Advice—July 2006

Dear Sparkle,
The weirdest thing is going on in my home right now! The humans just brought home this really strange little creature and they are making the biggest deal out of it. I actually think it’s kind of ugly—it doesn’t have any fur and it’s kind of noisy at times. It sort of looks like an unfinished, miniature human. Whatever it is, it’s totally helpless and the humans have to do everything for it. They even have a whole room devoted to this thing. Even though—like I said—it isn’t the most attractive creature in the world it seems okay. I mean, at least it’s not another cat! What do I do about this creature? Should I make friends with it? It’s not going to steal my food, is it?
Signed,
Mystified

Dear Mystified,
When you said that this creature looks like an unfinished, miniature human, you were actually right on the mark because that’s exactly what it is! It’s the human version of a kitten, called a “baby.” Babies actually aren’t as fun as kittens because they are so helpless for such a long time. It takes them many months to mature enough to be playful, and even then you had better hope your humans train it well—unfortunately babies grow in size faster than their ability to know the difference between “playful” and “hurtful” when it comes to us kitties.

But you won’t have to deal with an overactive, untrained baby for a while yet. Right now your biggest concern is making sure that your humans don’t totally neglect you in favor of the baby. If they do, they don’t mean to—I’m sure your mother neglected her humans when she had you and your brothers and sisters. The best thing you can do right now is just be there—hang around where ever the humans are, sit next to them if you want and generally be present. They probably won’t be feeling terribly playful a lot of the time. Humans don’t have as natural a parenting instinct as cats and other creatures do, so they are usually pretty stressed out when they have a new baby to deal with. You’ll have to cope with that the best you can.

Chances are you won’t get much access to the baby’s room, which is really a pity. Babies are warm so they’re nice to sleep with, and the tops of their bottles make fun toys to bat around. But it’s almost a given that the humans will put some sort of cover or tent over the baby’s crib to keep you out, and they will not appreciate you playing hockey with any of the baby’s things. If you want to get to know the baby, you’ll pretty much have to do it on the humans’ terms.

As far as stealing your food, that won’t happen for a good, long while. When the baby starts to crawl around, the humans will probably keep an eye on it and keep it away from your food. The problem will come when they get used to it roaming around and they aren’t quite as watchful. Then you might find the baby in your bowl. But if this happens, just complain loudly. Your humans will be more than happy to remove the baby from your food.