brace yourself for cuteness

[text]
there was a time when i had no patience for bloggers who foisted snapshots of their pets off on their readers as some kind of lame-ass substitute for actual content; this, of course, was (a) before i had my own blog; and (b) before i checked the memory card from an old digital camera last night and found these pictures.


understand: i've never been a cat person, and i sure as hell wasn't one that day in april 2001 when i went down to the garage to grab some tool or other, and heard--so faint i almost missed it--this weird little squeaking noise i couldn't isolate. i finally figured out it was coming from behind the dryer, went and grabbed a flashlight whose beam revealed this tiny little ball of mewing black fur; apparently the neighborhood stray had finally had her kittens, and had left one behind for me.


after fishing it outta there--eyes still closed, couldn't have been more than a few hours old--rather than heading over to the jobsite as i'd intended, i rushed instead to petco, got an eyedropper, formula and some quick instruction, and became a full-time wet nurse to the most demanding, ungrateful and adorable little kitten who'd ever lived.


at the time, i was working full-time and remodeling two houses, so i had no time for this foolishness; the idea was to keep her until she was weaned from the bottle and then find her a more suitable environment, but somehow that never happened.

today, she's as cranky and unlovable as her owner, but back then . . . *sigh*


[and in addition to being inexpressibly cute, the following picture finally solves the age-old mystery of how the roofing tar got on the eames ottoman.]