No One Gets Left Behind
So the first night Maddie had a fever (see previous blog) she woke up a couple times in the night.
And may I just say, getting up at night is way harder once you’ve experienced an uninterrupted night’s sleep.
Maddie’s sleep problems (I’m pretty sure I spent a good month talking about them) seemed to resolve around 11 months, and we’ve had almost a couple months of luxurious nights with Madeleine not getting up until at least 6 a.m. Let me tell you, I could get used to it. In fact, I did.
Going to bed the first night Maddie had a fever I knew she’d probably get up and I vowed not to be angry. I promised my husband I’d try very hard not to take it out on him, to which he responded with a skeptical and jaded roll of the eyes. I was prepared to forgive everyone for an interrupted night.
Everyone, that is, except the cat.
Madeleine woke up for the first time shortly before 1 a.m., moving into frantic sobbing almost immediately. I rushed in and spent several minutes holding her, singing to her, and quieting her down. You know that moment you live for in the middle of these situations, when you feel all the tension suddenly drain from the little body and it goes limp against your chest? I love that moment.
I held her for the required count to 100 just to make sure, carefully put her back in bed awake but drowsy and content, and crept out, closing the door behind me. As I climbed back into bed, a whisper of a memory tickled my brain – the feeling of something soft brushing my legs as I held my daughter in her room.
And I looked around and noticed the cat was not in her customary place on our bed.
Even as I silently searched the house for the cat, praying like I haven’t prayed in years, I knew it was no use.
The $&#* cat was in the nursery. Behind closed doors.
After gleefully discussing all the ways we’d punish our cat when the whole thing was over, Brian and I decided on a course of action. We’d wait for ten minutes to give Maddie time to go to sleep, then creep into the room and rescue the cat.
Oh, and spend the ten minutes leading up to the rescue praying to our benevolent Lord that our cat wouldn’t need to leave sooner and start scratching on the door.
Ten anxious and heart-stopping minutes later, we were ready for Operation Kitty Extraction.
Brian got our trusty video camera with its night-vision capability so we could locate Kitty in the room. I turned it on and pressed the eyepiece, perilously leaking its tell-tale green light, against my chest. Crawling on the floor to Maddie’s room, I reached up, slowly and silently turning the knob and stealthily pushing the door open. Still flat on the floor to avoid Maddie’s seeing the night-vision glow, I slid the video camera up and took a look.
Staring me in the face was a satisfied cat, looking fixedly at me as if to say, “1 a.m. Right on time. You got the memo; good job.”
She swished past me smugly and hopped unconcernedly (and ungratefully) up onto our bed, where she fell into an immediate and dreamless sleep.
Mommy, on the other hand, spent several sweaty seconds reversing her intrusion into the nursery, dropped off the camera, and lay staring at the ceiling as the adrenaline pumping through her veins kept her up for another half hour or so.
Anybody want a cat?
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