The Battle Hymn of the Nap.
by Rachel Mankowitz C
Cricket is prone to fits of crazy digging. She’ll dig outside in the dirt, if she can, but most of the time she digs on the rug, on my bed, or under the couch. And there is a vocal accompaniment to what she’s doing with her paws. I would call it ululating, except that there’s a lack of musicality to Cricket’s version; her rhythms are chaotic, and her pitches unrecog- nizable. She sounds kind of like a high pitched car alarm on speed. Very often, her crazy attacks
of digging are part of her prepara- tion for bedtime. Cricket is like a toddler who is exhausted, but enraged that she has to go to bed. She loses her mind, racing around in circles, picking up toys and growling and crying. She doesn’t want to be overtaken by sleep; it’s an awful fate that she has to fight off like the monster it is.
Cricket and Buttercup, ready for a nap. Or are they?
She does the same things whether it is a daytime nap or a nighttime nap: she will either do a running jump up onto my bed from the doorway, or stand next to my bed and try to jump from a standstill, which usually takes five or six tries. When she’s finally up on the bed, she starts digging at the sheet, and crawling under the blanket to dig in the dark. The digging speeds up and the ululat- ing kicks in, and then she starts to push the blanket around, creating a fort, where she finally falls asleep.
Butterfly has a different bedtime ritual, which requires me
to chase her around the apartment for some period of time, and then pick her up from the floor, and carry her to her blanket on my bed. Sometimes she is very excited and hops around the apartment, sticking her tongue out and smiling at me. Other times she is more of a little princess, waiting to be lifted and car- ried to her throne. Sometimes, when I pick Butterfly up for nap time, some-
thing about the slight squeeze around her middle makes her fart. While Cricket’s farts are silent and stinky, Butterfly’s farts are musical. It’s a bit like the sound of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, or a kazoo, played staccato. When Butterfly is really tired, she just topples. She’ll walk
down the hall to my room, alone, and plop down on the rug, to let me know that I have kept her up too late. There’s no running or jumping or raging at the dying of the light, there’s just motionlessness. When Cricket is in a particularly dastardly mood, she sees
Butterfly resting comfortably on my bed and starts scheming. She’ll run to the front door and start barking, as if something very important is going on and she needs all hands on deck. Butterfly, being a loyal sister, shakes herself awake and rushes down the doggy stairs to help Cricket in her time of need. Within seconds, Cricket runs back into my room, jumps up on the bed, and stretches out on Butterfly’s blanket, leaving Butterfly stranded on the floor, because she doesn’t know how to climb back up the doggy steps If this had happened only once or twice, I would give
Cricket the benefit of the doubt, but it happens on a regular basis. Butterfly just accepts her fate, and goes to sleep on the rug, one ear up, ready to respond to her sister’s next call to arms, while Cricket snuggles in for a long, comfortable nap, on the bed.
U 78 THE NEW BARKER
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