Mom’s current obsession is the cats. Truth to tell, when she was a little more rational she would use them as an excuse to leave wherever she didn’t want to be. She had to get home to feed them. “What time is it? What time is it? What time is it? I have to go feed the cats.”
Mom doesn’t go out much these days. Certainly not alone and usually with my father although occasionally with one of my sisters or me. Because of the Covid-19 restrictions she really can’t, and shouldn’t go to the store. She doesn’t understand the need for a mask and takes it off. She doesn’t understand washing your hands for 30 seconds. She doesn’t understand she can’t go up close to ogle a baby. Mom loves babies. Always has and now even more so. But you can’t let her near a child now. You have to gently ease her away. Parents don’t understand this old woman coming close to their child, possibly spreading a fatal disease. They don’t know it is her last surviving bit of memory, this memory of love she can pour out unreservedly.
So she feeds the cats. She wants to feed them all the time, even if there is food in the dish already. But sometimes she doesn’t understand that they don’t eat pieces of mandarin orange, or a cookie. Still, the cats don’t care. They just ignore the odd treat and come around for their regular meals. They don’t hold it against her.
She has a doll that she has become attached to. Not in a holding-it-all-the-time kind of way, but in an almost creepy, talking to it like it’s a real baby kind of way. Or as if she’s talking to one of the cats. You’d think talking to the cats would be creepy, but it’s not. They are living things, after all, and can respond in their own cat way. Maybe it’s because I talk to my cats and it just seems more natural to me. They know what I’m saying, right?
She’s forever trying to feed me, my sisters, and my father, too. It’s too bad mom was never a great cook and these days she eats a lot of yogurt, ice cream, cookies, crackers, toast, cereal and, occasionally, real food, like half a hamburger. She seems to think that if she eats only two teaspoons of yogurt, that’s enough for the moment. She’s full. But 10 minutes later, she’s eating another two teaspoons and serving herself a tablespoon of ice cream with a cookie on the side. I’ll say this: She gets plenty of dairy in her diet. She’s also not going hungry and my feeling is that at 89 she can eat whatever she wants. I’m not going to force her to eat real food at this time of life.
She offers me ice cream every 30 minutes or so while I’m there, which I turn down and she, affronted, exclaims “Why not! Why don’t you want any ice cream?” I can’t tell her that I don’t want to become as big as a house by eating ice cream every 30 minutes, so I just tell her I’m not hungry, which she takes with bad grace. I think she just doesn’t want to eat ice cream alone.
She can’t have her babies, so she has her cats, and nurtures us all as best she can with junk food.
