I'm at my college classes and I get a call, "We need to talk when you get home." I assume she's going to break up with me or something. Certainly a conversation started that way is grave. I rush home in a panic, unsure of what unpleasant confrontation I'm walking into.

I come in the door and there's a tiny white and black mass of fluff and mewling. "I rescued him... can we keep him?" I was so relieved I had to accept the kitten.

She had found him under a rusty old van, covered in oil. She bathed him repeatedly and the black spots that remained looked like inkblots, like the Rorschach test. Eventually the oil-stained hairs were replaced by fresh white ones and the name became purely symbolic of his neuroses. He was afraid of string, terrified of the toilet flushing, and not the best at separating his poopy from his tiny body.

But he was her baby and always will be.