We had been warned that Brandy was raised with a d*g in her formative weeks,
and boy does she behave like it! We have never heard a hiss out of her.
Rather, she pins her ears back, shows her teeth, and growls.

Louie and I were eating cheese adn crackers the other day, and of course she
wanted to get into the act. After trying to steal cheese unsuccessfully, she
reached herself up and snapped a plain cracker out of Louie's hand, and
actually ate the darn thing! Thus proving that there is other natural prey
than the domestic ham sandwich.

She is almost a cat now, and will be a year old next month. We'll get some
yogurt for the cats, some nice fresh catnip, and devastatingly high-calorie
munchies for the two-legs and have a party, as we always do for our babies.
I cannot believe what a little chub she's become in five months! She is one
rotund kitty, and it doesn't appear as if she's eating any more than the
others. Her paws are huge. I'd always expected females to be dainty little
things, like Odessa; Brandy is Mama's little lumberjack. I wonder sometimes
if there is something genetic in calicos that promotes chunkiness. The
chubbiest girl kitties I've known were all calicos. There was one who was a
mascot of a pharmacy in downtown Buffalo, who was as wide as she was long,
and I once took care of a lady who had a little basketball of a calico. My
friend Nancy has a little calico heifer lounging at her home, and my
ex-boyfriend Jeff had an elegant, oversized one who carried herself like a
wealthy, fur-wrapped lady of means going to opening night at the opera.
Brandy is too much a tomboy for such elegance, and looks more like a
"professional" wrestler stomping about the ring.

Ah, what the hell. I wouldn't love them all so dearly if they weren't such
little individuals!

Blessed be,
Baha