She gets the munchies.

She has such a personality these days—and while I won't commit one way or another how I find it, I must say that it is entertaining. She's quirky like me and clumsy like Nick...and vise versa, too. She loves French Onion Sun Chips and licks the butter from your toast if you leave it unattended. As we drift to sleep, the wall-mounted LCD on timer, she can often be found at the end of the bed, braced up on her front paws against the foot board, her ears perked forward to watch the CSI rerun.

She snubs broccoli—my über food—and turns in disgust while I kickbox. She finds my sweaty body scandalous and wastes no time in looking at me with eyes that place me in a cave with a pelt-toga and disgruntled extras from the Geico commercials. Her tail straightens up into a plume and she walks away, paying me and my evolutionarily retarded lifeform no mind. I imagine vividly that one day I will return to find her belly up in the recliner with Sun Chip crumbs nestled in her fur and remote under paw. To say the least, she has inherited our bad habits, taking in none of the good.

And though I am irritated that she won't let me sleep past a certain point, I am secretly tickled that she wants to spend time with me—you know, after I've showered and scrubbed the broccoli stench from my breath—and I love those brief moments in the still of morning when she doesn't want to play, she doesn't want treats, and she doesn't want to gnaw on the pet repellent pellets we put in the houseplants....when all that she does want, is me.

BIRD!

Sophie has been a different cat the last weeks. After her trip and overnight stay at the vet's in April, she seemed to have an attitude problem. Go figure. But I kept giving her treats in the morning and a can of Fancy Feast when I got home, and it got to the point where she would get me up in the morning and run to me when I came home at night...she still didn't let me touch her, but it was something...until one morning, her head bowed as she all but inhaled her Whisker Licken's, I reached down to scratch behind her ears.

At first she froze like, "HUMAN. TOUCHING. ME. OH. MY. GOD." And then I think her eyes actually rolled back into her head as she flopped back and began to purr. "Hhhhuman....ttttouching...mmme...ssso...goooood." I continued the surprise attack loving for several days, and within a week she was asking for t.l.c. before treats. It was such a welcome change.

And now, she's all over us. It sometimes takes me 5 minutes to cross the room because she's weaving between my legs and I'm afraid I'll step on her. She seems to actually like being around us, and now she sleeps with us. "Sleeps." Yesterday I woke up to find between us both Sophie, and a soggy tennis ball. A few nights ago, Nick and I were trying to fall asleep for the night and she was wild with her nighttime crazies, jumping up and down from the bed, from the floor to my probably-bruised pelvis. Nick grabbed the ball from her mouth and threw it across the room.

She sprinted from the bed to find it, jumped back up (ON ME) with ball in mouth, and he snatched it away again, and she chased the ball down again, and they went back and forth for the longest time. Finally, he tossed the ball so that it left the room and bounced down the stairs and further from what we could tell by the echo of the jingling bell and Sophie ran down to search out her prey. Nick laughed and his face dimpled as it always does with his best smiles, "I love our cat."