it's no surprise that having to take care of another as your own teaches a lot about yourself and others as well. already, aileen and i have had several disagreements on the best way to raise allie - and i have never seen aileen so posessive over anything before. it scares me a little knowing she is going to be a lot more posessive when we have actual kids, but at least we can use the kitten for practice.

in any case, another lesson that i learned is that catnip does wonders for cats. amazing.