Sometimes it's hard to love the cat.

This evening as Gabe and I were going through our cozy bedtime ritual, I walked him over to his crib to take out the decorative stuffed animals (as placed there by the decorators who staged our home which STILL HAS NOT SOLD ahhhhh am losing my mind from the noise of the vacuum and the fumes from the kitchen cleaners which I use EVERY DAMN DAY), I noticed something highly unpleasant.

Our cat, who has been acting up a bit ever since Gabe started walking in earnest, had peed in the crib.

CAT PEE IN THE CRIB.

The bad, bad, bad cat also managed to pee all over Gabe's lovey lion blanket (a very soft, sweet, small blanket with a lion's head sewn on one corner). I was horrified. I am still horrified, several hours later.

So rather than rock Gabe in the glider chair and lay him down gently to sleep as had been my plan thirty seconds earlier, I was forced to strip the crib and and put on a clean mattress pad and sheets. Thank goodness for the waterproof mattress pads that I bought in bulk when Gabe was a newborn. That purchase represents a rare moment of lucidity in the midst of several highly sleep-deprived weeks.

Also, thank goodness we have a backup lovey blanket.

OR SO I THOUGHT.

Gabe has slept with his lovey lion blanket since he was a very little guy. It's organic and made from breathable fabric and it's quite small, so even though I was absolutely terrified of SIDS (and undoubtedly will be again for Version 2.0), the lovey lion blanket never worried me much. Shortly after Gabe began sleeping with the lovey lion, we received a nearly identical blanket as a gift. It's exactly the same, except it has (you guessed it smart readers!) a bear's head on the corner.

I've offered Gabe the bear blanket on a few occasions in the past, usually when the lion was in the wash, and he accepted it without protest.

Not tonight.

Tonight I got him all snuggled down in his crib and handed him the lovey bear. He took it happily, then frowned and sat up to get a better look at it. He examined the blanket, looked at me with raised eyebrows, looked back at the blanket, then smelled the blanket. He turned to me with a very serious expression on his face, extended his arm to show me the blanket, and said, "Uh oh!"

Clearly, not fooled. Not for a minute.

After some serious negotiations he accepted his Elmo doll and DaDoh the gingham stuffed lion as substitutes, and seriously, I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't taken them. I had a few moments of something close to panic as I tried to imagine how I would get him to sleep without the cat-pee-soaked lovey lion. We have an allegedly high efficiency washing machine and dryer, and those damn things take an hour each to run a full cycle, so tossing the lovey lion in for a quick wash was not a good option.

Lucky for me, I have the greatest baby in the whole entire world, and he cheerfully settled down with Elmo tucked under one arm and DaDoh tucked under the other, and was out cold in mere minutes.

Lovey lion is in the wash now, and should be good as new in a couple of hours.

But what am I going to do about the cat?