About ten evenings ago, I heard a cat crying outside my front door. It took a few minutes to realize that it not only wasn’t one of my cats, but it wasn’t even a full-grown cat at all. I stepped out on the porch, and in the shadows of my neighbor’s house was a small dark blob, screaming for food and attention.

It took me two hours of patient, careful maneuvering (and some stinky wet food) to finally catch the little beast and bring her inside–only to have her outwit me the following afternoon, when she escaped through a window. After that, she was justifiably leery of me and my intentions, and wasn’t about to let me touch her. But she did seem to recognize that my yard wasn’t such a bad place to be; she spent the next two days hanging out, devouring all the food I gave her and making the acquaintance of my porch cats. She went from looking lost to looking like she was contentedly settling in.

Occasionally, if I sat very still, she’d come close and check me out–only to run away if I tried anything funny.

After two days of that bullshit, I borrowed a live trap. I baited it with more stinky wet food, and within five minutes she strolled right into it. Unfortunately, she was so small and skinny she didn’t weigh enough to spring the mechanism, even while standing right on the trip plate. I didn’t want her to distrust the trap, and there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t scare her away. So I just let her eat, and decided to give it another go later, once I’d rigged a means to manually spring the trap.

A piece of lath shoved through the wire did the trick; the door dropped and I finally had her. And boy, was she pissed–she stormed around, hissing at me while trying to find a way out. Then she’d stop to eat some more (I guess to fuel herself so she could enact her plan for vengeance), growling the whole time.

It’s been a week, and that hissy little demon has turned out to be very affectionate–though still very independent. With access to all the food she can eat, she’s growing fast as well as packing on weight; I can’t use her backbone to slice baguettes any more. My guess is that she’s about 10 weeks old right now; she weighed exactly 2 lbs. when I plopped her on the baby scale this morning.

As for where she came from, I have no idea. There have been no Lost Kitten flyers posted in the neighborhood; there was nothing when I looked on Craigslist or checked with the city shelter. I haven’t had her scanned for a microchip yet (her first vet visit is on Tuesday). But she’s so young, and only now just big enough to spay, so I doubt she’s chipped–no shelter or rescue would have adopted her out unaltered, and free kittens don’t come with microchips. So with that, I assume nobody is looking for her all that hard, and if they’re not looking for her, I’m not looking for them, so I guess he’s mine, now.

I wasn’t planning on another cat. One of my all-time favorite cats, Dexter, died of cancer at the beginning of June, and while I’m never dead-set against taking in another feline in need, I was in no rush to do it. I’d only recently brought home two fosters, and that was enough.

I’m also not a kitten person. Here on the Island of Misfit Cats, many of the residents come to me because nobody else wants them–they’re too old, have too many medical issues, are too “ugly,” are going to die soon, or just aren’t big fans of humans. I only adopt young cats if they have chronic, incurable conditions that make them unadoptable. Kittens (and healthy adult cats under five years old), generally don’t have a hard time getting adopted at the shelter I volunteer for. I could take her in, and she’d be spayed and adopted within a week. But here she is, and kitten season is going full blast, and–well, shit. Okay. She’s here, she’s happy, my cats accept her, she needs a home, and there’s not a single good reason why that home can’t be here, so she’s staying.

Her name is Nina, after a recently-deceased gorilla of my acquaintance, who was also an independent-minded lady and kind of a handful. So welcome to the Island of Misfit Cats, little Nina; may your stay be a long and happy one.