Kris called me yesterday evening to ask if I wanted some cat food.

Her cat, Pumpkin, was not especially social before they had Emma. After Emma was born, she became ragingly jealous. She never tried to hurt the baby, but she lost her litterbox training and started to pee on the carpets.

After nearly two years, Kris finally came to the difficult conclusion that Pumpkin was not ever going to get over her jealousy, and that they'd have to give her up. Sometime today, Braz is going to take the cat away, and then donate to us her uneaten catfood.

Poor Kris. She's had Pumpkin since before she ever met Braz. But there really wasn't much choice, there. It's almost too bad Pumpkin didn't try to scratch or bite Emma - it might have been an easier decision for Kris, if it was a real safety issue.

I've heard of other cases where pets become jealous of a new baby and have to be given away. I really, really feel for Kris. I hope we don't have to face that problem with Diamond. He's already so old and rickety, and he deserves to live out his last few years in peace and comfort.

I keep trying to tell myself - Diamond is pretty well-adjusted around other humans, even strangers. He likes people. And we've had advice on how to introduce new babies to pets. If we're careful not to interrupt Diamond's routine too much...

But you never know, do you? I want to cry, just thinking about it. Diamond was my first baby, in truth.

On to somewhat happier topics. I've got a meeting at 9 this morning to discuss my telecommuting application with my boss and the office manager. My boss said it looked pretty reasonable to him, and the office manager almost certainly won't reject it, since we have another part-time telecommuting mother in the office.

It'll only be one day a week - my job requires me to actually be in the office for too many things to make a case for more often - and it will run for about six months, from October through March. The reason stated on the application is to allow me a somewhat more restful environment for a full recovery from the birth without having to take unpaid leave. (The telecommuting policy is very firm on the fact that telecommuting is not to be used to supplement daycare for dependents.)

If I want to continue the arrangement after March, I guess I'll have to think up another reason. Perhaps if I can argue an increase in productivity during the first six months, that will be sufficient. I'll have to find out what our other telecommuting mother is doing.

And in even better news, I finished my edits of the last chapter of the novel yesterday! Wha-hoo!

Of course, I don't know what I'm going to do now to keep myself occupied at work...

Well, we'll see. I printed out the first couple of chapters yesterday, so I can do one big read-through after we're done editing, and I couldn't resist reading them, and those first few chapters could use some re-editing, I think. We weren't entirely sure what we were doing, at first, so they're still a little ragged in places.

But it felt so good to finish that last bit and close the binder.

--Liz