Please salve my guilty conscience over my cat!! and in fact my general neglect of all of my cats since having children!

[peggotty]

Ok, not actual real proper neglect, just not having time to pet, play with them as much. And in fact, being bloody irritated by them sometimes. One of my cats has just been diagnosed with possible asthma and it has made me feel awful because he's been wheezing for a couple of weeks and I only just round to taking him to the vets yesterday. My 3 cats used to mean the world to me and though I still love them I really do have much less time for them now I have 2 dcs. One in particular is now 11, I got him when I was a student and I can see he is starting to age. My chldren are young (3 and 8months) do you sort of 'rediscover' your pets once dcs are a bit older?

Or maybe my conscience is unsalvable and surruptitious (sp!) bump

It's really hard, isn't it. We have two quite young cats, and they've never sat on my lap since I had dd . Although two years in, they are beginning to recover.

I don't know; for me, I suspect I will never ever love a cat as much as I once did - (although I can still cry at the thought of my old Eartha Kitten, who I got when I was a student died at the age of 18. I'm sort of glad that I didn't have a child when she was around, as she would have really missed being fussed over. But I still like having them around, and would hate not to have them.

And don't feel guilty, we've spent months (and I mean this) trying to get a urine sample out of Fat and Lazy Cat. In the meantime, her cystitis and urge to pee on the front doormat has gone away, so now we've given up...

Don't feel bad, peggotty! Before I had my dc I used to bake and ice birthday cakes for my dogs, and my animals were the most important thing in the world to me (even more so than dh!).
Six years on and with two dc I still love my animals to bits but it's natural that your priorities change, and you do hve a lot less time on your hands to notice every little ailment as soon as it happens.
So don't beat yourself up about it - you are doing the best you can for everyone, 2 legged and 4 legged

Hmmm, I used to love cats too, and when we lost our last cat, when ds2 was 2, I thought I would be devestated. She was an old cat, and didn't suffer but all I felt as an overwhelming sense of relief, at being able to concentrate on the boys! She used to be sooo undemanding too, but always wanted feeding at 5pm, in the middle of the horror hour, or she would be ill when one or both of the children were ill (I once had dh and both boys ill at home, and brought one of them back from the doctors to find that the cat had vomited individually on most of the steps going upstairs!)

Now that ds2 is at school full time, I am starting to feel I might have space in my life for cats again. I do love them theoretically, and the boys are longing to have one too. Just waiting for ds2's asthma to settle down.

My cat was about 18 months old when my DS1 was born. We'd had him from an 8 week old kitten and he'd always been my cat. Sitting only on me and never on my DH or anyone else. I thought this might change when I was pregnant but no, he managed to arrange himself around my bump. I even have a picture of me with DS1 lying on a pillow across my knees when he was a newborn with the cat's head also encroaching onto the pillow. As DS1 got bigger and took up more of my lap then the cat had to seek comfort elsewhere and began snuggling up to my DH (who wasn't so keen!) and over the years will now sit on anyone whose sat down!

Now my DSs are much older (10 and 6) the cat has become more my cat again prefering me to anyone else if I'm sat down but he will go to anyone for attention if I'm not around.