Keeping My Eye To the Keyhole

Recently, Melissa McEwan's adoption of the relentlessly adorable and completely miniscule Sophie Moon coincided with my co-workers' capture of nine stray cats across the street from the library. These cat rescue people are SO SELFISH. Oh, they say, would you like to adopt two or three cats? It's hard to believe these rescue people spend all their spare change catnapping and feeding cats they find - you know - freaking everywhere. It's practically stealing.

Meet our newest furry overlord, whom we are calling Chou Chou because cabbage is divertissant.

She's awfully cute. In a death-defying twist of hilarious fate, and perhaps a watusi or two, at just about the same time, Topaz and Drusy started singing My boyfriend's back and there's gonna be trouble when the stray cats went all Jets and Sharks in our backyard. I enjoyed the dance numbers. It was about the time I separated hissing girl gang members that I decided Topaz and Drusy needed a new hobby, preferably one that didn't involve knife-fighting back up singers. How about a kitten?

Those selfish rescue people didn't have a female kitten, so I asked a friend who volunteers at a shelter, where they had too many rules. Look, I said, if you're actually trying to place animals in good homes it shouldn't involve more paperwork than a bank loan. I asked another friend who volunteers at a shelter in North Jersey. She said they mostly had older cats; I pictured Topaz and Drusy pushing some wheelchair-bound tabby down the attic stairs, Baby Jane-style. I couldn't have kittehs plotting revenge and ruining the Chi of my teeny yoga studio, thus, you must imagine my relief when the original selfish catnapper contacted me about a kitten named Gigi. Yesterday, Pete and I were more or less interviewed for two hours by very nice people who finally believed we weren't sociopaths because we said we weren't, which, um, nuh-unh.

Gigi just isn't a Gigi. She's beige and terribly plush and after 4 this morning, she decided to clear off Pete's dresser. I can't blame her. Kick...BLAM. Kick...BLAM. Kick...BLAM! Kitteh! I got out of bed a few times to address the situation but how can you be mad when the kitten says purr purr purr? She is a darling baby girl who at eight months outweighs the two-year-olds and is mostly unimpressed by their hissing. Above, Miss Chou Chou sits in a Fuzzy Town igloo in our bedroom closet, her plush refuge between Pete's work boots and my bedroom slippers. She is acclimating. This igloo is supposed to house stuffed animals. We are trying our best to fill her full of tasty kibble.