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Thanks to Jake Jabs’ weird obsession with large, wild cats, Kaylee has a near-life-sized stuffed tiger in her room.  (My parents found it for a bargain price at American Furniture Warehouse and bought it for the grandkids to climb around on.  They gave it to Kaylee when they decided it was taking up too much space in their living room, and that it was too creepily lifelike.)

So now he hangs out on a plant shelf near Kaylee’s vaulted ceiling, surveying the room with those eerie tiger eyes.  His companion is a large monkey that I won for Kaylee at Elitch Gardens, and we now refer to the two as Sam (tiger) and Dean (monkey) Winchester.  The reason behind that involves a long explanation that only “Supernatural” fans would understand, and which caused Rob to wonder aloud whether spending all day alone with just Kaylee for company is really good for my mental health.

Anyway, the point is that Kaylee loves Sam.  He’d sort of become a background fixture in her room until recently, when her cousins visited and asked to play with him.  Once he was brought down to the floor where he could be climbed on, have his tail tugged, and be kissed on the nose, Kaylee realized she had found a new friend.  And so I’ve been taking him down for her every day, in a process that involves jumping up and down until I can get a handful of tiger paw, and then hoping he doesn’t hit a lamp or a baby when he plummets to the floor.  (I’m too lazy to walk the 20 feet to the dining room to get a chair to stand on.)  So far I’ve only pulled one neck muscle, which I consider to be a triumph.

Sam now spends about half of his life on Kaylee’s bedroom floor, being pounced on by a toddler.  She’s still too young to articulate her thoughts, but I imagine that Kaylee’s pretending to ride Sam through fields of candy and popsicles.

The thing about Sam, though, is that he looks very real.  Like, a lot.  When Kaylee is bouncing around on him, sometimes she’ll hit him just right so his head jerks up suddenly, making me want to knock my daughter to the ground and cover her with my body to protect her from an impending tiger attack.  Sometimes, when she’s squashing his head with her whole body, his face almost seems to say, “Look at me.  Look what I’ve been reduced to.  I will find you one day, Jake Jabs, and I will eat you.”

I have become convinced that Sam secretly comes to life at night and prowls our house.  Maybe sometimes he gets Kaylee out of bed and they go off on adventures together, with her riding her magic tiger’s back.  Maybe they lope off into a land of fairies and unicorns and team up with hobbits to defeat Lord Voldemort.

Or maybe, just maybe, I need to get out of the house more.