A few friends have inquired as to how the furry four-legged member of the Burt family is coping with having not been the center of attention in our household for the past eight weeks.

The two hairballs I’ve found in the past seven days sum up Miss Dorian Gray’s feelings. (My feelings on the hairballs are best summed up, “Seriously, Dorrie? Hairballs? Now? We’ve had you for four years and you’ve never had problems with this before. Did you feel left out of the part of life where I spend all my time cleaning up someone else’s puke?”)

(Question for the kitty mamas out there: Should I be worried that Dorrie has suddenly started having hairballs, or is this just part of the feline aging process?)

Before you click away in disgust, let me assure you that there is more to this story of Dorrie than slimy wet hairy bodily emissions. And I did not photograph them. (If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you might have been repulsed by one or two images last week.  Clearly I don’t know the limits of polite photo netiquette.)

Prior to the hairballs, I actually had the naïveté to think Dorrie was starting to like Liam. Sure, there was that moment last Saturday when she was sitting atop Mr. Burt’s dresser and I held Liam up to look at her, and her response to his intense, interested gaze was to hiss at him before backing away from him in terror. (Liam was unimpressed by this show of feline ferality.) But even hissing and cowering are behavior improvements. She’s long since gotten over her initial reaction of being pissed off at Mr. Burt for bringing this new pet into our home and her indifference to me, having realized she gets even less attention when she’s being disagreeable, and in addition to acting out the most pathetic bids for affection and attention (literally throwing herself at our feet), she’s lately begun to spend a lot of time in Liam’s room; I go in during the day to put his laundry away and find her curled up in the corner behind his door, or perched on top of the bookcase, staring at the crib — occasionally, while Liam is in there, napping. Or, if the door is shut, when I get up for the middle of the night feeding I often find her perched outside, waiting for me to open it.

Can you believe I actually harbored the notion that she was keeping watch over this little person whom she secretly liked and wanted to see?

Apparently, I’d begun to believe Dorrie was a dog.

It wasn’t until I went to wake Liam on one of the mornings he hadn’t actually woken me that I remembered Dorian Gray is, very much, a cat.

The bedroom door was already open when I got there, presumably pushed open by Dorrie (the house has settled in such a way that you have to pull the door just so for it to latch shut), who was sitting on the bookcase. Looking not at Liam, but at the window.

Or rather, through the slats of the blinds in the window.

Watching something outside the window.

With her hackles raised.

And making soft chattering sounds.

As she does when she watches…

…birds.

Doves, to be precise.

As you may recall, a pair of doves call our window ledges home each spring. Usually it’s the downstairs powder room window, which is concealed by a Yaupon Holly tree, but this year our doves’ nest and two eggs are ensconced in the ivy covering the nursery window. (I think it’s lovely that new life is beginning so near to where my baby sleeps and am convinced the mama dove knew this and chose it as an auspicious location to hatch her little ones.)

(Less lovely is the fact that the room where my baby sleeps is also the staging point for the violent act of destroying new life my cat longs to carry out, but there’s a life lesson in that, too. Namely, the ever-present reality of the food chain.)

I’ll let Dorrie keep thinking she’s on top for as long as she can.

Soon, Liam will be crawling.