Lost! One Siamese Cat...Answers to the Name of Doggie

Last Christmas, Connor received a stuffed animal from his Uncle Mike. Later that day, Ed and I pondered whether the animal was a cat or dog, with input from both Mike and Ed's mom. In the end, no one was truly confident, but we decided to call it a dog. Since then, I've been trying to get Connor to like "doggie", because every sleep book I read suggested that bonding with a stuffed animal could help a kid sleep. The theory is that they wake up, see their good friend stuffed animal, and fall back to sleep. I was certainly skeptical - because Connor is not often impressed with anything other than the real thing. After all, Connor has probably spent all of 60 minutes - in his full 16 months of life - sucking on a pacifier (and looking back, I think I recorded every one of those moments with excitement in this blog) but is quite fond of his human pacifier, me. But, in the end, I figured it couldn't hurt. Ed, also skeptical, correctly pointed out that the trouble with having a favorite stuffed animal is that if it gets lost, we could be screwed.


Well...it happened. Connor finally started liking doggie, only to have doggie get lost somewhere between my parent's home and ours. So, we did what any good parents would do. We checked all the lost and founds at the two airports, begged the airline to search the plane just one more time, and then turned to eBay. Thankfully, Ed was able to locate the stuffed animal (the man can't remember his phone number but remembered the brand of stuffed toy his son had received a year ago). In doing so, he learned that our beloved doggie is actually a cat. A siamese cat. This is even more funny to us because when Anna and Emily (ages 9 and 7.5) first met doggie, they looked at us confused and said "that's not a dog, it's a cat!". To which I replied - in very undiplomatic fashion - "well, we're calling it a dog".

When doggie arrived from the nice eBay store, I opened the package, tore the tag off, put doggie back in the package and then brought it out to Connor. I told him doggie got lost at Mims' house and she mailed him back to us. Connor wore a really huge grin when he saw doggie. Ed's comment "and the lies begin". I am now bidding on two more "doggies" on eBay, just in case this doggie gets lost. Connor now loves doggie even more, so I guess it's true... absence makes the heart grow fonder.

When Ed first learned doggie was a cat he told me that I would have to break the news to Connor. For now, I'm sticking with the story that it's a dog.