Cardboard Cats
We’ve got two cats. A very big ginger one called Einstein — who is good at sleeping, eating, sleeping, disappearing for a couple of days at a time, sleeping and eviscerating small animals, and a big grey one called Darwin — who is good at purring extremely loudly (I’m not joking - sometimes you can hear him purr from a different room), sitting on top of the telly, waking the GLW up in the middle of the night, and of course eviscerating small animals.
They look a bit like this picture.
Actually, come to think of it, they look a lot like that picture, since that’s them.
Now before I go any further I really ought to tell you about my niece. She’s a lovely lass, bless her, likes football, likes reading books, likes puzzles and so on and she’s really smart. Which is why she’ll kill me if she ever reads this next paragraph, ‘cos she’ll be embarrassed.
Quite some time ago now, not long after she started “big school” (e.g. 11+) she came home from school, and found my GLW there with the kids.
Auntie! You’ll never believe this! I’ve just found out at school today that there used to be a really famous scientist called Einstein — he’s got the same name as your cat!My niece
At what point precisely do you say “Really? Well I never! Oh, wait … I did know that, as it happens. That’s who the cat was named after. Later on you may discover that there used to be a scientist called Darwin too…”.
Apparently my wife told her the news with a great deal of tact and diplomacy. Which hardly sounds like the most fun way to do it, but never mind…
But anyway, now you’ve seen my cats, you’ll appreciate the wonderful piece of artistic endeavour that went into producing this:
The cardboard cats, as produced by little BTP and SWP — I suspect with some degree of help from their Grandma though, as the cat faces look a little too well drawn — but the sheer pride in BTPs face as he showed me the pipecleaner Einstein cat that he’d made. Or at least that he felt that he’d made, even if Grandma did help quite a bit.
It’s moments like that that make me swell with pride and make me so happy to be a dad. It can be hard work at times, but moments like that make all the hard work worthwhile.
…although if there’s anyone out there reading this who is considering having children, it’s only fair to point out that there is a rather considerable amount of hard work involved — and that the Cardboard Cat type moments have to be mentally saved up for those other moments. You know, the Homer strangling Bart ones, when your child won’t eat, or sleep, or be polite, or go to bed, or have a bath because they are too busy tearing wallpaper off the walls and or scribbling on the very same walls.
That’s not to say it’s not worthwhile — it is — but it wouldn’t have been fair if I hadn’t warned you properly 
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In the early days/weeks I just keep telling myself “It gets better. It must get better” :). Slowly it did, but then someone or something convinces you to do it again (and again in my case).
That said completely agree with you Jack. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
Think I’ll just stick to the cats, they’re cheaper to run ;o)