Miles gets stuck in the cat door

February 27, 2007 4:51 PM

Let's not do that again, okay? Little Miles gets hung up in a cat door. [Quicktime requiring ActiveX] via
posted by onlyconnect (42 comments total)

Hmmm I didn't need active X at all.
posted by MrLint at 4:53 PM on February 27, 2007

I needed to re-start my crashed browser.
posted by matty at 4:59 PM on February 27, 2007

Uh.. I had hoped this was a fake, but yeah it isn't.

I have a feeling the kid's parents are gonna find out what karma is.
posted by ninjew at 5:03 PM on February 27, 2007

Miles has a thing for brooms, brushes, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, nail brushes, dustbrooms.. you name it. If it has bristles or a handle, he's all over it. In rare form, working both the broom and the Swiffer simultaneously. We spend a lot on Swiffer pads, but never have to clean the floors.
posted by delmoi at 5:06 PM on February 27, 2007

This is exactly why I had kids. Let the fun begin.
posted by jmgorman at 5:08 PM on February 27, 2007

I've run into another room to get the camera before setting my children free from whatever predicament they've gotten themselves into. I was totally feeling this clip right up until the puke.
posted by padraigin at 5:10 PM on February 27, 2007

You know, I found some mildly humorous things on the Internet today and I considered posting one of them here, but I decided that "Mildly humorous" doesn't really cut it for a MetaFilter post. I guess I was wrong, then.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:12 PM on February 27, 2007

You mean, the puke and then the laugh . Followed by the "clean up your own puke" montage.
posted by phaedon at 5:13 PM on February 27, 2007

I love that her son is stuck in a dog door with his hands in his own puke, crying, and she's walking over casually, videotaping the whole way. Nice going, mother of the year.
posted by jonson at 5:16 PM on February 27, 2007

Of course after I typed that, I looked up at the other computer monitor and there was a picture of one of my kids as a baby, being held by my husband in a carrier with spitup all down her front, which I took. I guess my feelings about vomit documentation have changed in four years.
posted by padraigin at 5:17 PM on February 27, 2007

Well, the mom probably exists solely for his amusement too.

this made me deeply uncomfortable.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 5:21 PM on February 27, 2007

I think it was great parenting (though a so-so FPP). She saw it was no biggie, talked to the kid so he didn't panic. Let him discuss some cause and effect and prevention and gave him a brush to correct the situation. Calm, cool, collected.

Too many moms would have been "Oh My God My Precious Unique Snowflake is DYING!!" then would have him rushed to the ER to be sure that the puking was not a sign of internal hemorrhaging, and would have topped the whole affair off with an attempt to sue the manufacturer of the cat-door.
posted by sourwookie at 5:22 PM on February 27, 2007 [6 favorites]

Imagine Connor McCreaddie getting stuck in a cat door.
posted by phaedon at 5:29 PM on February 27, 2007

God damn, I was hoping Miles was a cat.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 5:37 PM on February 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

lolsomeonethinkofthechldrn

~or~

What sourwookie said.
posted by everichon at 5:52 PM on February 27, 2007

Yeesh - really? I sort of regret finally paying the $5 after years of lurking.
posted by Nabubrush at 6:12 PM on February 27, 2007

I laughed, quite a bit, at "That's right, clean it all up." Maybe I'm a horrible parent (and my son is on Metafilter, so perhaps we'll find out), but I thought that was richly humorous.
posted by johngumbo at 6:17 PM on February 27, 2007

Yeesh - really? I sort of regret finally paying the $5 after years of lurking.

Nah, your first comment in the blue managed to squeeze in both a complaint about the cover charge and some snark about the shittiness of the post - you'll fit right in, give it time.
posted by rkent at 6:22 PM on February 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Nabubrush, I think you're looking for the lol cheney almost died thread down the hall.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:30 PM on February 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ech. Sure, the kid wasn't in danger, but why was her reaction to grab a video camera?
posted by boo_radley at 6:43 PM on February 27, 2007

I love it - kids are nearly indestructible.
posted by gottabefunky at 6:46 PM on February 27, 2007

Nabubrush, I think you're looking for the lol cheney almost died thread down the hall.

Hey, whaddaya know - I used to work for that guy. He's doing pretty well for himself nowadays. Thanks for the heads-up!
posted by Nabubrush at 7:13 PM on February 27, 2007

Do you have to be a parent to find this at all interesting or amusing? I'm not, and it was neither.
posted by mrnutty at 7:14 PM on February 27, 2007

I snickered, mostly at the cleaning montage...

And howdy Nabu... A TOUAMB wave to you! (assuming it's as rare a nick for people with that career history as I expect. Though I realise I'm using a different name here...)
posted by opsin at 7:39 PM on February 27, 2007

Yeah, yeah. That's cute and all, but 15 years from now, Miles is gonna be pretty pissed off when his friends search for his name on Microsoft Google and this turns up.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:04 PM on February 27, 2007

Miles has a thing for brooms, brushes, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, nail brushes, dustbrooms.. you name it. If it has bristles or a handle, he's all over it. In rare form, working both the broom and the Swiffer simultaneously. We spend a lot on Swiffer pads, but never have to clean the floors.

Hmmm. I need to get me one of these Miles creatures. The Mexican lady that cleans my house is only here once a week or so. He sounds like a cost effective alternative to the Roomba I was considering.

Other than the fact that Roombas don't generally need to clean up their own puke.
posted by miss lynnster at 8:06 PM on February 27, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yeah, yeah. That's cute and all, but 15 years from now, Miles is gonna be pretty pissed off when his friends search for his name on Microsoft Google and this turns up.

*waits for litigation*
posted by the other side at 8:12 PM on February 27, 2007

I really have wondered how the kids who are the subject of all the parenting blogs out there are going to feel in a few years, in two situations. One: when they read their parents' blog for the first time and see how completely frustrated and angry their parents were sometimes because of them; and Two: when their adolescent classmates discover their parents' blogs and use it as fodder for teasing, etc.
posted by onlyconnect at 8:23 PM on February 27, 2007

Stuck in a cat door, my own vomit all over my arms, some lady filming filming the whole thing and putting it on the internet.

I call it Thursday.
posted by dirigibleman at 10:23 PM on February 27, 2007

My kid is cuter.
posted by LarryC at 11:00 PM on February 27, 2007

Yeah, okay, fine. Your kid is cute. But will he mop my floor?
posted by miss lynnster at 11:09 PM on February 27, 2007

My vote is "good parenting." If it's no big deal, don't act like it is.
posted by autodidact at 12:36 AM on February 28, 2007

Few years back I was walking along a trail in the Chilcotin, B.C., when a grizzly bear suddenly appeared, blocking my path. My first reaction was to grab my camera too.
posted by Flashman at 1:20 AM on February 28, 2007

Slarty Bartfast, I too envisioned a zaftig cat wedged unceremoniously in the door. Anyone have those videos - Post 'Em!

and I loved the kitty in the kitty washer video. There's something quietly satisfying about watching a superior creature in a despicable situation.
posted by headless at 1:54 AM on February 28, 2007

Humiliating your child on the internet is good parenting? In what universe?
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:52 AM on February 28, 2007

what a cute kid.

that whole "oh did you vomit" bit made me pause though.
posted by milarepa at 6:56 AM on February 28, 2007

I hope some day when that cold-hearted woman is in a nursing home, tangled in IV tubes, covered in vomit, the kid comes along with a video camera, telling her it's nothing and to clean it all up.
posted by fish tick at 8:43 AM on February 28, 2007

Very little kids really like cleaning. Seriously. It's not a chore for them, it's an interesting experiment in cause and effect that makes them feel grown up and lets them play with funny things.

So, that didn't bug me (especially since I'm sure she didn't actually make him clean the whole deck).

But lady, put down the fucking camera. If recording this kind of thing is second nature for her, her kid's going to remember her as that weird cyborg lady with the glass and plastic face whose love was also kind of like interrogation.

I wonder about this generation that's going to grow up being uber-documented, recorded, and remixed from birth.
posted by poweredbybeard at 8:53 AM on February 28, 2007

I wonder about this generation that's going to grow up being uber-documented, recorded, and remixed from birth.

I wonder about this generation with this fancy aartomobiles and steam powah!
posted by delmoi at 9:57 AM on February 28, 2007 [2 favorites]

I love that her son is stuck in a dog door with his hands in his own puke, crying, and she's walking over casually, videotaping the whole way. Nice going, mother of the year.

You know, once upon a time my son was toddling onto his wooden block-filled wagon thing, and I happened to be videotaping. He got to the top, looked around proudly, and smiled -- and I got it on tape. Then he started to get down and, instead of dropping the camera to help, I kept taping a few extra seconds and *boom* down he went.

Same thing happened recently with my daughter at a park, who was sitting on a bench -- then suddenly was faceplanting off of it, onto the concrete.

This happens with a lot of parents who videotape or take pictures of their child's activities, because the harbingers of accidents and injury are subtle -- and when you're videotaping or taking pictures, you're not fully engaged with what your child is doing, and so you're highly likely to miss the "crisis is imminent" cues. That doesn't mean it should be forgiven, but it's caused by inattention rather than cruelty.

Having said that: the moment your kid hits the floor, or in any other way injures themself/makes themselves sick, the camera should be the last thing on your mind. This video, though, I didn't even need to watch to understand her motives: she was thinking of America's Funniest Home Videos.

My wife and I do this a lot; we throw the camera aside when something looks like it's getting dangerous, and then afterwards (when we've prevented the injury or they've finished crying, depending on how good we are as parents that day) we say "oh, boy, that was [close/awful], but it would have made for a funny video."

To actually, consciously ignore your child's suffering in order to make that video, however? That's cruel. Do you let him be stuck for a little bit? Absolutely -- it will help him learn that he shouldn't go through the cat door. Puking? That's the red flag to tell you that *you've already let him suffer far too much, and you are a bad parent*, so letting him go beyond that is just unbelievable to me.

Okay, I'm done ranting and judging. At least for now.
posted by davejay at 10:16 AM on February 28, 2007

I wonder about this generation that's going to grow up being uber-documented, recorded, and remixed from birth.

I wonder this, too, as my kids (at 18 months) have more pictures and video of themselves than I ever thought possible.

So far, the only impact I can see is that my daughter has learned which poses get the most positive response from my wife and myself, so we have lots of really good photos of her.
posted by davejay at 10:18 AM on February 28, 2007

It's neat to see into the future. Like this future "Exhibit A" as part of an insanity plea to explain why Miles' mother was found asphyxiated, her bruised head sticking halfway out of the cat door, what would drive such an otherwise upstanding young man, straight A's, popular in school, to do this to his own mother...

Your honor, members of the jury... lights please....
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 5:27 PM on February 28, 2007