, I was thrilled
that he immediately agreed with the name Katherine if we had a girl. We thought about what her nickname would
be. Would we call her Kathy, Kate,
Katie, or Kat. My husband and I thought
it would be cute to call her Kat.
When we brought Kat home, my cats
didn’t know what to think. They hid for
a few days. After that they would come
around and sniff her. But Tobi acted a
little different than the rest of the cats did.
This cat that didn’t really hang around me often before Kat was born was
now suddenly everywhere I was…as long as Kat was with me. There were many times that I sat on the couch
feeding Kat or just holding her and Tobi would come cuddle up next to us. You can tell that he likes her.
It’s been two months now and the
cats all seem to be adjusting well to their new “little sister.” They all love her now, but it is still
obvious whose cat is whose. I still have
Shadow and Midnight and my husband still has Zena. But it’s obvious that Tobi is now Kat’s cat.
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