Anything for Angelica

Miss Angelica Pinkerton, I presume?

Angelica Pinkerton, feline first class explorer, is obsessed with climbing the screen door to hang out on the ledge above. I find this antic wildly amusing; Matt finds it dangerously destructive. Why? Well, since Pinks is a creature of habit, she climbs the same section of screen each time and since most of my nail trimming attempts have failed, she's clawed a rather large section of the screen so often that it is now threadbare and Matty is afraid she's going to put her leg through it and hang herself.

Where in the room is little A. Pinkerton?

This thought scares me to death so I proposed the following ideas to Matt:

• I can quit my job and stay home with Angelica P. full time, like a good mother, to make sure she does not injure herself.
• Take a look at the above pic. See the wall space between the door and the window? We can build a series of shelves to act as stepping stones. Then, I'll teach her to use the shelves as a ladder to her destination.
• We can replace the screen and continue to do so each time a hole begins to form that we deem dangerous to her safety.
• We can buy her a little mini kitty jet pack that I'll strap on to her each morning before work.

Needless to say, Matt vetoed #1 immediately (which shows that he cares more about money than Pinkerpins safety and my emotional stability). He agreed to replace the screen but he made it clear that he'll only do it once. Then he mentioned something about plexiglass and I stopped listening. #4 made him look at me and roll his eyes. Then, I think he stopped listening.

So, #2 became our option of choice, until we looked at the logistics and determined that she might not be able to jump around a corner from the top shelf to the ledge. That's when Matt came up with the idea of building a ramp - 4 inches wide and, um, 11 feet long - that we can prop up against the door to give her safe, easy access to her favorite sunny space. He's at Home Depot buying the wood this minute, as I sit here typing. Anything for Angelica Pinkerton, the world's most coddled cat.

So, What's La Pointe of It All? Well, it's this - if we're willing to go to this extreme for our kitten extraordinaire, can you imagine what we'll do for the future Littlest La Pointe? And considering we only plan to have one child (Matty is an only child and he is, in my opinion, a perfect human being, whereas I have a sibling and I'm a complete mess), will our efforts to keep that child happy and healthy be exponentially more extreme?

I can't wait to find out. Unless, of course, the kid is ugly. In that case, I already have people lined up to take it.