A little whirlwind named Cosette

Still missin' my dear departed old cats Lucy and Turtle, but not quite ready to get a new one, given the happy fact that I'll be away from my little Robbinsdale home a lot at my second little home in Old Frontenac, Minn., after it's built this new year. But it was a joy to cat-sit Noah's new kitten, Cosette (named after the heroine in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables") last week when he went to South Carolina with his dad and stepmom to visit his grandpa. Cosette is an adolescent kitten, a just-spayed female stray he got at the Humane Society. She's dappled like the alley cat she might have been, and utterly sweet -- lively, funny, social, gentle.