Kitten!

At Christmas, Santa Claus left very serious notes in stockings about Darcy getting a cat once we were settled in a house. We visited the local animal shelter a few times, and last week Darcy chose a small tabby-and-white older kitten named Paige:

She's six months old and very sweet, but she hadn't been tested for infectious diseases when we saw her, so we couldn't take her home. For whatever reason, the tests took a long time and our house got more and more ready for the kitten who was not here. A cat door was installed in the door to the basement. A litter box was purchased. Food, too, was added to the Christmas kitten-presents of a carrier and dishes and toys.

For the past few days, I've been keeping my fingers crossed that Paige would be given the ok before the storm hits tomorrow. I can't think of a better way to keep Darcy occupied during a snow storm than a new kitten. And with not much more than an hour left of the shelter's operating hours, we got the call: Paige is negative for all possible diseases and we could come pick her up. 

So we did! 

She behaved beautifully in her carrier on the drive home and allowed us to pet her for a minute or two before going to explore and hide. But she came around by the end of the evening and played a little before crawling under Darcy's dresser for a bath during Harry Potter. She is still up there now, sleeping, just as Darcy hoped.

During her exploration, she showed good taste in books by draping herself across my cookbooks for a while. Didn't look very comfortable to me, but Paige seemed perfectly happy:

She sports a bow-tie-like mustache and extra toes, one of my favorite traits in a cat! I hadn't noticed them at the shelter, but they're obvious now that she's made it home.