As soon as I heard about this week’s Gallery theme I knew which picture I had to use. This one:
All right, all right, I admit it’s not a true instance of mother love. Keen observers will have spotted that this is not a child. It’s the divine Mme Bovary again, and it’s not even a new pictures, I’m pretty sure I’ve shown it to you before. But it is one of my great favourites, and I get the same rush of love when I see it as I did when the girls were small and I pored over their baby pictures.
The truth is that teenagers are not the easiest creatures in the world, and they do tend to answer back. Cats, on the other hand, are small, furry, reasonably loving, and don’t say, ‘you’re the most rubbish mother in the world’ or ‘I’m going to live with my Dad when I’m 16’ and all the other lovely phrases that ping around the house on a bad day. Usually, our days are good and everyone is reasonably contented, even in our current building site state. But the great thing about Mme B is that she never, ever says a harsh word. And that seems quite restful at the moment. The girls do accuse me of treating her like a third child. Even TL has been known to point out that she is a cat. But I’m afraid I do persist in thinking that she is one of my brood, just one that behaves a bit oddly in wanting to eat rock hard catfood pellets and hide under the sink. Just look at her. Who could resist? Awwww.