Another Country Heard From

We thought we had a lot going on. The adjustments, the difficulties, the laughing, the crying, the silent struggles, the hot new joys. We thought we were the sole helmeted travelers exploring the centers of this swirling new universe, just born from the particles of infinite space and time. And then I caught my cat straddling the baby in her bassinet, ever so nimbly eating the tubing from the feed bag, while the feed was going through the pump, while Willa slept soundly, while we were talking in the next room, in broad daylight, plastic and all. I looked at her, she looked at me and I knew, ok so I guess I’m not the only one making hay…

Ever the opportunist, our cat, The Panda, has been making some personal discoveries on her own these days. The most wondrous being the ins, outs, and contents of the feeding apparatus Willa came with. The baby may have stolen the laps, may have shut the doors of the bedroom, she may have turned the doting eyes of the two parents in her general and forever direction but there is a bag filled with the wonders of free food and it sits there as if from a limb high in the bassinet, just ripe for the picking. It sends a chill down my spine.

I’m sure you can imagine: a quick game of word association if you need help: cat, baby, bassinet, smother, accident, death etc etc… And so life gets a little more complicated for The Panda. At 9, 12, 3 and 6 she is shooed into the basement to wait out the hour-long feed. She is watched, monitored and disciplined. None ideal as far as she is concerned and she looks at us with saucer eyes, “Why?” I tell her, “Panda, the last thing I need from you is a guilt trip. We all have to make adjustments.”

Well, she’s made hers. I caught her again Wednesday. This time she had managed to disconnect the bag tubing from Willa’s extension on her g-tube (this is not made to be disconnected so easily, it’s a plastic nozzle that snaps into the extension, the extension goes right into Willa’s stomach via button. Is this the same apparatus that was so recently a near death experience you may ask? Yeah, that one…), she had pulled it onto the floor where she was busily eating as much of it as she possibly could before getting caught.

I honestly couldn’t even get mad. I was just plain impressed. Again, Willa never even woke up. Now, if I sneeze two rooms over it will wake her. If I put the dishes away in the kitchen it will wake her, if I walk too heavily, if I touch tin foil, if I need to make a phone call, if I think about doing laundry, all will wake her. But a cat pulling off her feed from a hole in her body? Apparently, no biggie.

And the universe expands…