Cat Tested, Mother Approved

I like to think I’m the type of person who doesn’t let my kids bug the crap out of people. I may be living in an altered state of reality and my children are actually complete heathens who leave a charred path of chaos and destruction wherever we go, but I think our biggest offenses generally include them acting like freaks and me telling them to knock it off. Both of which could, admittedly, get annoying after a while.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I do a decent job of staying on top of them. Tonight, for example, we were out at dinner, and I spent a lot of the evening having minor, internal nervous breakdowns because I thought they were periodically being too loud. In a restaurant that contained only eleven people. Five of which were related to the kids. So, yes, I’m neurotic — we can all see what we’re working with here.

I know that kids can be crazy and annoying and pestering. I know that not everybody likes them. In some situations, they’re the equivalent of dogs to a cat person. So I get it. Now for a little story. . .

Elfie, my soon-to-be 7-year-old, and I are shopping for plants at our local nursery. It’s almost 100 degrees. I’ve picked out a whole cartload of stuff, but (per my husband, the gardener) I’m supposed to get flowers for our hanging boxes. Elfie is starting to lose it. She’s slouching over, saying she’s hot, and asking to leave. I try walking her over near some fountains, and she asks if we can go inside. “Inside” is the shop where they sell garden do-dads and it’s not much cooler because it’s open to the outside. But we give it a shot.

We walk in, realize pretty quickly that it’s not much cooler, but, hey, look, there’s a cat lying on the floor, half dead in the heat. Wanna pet the cat? So Elfie walks over, crouches down, and proceeds to pet the half-dead cat.

“That’s the life, huh?” says the woman running the store. The store that, incidentally, has no one in it.

“Yeah.” I say. “Hey, would you mind if she just pets the cat for a minute while I go grab a couple things outside?”

Big pause. Evaporation of happy disposition. Small harumph. “Well, we’d actually prefer that you watch them yourselves.”

Okaaaay. So Elfie and I made our exit. I checked out, minus the flowers for the boxes. I guess I’ll buy them somewhere else.

Here’s the thing. My logical, rational brain says it was absolutely reasonable for that woman to expect me to watch my own child in a store. Absolutely reasonable. You’ve got her shop and my potentially whirling dervish. Her property and my lurking, evil spawn. But the fact is, I was totally offended. I couldn’t help it. I got really, really pissed. It’s not like Elfie was a 3-year-old who went storming into a crowded room with me screaming bloody murder and frantically trying to catch hold of the leash to her child harness. We were so hot and tired that we literally crept into the place. She practically tip-toed over to the cat. And I think two people finally “filled up” the place as we were leaving.

And when you have dogs (yes, they also have a dog) and cats roaming around the place, it kind of implies, “We’re moderately laid back. We have animals that could potentially bite or scratch customers, but, hey, life’s a little messy. We deal in dirt. We get it.”

I wish businesses understood that when they do something to take away a customer’s “happy feeling,” it’s just not that easy to get it back. I really do my best to support local business, but the fact is, no one who works at Home Depot gives a damn what my kids do in the aisles. So I guess it’s either the big box or an extra ten minutes to the next nursery.

Maybe I’ll take Elfie to check things out at the other nursery tomorrow. We’ll see if they let her hang out and pet their cat.