It happened early in the morning, when the house was still asleep. The kitchen clock was ticking, rain whispered outside, and in the nursery stood a cradle with a baby boy. His mother, Lena, had fallen asleep for just a few minutes — the night had been long, and the baby kept waking up.
In the house lived a cat named Mira — striped, calm, always near the baby. Ever since the newborn was brought home, she hadn’t left his side. Sometimes Lena would joke:
— “She probably thinks he’s her kitten.”
But that morning was different. Mira was restless. She paced from room to room, meowing, then suddenly jumped onto the windowsill and froze, listening. Moments later, she ran to the cradle and began scratching the side, meowing loudly as if calling for someone.
The boy lay still. Too still.
The cat tugged at the edge of the blanket, then carefully jumped inside — without touching the baby — and started pulling at his little mitten with her claws. Finally, Lena woke up to the loud meowing.
— “Mira, what’s wrong?” she mumbled sleepily, getting up. But as she approached the cradle, she froze. The baby’s face was pale, his lips slightly blue. He wasn’t breathing.
Lena grabbed her son, screaming for her husband while he called an ambulance. Seconds felt like eternity — until the baby gasped weakly, then breathed evenly again. Later the doctors would explain: a mild suffocation from his head’s sleeping position. A few more minutes — and it could have been fatal.
When they returned home, the cat was sitting beside the cradle, quietly purring. From that day, Lena stopped joking. She stroked Mira and whispered again and again:
— “You knew. You felt it before we did.”
Since then, Mira slept only there — beside the cradle. And if the baby coughed in his sleep, the cat was always the first to wake.
