The photo below shows the kitten we named Kua on my shoulder back when we lived in a two-bedroom townhouse Mauka of Kahala Mall. This was less than a year before we bought a house in Kaaawa and moved to the “country,” where we stayed for more than 25 years. The photo is taken at my work desk, which also did duty as our dining table in that Kahala townhouse. I was working on my trusty Macintosh, with Kua whispering advice in my ear.

Kua was the #2 adoption in that first cohort of calicos.

That was a story!

Meda had a bad case of kitten fever, so we wandered out into the world on June 6, 1987, looking for a kitten. We found this one in a Kalihi pet shop.

Here’s an excerpt of something I wrote after Kua died, way too early, on Bastille Day, July 14, 1998.

This tiny calico was the runt of the litter, but an obvious match. Soon we were back in the car with a kitten, in a cardboard box, sitting on Meda’s lap. It turned out to be one of those impulsive decisions that violated the accepted laws of kittens. Did the kitten have runny eyes? Did the kitten have runny, well, you know? Yes. The vet soon informed us that she had about everything from coccidia to mange, which at one point left the tip of her tail exposed and hairless .

“Foodface.” That’s what our vet called her because, for whatever reason, Kua didn’t clean herself at first and her face was a constant mosaic of meals past.

We persevered, and Kua became a big part of our feline family. She moved to Kaaawa with us and enjoyed a decade there before a bad heart ended her life.