The Mom says the Treat Issue is Out of Control!

Yes, Bobby, it is. It all started out innocently enough, a little treat for Bobby the Crow, Bullet the Rabbit, and Vinnie and Vito, the cats. The Mafia Brothers, those two.

There was good reason behind it – bad parenting. Give each one their particular version of a Pop-Tart, so that Tomas could write without the brothers jumping on him every five minutes, and so that I could write without feeling guilty that I was not spending hours petting and playing, as much as I would like to.

Now, The Treat has become mandatory. It started out in the early evening, and has progressed to every ten minutes. I stop writing to go out and throw something together for the humans to eat (gasp!), and I have Vinnie winding around my legs, always fun until someone loses an eye, Bobby on his lower perch, where he can observe kitchen activities, glaring and pounding on it, and the Bullet down the hallway in my bathroom smacking his plate against the wall.

Vito sitting at Tomas’s feet, chirping and raising his big black self up to stick a claw in Tomas’s leg.

Okay.

Quick.

Bobby – give him a peanut.

Run to the cat food cupboard and grab a handful of the junk food dry (cat version of Cap’n Crunch), sprinkle some for Vinnie in his little sushi dish, sprint down the hall and leave the rest of the junk dry on the floor for Vito, hop over the bathroom door barrier and give Bullet a fast buffet of nuts, Quaker Oats, and bannana chips, then race back to the kitchen to check our food.

Bobby has finished his peanut and is glaring again, Vinnie has finished his sprinkles and is underfoot, and I am hearing a rather ominous sizzling on the stove.

And this is just the quickie, before everybody gets their last true meal and we call it a night.

Monsters. I have created four monsters, and in the process am losing both mind and body coordination.

I am so whipped. I am so owned. I am a slave, yet still cling to the idea that they belong to me.

I wish I could say at least they are not demanding an iPod or an X-box or whatever, but I am certain the digital peanut is being invented as I sleep.

Well, kids, enjoy it while it lasts, because things are going to change in 2008.

OH yes they are.

And to all a good night.