Eva Bradley: Pets face adjustment too

Fur babies need an adjustment period when their first human sibling arrives. While Greta took an interest in her new brother, Dave the cat was far more interested in getting inside.

It is common knowledge that the arrival of a new baby can cause a few itty bitty issues among older siblings. Jealousy and how I would deal with it was something I thought about a lot before the arrival of our firstborn (human), Edward, 16 months ago.

Anyone with pets will know that babies of the fur variety can hold court in your heart just like the real kind, and yet it's inevitable that their place in the pecking order will slump dramatically when you walk through the door with a wriggling, mewling little parcel of 100 per cent human.

One of the sweetest photos of many hundreds of sweet photos taken in the first few weeks of Edward's life was of my old faithful dog, Greta, poking her nose inside the car seat to say hello to her little brother.

Less enthusiastic was our cat, Dave, who can be seen at the back of shot eagerly waiting to get the heck inside with his parents after they'd suddenly left him baching (living at home as a bachelor) six days earlier with only a large bowl of dry food for company.

Until that moment, Dave was the youngest of the family, and fulfilled all the cliches of a spoiled brat cat.

He slept all day on the sofa, all night between our heads. He got home-cooked meals and daily brushing and snuggling. Whatever Dave wanted, Dave got.

Until Edward arrived.

Always the more gentle, accommodating child, Greta made way for Edward in much the same way she had for Dave two years earlier. Lying down with good grace while both of them climb all over her and steal food from her bowl is par for the course these days at home.

But Dave has not adjusted so well. From that first moment when we walked through the door and kicked him off the couch to make way for his evolutionary superior, he's been playing up.

Constantly paranoid that he would transfer his preference for sleeping on my head to Edward's instead, I didn't just shoo Dave off the bed at night, I pushed him out the bedroom door and shut it in his face. This cruel demotion coincided with those difficult teenage years that all cats go through and before I knew it he was out at all hours, picking fights over the fence and stealing steak off the bench.

Lately his behaviour has hit new lows - and audible new highs. For some reason, which we can't quite understand but certainly has something to do with the irritating capriciousness of teenaged cats, Dave has taken to galloping at frightening speed and volume up and down the hall, but only when Edward is trying to fall asleep.

Likewise the moment his weary parents slide blissfully into REM sleep, he tracks the same path but with unrelenting loud meowing that can only be translated as 'feck you, Mum and Dad, if I can't sleep in your bed, then neither can you'.

The only way to shut him up is to open the door and give him the run of the bed (which includes our heads) and then surrender to the knock-on impact of this, which is to be woken at (what he considers) breakfast time - 5am.

Anyone who thinks raising humans is hard has never tried raising Dave.

Deciding the solution lay in better understanding his psychology, I did some research on how to help older siblings adjust to a new baby.

Immediately I realised that some mummy/kitty time was overdue. And so now instead of kicking the cat when he meows around my feet wanting love, I stop, pick him up and give it to him.

It seems the currency of cuddling isn't just universal, it also spans all species.

Eva Bradley is a photographer and writer.