1.  Last Friday was a little heavy.

2.  Sundown towns, textbooks on slavery, and the Daughters of the Confederacy…

3.  You know, your usual lighthearted fare.

4.  I thought I might roll this week with — wait for it — our cats.

5.  We have two rescues.

6.  Cats keep showing up at our friend’s house, man, what’s a girl to do?

7.  She is clearly the cat lady except she’s the cat lady who can’t have cats in her house.

8.  She feeds them and keeps water dishes out but that’s neither here nor there for the purposes of this post.

9.  Seven showed up at her house back in the fall of 2020.

10.  Side note: Have I ever mentioned where Seven got his name?

11.  He’s named after the seventh point on the Black Panther’s Ten-Point Program: We Want An Immediate End to Police Brutality and the Murder of Black People. Particularly appropriate in 2020.

12.  Anyway, Seven joined Mia at our house and we were off to the races.

13.  Where did Mia come from? Our cat lady friend, where else?

14.  Mia does have a pretty cool story, though.

15.  Fast forward to fall of 2023 when Mittens showed up in our friend’s front yard.

16.  Mia (our white kitty in the photos with Seven) had died so technically we had room…

17.  Turns out Mittens was about three at the time so we found ourselves facing the challenge of introducing an adult female into the household.

18.  Hey, if you’re curious about her introductory days months you can read about those here.

19.  Anyway, she fell in love with Gracie fairly quickly, but Seven and his wild boy energy was too much for Mittens.

20.  The two of them have learned to live together at a ridiculously slow pace. Glacial, really.

21.  It’s the sort of relationship development that embodies watching paint dry.

22.  And that’s why I’m turning cartwheels this week.

23.  It’s been 21 months since they met and while they’ve made slow but steady progress toward nonviolence they didn’t quite look like they were bonding.

24.  But this week they both took an afternoon nap with me.

25.  At the same time. On the same couch.

26.  TOGETHER.

27.  Not to be dramatic but I imagine this is what someone feels like when they negotiate a major peace treaty among nuclear powers.

28.  Just take a look at this.

29.  Can you believe that cuteness?

30.  The only thing cuter would have been if the two of them had launched into a Disney duet.

31.  A song would be stunning, but the two of them this close and relaxed was shocking enough.

32.  There was a little bath time in there, too, but my site won’t let me load videos so you’ll have to take my word for it.

33.  Boy, I sure hope you guys like cat chronicles.

34.  I guess those who don’t probably bailed around #12 so the point is moot.

35.  It’s mind boggling that we’re a cat family now.

36.  Not so much currently mind boggling — for me anyway — but for a bit after we lost Gracie I was trying to wrap my brain around the fact that there are no dogs here.

37.  We got our first dog in ’95 and haven’t been without one since. Until now.

38.  And because this post has all the photos here’s one of our first and second dogs.

39.  So, in sum: cute animals, all the cute animals, even the troublemaker animals, cute cute cute.

40.  May your weekend be filled with the peace brought along with all the adorable animals. Happy Friday.