Tallulah and Hubert are adjusting very, very well to having a home.
It's little things that sometimes make me realize what a long way
we've come.

Lula still has the stray's habit of very light sleeping, but now
instead of leaping up, wide awake and anxious, when you walk into the
room she'll just open one eye at you.

When Hubie and Lula are playing with abandon, they can forget we're
there.  We can turn a corner and surprise the hell out of them.  Now,
though, instead of looking alarmed, they just look annoyed.

At first, whenever Tallulah would try something new and we'd see her
do it, she'd come rushing over to us and have to be encouraged and
reassured that it's okay, for example, to jump in the laundry basket.
She's gotten much more confident, and now if something new comes into
the house she doesn't hesitate to assume it's for her.  Though it's
not very nice, and certainly not rational, I had somehow not wanted to
bring out Mikey's favorite things for Lula and Hubert.  But I opened a
closet door the other day and saw Mike's tunnel there, all washed and
put neatly away and going to waste, and got it out for the kitties.
Both of them immediately started chasing each other through it and the
one outside the tunnel pouncing on the one inside the tunnel and
having a blast.  No reassurance necessary.

We've had some days with nice weather lately and I've opened the
windows.  Outside sounds can terrify Hubert, but I have mostly been
able to reassure him and keep him from running away and hiding.  It's
actually significant progress that I am now at least a little less
scary than a lawn mower.

Hubert, in fact, has recently and suddenly crossed some sort of
threshold into sociability with the humans.  We're now more
interesting than scary, and he will even occasionally approach us for
*very* short periods of petting.  He signals that it would be okay to
pet him for a nanosecond by plopping himself down at our feet and
rolling over to show his adorable spotted belly.

There are also little things that just make me smile:

Hubert went to TED today for another round of shots, and he hissed at
the tech.  Baby's first hiss!  Doesn't it make you all misty?  (Hubert
is 13 weeks old and weighs 6 pounds.  TED joked that he was going to
call the ASPCA on me for not feeding the kitten.)

Hubert's tail is outrageously long, and sometimes he sleeps with it
curled over his eyes.

I woke Hubert reaching over him to turn off a lamp, and he looked up
and mrrrped at me.  Another first.  :-)

Lula sits in the cello position in a cardboard box, with one back leg
in the air, but instead of tending to personal hygiene she rips bits
out of the edge of the box from this position.  Silly cat.  Hubert's
been spending quite a bit of time in the cello position just lately
too, checking out the *new* things that have recently appeared beneath
his tail.  He doesn't know they won't be there for very long.

Tallulah's not a big girl, but she's earned the nickname Linebacker
Lula; she has broad shoulders and hips, a wide rib cage, short solid
legs, feet like catcher's mitts, and a head/neck proportion not often
seen outside the NFL.  It makes her extra nice to cuddle, though she's
only gradually warming up to being held.  Hubert, on the other hand,
is narrowly built and so skinny and soooo long that he's very
reminiscent of a snake.  His fur gets silkier every day, and it's
lovely to stroke down the looong length of kitten whenever he'll let
us.

------
Krista