Lately, Isobel has been having breakfast with me. I sit on the floor and have my coffee and cereal or yogurt or whatever, and she either curls up in my lap or snuggles up to my leg.

When I first met Isobel and Yoshimi, they were very small.

I adopted them from the Chatham County Humane Society in Savannah, Georgia a few weeks before starting my MFA. They were the only two kittens in their cage in a room full of cages stuffed with desperate, crying kittens. Isobel was not crying. She sat in the back of her cage and ignored me, while Yoshimi cried and pawed at the bars. Of course: I decided I wanted to adopt her. But I didn’t have a copy of my lease with me to prove that I was allowed to have pets, and the shelter was closing. So: they told me that they would put a hold collar on the kitten I wanted, which would keep her from being adopted by someone else through noon the following day.

We went back into the cage-filled room and I pointed to Isobel. They opened her cage and lifted her out to put the collar on her and Yoshimi went ape shit. I mean: he really lost it. He cried and cried and jumped around in the cage and pawed furiously at the bars. “Well, shit,” I thought.

I went home. I ate dinner. I tossed and turned. I went back the next morning and I adopted them both. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

That night: they both slept on my head in my apartment at 811 E. Henry St. in the Victorian District. In this way, I became their mother.

Yoshimi is very friendly: he always has been. He meets everyone. Isobel, on the other hand, is a little stand-offish. Strangers make her nervous. Sometimes: she hides under the bed. When she was younger, she would get scared and quiver uncontrollably, like a little, high-strung dog. I would hold her close to calm her down.

She hasn’t done that in a long time.

I once asked her why she was hesitant to meet new people. Her response: “I have enough friends.” A kitten after my own heart.