Is this scene getting old? I think so, but the mom remains enthusiastic.

“Gracie, you and Ophelia are getting along so well!” she exclaims. “We need to capture this moment.”

Fine, mom. You just interrupted our nap. Ophelia may be a spoiled fluffball, but she knows exactly how to hook our mom. She’s mastered “cute.”

“Hard to believe Ophelia was once a miserable kitty in a small cage,” my mom says. “When she first came she waged war on Creampuff. Her fur was a mess. And now…”

Right. After hundreds of dollars of vet bills and top quality food, we have a fat, furry housemate who clearly enjoys her life with us. She jumps up in my mom’s lap. She inherited Tiger’s position as dominant cat. Luckily Creampuff is too ditzy to care.

And I don’t care who runs the household, as long as Cathy’s schedule gets dictated by my treats, walks and naps.

Look who’s on a home page – top story of Your Organizing Business! Our own housemate. My mom wrote a blog post about how starting a business is not unlike adopting a cat. To illustrate, she used the photo of – who else? The cat who inspired the story: our own expensive adoptee.

Ophelia is a 15-pound, 11-year old cat. As you can see, she’s still pretty frisky, especially when my mom adds some catnip to her favorite toy. We were hoping for more gymnastics. I gotta admit it: Ophelia has some really cool moves.

Thank goodness dogs don’t do drugs. We canine princesses have to maintain our dignity.

My mom just read me this article from the New York Times. Apparently some scientists studied how cats drink water. “Much classier than dogs,” was the conclusion.

Do we need to know? Do we care?

The real question is, why do cats drink water from glasses and cups, turning up their little pink noses when mom pours water into their official water dishes? Now that would be useful.

My mom keeps two full glasses of water on the coffee table at all times. “Does nothing for the living room decor,” she sighs, “but otherwise Ophelia’s whiskers would be digging into my water.”

What is it about those funny cat videos?

This one’s been watched over 5 million times. Good grief. My mom says, “Now you know why I never, ever feed Ophelia and Creampuff in the morning. They aren’t trained to get food as soon as they wake up…or as soon as I wake up!”

Okay, here are our two feline housemates. They’re engaged in their favorite activity: eating. Ophelia may be the champion but Creampuff isn’t exactly holding back. They’re both so absorbed in feeding their furry faces. They don’t even notice they’re co-existing peacefully, side by side.

My mom loves these scenes. “See?” she says. “Even full grown cats can learn to get along.”

Yeah, yeah…so what’s the big deal? Ophelia’s been here for over 2 years now. Nobody’s gotten killed. No blood has been shed. Occasionally we hear a yowl…very rarely these days. They’re settled.

But I have a feeling we’ll be seeing more photos of these cats. Ten years from now, we will see two senior cats, side by side, and my mom will be reaching for the camera. “Oh look, Gracie! They’re getting along!” she will exclaim. Picture #1000 ready to roll.

Even my mom was surprised. She picked up the Week In Review Section of the New York Times to catch up on current events. Right on the front page of this section was a big story about a stray cat the author found in India. It’s the old story about a scraggly cat that recovered, with the help of a lot of love and good food.

Ophelia was a little scraggly when she came to live with us. She wasn’t exactly starving like that cat. She weighed fifteen pounds. She had an eye infection and she hated Creampuff. Now she’s got a healthy coat, she tolerates Creampuff and she still weighs fifteen pounds.

“The cat in the story liked to roam around,” my mom said. “That would never work here.”

We all feel sad about Creampuff sometimes. This ditzy calico loves the outdoors. With the right owner, she’d be an indoor/outdoor cat, my mom says. Alas, she’s destined to spend her life inside, as a city apartment cat. She seems happy. She purrs a lot.

And after all, what choices did she have? She wouldn’t have survived another month at that shelter. Let’s not go there.

But we’re still puzzled. How does a cat story merit all that space in a distinguished newspaper?

For once, Creampuff has the right idea. She’s snoozing in the sun. I’m sitting next to her so I can keep an eye on our ditziest housemate. We’re in Cathy’s office, trying to distract her from her work.

“Website makeover!” she mutters from time to time. “Hassle. Frustration.”

That’s where Creampuff and I get busy earning our food and treats. We lighten the mood. We give the mom perspective.

“Gracie, why are you lying in the sun?” my mom asks. “Dogs don’t tolerate heat well.”

True. Eventually I’ll move to my own bed and Creampuff will go off in search of new adventures. And in just a few minutes, I will nudge my mom with my cold nose, reminding her I need a walk. Her work can wait. I can’t.

Don’t they look like an old married couple? My mom says, “The cats are getting along much better since we moved. Everything was strange except…each other.”

Or else, I would add, they’re getting older and wiser. When a cat hisses, Cathy says, “Look, you either get along or you go back to the pound. You didn’t like the pound, did you? Both of you cats spent serious hard time in small cages. You really don’t want to go back there, do you?”

Nobody feels seriously threatened. We all know we’re not going anywhere. But somehow the cats pick up on Cathy’s energy and they seem to respect each other’s boundaries a little more.

The cats never go outside, except in their small crates on their way to the vet. So windows are a big deal to them, especially Creampuff.

Creampuff would have preferred to be an outdoor cat. The only problem was, nobody wanted a 2-year-old calico cat in Silver City, New Mexico. She had been in a cage for three months when Cathy came looking. Her calico cat Loretta had just died. (Loretta was named for the country music singer, Loretta Lynn, because she had whiny done-me-wrong yowl. I shudder when I think about it.)

The shelter staff persuaded Cathy to take Creampuff home. It was an easy sell. My mom usually takes the first dog or cat she sees at a shelter or (in my case) online. So Creampuff got a new home. Not perfect, but she’s alive and free to express her ditzy personality.

Creampuff wouldn’t last long on the outside. I’ve been there and I know. My mom says Creampuff once caught a mouse in her New Mexico house. But I suspect that mouse was even ditzier than Creampuff herself. Even my mom says, “We were the only house in the neighborhood with cats. So any mouse who ended up there wasn’t very bright.”

I rest my case. And these cats are resting as comfortably as any cats in Seattle, or maybe the world.

On Monday the mom took Ophelia to our wonderful vet, Dr. Clare. Our fattest housemate, the queen-sized Ophelia, was diagnosed with rotten molars. No comment. .

“She’ll feel better when these two teeth come out,” the vet said.

Really? Ophelia seems to be feeing just fine, as far as I can tell. She’s totally taken over the household, even though she’s by far the most junior member of our furry family. She grabs the best spot on the couch and the place of honor on my mom’s bed. Now she’s winning the contest we have going: Who can spend most money at the vet? With the expenses of her liver disease, right after she was adopted, and her dental surgery, Ophelia’s racking up the bills.

“It’s not her fault,” the mom said. “Gracie, you get sick bcause you eat junk in the park and on the sidwalk. That’s why we are getting you a muzzle.”

Royal princesses don’t wear muzzles, I tell the mom. She points out that eating the stuff I find in the dog park is not exactly a sign of royal breeding.

Time to change the subject. The vet tech called my mom to ask how Ophelia was doing. “Is she eating?” they wanted to know.

Please. We are talking about Ophelia here. She didn’t get to fifteen pounds by denying herself the good stuff.