A Young Cheetah Moves

When I went to Chicago last week, my Cheetah Boy had just one request beyond the eat-in kitchen (yes, he did actually ask for that) and the Super Hero Training class at the Y. He wanted me to bring back a little cheetah toy. Luckily, the neighborhood toy store had just the thing.

He loves this cheetah. The cheetah goes everywhere; he sleeps with Baxter, he is read to by Baxter, and he comes along to the playground, where Baxter directs me in making a cheetah den with sticks and tree bark (so that the other animals can't see the "kill" - a dead gazelle - that the cheetah has hidden away in there).

But what he really wants to do with the cheetah is to pretend he is moving. In this incredibly transparent game, Baxter sets up the African savannah where the cheetah used to live and makes him move to the African forest.

In the savannah, the cheetah shyly listens as the animals (his friends) ask him why he is moving ("I just need to, it's time to go," he says) and then bows his head further and does not reply when they say they will miss him. He races off toward the forest but slows considerably as he approaches the line-up of unfamilar animals. Baxter tells me the cheetah feels shy and a little scared about meeting all of these new animals, and I make him laugh by demonstrating many inappropriate ways to approach a crowd of new kids - er - animals.

All of a sudden, though, Baxter looks up with a gleam in his eye and says, "But Mommy! The cheetah has something really exciting about his new home!"

"What's that?" I ask.

"He has a cousin who already lives there!" he says with full-throttle enthusiasm, and makes the cheetah go bounding off into the group of new animals to greet his cousin, a smaller, more orange version of himself.