One of my cats, Masha—a very small and really soft female with the face of a killer—got hurt a few days ago. She came back visibly limping, avoiding putting down one of her legs. There was no blood, she didn’t overly mind being touched there, and didn’t seem too disturbed by the whole thing. We thought about bringing her to the vet but decided to give it a few days.

The being didn’t seem convinced of the wisdom of waiting. To convince her, I guess, I pointed out how well she herself had recovered from the time in San Francisco, when she was 18 months old, we broke her leg by pushing her down a slide, and then needed a couple of days to figure out something was wrong. Okay, it wasn’t just our fault. It’s true that when she cried, we gave her first all sorts of hugs, but then put her in the back of the bike—what else were we supposed to do?—and only a few hours later did we notice she wasn’t putting her leg on the ground. We brought her to Oakland’s children’s hospital, they took an X-ray and didn’t see anything, so we went back home. It was only a few days later that they called us from the hospital because somebody else had looked at it and spotted the broken tibia. At the hospital, they were super nice, but as you can imagine, we felt pangs of guilt. Anyway, I’m not sure if this story convinced the being of anything, but I am sure it’s one of those things she’ll tell later in life when she wants—hopefully in good bantering mood—to describe her parents and her upbringing.

I agree we wouldn’t win any parenting medals for that episode, but there are some mildly exculpatory ingredients. I mean, if I had broken my leg, there’s no way I’d be in a good mood or acting as if nothing happened a few minutes later. I’d scream, and even if I were in Inner Mongolia, unable to speak or understand what people say, I’d make it clear for real long that I was hurting. Kids don’t do that. Neither do cats. But focusing on kids, I wonder: when do humans lose the superpower of crashing to the ground in the most dramatic way, coming to ask for hugs, maybe getting a sweet, and one minute later being ready to do it again? I guess physiologically, there’s a difference between babies and adults—as the nurses put it when the being was born, les bébés sont élastiques—but that doesn’t explain it all. Babies (and cats) are much tougher than adults.

Now, I’m sure there’s some evolutionary reason for this. Partly for the survival of the babies, but also for that of the parents. I mean, kids are nuts. They’re crazy. Están como las maracas. Locos bajitos. Short, tiny lunatics. If, as a parent, one were to measure what happens to them the way one would for adults, one would suffer five heart attacks a day. The five-second rule becomes the five-minute rule. Paraphrasing something Jeff said at some point: when you hear a crashing noise and see a kid dramatically crying, you count the limbs, and if they’re all there, you give a hug and a piece of candy and call it a day.

With all humility, I believe I improved on Jeff’s approach: when the being used to crash as children do, my first reaction was evidently to wonder in horror if she was still alive, and when there was evidence of movement, I moved to the hug phase of the process. But then I used to tell the being she had to be careful because she was going to break the floor. For a long time, her reaction was one of complete puzzlement, as intended. I guess this put the issue in a perspective she hadn’t considered before. It seems to me kids have a harder time focusing on two things than adults do, and making her focus on the possibility of the kitchen floor tiles breaking—rather than her head—was enough to make her forget that a minute before, she’d fallen headfirst from somewhere close to her own height.

For clarification, the being is now older, and this doesn’t work anymore. She’s also much more reasonable, though she’s covered in bruises from skating. But if you wonder how that specific sentence about breaking the floor will come back to bite me, let me assure you that I also wonder. Knowing her, I’m sure that it will bite me at some point. But in the moment one has to cope as best one can with feeling for the third time in a day that somebody was close to death, knowing it’ll happen a few more times before bed.

Anyway, this all started with Masha. She spent two days trapped at home, limping but with an enormous desire to go out. Whenever a door opened, it seemed like she was training for the tripod-cat Olympics. So yesterday night, I let her out. And this morning, the limping was imperceptible. Since I’m sure she didn’t visit a shaman during the night, I’ve decided it was psychological limping, and that a few hours of doing horrible things outside just made her forget about it. Life would be easier if we were as tough as kids. Or cats.

P.S.: I want to point out that I’m also vaguely responsible for my nephew’s broken arm. He was 2, we were both in the park, and although this time it was him by himself who did it all, I was nearby, and if I’d had better reflexes, I might have been able to catch him. Again, in this case, only a day later did my sister notice something weird—that he was only using one arm. But he was as cheerful as always. Amazing. In any case, if you want to entrust me with your toddler, make sure first that you have good healthcare insurance.