Before we had an actual human child, I remember reading / hearing that once you do, you might suddenly find that you HATE YOUR ANIMAL CHILD, and I remember thinking, that won’t be me, I could never hate our magical white Christmas turkey teapot. CUT TO ME, 4 am, telling Cracker, who is demanding food while the human child is also demanding food to F**K OFF. I don’t actually hate him. It’s more like I have zero patience with him and if he makes a sound In the middle of precious sleep (namely mine) he’s a villain and his hair all over the floor is another thing I don’t have time to think about and when he darts in front of me like an actual lunatic it’s not cute, it’s a POTENTIALLY FATAL ACCIDENT. I think for the last three years, I’ve taken all the love I had for my future kid, all of my love and nurturing and all parts of my softest touch and voice, and put it onto this Cat, because it was in me and I had to put it somewhere soft. And now that I have a human child, he gets none from me, which is maybe why yesterday, when he’d yet to come out for his damn breakfast that I passive aggressively laid out for him, I found him nestled in the sink, Next to the toothpaste, as if to say, Remember me? The Cat? Everything you used to put on me: I’m still holding it.