In the spirit of being alliterative, here’s my Three Beautiful Things Thursday entry:

1. A family of four kittens lives in my neighborhood and Mama has been walking them through the top level of our window well, much to the frustration of Jeremiah. (I think she’s teaching them that if they get caught by people, they’ll end up in “kitty jail” like my cats seem to be.) Shortly after midnight, one straggled behind a bit and couldn’t figure out where Mama had disappeared to. I went outside to see if she was okay. She was a long haired tiger. So little, so cute, so loud! It hid under a bush after I stepped away, and Mama must have come back for it because we didn’t hear a peep after that.

2. There is nothing like the soft warmth of a polar fleece blanket on a chilly morning. The past few mornings have been chilly in the Burrow (it may have something to do with that open window in the living room, but I refuse to let go of the fresh air it brings). So it feels extra nice to wiggle my toes under the covers and have them encounter a snuggly blanket instead of the cold reality rising will eventually bring.

3. We have a monthly meeting that generally convenes at Ben’s Chili Bowl, a D.C. institution. We don’t visit other than that, but we’ve been going monthly for 18 months or so. One of the men behind the counter, David, knows us by sight and always stops us as we walk in. “I was asking them if you were coming,” he teased last night when we came in a few minutes late. We don’t have to stand in line anymore — he knows what we want. We just have to catch his eye and he puts food on for us. Certainly, it’s not a place where everybody knows our name, but one person does, and he’s always glad to see us. And we’re always glad to see him.

Our neighborhood has a lot of restaurants. Because of that, we also tend to have wild cats (the restaurants leave scraps out for them). Earlier this week, Rudi and I discovered we had kittens a block from the burrow — four of them.

Today, as I was walking back from the wine shop, I happened to glance up as I was passing a neighbor’s house and noticed a cat on the stoop. Looking closer, I realized it wasn’t one cat; it was five cats — the four kittens and their mom.

Mom was standing watching me as I crossed the street to get a closer look. The kittens weren’t paying any attention to me. They were too busy trying to nurse. Eventually the mama cat sat down, which made the kittens happier. And finally she just sort of toppled over to allow the kittens easier access. But she never broke eye contact.

When Rudi went to move the car a little while ago, he saw them back under their regular bush.

How many cats in the hand are five cats in the bush worth? I don’t know, but four kittens nursing on a front stoop are worth quite a bit of enjoyment.

I stumbled across Clare’s site, Three Beautiful Things, last week and it strikes me that if I stopped to write down the things I noticed I might appreciate life just a tad more. So in that vein:

1. Pink flowers — The pink dogwood at the corner of the Moroccan embassy is blooming. Like the magnolia trees three weeks ago, it looks like tons of pink butterflies have alighted on the tree and it makes my walk to the Metro much more pleasant.

2. A cup of tea — I didn’t have time to brew a whole pot of tea this morning and the regular tea bags I have are meant for more than one cup. So I pulled down the tin of Earl Gray tea bags Gramma gave me a while back. It’s been a while since I had a cup of Earl Gray and I had forgotten how much I enjoy a well-made blend. Some blends incorporate too much bergamot, but this one was just right.

3. A chilly cat — Jeremiah, our black-and-white cat, has been on the peck recently and has been a bloody pain in the neck, blocking our other two cats’ ways, chasing after them, and just generally tearing up the place. But at night he curls up on us, balanced on both our hips. And in the morning, he is generally curled up next to my stomach. And this morning, when I needed to be getting up from my chair and getting ready for work, he came and sat on my lap and gave me such a look that I had to sit for a few more minutes just to not disrupt his nap.