Now that the weather is nicer, we’ve been leaving our sliding glass door open most of the time, and one of Kai’s favorite things to do is hunt the birds that gather around our bird-feeder. It’s a little bit sad to watch because he knows, and we know, that he’ll never actually get at the birds, but he stalks them all the way up to the screen, slinking around corners, hiding behind houseplants, pressing his belly flat against the ground so that they’ll never in a million years know that he’s there. All the while making an adorable guttural noise that’s something between a hiss and a chipmunk’s chitter.

A few nights ago, after a heavy rainstorm, he discovered his first toad. The tiny dark creature was sitting a mere four inches away from the glass, staring at us, and Kai simply couldn’t handle it. He paced and ran back and forth, he glared, and he pawed at the screen - all the while, the toad sat there with a smug expression on his face, saying “You may be bigger than me, but I’m smarter.”

Yesterday I was able to finally get Kai into his harness and leash properly for the first time, with lots of treats and cooing noises (and biting and snarling from him). Once he was in the thing, he sat there obstinately in the living room, as if to say “Okay, you’ve got me into this ridiculous and irritating getup, isn’t that enough?”, and it wasn’t until I picked him up, opened the door, and physically placed him on the patio that he realized the harness meant he could go outside. His first order of business was to roll around in some leaves and spilled birdseed on the concrete. His second order of business was not to explore the grass, or the flower beds, or the trees. No, he decided that he’d rather go looking for toads and insects in the deepest parts of the bushes, and since the leash that came with his harness isn’t particularly long, I followed him, because I’m not afraid of a little dirt and because hey, it was his adventure. I was just along for the walk. However, I think that in the future I’m going to have to teach him the joys of watching grass grow.