For the past couple of weeks, I’d been keeping my eye out for a kitten that seemed a good fit to join our family, every day checking the classified ad sites and the local animal rescue’s website. I saw a few that interested me, but nothing that really made me sit up and take notice until Wednesday night, when I saw this picture of my new cat.

Though we were out of town on a mini-vacation, I hassled Olof relentlessly to keep calling about her until he got a reply. On Thursday evening, after we were home, he finally got an answer to what he declared would be his very last call. Happily, the cat was still available for adoption and, even better, we could pick her up immediately!

On the drive to Skellefteå to meet the kitty and again on our way home with her safely in a crate on the backseat, I tossed out name suggestions to a mostly indifferent Olof. For a short time I was all but decided on Charlotte, but couldn’t get the old movie Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte out of my head, and that didn’t feel terribly auspicious. However, that association moved my mind along to some lyrics from my young adulthood (hush, hush, darlin’ … hush, hush, darlin’), and after a moment’s struggle to identify them as No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, I decided that I could do worse than to give our new family member the name of the band’s lead singer, Gwen Stefani. (My kids’ brains are far more likely to go to Ben10’s cousin, Gwen, but that’ll do as well.)

So, without further ado, meet Gwen: