Week 35 - Goodbye, Baby, Goodbye

This was an incredibly sad week, as we had to find a new home for our beloved two-year-old kitty, Ridley. Ridley has always been a fairly aggressive cat (we like to refer to it as overly playful) but he has done a pretty good job of keeping his aggression away from the baby. In fact, since he sniffed her in her car seat the day we brought her home from the hospital, he has pretty much just completely ignored her for the past seven months. However, about three weeks ago, Ridley was sitting on the coffee table watching as Ellie played with her blocks on the carpet and out of nowhere - BAM - he swatted at her head and scratched her on her helpless little bald scalp!

Of course in the aftermath of Ellie hysterically crying, me screaming and Marty chasing after Ridley like a madman, I think that he got the point that he did something REALLY wrong. And quite frankly, since then he has behaved like a perfect angel - even running away anytime she crawled anywhere in his vicinity so as not to get in trouble again. Unfortunately though, he pretty much sealed the deal and wrote his walking papers by attacking her unprovoked. He may have "reformed" for now, but it is just too dangerous to have this unpredictably aggressive animal near our baby, especially now that she is mobile and more and more interested in him. The time was drawing near where she would be chasing him around, trying to pick him up and sticking her finger in his eye when pointing at him. I can only imagine how he could react if actually provoked. And we just can't take that chance. It would be irresponsible of us to wait and see – we would never forgive ourselves if Ellie really got hurt.

I feel incredibly guilty. I hate to be one of those people that has their beloved pet and then has a baby and ignores the pet and can't follow through on the commitment for caring for it. For two years, Ridley was our baby - we took a million pictures of him, talked about him like proud parents, played with him (he played fetch!) and cuddled with him to our hearts content. Of course things change when you have children, as obviously your helpless baby needs you more and trumps the family pet – at least for a while - but we still loved him like part of the family.

We ended up finding a nice college student to take him, and we are confident that Ridley will love it in the spacious apartment, on a very busy street in Center City with tons of interesting things to look at through the window. She has the time and energy to make him her number one baby and I know that he will love being the center of attention once again. We know that it was the right thing to do, but that does not make it easier, or make us miss him any less.

I think that Ellie will miss him too. She smiled whenever he came into the room and laughed when he walked by, swishing his fluffy tail in her face. She was always watching him, finding whatever he was doing (licking a plastic bag, trying to crawl into a box 3 times too small for him to fit in, chasing after toy mice?) incredibly interesting and funny. We are also trying to reassure Ellie that we will not get rid of her if she is mean to any subsequent children we may have, but really it is a lesson that she should keep in mind. (haha)

So it is with heavy hearts that we say Goodbye Ridley, our first baby! Our house is emptier without you - and you will be missed.