“I thought you said you were going to put his entire head in your mouth.” “What? No way, that’d be disgusting!” “That’s what you said — I thought you could do that.” “No, no, I just put part of his head in my mouth.” “Can you try this time, for the picture?” “Uh, I don’t really like the idea of his mouth being inside of my mouth.”

Ah well. I wouldn’t have done it either. But for the record, out kitten was adequately displeased regardless. (See another, blurrier attempt here.)

We were forced to reach the unfortunate conclusion, a few weeks ago, that our adorable little kitten is a total asshole.

“Adrianne,” my friend Sara said with some alarm, attempting to shake Jack off her leg during her first and potentially last visit to our new apartment, “your cat is kind of insane.” It was a little late to be shaking anything, to be honest. Once he gets those fangs into your marrow, there’s no getting rid of him; you have to make a few preemptive strikes before making a movement of any kind in our home. Or if you’re sitting for a long period of time. Really, if you’d rather not be attacked, you should just go into a closet and shut the door behind you, quickly.

By the time we had decided to get a kitten, I had forgotten what kittens actually were. Or more accurately, what kittens weren’t: the fact that our kitten was not a jpeg really threw me off for a few days.

“Look at that!” I would exclaim. “He’s, like, movin’ around!”

We watched Jack move around for three solid hours after we brought him home. Jurvis fondly referred to this as “the kitten channel.” He patted at things experimentally, sniffed and hissed at his food bowl, looked around with big eyes and nosed our palms. My mind was completely blown. When I sat down on the couch a few hours later to read about claw trimming, he tip-toed over and snuggled into my feet.

“ASkdfjaoisdofla;jf!” I said.