AN/ The bit about the grandmother is autobiographical for me, my sweet little French Memere was ruthless. (still is at the young age of 90). Thanks for R&R-ing, I'm loving the positive strokes I get around here! Heaven knows I don't get many with all the teenagers I work with.

Woody knelt by Jordan's bed, gently stroking each kitten on the tiny head.

"You're a grandmother!" His eyes sparkled with mischief.

Lizzie looked at Woody with a lazy eye. Her Jordan was nice, but she was not her mother! HER mother was very fuzzy, had eight nipples and knew how to wash herself properly, not with that strange water.

Jordan sighed and ruffled Lizzie's head. "I guess a trip to the vet would have been a good idea, hey Lizzie? Well, as soon as this batch is gone, we'll get that taken care of."

Woody smiled. As he looked into her eyes playfully he asked, "What are you going to do with six kittens? Somehow I can't see you putting them down. That's what you do on a farm, you know. Once you have too many kittens you just put the extras in a burlap sack and drown them."

"How could you?" Jordan was horrified. These babies were an unexpected pain in the neck, but she certainly couldn't kill them just because they were inconvenient. "Don't tell me you've done that?"

"Nah, that was Grandma's job. If it was just one or two, she wouldn't even drown them, she didn't really say what she did, she just, killed them. Kind of scary, actually. I never had the stomach for that job."

"There is no way these guys are going to be thrown away. Life is too precious, in any form. Especially a fuzzy, purring form, right Lizzie?"

Lizzie again gazed over her subjects with indolence. They were at last paying proper respect to her little ones, and she was pleased.

"What are their names?" Woody asked.

Jordan's eyes widened a bit. "No one told me I had to name all of them!" She raised one finger as she listed off each 'name', "How about: I. Should. Have. Had. Her. Fixed. That's six names."

"No way! They're all little individuals, they deserve a good name. Which ones are the boys?"

"The two calicos are female, because of genetics you hardly ever get a male calico. Something about the three-colour gene being on the female chromosome. The other four I don't have a clue. I tried to figure out what they were, but I can't see any sex organs at all."

Woody started to laugh. Jordan looked at him sideways and said, "What?"

"I just got a mental image of you; hard-nosed medical examiner, your hair up ready to do an examination, staring at these tiny little butts trying to see testicles in all that fur!"

"Gee, thanks, laugh at me when I'm down." Jordan pretended to look hurt. The six pack was starting to grow on her, now that she wasn't so shocked. "You know, with Mom named after Lizzie Borden, they could all be killers. Like, this one with the weird pattern around the eyes, that could be Charles Manson. Those two that look exactly the same, they could be Lyle and Eric Menendez. That one could be Susan Smith."

Woody gave her a scolding look. "Oh, come on, look at them! How could you do that to these little guys?"

"What do you think if you're so picky?"

He gazed at them all for a minute. "Well, you could go with their appearance. Like the black one could be Midnight, or Shadow. The white one could be Snowflake, or Winter."

"That's just boring. I'll have to think about it." She sighed again. "So I guess I have to put up posters looking for homes. Maybe an ad in the paper…"

"You can't just give them away to a stranger, there are weird people out there who do weird things to cats. You've got to make sure they've got a good home, not an early grave!" Woody was genuinely concerned, he'd seen some pretty awful things.

"Do you think we know six people who want a cat? I can't imagine getting that lucky."

"Uh, Jordan? What's this 'we'? Lizzie's YOUR cat…"

"Oh, no," Jordan half laughed. "If it weren't for you I'd have never kept her! You helped get me into this mess, you can help me get out of it!"

"How about I adopt one? I can handle having a cat around. And sooner or later, you and I will be together anyway, so the cats would get along…" Woody looked at Jordan, trying to read her reaction. He slipped that one in, as kind of an easy way to introduce the subject. He figured it would take a long time to convince her, so there was no time like the present to get started.

"Hmm, you're right. We'll probably come here, I mean it's bigger, right? So it would make sense for me to keep one, then we'd have two cats. That's not a big deal, right?"

"What did you say?" Woody could hardly believe what he had heard. Jordan Cavanaugh was casually discussing a major commitment. He was quite certain that Lizzie would sprout wings and fly at any moment.

Jordan looked at him with mild confusion. "Um, two cats are no big deal?"

"No, before that."

"What, you want to go to your place? I mean, it's really not that important but my place is definitely bigger. Unless you want to get a new apartment altogether, start fresh."

"Who are you? What have you done with Jordan Cavanaugh?" Woody laughed as he stood up and pulled her to him.

Jordan smiled, realizing he was surprised that she would consider any commitment. "She fell in love. With a cat! Then she realized what she'd been missing. The almost dying on a mountain changed her priorities a bit, too."

Wrapped in each others arms, they fell into each other's eyes, melting together, proving the unspoken commitment in a dizzying kiss. Woody sat on the bed and was pulling Jordan to his lap when Lizzie decided to jump down from her nest of kittens. Tiny little mews exploded, and the humans looked on with smiles.

"Well, this bed isn't much good in this condition. Help me clean the mess?" Jordan's arm rested around Woody's shoulder as he answered. "Sure. Then maybe we can talk? I mean, we kind of fell into… something at the Inn last winter, and I think it would be really smart for us to… talk, before we take the next step this time."

Jordan's sigh swept across his cheek. Being this close together felt right. Neither of them had to make a big decision, or 'get ready', somewhere along the way that had happened when they weren't looking.