Last week my daughter phoned me, quite early in the morning, to see if perhaps, just on the off-chance, I might like to go with her when she took her two gorgeous babies for a swim in the river.

She didn’t sound too confident that I would say yes. I’m not usually a “make plans on the spur of the moment” type of person, but what she suggested sounded like fun, so around mid morning I headed off to her place, we loaded her babies into the back of her car and off we went.

A couple of days later, I saw that Kathy, at Lake Superior Spirit, was sharing photos and adoption stories of her own “grands”, Kathy’s being grand-kittens!

What is it with us women with grown children? Here we are referring to our children’s animals as our grand-pets! Is there a secret longing that we are holding deep within our hearts that perhaps this addition of fury-grands may soon lead to “The Real Thing”? Or are we collectively heaving a sigh a relief that these grand-pets of ours, if they give our own babies any sign of trouble, can be unceremoniously put out the back door to give our children some peace? We remember the trials we have been through with our own real babies!

It is so easy to recall the joy I felt when my children were on their way into my life, the anticipation, the planning, decorating the nursery, choosing baby clothes and contemplating names. What a joyful time it was. And yet I simply cannot get my head around the idea of having an real human grandchild, one without the fur!

I keep on telling my children that I’m too young to be a grandmother, but that story is getting old, way too old, especially considering my eldest is now twenty-eight years old!

When the time is right for my children, when they can almost smell the soft scent of a baby near to them, when they long for the feel of a babies gentle skin touching their own and when they know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are ready to love another human being to the ends of the earth and back again, then I guess I’ll be old enough to be a grandma.

But for now, like Kathy, I will enjoy the long-furred, heavy-breathing, doe-eyed, unconditional love of my two grand-pups, Porter and Bella. Oh, and did I mention that I have two grand-kittens too? Like Kathy said, “Gosh darn, the important things we forget to blog about”!