A Cat's Guide To A New Baby: The 7 Stages Of Grief

No doubt that the birth of Reddit poster manychairs' adorable child was a significant, powerful, and wonderful milestone. For their cat Roxy, however, the day was significantly less magical, as evidenced by this hilarious and extremely telling photo her humans posted earlier this week. This cat was clearly not expecting a new baby to suddenly show up, and his face pretty much tells the whole, shocked story.

Many parents-to-be fret and fuss over how to ready their furbabies for the birth of their actual babies. The ASPCA has some handy guidelines on preparing your cat for a baby. These guidelines include advice such as slowly introducing new furniture and clothes before the baby arrives, and keeping on a consistent schedule. While this is all well and good, I would counter that just as new parents are never fully prepared for the arrival of their bundle of joy, neither is a cat. Part of the reason this is true is that it's...well...a cat, and a cat can't completely comprehend what's going on. The other reason is that it's...well...a cat, and cats are spiteful creatures who will act as though you gave them absolutely no warning regardless of how thoroughly you prepped them.

This was very much the case for my family. My own furbaby, a large, van-patterned fellow named Pigeon, went through very distinct stages when we brought home my first child three and a half years ago.

Commodore Pigeon: supreme ruler of our apartment and lovable jerk-face extraordinaire. This isn't a posed picture. This is a demonstration of dominance.

Stage One: Shock

"What is this? What have you done? What have you done?!"

Stage Two: Confusion

"No but seriously: what am I even looking at? Is this...like...a mini-human? It kind of looks like a mini-human but also a shaved puppy..."

Stage Three: Indignity

"And just what the hell do you expect me to do with this thing? What do you expect to do with this thing? You're going to fail. You've already failed me. You've failed yourself. You're a damn failure."

Stage Four: Rage

"Do you have any idea what you've done you idiot?! You've ruined everything I've worked for! How dare you! You've ruined my life!"

Stage Five: Denial

"This isn't happening. This can't be happening. I'm going to completely ignore you people for a few days and just sleep this nightmare away."

Stage Six: Passive Aggression

"Did you want some water? Oooooooops. Soooooooorry."

Step Seven: Sullen Acceptance

"*sigh* I am a goddamn saint."

Please note that your cat may get stuck in any one of these phases. They can also regress or just live all of them at once because, again: cat.

But if you're lucky, they may even get to Step 8:

Secret Love

Images: Imgur; Facebook (2); Giphy (7)