It's funny and a little amazing how the kitten has transformed our home. Her bright energy lights the place now, even when she's asleep. She's full of mischief and the requisite curiosity. She likes to help - with laundry, with sweeping, and with making the bed especially.

She is so thoroughly herself, so full of her own desires and goals. I suppose that's obvious, but it's somehow easy to forget when you've lived without a pet for some time - that they are creatures complete unto themselves. Cats especially, who keep secret their unfathomable motives.

At night she burrows down between us and purrs herself to sleep, but once walking to the bathroom I saw her in the moon-lit square of the sliding glass door, staring out into the darkness, silent. She is a great devourer of crickets and spiders, but when she finds a ladybug she will sit primly with her tail wrapped around her paws and watch it, following carefully when it crawls out of her sight. She comes when called only if she has nothing better to do, but she comes running to the door to greet us almost always when we get home.

And somehow, it feels like we're a family now, rather than just a couple. Obviously she isn't a baby, and she's too autonomous and also too sharp to be a very good stand-in. But she is very small, and very sweet when she isn't being possessed by wild cat-spirits. And I do love her, from the bottom of my bottomless heart.