I'm a Baby Kitty Where's Mama

My hands were aggressively deep in a bowl of raw ground beef and breadcrumbs when I felt something wet drag across my bare ankle. I didn't even jump. When you've three kids under five, you just accept that random wet things are going to touch you in your own kitchen at 5:00 PM. I looked down, fully expecting it to be the dog wiping his mouth on me. Instead, it was my three-year-old, Sadie. She was down on all fours, batting at my shin with a curled fist, crying out this high-pitched little wail about being a lost baby kitty looking for her mother.

I wiped a meat-covered hand on my apron and just stared at her. I'm standing right here in broad daylight making a Tuesday night meatloaf. I haven't abandoned anyone. But somehow, in the span of an afternoon, I had been replaced by a fictional feline matriarch, and my kitchen floor was now a den of despair.

My oldest kid was much, much worse

I’m just gonna be real with you, this isn't my first rodeo with children forgetting they're human. My oldest, Jackson—bless his heart, he's my permanent trial run—went through a hardcore animal phase. But his was entirely prehistoric and violent. He was a velociraptor for six straight months. He learned how to open doors with his chin and would screech at people in the grocery store checkout line.

We basically got put on probation at library storytime because he tried to take a chunk out of a toddler’s shoulder over a board book. So honestly, a baby kitty crawling around my kitchen island is a massive upgrade in the safety department, even if it's incredibly annoying when I'm just trying to walk to the fridge without tripping over a child.

My nephew tried to explain the internet to me

I actually texted my nineteen-year-old nephew later that night because I thought maybe she picked this specific phrase up from YouTube Kids. He texted me back a screenshot of a search for i'm a baby kitty where's mama league of legends and tried to explain that it was some video game thing, or maybe an internet joke where people were confusing AI chatbots? He used the word "augment" and I asked if that was a new vaccine. He just sent a sighing emoji.

I literally don't have the mental capacity for that. I'm running an Etsy shop out of a spare bedroom and trying to keep three small people alive. I don't have the bandwidth to understand Gen-Z meme culture. All I know is that my house now contains a feral cat, and she refuses to use a fork.

Dr. Davis said it's just a phase (I think)

I brought it up at our next pediatrician visit. Not specifically the cat thing, but the fact that Sadie was suddenly panicking every time I went to the bathroom, crying out for her "mama cat." Dr. Davis drew some messy little circles on the crinkly exam table paper—mumbling something about brain development and the amygdala and how their little frontal lobes work.

I was only half listening because my youngest, Baby K, was actively trying to chew on a cotton swab he found in my purse. But the gist I got was that pretending to be a baby animal is how toddlers process separation anxiety. They feel small and vulnerable, so they play the role of something small and vulnerable, taking control of the terrifying feeling that mama might leave them alone.

The absolute filth of floor living

Let's talk about the reality of a child who refuses to stand upright. It's disgusting. We live in rural Texas. The wind blows, and a fine layer of reddish dirt immediately coats everything I own, no matter how tightly the windows are shut. I sweep my kitchen floors twice a day. I mop. I run that ridiculously expensive robot vacuum that I saved up for six months to buy. It absolutely doesn't matter. The floors are never clean enough for a child to live her entire life down there.

When Sadie is in full feline mode, she's army-crawling under the dining room table where the dog sleeps. She is finding stray Cheerios from 2022 and pretending they're gourmet kibble. She is rolling around on the entryway rug that everyone walks on with their muddy boots. The amount of laundry this phase has generated is enough to make me want to cry into my coffee. It’s not just regular dirt; it’s a deep, ground-in grime that embeds itself directly into the knees of every pair of pants she owns.

I swear, if I've to scrub one more mysterious sticky spot off her kneecaps because she decided to crawl through the kitchen while I was making strawberry jam, I’m going to lose my mind. Some internet parenting guru with a spotless beige house says you should just get down on their level and embrace the messy floor play, but frankly, I've sciatica and a business to run.

Things I've stopped my cat from eating

Before this phase, my biggest worry was what to make for lunch that wouldn't get thrown against the wall. Now, I've to actively monitor my child to prevent her from consuming things she scavenges at baseboard level. In the last week alone, I've stopped her from eating:

A petrified piece of macaroni from the dark void under the stove
One of Baby K's discarded teething crackers that the dog had clearly already licked
A literal dead moth she batted out of a windowsill
Imaginary milk out of an empty Amazon box she claimed was her bed (don't even ask)

Dressing a feral child

This brings me to clothes. If your kid is going to crawl around like a wild animal, you need clothes that don't cost a fortune but won't fall apart after two washes. Etsy shop money doesn't cover replacing ruined outfits every week. I actually love the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao. Sadie practically lives in these right now.

I bought three of them because the price was actually reasonable for real organic cotton. They're 95% cotton with just enough stretch that she can crawl around without the neck hole getting all blown out and saggy. Plus, the little flutter sleeves kind of look like ears when she hunches her shoulders up to meow at me. It's thick enough that it protects her stomach from the carpet friction, and the natural fibers don't hold onto the weird dog smells like synthetic fabrics do.

Trying to feed the kitty

Because I'm a sucker who's easily influenced by my own exhaustion, I thought I could channel this whole phase into mealtime. Getting Sadie to sit at a table was becoming a physical battle, so I bought the Silicone Cat Plate. It has little ears and a face, and I figured, hey, let's feed the kitty her dinner.

It's alright. I mean, it's a perfectly good plate. It's made of that heavy food-grade silicone that doesn't smell like soap right out of the dishwasher. But I'm going to be honest with you—the suction base is only okay. If your highchair tray has even a single speck of dust or isn't perfectly flat, a determined toddler can still pry it up and flip it over. It does get her to eat her scrambled eggs while sitting in an actual chair instead of under the coffee table, so I consider it a partial victory.

The collateral teething damage

While Sadie is having her identity crisis, my youngest is going through actual teething hell. Baby K is just a drooly, miserable mess right now. I don't know why, but seeing the older one act like an animal makes a baby want to chew on absolutely everything the older one touches. It's a chain reaction of grossness.

We gave Baby K the Panda Silicone Baby Teether just to save our sanity and our baseboards. It's flat, so it's easy for tiny, uncoordinated hands to grip, and it's completely BPA-free. I don't panic when it inevitably gets dropped onto the floor of the "cat nest" and then shoved right back into a mouth before I can intercept it.

If your house is currently overrun by small people acting like wild creatures, you might want to look at Kianao's organic baby clothes collection so they at least have something soft and breathable to wear while they terrorize your living room.

The morning migration

My grandma always used to tell me, "Just ignore 'em till they use human words." Bless her heart, but Grandma clearly never had a modern schedule or tried to get a child who believes she's a stray cat into a minivan at 7:30 in the morning. You can't just ignore a child who refuses to wear shoes because "paws don't need sneakers."

Let me tell you the actual chronological steps I've to take to get this child to daycare on a Tuesday morning:

Convince her that the Honda Odyssey is a giant metal cat carrier taking us to a very fun vet.
Physically carry her down the driveway by her armpits while her legs dangle limp, because walking on two legs breaks character.
Bribe her with a piece of string cheese so she stops hissing at her older brother in the backseat.
Wrestle her stiff-as-a-board body into the five-point harness while apologizing to the neighbors who are walking their dogs.

The drop-off is always the hardest part. The separation anxiety spikes right at the classroom door. The wailing starts. But instead of fighting it and trying to force her to be a logical human, I just lean into it now. I rub my nose against hers, give her a pat on the head, and tell her, "Mama cat always comes back to the nest."

It sounds absolutely ridiculous out loud, especially when the daycare director is standing right there holding an iPad, judging me. But it works. She stops crying, squares her little shoulders, and trots into the classroom to play with blocks.

Being a parent is just a constant, exhausting negotiation with tiny, irrational people. This feline phase is messy, my floors are ruined, and I'm tired of meowing back. But a baby needs to feel safe in a big world, and if pretending to be a kitten does that, then I guess I'm buying a scratching post. Just kidding. I'm definitely not buying a scratching post.

If your little one's separation anxiety is peaking and you need some gentle, safe distractions to help them cope, check out Kianao's wooden play gyms and teething accessories to help them self-soothe through the hardest transitions.

Questions you didn't ask but I'm answering anyway

How long does this pretend animal phase last?

If you figure it out, please text me. Jackson was a dinosaur for six months and I thought I was going to lose my mind. Sadie has been a cat for three weeks and I'm already exhausted. I think they just do it until their brains finish downloading the next software update, and then suddenly they're pretending to be a fire truck.

Should I worry if my toddler won't respond to their real name?

I brought this up to Dr. Davis, fully panicking that I had broken my child. She literally rolled her eyes (kindly) and told me that as long as they respond to the "cat name" or turn their head when you shake a bag of goldfish crackers, their hearing and social tracking is fine. It's stubbornness, not a medical emergency.

How do you get them to eat normal food?

Boundaries. I'll meow at you in the living room, but I won't put a bowl of spaghetti on the floor. I tell her that kitchen cats eat in highchairs. If she wants to eat, she sits. They will eventually get hungry enough to drop the act for twenty minutes to eat some chicken nuggets.

What if they start biting or scratching other kids?

Yeah, this is where I draw the hard line. Like I said, Jackson used to bite. The second the pretend play turns physical, the game is over. I just pick them up, sit them on the couch, and use my serious mom voice to say, "Cats who scratch have to sit alone." Usually, the shock of me breaking character is enough to snap them out of it.