There’s something comically cartoonish about a black kitten in dim light: a silhouette in which the only visible features are the roundly staring eyes.

Pillow, the kitten, has evidently decided that being picked up and carried by the Big Animals ain’t so bad; he even makes a game of it: runs away and then lies down, sometimes repeatedly.

I hope you’re not too dismayed at finding this column dominated by drivel about cats. It’s because my present assignment has a longer commute than most, plus my insomnia has been acting up a bit.

Pillow is adding to his repertoire: after a month largely spent crawling under things, in the past day or two I’ve seen him for the first time climbing onto things: a stool, a chair, a coffee-table, my bed. He seems a bit dazed at the novelty.

Fluffie, the senior cat, went missing last night. It appears that she got off the roof, sought admittance at the front door (after the humans had gone to bed), and was attacked there presumably by another cat. We try not to worry: at our previous dwelling, where she regularly went out to hunt rodents, she was absent a few times for several days at a time.

Pillow, despite his “all you can eat” diet, is not fattening up rapidly enough to make a convincing substitute for Fluffie.

Update: After presumably sleeping under a bush all day, Fluffie returned late the following night. She was admitted by my housemate, who did not happen to mention whether she was reeking of cheap booze.

Last night someone appealed on Freecycle to have a stray kitten taken off his hands. Our perennial talk of adding a kitten to our roster had recently become more serious; so, in short, we are the new guardians of a scrawny black tomkitten named Pillow.

We had heard that it’s good to keep the new and incumbent cats separated for a few days until each is accustomed to the presence of the other’s scent; so Pillow is temporarily confined to the master bedroom, the rest of the apartment remaining Fluffie’s sole domain for the time being.

Another trick we’ve heard of is to smear butter on the kitten’s head and get Fluffie to lick it off, thus tricking her into a bit of maternal bonding.

Thursday: Vet says he’s three months old, though tiny for that age. It’s a bit of a mystery to me how he can be so neglected and so tame. (He hisses and struggles when I pull him from his hiding-place, but then is quite content to be held.) Though afflicted with fleas, roundworm and a respiratory infection, he is happily free of leukemia/immunodeficiency virus. His isolation will continue for a couple of weeks.

Do yourself a favor: never buy Swheat Scoop cat litter. Some litters absorb pee and make a non-smelly solid lump. Swheat Scoop makes a smelly sticky lump whose consistency resembles that of my oat-cookie dough. It’s a bitch to clean up.

On another hand, World’s Best brand litter (made from maize) is excellent.

I’m quite pleased with my new Coleman air-mattress. It replaces one from Greatland [Target’s house brand] which was rather less like a bed than like a quicksand pit.

Later: The air-mattress apparently succumbed to Fluffie’s claws as she scrambled up to keep me company. I now have a conventional mattress, sadly less comfortable.