cats and parenting

so a few weeks ago, my family got a cat! his name is trooper and he's 9 normal years old, but apparently 52 in cat years. we got him from my mom's friend (mrs. lam) and he's been a lot of fun :) ok so my family's history of pets: probably 30 fish, 4 parakeets, and 3 turtles. unfortunately, all those pets are now dead. trooper is our first interactive pet and i've definitely learned a lot about responsibility from him.

after the first couple days with him, i realized trooper seems to have rabid hunger. he always jumps on the counter where we hold the food and tries to eat corn chips or any other food in the kitchen. i guess we either don't feed him enough or he's a rebel without a cause. pretty much everytime he does something bad (like knocking over and spilling the huge tupperware of his food and eating liberally), we have to spray him. according to mrs. christine cho, you spray from the back so cats think it's divine intervention- it rains everytime they do something bad. trooper has been sprayed about 20 times so far haha, and my mom has been disciplining him like crazy. she yells at him in chinese and it's almost nice having trooper around- he experiences 1/2 of the rage that might have been intended for me. one of the things i didn't like about with being the only kid at home was that my parents now solely focus on me. andd therefore, i get in trouble and scolded 4x more than i used to. thanks for trooper that has been cut in half.

speaking of discipline, i adore kids. i truly hope i turn out to be a good parent and that i make my kids want to love God more. i love my parents and am sincerely thankful for them, but i honestly hope i don’t follow their steps with parenting. ahh, but then it scares me when people say that no matter how much you fight it, there are things that pass on from generation. i pray to God that i will be an understanding parent, who my children feel comfortable sharing anything with and who can admit failure to. i also hope that i won’t hurt my kids through hypocrisy or by my words.

anyways, parenting is a long way off, but i like to think of baby names—ari, madelyn, noah, and josiah. i always have loved how those names sounds, but i never knew the meanings. ari is hebrew and means “lion”—i guess i do want my child to be courageous and fierce like a lion haha. madelyn means “woman of magdala”; according to wikipedia, magdala was where Jesus’ boat headed towards after he fed the 4,000. noah means rest and peace andd i would want my son to have faith like noah in the bible. and finally, josiah means “God will save,” which is so so true. i’m listening to “mighty to save” right now :) alright i should go study for stats and espanol b/c i'm not doing so hot in them!