Arianna Georgi

Sometimes when my friends tell me stories about their babies, the only way I can relate is to bring up my cats. “I just feel a little worried about leaving him,” someone will tell me about their anxiety over their upcoming trip to Cabo and their three month old. “I know exactly how you feel,” I’ll say, “when we got Hot Dog I left like a week later to go to Park City and I was really stressed the whole time.”
I always throw in “not that I am comparing your baby to my cat” because that is the polite thing to say, but really that is exactly what I am doing. I have compared my friend’s babies to my cats when we discuss feeding, discipline, and funny habits like chewing on blankets. “It’s so funny how she has her own little personality already,” my friend will tell me about her newborn. “I know Charlie had a very definite little character like that from the time he was a kitten.”
All of this may just be a symptom of my much larger and more worrying descent into a full-on crazy cat lady, but I think it has more to do with the fact that things are changing and it’s hard for me not to get left behind. In the last three years almost all of my friends, mostly without consenting me first, have decided to take the headlong plunge into motherhood. I’m at least five years out from even considering the thought. Actually my most frequent reoccurring nightmare is that I discover I’m five months pregnant and had no idea. Panicked because I have been drinking and (occasionally, when I am drunk, smoking) and eating sushi I rush to the doctor but nothing can be done. At the end of the dream I give birth to a dog. I don’t even like dogs.
So lately I am Peter Pan tapping on the windows of my Wendy friends. “Let’s go do keg stands,” I yell, “let’s spend 150 dollars on a meal at that new restaurant downtown.” They smile at me sadly and shut the shades. The only thing I can even come close to comparing the responsibility of having a newborn to is having a cat. And one time I got drunk and accidentally locked the cat in my bathroom all right. I am pretty sure you can’t do that a baby.
And that’s just it. I have no idea what the hell I am talking about and not even a basic understanding of why my friends are so tired all the time, or why they suddenly want to talk more about poop then beer. But I am trying. It’s because I know my friends are worth fighting to relate to, even if the whole motherhood thing is beyond me now. One day when I have thirty cats, I’ll expect the same in return from them.

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