Julie Jay: Pets add an entire extra dimension to a child’s life

Our impossibly tiny cat may be in the winter years, but living with two tiny people keeps her young at heart

Our impossibly tiny cat may be in the winter years, but living with two tiny people keeps her young at heart

WE have a cat. Her name is Molly, and she is very much in the winter years of life.

I’m still not fully sure how we adopted Molly, but she basically showed up on our doorstep in 2020, when I was pregnant with Number One, and she never went away.

As cats do, she had been scoping out new homes for a while, appearing at various doors in the village looking for food for a protracted period until she obviously decided the nomadic lifestyle was no longer for her.

Though she had been calling to the house off and on for years, I’m not sure what made her decide to move in full time, but I’m so glad she did.

She has brought us all endless joy, none more so than the kids who have Molly placed on a pedestal, which would make current global superstar and Dunboyne native CMAT look positively lowly in comparison to the level of reverence placed upon this impossibly tiny black and white cat.

Back in 2020, two separate vets informed me that Molly was “at least 20”, but here we are nearly six years later, and she is still going strong, defying all life expectancy expectations — albeit at a slower, more measured pace.

She is nearly fully blind at this point, but if her purring is anything to go by, she’s still pretty happy with her lot — even though her world is much smaller now — and she rarely, if ever, ventures outside.

For the boys, she is the sister they never had. A very elderly, blind sister, but a sister nonetheless.

Incredibly, she is technically my husband’s first ever pet, and how he got through 39 years on this planet without ever having something at home to rub baffles me on the daily.

Growing up, we always had a dog and a cat floating about the place, and the concept of not having had as much as a rabbit to comfort you back in the emotionally charged days of fourth class is utterly terrifying. No doubt my husband had to actually talk to family members instead about his problems, which just doesn’t bear thinking about.

I truly believe pets add a separate dimension to a child’s life. They teach them about being gentle and caring towards animals, as well as how to respect boundaries. The latter resonates in particular with me, given that my first ever memory is of a cat scratching me in what was then my grandad’s kitchen.

Given that I had been trying to dress her up in a frilly frock, she was totally within her rights to throw a few slaps.

To add insult to injury, she was also ginger, so the rejection from my own community cut deep. Still, I learned my lesson in relation to how far to push it when it came to frolicking with my feline friends.

Seeing the kids interact with Molly is nothing short of adorable.

They are borderline obsessed. Their ultimate fear is that Molly is going to feel even slightly peckish. So to avoid this, Number Two, who is a toddler, approaches me multiple times per hour requesting that I feed her. He gets more and more aggravated when I insist she has just been fed, usually culminating in him throwing a tin of cat food in my direction and denouncing me in a tirade of baby vitriol.

While he loves sneaking a few rubs at any opportunity, Number One enjoys burying his head in her whiskers. Basking in the attention, Molly gives what is now a full-on Shane McGowan smile, because no starlet reaches the age she does without losing a tooth or two along the way.

Yesterday, when I deigned to move Molly so I could sit on the couch, Number One insisted that she didn’t want to be moved, despite her appearing oblivious to it all.

“You don’t know cats like I know cats,” this tiny Dr Doolittle announced.

Eventually, I returned her to her spot, purely for the sake of an easy life with this vehement animal rights activist.

As Molly slows down more and more, she spends most days perched like a queen on the couch — where her tiny attendants take it in turns to bring her gifts, including Batman and The Incredible Hulk toy figures, and a selection of Hot Wheels racing cars.

Number Two enjoys wrapping her up in a blanket so that she resembles the Messiah in the manger all those moons ago, an appropriate metaphor in that this same baby was also presented with useless gifts: Gold, myrrh, and frankincense.

Between my two fellas and The Three Kings, I think it’s safe to say men should not be allowed to choose gifts without supervision.

On the plus side, it could be worse — the boys could be attempting to dress Molly up in a frilly frock.

Now that would certainly be something to throw slaps about.