Close Encounters of the Feline Kind

My son is completely enamored of cats.

Seriously, not only is his favorite toy (outside anything with wheels, I mean) a stuffed cat, you should see him go crazy every time he sees a cat. Whether it's on the tv, or in the courtyard, or a photo in a magazine ad, the spotting of a cat always causes an extremely excited eruption of "KEY CAT! KEY CAT! KEY CAT!" from the boy. It's kind of cute.

The thing is, he's never actually seen a real cat up close, unless you count a visit to PetSmart one night when they happened to have a few that were up for adoption. Even then, those cats were behind glass, and not particularly friendly towards our enthusiastic toddler. Judging from his rough handling of the dogs at home, I don't think I'd want him to handle a cat anyway. Those kitty claws - they're sharp!

Obviously, we've been working on him towards being more gentle with the dogs. "NICE!" gets said a lot around here. He no longer grabs handfuls of that abundant Yorkie hair to tug, which is good. He does not try to poke out the dog's eyes, which is better. He knows to gently stroke their fur, instead of trying to pat or smack them. He's made really good progress.

This came in handy tonight, when he got to see his very first real cat, up close and even got to pet it! We dropped him off with his godparents while we went to an appointment. When we came to pick him up, there was a stray cat outside their door. It came up to us and let it pet it and was very friendly. He was very excited to see it when they opened the door for us of course, but we didn't let him out to see it. When it was time to leave the cat was still there. He got very excited again so we decided to let him pet the cat, reminding him first to be nice.

He was so good with that cat! I was very impressed. He stroked it's fur very gently, and in turn, it almost knocked him over when it tried to rub against him. We stood out there and let him talk to the cat and pet it for about five minutes, then decided to leave.

Man, you should have seen the fit he pitched when he was pulled away from that cat! The little indulgent mom voice in my head told me that we should just go ahead and take in that poor stray. My husband confessed that he was thinking the same thing, but we both agreed there was no way we could take in a cat right now.

Maybe after we move. Maybe.