We’re only a week into summer, and much of the country has already experienced several days of dangerously high heat and humidity. Meda and I were on a Zoom call with a group of friends on Tuesday, and several reported the temperature in New York City had reach 100°. Here in Honolulu, it was 81° with brisk tradewinds. Lucky we live Hawaii!

Meanwhile, this was a good week for cat photos.

For example, here’s the scene that greeted me when I went to bed one night earlier this week. Kiko and Kinikini had already claimed their territory. As you can see, Kiko continues to display her amazing skill at creating new sleep positions. She is a feline yoga artist! In this case, I was forced to pull rank and shove her over to create space for myself. Kiko and Kinikini didn’t mind, and we all quickly drifted off to sleep.

And a heads up: Pay attention to today’s second-to-the-last photo, in which Kiko displays more of her spots!

And then, with no further ado, here come the cats!

It’s the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a good time of year for the cats, with lots of warm sun spots for them to occupy.

Kiko is Cat #4 in our current cohort, the most recently adopted (September 2024) from the grounds of the Kahala Hotel. The other three were adopted from a cat colony at the top of Aiea Heights over a period of two years.

It took us a while to find the right nane for Cat #4. We chose the Hawaiian word, Kiko.

From the Ulukau online Hawaiian dictionary.

kiko

1. nvt. Dot, point, spot, speck of any kind; section of a story; cock or trigger of a gun (see ex., ala 2); punctuation mark; dot in music indicating time added to a note, also to repeat; dotted, speckled, spotted; to dot, mark, peck, hatch; to pick up food, as chickens; to injure fruit, as by a fruit fly; tattooed with dots on the forehead.

And Kiko is all about spots. She has large black spots on her shoulders. “Like angel wings,” one visitor to the house said recently. There are black spots on her legs, small random spots in her fur, and in this photo you see the spots on the bottom of her paws that are usually hidden.

It’s a good name for her. It fits. It’s descriptive. And she responds to it.

This week’s photos include five of each of the four cats. It was challenging to choose the five best photos of each, and to capture enough images of each to be able to select the five best.

Hopefuly you’ll enjoy them.