The little tortoise-shell cat we found outside the garage last week seems to be at home here.

She spends a lot of the day sleeping, and much of the night. Before we go to bed she usually runs laps around the house. After all the lights are off, she settles down until some time between 3 am and 6:30 am (that’s earlier than we like to get up, being retired and all). At that time she eats what cat food has been left out for her, relieves herself in a litter box, and jumps on the bed and stares at Leah to ask her to get up and feed her some more.

She likes cat toys. Like most cats, she ends up batting them so far under something that she can’t quite reach, like a refrigerator.

We don’t want to have a litter box in the house, but we also don’t want her to wander off and get lost. Leah has been taking her out occasionally to let her wander and investigate, and, we hope, relieve herself. So far she does the wandering part OK, but not the relieving part. We wonder whether she was a house cat in her previous life. She doesn’t seem to know that she can actually do her business outside.

This cat, whose name has evolved to Molly right now, is very much like the cat Leah has been wanting for years, except she’s not Siamese, Leah’s favorite. She is friendly, likes to be petted, and doesn’t startle and run away like all of our other cats. Leah says she’s sweet and precious. She doesn’t spend a lot of time sitting with us, but has climbed up on the sofa and sat in my lap at least once. She also sometimes ends up sleeping between us in the morning.

We took her to the vet last week. The vet thinks she is around three years old, much older than we thought. She certainly acts like a kitten and she’s even smaller than Chloe, who we used to think was a small cat. She and Chloe do not get along. She also doesn’t like Sylvester much. She’s OK with Smokey. She’s great with the dogs, and the dogs seem OK with her.

We posted on a local Facebook group asking whether anyone knew anything about her. One person said she found an almost identical tortoise-shell kitten at the base of the mountain within a few days of when we found Molly. We were thinking maybe they were litter mates, but if Molly is as old as the vet thinks, that can’t be the case. Next, we thought maybe Molly was the mother, but the vet says Molly has not had a litter recently, so that pretty much rules that out, too. In any case, Molly is scheduled for an appointment at the vet’s next week, after which she shouldn’t be bringing any new kitties into the world.