Is This Parenthood?

I find myself yelling a lot in my house. It's not that anything particularly exciting is happening, but I keep having to break up pointless fights.

"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" while simultaneously slamming a chair against the ground is a tactic that I find myself frequently using.

Basically the cats are revolting.

Who knows, it could be that time in a cat's life where it decides to anxious, excited, rebellious, and downright grumpy all the time right before it goes off to cat college. Unfortunately, this manifests itself by having countless cat fights behind the washer, cats playing "Kill Bill" (the last scene in Vol. 1) on my bed at night, and attacking a pair of socks with the ferocity of a thousand rottweilers chasing after...a ball? (What do dogs chase these days? Cars? A cell phone plan with the best coverage? They wanted you to go to Jared's?)

It has gotten a little exhausting. Every time that I have to put my foot down (quite literally), a pang of guilt comes over me for yelling at these small creatures. I assume they only look to me as a food dispensary and occasional massage chair, but I also hope that they see me as some sort of parental figure that they can attempt to love.

All these things they continue to do to me, I constantly wonder if I acted in a similar manner throughout puberty.

"I told you you couldn't borrow my sweater!" "Well it looks better on me, anyways!"

Destroyed clothing? There was the time I let my sisters tie strings to all the tags in my clothes and we saw if we could rip them out by running away very fast. I think I just ended up with minor whiplash, though.

Made a fuss about wanting more food? Since I possess opposable thumbs, I generally just did a lot of eating on my own. So the time that you kept finding pieces of pizza with only a couple bites taken out of them, that was me, Mom. Sorry.

Fought with my siblings? My brother kicked me down the stairs once. In his defense, I must have been being obnoxious in some manner. Probably how I must have been obnoxious when he rolled me down the stairs in a sleeping bag, ninja kicked me into the couch, sat on top of me, tied me up in the closet...(I'm starting to see a pattern here...)

Obviously with my generalized analysis of my childhood, I can now justly say that I feel like a parent just trying to do what's best for the sake of the children.

Even when they decide to do a ninja freak-out for no particular reason and your face gets caught in the crossfire.

I may not be a perfect parent since I don't make them make their beds every day, but I think I'm getting there. Last week, I only yelled at them once for knocking over my flowers. They might have only knocked them over once, but I think that's a goal we can all live with. 

My only hope is that when they grow up and go off to cat business school, or cat law, that they remember me fondly. Or, at least dream about the giant food dish that appeared to them every day.

Because sometimes it's just hard to be mad at that.