baby gates and polite kitty

Since our little Quint has become a speed crawler, we've had to deploy the baby gates with more vigor. The cat still will meow piteously from the other side of a baby gate. We have a hand motion for "jump over it" and then she'll bound over it without touching it.

But she waits for permission.

We've had to buy a super-duper fancy baby gate with a swinging gate within a gate.



One walkway in our entryway is two inches too wide to use the extremely cheap baby gates that have been so popular for, oh, I don't know, 40 years or so.


Our new super-duper gate cost sixty-four damn dollars. The other baby gates cost us a whoppin $9 each (we have 3).

Yesterday, in our typical family fashion, Hubby fed the baby carrots while I figured out how to put together the baby gate and installed it. It works great! It's a pressure gate, so there are no holes in the wall. It took me about a half hour to put it up, but we won't need to take it down each day like the others so whoopity. AND, when the baby is not in danger of gnawing on whatever is behind the gate we can LEAVE THE SWINGING GATE OPEN!! It's a beautiful thing! Hubby said like three times last night how much he liked the new gate. We're still hurdling over the others when they're in place. Which now seems odious in light of the new gate. Now it's crossed my mind twice in 24 hours, "ooohhh we could get those for every babygate."

See, this is the problem with nice things (trust me in my snarky mood to find a problem with nice things). Once you have the upgraded version of something, the regular, good-enough version just won't hack it. Once you've had post-its, regular note paper just won't do. And whatever the upgrade, it's going to cost you money perpetually. Once you get cable, you will start to think that the expense of cable is a utility. It's not. It's a perk. No one NEEDS cable TV. But once you've had it, you can't not have it.

I really enjoy my Lincoln Towncar. It has many bells and whistles that I've never had before and that are frankly unnecessary. About once a month it crosses my mind that once this car dies (it's 12 years old) I will have to be happy with something a little less posh. We typically, like most thirty-somethings (ha!), buy huge, safe, white cars. So my next car will probably still be huge and white, but probably not posh. And I'll have to be OK with that. But I know it's gonna chaff. This problem with nice things is why we still don't have a DVR, or HD, or huge flat panel screens. It's why we never talk about getting an iPhone. My husband once had a blackberry (at someone else's expense) and we still long for that ease of scheduling. It's been 5 years. It's why when I have my hubby get me a new cell phone (because mine will no longer hold a charge) I tell him to get me whatever they offer for free. I just don't need bells and whistles that I might have to actually PAY for later.

OK, so I've run out of steam but have not really wrapped this up. I guess the moral of the story is, try not to buy any baby gates that you don't need for sixty-four damn dollars. And maybe use kitty crack (kitty treats) to convince the cat to just bound over those things whenever she wants.

polite kitty

Last night I installed a baby gate in the upstairs hallway. It separates the rooms Quint can explore from the bathroom, stairs, and loft, which he should not explore. The bathroom would be fine, but it's easier to stick it mid-hall before the bathroom door. And I wanted to avoid trying to step over a babygate and down a step with a baby on my hip.

Anyway, the kitty encountered the baby gate this morning and meowed piteously from the other side of the gate. I kept calling her, but she wouldn't jump it. This thing is knee height - easily jumpable. I just lifted her over it. As we were all leaving for the day, I encouraged her to jump it. She looked at me like, "didn't you put this up to keep me out?" How sweet of her to think that this was to control her! However, there is no way that a baby gate could control a cat. I started to step over it myself, talking to her but not looking at her, and promptly kicked her in the head. Smooth move x-lax! She darted into my office. I stepped back over, put the baby down and tried to love on her. She popped her head around the corner giving me this fierce look. Then stepped to the baby gate, touched her paws to the top of it, and bounded over it. She then gave me another fierce look and darted down the stairs.

Well, that wasn't quite how I wanted to teach her that, but the lesson got taught anyway.