"A Good Old Cat"

This is from the book "Why Animals Sleep So Close To The Road (And Other Lies I Tell My Children) by Susan Konig. . The book details her life as a metropolitan working woman, born and raised in New York City, who becomes a suburban stay-at-home mother. The chapters are short, funny, and very easy to read. I found this chapter worth copying, word by word. WARNING: It's a tear-jerker:

"Do you think we'll love the baby as much as we love Scout?" This was the question my husband and I asked each other in the months before our first child was born in 1994. We were serious. We knew we loved our cat whether or not she was a mouser; we just had no clue what it would be like to be parents.

Needless to say, like billions of new parents before us, all our questions and doubts were answered instantly. We loved our baby. So did Scout, who slept beneath the crib every night, gritted her teeth and ran away when her fur was pulled, and later on, lay on the floor and eventually let our toddler daughter rest her head on Scout's furry tummy. Eventually Scoutie lost some of the seniority she'd had for eight years and had to take a backseat to the baby.

On another night two years later we lay awake, again consumed in deep thoughts. Our daughter was now two (Scout was now ten) and in a few days the burgeoning population of our small apartment was almost certainly going to violate some city code. "Will we love the new baby as much as we love our little girl? After all, it's the three of us (well, four, counting Scout); how will this new stranger fit in?" Scout just lay on top of my huge belly and purred. She had already connected with the little stranger.

Our son was born, all twelve pounds of him. The morning I was scheduled to leave the hospital, the pediatrician came to me and said my son couldn't go just yet. He had jaundice and his bilirubin numbers had not improved enough for him to leave the hospital.

"But my 2-year old is waiting for me. We've never been apart before." The doctor implied that the baby could probably be released that evening. So I reluctantly decided to go home to my firstborn. That night word came that my son would have to stay another night. It was the four of us now (well, five counting Scout), and one of us wasn't home.

My daughter was watching Dumbo, and it was the part where the mother elephant is locked up in a cage and can't get to Dumbo so she sticks out her trunk and rocks him. I burst into tears over the little boy I'd carried for nine months and slept with in the hospital. We'd been attached all that time and now we'd spend the night with eleven city blocks between us.

It was a long night. The next day my husband brought our son home and finally we were all together. The new stranger fit in just fine. Scout waited patiently, purring. The moment both our babies were in bed, Scout fell asleep in my lap.

Now our daughter was four and our son was two. Scout was twelve. She developed kidney failure and started having seizures. We tried to hydrate her with fluids under her skin using needles and an IV bag in the kitchen every night. I never thought I'd be able to do anything like that, but I was a mom now. When her weight got down to almost nothing and she could only lie in the corner, we knew it was over. My son had just learned to be gentle with her. He'd go over to her spot by the heater and pet her so softly and say, "Oh, key-kat." One night she wasn't in her place, and I feared the worst. She hadn't been able to walk more than ten steps without falling down. After looking all around, I found her lying like a proud sphinx in the middle of the kids' room. She was watching over them one last time.