5 months and cat drama

Maddie is five months old today. She's definitely starting to show more personality now. She's also finally on a nap schedule. She takes long naps around 9 am and 1 pm and then takes a 30 minute nap at 4:30pm. She goes to bed really easy now at 6:30. I'm so relieved since not even a month ago I spent my entire day trying to get her to sleep and every evening she cried at bedtime. We bathe her, feed her, and read to her every night, then lay her down and she falls asleep on her own without any fussing. She enjoys board books the most, mainly because she loves sucking on their corners while I read.

Now, onto the cat drama. I'm sure you're all waiting on the edge of your seats for this. Well, as many of you know I have a mean, psycho cat. I used to never admit this since he can be very loving at times, but now that I have a baby and he's just a cat again I see what everyone is talking about. So far we have not had any problems with him. Casper usually doesn't pay Maddie much attention. Let me preface this with a story. Casper is an indoor cat but tries to escape every chance he gets. Well, my parents visited us last Christmas. As my dad was going out to the back yard Casper ran out. Instead of letting him go my dad grabs his tail. I've never heard so much commotion from Casper. He turned around and attacked my dad with his teeth. My dad still has the scar from the incident but I will give him a little credit, Casper didn't make it outside. See, my parents have a cat at home that loves being picked up by his tail. My dad calls it his handle.

Believe me, it's not animal abuse. As soon as he puts her down she backs up into him again asking for more. I think the main difference between their cat Gingy and mine is that Gingy weighs about 2lbs and Casper weighs 14lbs, so I don't think it's physically possible to lift him by the tail.

Anyways, on to current events. Today Maddie was pretty fussy in between her two naps. She only slept an hour this morning so I think that's why. I was walking her around the house to distract her from tiredness. Casper was laying on the arm of the couch so I set Maddie behind him. She's been really fascinated by our animals lately. With JoJo she'll stare at him and grab at his skin. Yesterday I was doing something in the kitchen while Maddie was in her excersaucer and turned around and JoJo was nose to nose with Maddie and she had his skin clamped in her hand. He loves it (seriously, he loves any attention he can get). Casper, not so much, so I should have seen what was coming. First Maddie just looked at him while his tail moved back and forth over her legs. Before I could stop her she reached out and grabbed at the hair on his back. She came away with a huge handful of hair and he jumped up, turned around and shot dagger eyes at my baby. I quickly reacted and moved the baby away from the scene, meanwhile trying to get all the hair out of her hands before it found her mouth. Casper has since recovered and fell back asleep, but I'm really worried about when Maddie's a toddler and loves pulling her cat's tail. We may need to loan Casper to one of my very kind family members during that time period. Anyways, I had to share the story.

Here are some pictures I took over the last couple of weeks and never got around to posting.