I had a 20 pound calico cat for 13 years when I became pregnant with my son. She tried to sleep on top of my stomach up until the day he was born. She thought she was a chicken hatching her own egg. Everyone told me to be really careful with a cat around a baby. Especially this cat, who tried to kill every other pet I brought home for 13 years. Dogs were scared of this cat. She was mean to everyone but me. Then I brought my son home from the hospital. I put him in his crib in his room with a baby monitor beside him. She would not let the new baby out of her sight. She slept underneath his crib. I didn’t need the baby monitor. As soon as he would wake up and cry, she was standing on top of me meowing until I got out of bed to take care of her newborn. Sometimes, she would wake me up whenever he started moving and making noise. She didn’t even wait on him to cry. She never got into his crib. She never scratched him. I could have died. She would not have cared. She had a new baby to take care of. She was his cat until the day she died at over 19 years old. She is buried in our yard. My son still goes out and visits her grave.
About the time he learned to crawl, I had some friends with a Newfoundland dog that was a little over a year old. He wanted to be outdoors. They had too many dogs. I had a big fenced in yard and we were living in the city. His name was Max. He was solid black and looked like a grizzly bear. He weight around 160lbs when he was fully grown. His head was taller than me when he put his front paws onto my shoulders. Max met my son and was immediately his. Max would hear my son cry or scream or just be a kid inside the house. Max would run to the nearest window to my son and look in and bark until he could see my son and see that he was ok. It was crazy. Max wouldn’t let us out of the backyard if there was a stranger at the gate until he knew they were ok. He would literally stand between my son and I and the gate and growl until I told him to stop. Then he would let me go to the gate. I had more than one conversation with Max to let people near my son. When we moved out of the city, I gave Max back to his previous owners. Max and my son were both not very happy with me about that, but I didn’t have a place at the time we were moving to keep him. Max was a good dog. If you ever need a family friendly dog that will also be a guard dog, a Newfoundland is a great choice. The coast guard uses them for water rescue dogs. They’re extremely intelligent and trainable. They do not like hot weather.
Max was scared of the calico cat.
When we finally got moved and settled into a house, I got a collie puppy. My son and her were inseperable. He took her for walks and spent hours playing with her. He still plays with her. So she is his which is fine because I got her for him. About a year later, she went into heat before I got her to the vet. All nine puppies she shared with my son. We found homes for 8 of them and kept one female puppy that my son picked out to keep. The runt of the litter. She is my sons also. They live in our backyard and visit inside the house. Both of them are very protective of my son. I could be killed. They would sit and watch. My son learned so much from watching the puppies be born and raising them until they were old enough to rehome.
The dogs were all scared of the calico cat. She would stand in the middle of the back door and look at them. They wouldn’t come into the house until she decided to move or I made her move. It was funny.
Four years ago, the calico was really getting too old to play much so I got my son a female kitten for his birthday. I wasn’t sure how the calico was going to respond since she had tried to kill every other cat up until that point. I figured between two dogs and nine puppies she had probably chilled out enough to handle a kitten. She hated the kitten. It jumped all over her and licked her until she finally gave up and decided it wasn’t going anywhere. She flipped her tail at it but they slept together everynight. Then about six months after that, we heard a kitten howling for a couple of days but we couldn’t find it. I finally found it abandoned in a tree with a hollowed out trunk. I crawled up into the tree and rescued the little male fur ball. He was almost dead. I brought him inside, fed and watered him. He perked right up. The calico pretended like he did not exist. It was hysterical. If he got near her, she would just leave the room. Finally, I had a pet again of my own. Nope.
Because I didn’t learn from not getting the dog to the vet in time, my son’s two cats had a male and female kitten. Again, surely I’m thinking, I have at least one pet of my own. NO! I told my son we needed to rehome the two kittens. I took all four cats to the vet and got them fixed. My son still has all four cats. The calico passed away of old age. Maybe someday, I will have a pet of my own again.
Middle of the Muddy Road 