This is Emerald. Isn't she cute?

She arrived last night, along with her old foster mum, a small bag of cat food, and part of a bag of litter. She was in a cat carrier, and she wasn't happy about it, as evidenced by pathetic mewing and one small black paw pushed futilely against the door grate.

However, she cheered up as soon as she was let out into the relative freedom of my downstairs bathroom, where she had food and water, a litterbox, a scratching post, and a little bed I made her out of a folded-up blanket. After she'd finished exploring the limited space, she curled up into cat-loaf position on the bed and stayed there for the whole of the evening, until I went to bed. (That's where the above photo was snapped. She was falling asleep when I took it).

Having heard about her slightly obnoxious behaviour from the former foster home, I braced myself for crying and scratching during the night. Not a peep. I slept soundly and the first noise I heard out of her in the morning was scratching in her litterbox, until I made a phone call from my bedroom and she heard my voice, upon which she let out a plaintive meow.

Released this morning, she walked cautiously but inquisitively out of the bathroom. It took a great deal of coaxing from the top of the stairs to get her to come up, but she finally ran up the stairs and set about exploring the rest of the house. She now seems fairly at ease and is hovering within a small radius of me, meowing frequently when she feels she's being ignored. Quite endearingly, she paws my leg plaintively to request a pickup. Right now, she's "helping" me type this and licking my hands as I do.

She's extremely friendly and cuddly; loves to be held; sits on my lap; purrs; and talks a lot. So far she's adorable and I haven't seen any evidence of bad behaviour, apart from a hiss when I walked too closely behind her up the stairs, which is fairly normal. I'm anticipating that soon, a very lucky home will get a very special kitty.