My cat...

She is named Clover, because my son thought that name was pretty and we adopted her in the late springtime, when the pea family is abundant.

She is very confident. When my son has friends over, she does not run and hide, though it would often be in her best interest to do so. She also runs to the door to great new arrivals, much like a dog.

She has a little black spot on her nose, which is, of course, very endearing.

The mere sight of her will send my ailurophobic (cat phobic) mother shrieking in fear, clawing to get out of the room. My grandmother, who was otherwise a passionate animal lover, also was irrationally terrified of cats. My aunt, too.

She is mostly white with a few black areas. She has a little black spot on her right rear paw.

She is not the cat we had originally intended to adopt. We went in on the designated kitten adoption day and found a littermate of hers to adopt, and we did most of the paperwork but it was too late in the day to finalize the adoption. My son had just recovered from that heartbreak when I got a phone call from the shelter, apologizing that the cat we had put a hold on had been adopted earlier but had mistakenly not been identified as such. The next day, I raced to the shelter once my son was at school and picked out little Paige, soon to be renamed as Clover.
My son remarked when we went back to pick her up after school that he remembered her looking different, but I managed to distract him somehow. On the car ride home from the shelter, he sat with her temporary carrier next to him, singing.

I'm glad that she is our cat.

When we got home, I sang, "Crimson and Clover" to her. Over and over.

She likes to sleep between my legs if I'm on my back or stomach and pressed up against the back of my knees if I'm sleeping on my side.

We have several nicknames for her, none very interesting: Clo-Clo, Clove, and Clovie.

She is not scared of our dog. He barks at her and chases her, but she seems pretty unbothered by the whole thing.

Occasionally our dog smells like kitty litter and I really don't want to contemplate that much more than simply stating it as a fact.

We recently put up a second birdfeeder right next to our sunroom where she can watch the proceedings from her post next to our computer. Her tail swishes and twitches furiously and occasionally she has banged herself against the glass panes of a window.

If she were in kitty prison, she would have two teardrop tattoos for the two mice she has dispatched. A vegan should never have to encounter an inside-out rodent, but yet I have.

This is a lame post, yes, even Clover is looking at me all pitifully, but it is what I can manage at the moment.

Life is still happy. Shalom, everyone.