After dinner we usually gravitate toward the back-room couch to read the newspapers and watch playoff baseball. And when the TV noise diminishes, we hear long plaintive mews from behind the closed door of the nearby nursery.

Suckers that we are, we usher the dogs up the hall to the front room, set up the partition screen, and let Sonny out into the kitchen and back room. The first night we succumbed to his pleading, he was too tentative to come out on his own; we had to carry him back to the couch, where he wandered back and forth between us while purring continuously.

By night three he was trotting confidently out of the nursery when the door opened, and had explored practically every inch of accessible back-room real estate… even the carpeted stairs to the basement. And unlike the Divers, he doesn't sprint for cover when random loud noises occur. This little guy is no shrinking violet – he just doesn’t want to be by himself. And since he has no feline friends, that means he wants to be with his peeps. In some ways, he's like a younger version of Remy. Not quite as over-the-top friendly yet, but heading in that direction. We really hope he remains healthy (so far he seems great) and a furball sidekick arrives.

Rolling toward 9:30, we'll put Sonny to bed – and sometimes ferry the Divers across canine country to replace him in the back room. They've completely mastered the pedestrian terrain of couches, tables and kitchen bar-stools, but only recently figured out how to sneak down into the basement (they slither underneath the baby-gate at the bottom of the stairs that's there to keep the dogs out.) The basement is dark and tempting, with storage shelves and a whole rack of outdoor shoes and boots. And laces, laces, laces…

The Divers are growing like weeds, so Oggi is now bigger than the biggest Campers were at graduation, and Gigi has reached our 2.5-lb adoption threshold. But these two still need a little more socialization and seasoning. We hope the adoption process itself will give them that – they're listed on Petfinder now, so they'll probably start meeting potential adopters within the next week or so.

filed by: TS