Feline-icide

I'm on the verge of committing feline-icide. Seriously! If I hear one more meow out of Pushkin during my daughter's nap, I'm going to lose it.

When I first got my cats, they were my babies. I adored them. I let them sleep in my bed. I fed them only the finest gourmet cat vittles. I never wanted to leave town for fear they would be lonely. I refused to date men who were allergic. Who needed men? I had my cats! I even gave my beloved Persian the middle name Boyfriend. In other words, I was on the verge of becoming a very scary, eccentric cat lady. All I needed were a few more years and 10 or 20 more felines. Not hard to picture, considering I was accumulating cats at a rate of one per year in the late nineties.

So you can imagine the outrage I felt as my former animal-loving pals abandoned their furry friends in favor of their kids. How could these heartless people cast aside their "babies" for those screaming, fleshy aliens? The human babies weren't even cute! At least kittens are adorable right from the get-go!

Well, life took a curve ball and I met this guy in New York ... yada, yada, yada. Four years later, I gave birth to a baby girl and in an instant the cats were forgotten. I'm now guilty of the same crime I had chastised my friends for committing!

These days, the cats are lucky if they get fed. Days will pass before I register that their food bowl is sitting empty on the garage floor (yes, they have been relegated to living in the garage with the washing machine and my husband's old golf clubs). I can go away for weeks on end and never even check in with the cat sitter. One night we couldn't find Pushkin and my husband said, "Whatever, one less mouth to feed." And I totally agreed!

Does this make me a terrible, heartless person? Or is it normal that I don't have any love or energy left over for them?