About 220 Cats

So the son and I are riding in the car when we start talking about our new cat Cody, or as Aidan calls him, my BROTHER Cody with the emphasis on BROTHER. We weren't discussing Cody's apparent death wish at this point because the identification of this predilection wasn't made until his most recent attempt to choke himself by wrapping a balloon string around his neck repeatedly. Fortunately, he announced his act by banging the still attached balloon against any object he could find in a remotely taiko fashion. Apparently, he got rhythm versus any measurable intelligence which makes him all the more fun. After all, I do like Japanese taiko.

Now, this act followed Cody's attempt to put his head in the oven when I opened it to take some food out even while I yelled, Cody, hot, Cody, hot, CODY, I TOLD YOU IT WAS HOT!!! Little sore on the paws but otherwise intact. He sat there for a minute contemplating his paws and I suspect he was probably just comparing the pain in his paws to how he felt a couple of days earlier. That time, he went running with great gusto to launch himself in a flying arc right off the back of a chair and over the second floor guardrail landing on the hardwood floor below. But, not so gracefully. That one left him off for a bit as he worked to regain his ability to breathe and remember where he was.

So, in any event, the son wants to know if we should get Cody a brother to play with as Cody does quite a bit of chasing, catching and killing figments of his imagination, rounding corners on the hardwood floors approximately 5 mph faster than physics will allow which leads to Cody spin-outs, and springing out from under the couch repeatedly with great hopes that there will be something for him to attack despite any record of success. I do have to admire his perseverance or lack of short-term memory.

I explained to the son that I do think it would be a good idea but that I first would have to make sure that we had the adoption fee and the money for downstream veterinarian visits and all that jazz. Being the inquisitive child that he is, he wanted to know how much it was so I let him know that it was $100. He thought that was fair, especially since he didn't have to come up with the money. But then the obvious question came - How much did Mia cost?

Now, that is a question that I have long been prepared for, having been asked the same by a fishmonger yelling down the aisles at Walmart the second week I had been back. The answer - priceless. But, this is the son I am dealing with. Priceless isn't precise and precision is key. So, the next obvious question is asked - how much, exactly, is priceless? After futility trying to explain that it is an existential concept that he wouldn't understand now because he has not yet developed the ability to think in the abstract, I decided to give it a go.

I used the approved adoption speak to carefully explain to him that Mia didn't cost anything. Rather, mommy and daddy paid some money to some nice folks who could speak Chinese and who could help mommy and daddy fill out a lot of papers so that the people in China could see that we were a good family that would take good care of a little girl. And, of yeah, we paid some money to the US government to get permission to fill out another form later that we would also pay for, none of which was apparently paid for by the obscene amount of income tax we pay each year. So,that's great, he says but exactly how much is that? I throw the trump card and let him know that it was about the same as it would cost to have a baby in the hospital if you didn't have insurance, assuming that 1. they would admit you and 2. you had no complications and 3. the baby had no complications and 4. you didn't use any of their toilet paper which they most probably bar code so they can scan that cost into the total cost of supplies.

For some reason, this doesn't do it for him. He thinks for a moment and carefully crafts his next question to make sure he asks a very specific, closed question that can only have one, precise answer as he has apparently discovered that asking his mother an open question allows her to provide superfluous information merely for her own amusement.

After some deep thought, he asks did it cost more money to adopt Cody or Mia and instructs me to give him only one answer - Cody or Mia. He was indignant when he was told that we spent slightly more getting Mia even though I pointed out that he should consider travel costs and the dollar's slide againt the RMB over the last four years before making any judgements. He let me know, in no uncertain terms, that there was a problem. In his vernacular, that wasn't fair. Cody is his BROTHER and Mia is his SISTER, so what was up with that.

A couple of minutes later I get the follow up question - if we didn't get Mia, just how many cats could we get?

Told him it depended on what country they were coming from, the travel costs involved and the exchage rate of the euro, peso and ruble at the time of said adoptions. Seemed to do it for the time being.