Meet Stella!

She’s fierce! She’s cuddly! She’s like a dog or something!

Our sweet Kit cat passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly this past summer. She was a young, vibrant, incredibly friendly girl–so proud and graceful and one of the sweetest kitty cats I’ve ever known. We said our very tearful goodbyes to her, and I didn’t write about it at the time because I hadn’t really processed it yet. She was a member of our family similar in quite a few respects to a young child, in that she was a continual and generous source of unconditional love and companionship, with a little bit of innocent mischief and messes and misbehavior thrown in. Here’s one of my favorite photos of her, so friendly and confident and collected amidst the encircling chaos that is our little Graham and Violet (and now Penelope’s been added to the mix):

So now, enter Stella! She’s about five months old, and already looks about twice the size as she did in the photo above. They grow up so fast, those little ones! We thought Kit was the most dog-like cat we’d ever met, in that she constantly sought our company and companionship. And we thought it would be pretty unlikely that our next kitty would so friendly. But despite the odds it seems that Stella is even more of a crazy cuddle bug. Maybe some of that is related to kitten energy, which she currently has in abundance, the little beastie. But I think it’s clear that she’s always going to be an incredibly friendly girl, another dog-cat. She often follows me all over the house, meowing and trying to get stepped on. And for a while I thought she was doing this because she wanted some tasty pâté or other treat. But she does it even when she’s got plenty of that in her dish, and so I finally realized that she’s usually just trying to say, “pick me up!”