Little A is our little girl kitty. She's been the baby of the family ever since we brought her home with her sister, and she's been feeling a bit displaced ever since Little M came home. Her sister passed away at the end of March 2008, about a month after we found out we were pregnant with Little M.
The dynamics of the kitty heirarchy in the house changed a bit, but we were actually surprised to see that our Alpha Girl was still represented in spirit, as each cat seemed to take over some of her traits.
Little A took over the leadership role, as well as her usual diplomatic duties (she naps with everyone and makes sure there is no fighting in the group without some making up afterward. She also makes sure to include the staff (Big M and me) in the nap schedule, but since Little M came home, we've both had to beg off on our naptime lap provider roles. So Little A has been napping alone some of the time.
She mopes on whatever floor Little M is NOT on, and stays there sleeping until she can try to claim the affection that is rightly hers.
It used to be that we chased her down to lavish attention on her, and now she waits until the baby is in bed before she races to an unoccupied lap to soak up the loving.
Ever since Little M began to work on the crawling, she does little drive-by surveillance missions of the baby, getting just close enough to check him out, but not close enough that he could reach out and touch her. If I pick her up, I usually take her to the baby to let him pet her, but lately he is ignoring my request to pet her gently and is just coming up with a fistful of fur. We're going to have to work on the "gently" concept.
Big M uses Little M as a punishment for Tubby Tabby, the youngest cat. If he does something wrong, Big M will pick him up and make him endure the not-so-gentle petting technique that we're working on. Yet another fistful of fur to pick off of Little M before it ends up in the mouth.
The most adorable thing to come out of all this baby/feline interaction is that Little M is just enthralled by the cats. He's even hears us making the clicking noise to call the cats, and whenever he wants to see the cats, he makes his own little version of the noise. What a smart kid! Not a single cat falls for it, but he keeps trying!
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