Cinder was the first cat I had after becoming an adult. She was a good cat.

My little friend Sydney gets a little too needy sometimes. Much like a toddler, she has to go to bed at a certain time, and if I don’t put her to bed (that is, sit where she can crawl in my lap and go to sleep), she has a tantrum.

I think I like the tantrums better than what she did the other night after I went into the living room to read. Cats aren’t allowed in there, but she sneaked in, knelt at my feet, and rubbed her head on my toes. Ugh. An obsequious cat is unnatural.

Sydney and Hobbes sort of have an agreement: Sydney catches ’em, Hobbes eats ’em. Looks here like Sydney’s rethinking that agreement, or at least is making sure Hobbes knows just which of them is the Mighty Hunter.

I much prefer for Hobbes to do the eating; that cat has a cast-iron stomach. Sydney doesn’t — bird, rat hindquarters, whatever gets upchucked, and she has no shame about depositing it on my office floor. You cannot believe how disgusting it is to clean up bloody cat barf that’s still warm.

Last Thanksgiving our daughter temporarily shipped out her new companion while we visited, afraid we’d scold her for taking on a lifetime responsibility when she was still living like a, well, college student. As if we’d have been able to scold her when there was a two-month-old kitten to play with. Sheesh.

Here she is: Stella, a Manx. I only saw a little bit of her, but she seems very sweet-tempered. She kept winding through the living room where people were sitting, but she wouldn’t let anyone touch her.

Hobbes used to be our scaredy-cat. She puts on a good show of being terrified still, but if she were really scared she’d do her rabbit gallop away from us, not practically over our feet.

When we first got her as a kitten in 1991, she was far more timid than she is now. My daughter admitted a few years ago — after she’d left for college — that maybe the kids’ playing doctor on Hobbes made her so fearful. Geez, who woulda thought?