Sorry for being quieter than usual – I’ve been a bit distracted with a couple of things in my offline life, and so I’ve not been feeling as urgently about getting blog posts up.

I’ve mentioned in other posts that we have two cats at home.  The calico has the common sense God gave, well, a cat to clear out of Dodge when the Monster or R come running for her.  Our tom, though, is getting older and just can’t get out of the way in time, so he’s learned to just suffer through it.

I’ve seen plenty of things about how pets are very good for children with Autism – that they learn to deal better with animals who are rather unambiguous about their feelings when they choose to express them, who aren’t that demanding of attention, et cetera.  Of course, they’re not usually talking about cats, because… as we know, cats don’t really listen to anyone.

We’ve been working at teaching the kids to be more gentle with the cats, to pet them, and to work on approaching the cats on their own without one of us holding them to get petted.  Both of them tend to shy away from the cats – probably because the calico hisses at them when they try to pet her – though the Monster’s gotten better about going closer to the tomcat to pet him.

So last night, after dinner, I turned around to find the Monster on the couch, curled up properly with the older cat, petting and smooching the top of his head gently.  Not that they stayed that way for long – after I made a sound and before I could grab my phone to take a pic, the Monster had sat back up and scooted away from the cat – but it’s definitely progress of a sort.