Not until recently have I known that a little pet can be such a helpful assistant to a helpless mom. This is all due to what our new family member, a little kitten named Thula, has done. She seems to understand exactly what Iris needs at any given time.
Within a year of my daughter's birth in 2015, I already suspected that something was wrong. Even by babies' standards, Iris was a frighteningly bad sleeper. She also appeared unmistakably distant. Besides, after saying "dada" at eight months, she stopped talking. Finally, aged two, she was diagnosed as autistic.
In fact, after a long process of trial and error, I found activities that obviously did help her, including music and riding on the back of her dad's bike. Above all, Iris showed a remarkable talent for art: producing large multi-layered Impressionist-style paintings that took her several days and that once led to the Leicester Mercury headline, "Top artist aged 3."
Iris did make progress, but by no means steadily, with promising developments often followed by periods of regression (退步).
One night, Iris refused to sleep. As her frustrations mounted, she started to cry, and her sobs filled the quiet room. I felt so hopeless as I held her close. Nothing seemed to comfort her apart from her favorite book and I longed for some help, but she pushed away all who tried except me, making me on the edge of breaking down.
Downstairs, my husband looked at Thula in surprise who had suddenly got up off his lap. Her eyes focused towards the door and she had one foot raised, perfectly poised(悬在) in the air. Something had grabbed her attention – the crying of Iris. Then her legs were moving fast. Zooming round the corner, she flew up the stairs into Iris's bedroom and jumped onto the bed. She curled up next to Iris, ignored the cryin g and started grooming(梳毛) herself, licking her paws and rubbing them over her ears.
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Paragraph 1:
Almost immediately, Iris's mood changed.
Paragraph 2:
I was curious about the silence, then returned to the door of Iris's room and looked in.
