Don't diss cats by comparing them to kids! My cats are grateful for their food, clean litter, and shelter. Most kids I know don't even bother to say thank you when you do something nice for them anymore. Many are raised with a sense of entitlement.

It's an old Italian proverb! ;)
Now how do you know your cats are grateful? Do they ever say"thank you"? Mine don't but my kids do!

Don't tell me about spoiled brats, I used to be a teacher, so I perfectly know! Once I worked in a private school for the rich CEOs' kids and many of those brats used to tell us teachers that we were their employees since their fathers paid tuition fees hence our salaries, that's why we couldn't give them orders, bad marks and punishments. Haha! Sorry kids but no, that's not the way things work in the real world!

In their way, they do. They fight over who sleeps on my chest (Andy usually wins). They give me kisses. They cuddle. They purr.

Kids on the other hand.... most of them seem to think that someone owes them something these days (like an I-phone with unlimited data).

Off topic I would say, but what the hell. Cats do not say thank you, even in their own little way. They act on instint all of the time and everything they do is a reaction to something and is behavrioual. He has no conscience thought to even know what gratitude is, let alone express it. Does it mean a human cannot have a close relationship with a cat? Far from it, but a mistake people always make is putting human emotions to an animal that is functioning purely on instinct.

Children are of course the opposite. I prefer cats.

Dogs: My owners love and care for me. They must be gods.

Cats: My owners love and care for me. I must be a god.

As for Ava getting into NYU, don't think her family's bank account (a potential source of future alumni contributions) didn't have as much to do with it as her grades. Three generations of the George Bush family have gotten into Yale; Madonna's daughter has followed her to the University of Michigan; P Diddy's son is in Stanford (and on an athletic scholarship, no less!); Brooke Shields, one of the Menendez brothers, and Woody Allen's stepdaughter-turned-wife all went to Princeton: not that hard to do if you're that rich! On the other hand, what's going to be Ava's major? NYU does have a music business program...

Someone posted a quote from Richie where he was bragging about Ava's GPA going up 2 points. Given that GPAs are on a 4 point scale, that means her GPA was abysmal to start with. So her overall GPA probably had very little to do with her getting into any school. (Or Richie's an idiot and doesn't know what he's talking about--that's always a possibility.)

I agree with you, especially with your last sentence... but don't tell my family! ;)

I don't think that Ava's major will be music, she wants to be an actress, she already played in a movie and a TV series.

As for being accepted by several unis (she also mentioned Syracuse and Pepperdine), the same rule applies to Ori: she was a complete unknown until Richie picked her up. She had a smash hit single in 2012 but except for a few guitar nerds and Michael Jackson's fans, nobody knew her, including Richie and yet he's a professional guitarist so he should know his peers. But now that they're together she's getting an award here and an award there although she hadn't released a record in years and was just a hired gun among others in Alice Cooper's band! In Australia, who delivered the speech and presented the award to her? Richie! It was really weird! It's so obvious that he's pulling the strings that it's ridiculous. Now I have no problem with that, c'est la vie! Good for Ori if she manages to become a famous musician/artist that way (very unlikely if you want my POV).

Ava is probably going to Tisch School of the Arts -one of the colleges that make up NYU. My son went to NYU but not to Tisch.

Tisch is VERY hard to get into unless you are a celebrity's kid. My son had a friend who was a film maker who desperately wanted to go there - and his Dad taught at NYU. He didn't get in but he was accepted at USC Film School. Go figure.

Bad move, dad -- in addition to tuition, you'll also have to put out for extra airfare, LOL!