I’ll never forget the day we brought Hailey home from the NICU. It was the night before Halloween (my birthday) and we had her dressed in her “costume”, Halloween jammies! We came inside and walked up the stairs to our main floor. We sat her down in her car seat to let our cats, Indie and Oliver, get familiar with her. Up until Hailey was born, the kitties were our “furbabies”. Eric and I have always treated them like a part of the family and not just our pets. I digress. We set her down and both cats were pretty curious and very cautious. Neither walked up to the car seat immediately. Hailey was fast asleep and not moving a muscle. Eric, my mom and I just stood and waited to see what their reaction would be.

Indie came closer and started sniffing. Ollie stayed his distance and let out his little “growls” (we swear he’s a small dog). We expected him to be less frightened than Indie because she’s the cuddly one who just likes to curl up in your lap. Well, Ollie would too but he’s just too big for that now. It was interesting to see their reactions to her. They would slowly come up to her, sniffing at the car seat and whenever she would make a little “twitch”, both would cower away. I think Indie was the first to take off up the stairs and Ollie then stuck around to see what all the fuss was about.

After a few weeks, they both generally started getting used to the baby. What surprised us though, even to this day, is that Indie wants nothing to do with Hailey. She’s generally scarce throughout the day. Ollie warmed up to her after a few months. He and Hailey are now pretty good buddies. He still keeps somewhat of a distance but is more likely to let her come up to him and accepts a pet or two before he flees. Occasionally, Indie will hide out in Hailey’s room and let out a few meows when she has realized that she’s trapped in there with the monster. Ollie generally sleeps just outside of her door. We call him the little watch dog cat. For the past few nights, he’s also been camping out on top of the end table in the living room, just beside the monitor. We think he just likes to be close to her.

He would never let anything happen to Hailey..I mean, come on, who would want to mess with this dude anyway?