1 Mother 2 Another

3:30 a.m. last night, there was a knock on
our bedroom door. “Come in,” Brian groggily said.


Cora came tiptoeing through the door. “Mommy, I . . .”
but I was already out of bed and stumbling towards the door before
she even finished her sentence, knowing from the past four nights
what was going on.


We’ve got a new baby in the house, and no one’s
sleeping.


Cora adopted a four-month-old kitten the day after school got out;
it was her promised sixth birthday gift, and we’d made her
wait until school was over so she’d be home to bond with it.
And as fun as that kitten is, around 3:30 a.m. we all wish (just a
teensy bit) that Kitten was back at the animal shelter.

Kitten seems to pick the same hour every
night to A) wake up; B) wonder why her Girl isn’t awake; and
C) set about trying to change B). Kitten walks all over Cora, then
proceeds to chew on her toes. Poor Cora’s been patient, but
she’s gotten to the point where she can’t sleep with
her feet under a sheet because Kitten will immediately attack.


So every night Cora’s come into our room looking for help,
and every night I blearily stumble into Cora’s room and
snuggle with her on the bed while we train Kitten. We snuggle her,
scratch her, pet her, and love her through her “early morning
crazies”. I put my feet under the covers, then gently and
lovingly tell her “no” every time she pounces. After
half an hour or so, she winds down and snuggles next to her girl to
go back to sleep, and I stumble back to my room for a few more
hours.


Last night, though, Kitten must have not gone fully back to sleep,
because around 5:30 a.m. Cora came back into my room almost in
tears. “Mommy, I just want to sleep, and she keeps waking me
up! She wants to talk to me and crawl on me and won’t just
LET ME SLEEP!”


I tossed back the covers and gestured for Cora to climb in bed with
us.


“Isn’t it frustrating when someone comes into your room
and wakes you up and crawls on you and won’t let you
sleep?” I asked. Cora, crawling over my legs to get to her
favorite spot on the bed, nodded wearily and sank back into
slumber.


I don’t think she got the irony in that.