You’ll have to excuyi0-yde32jnrr455rrrrrrrrse me if this week’s cognitive offering contains a few keyborrr;;;;;;0ptfd gaffes.

Usually, my mistakes are the result of the variety common to those who fly across the buttons using the standard two-forefinger approach.

This week, howev56ty70==/‘=r, 42 digits are being employed to type this out.

The aforementioned forefingers — and the 40 furry, clawed appendages belonging to the two recent additions to the family.

Yes … for those of you who have been wonder1FFFFFFTGYFFingg .. there is indeed a new Head of the Household.

A pair of them, in fact.

It’s been three months, seven stages of grief and two vacations since their predecessor ascended to the Great Big Bookstore Cafe in the sky — much too long a wait, according to one of us; a trip or three too soon, according to the other.

Guess who won that debate?

#4niRLM9)*::Xs5!!! (That was me, expressing frustration … not one of the cats, expressing, well, whatever it is cats express when head-butting your chin while standing on a keyboard.)

It’s not that I didn’t want to replace the hole in our living arrangement. We’ve been ordered around by our feline friends almost for more than four decades, and fully expect to be for the next four.

It’s just, this time, I was settling into a post-HoH fog — thinking that maybe it was a moment where there was no need for the pitter-patter of little cat feet to arrive and peer at us on silent haunches until we figured out what it wanted and get a move on.

I was wronnm><nnnnvx&9-[]]]g.

Once she convinced me that adopting a fur baby was my idea, we trundled off to the Southern Oregon Humane Society … where it became apparent that we would become parents to more than one.

Guess who won that debate?

SoHumane had a delightful selection of young’uns yearning to be free from their cages. Test-driving them was a challenge in and of itself; since for every purr that we held in our paws, there were other sad eyes that we wished would turn the other way, so we didn’t have to see them cry.

Bop bop bop bop bop bop bop TURN ON DICTATION … Not Now

As luck would have it, we found ourselves drawn to kittens in separate cages that eerily reminded us of the pair who owned us before the He’d of the Household took over our lives.

Those readers with long memories might recall that I referred to them as “Kira and Dax, the Musical Cats” since Kira, a Calico, played the heating vent harp, as Dax, whose markings of a Trill, kept the backbeat on a closet door.

Both were named for “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” characters. I had wanted to name the HoH after another DS9 character, despite the insistence from the other corner of the room that she had the color scheme of a Tiffany lamp.

Guess who won that debate?

Now, however, I had a bargaining chip. I proffered a deal in which we could bring home two new family members … IF one of them would be named Keiko. And, just like that, she had managed to allow me to talk myself into adopting two kittens.

#4niRLM9)*::Xs5!!! (Me again.)

Just between us, it didn’t really require much scheming or arm-twisting on her part. We were well into the acceptance phase of the Head of the Household’s departure. It was time for the fog to lift.

It’s been only a week, but Keiko and Lexi — whose name was arrived at subconsciously after seeing the cast credits of a Hallmark mystery movie — al5606,,,,,…………………..-∏ºready show signs of being in charge.

At the moment, for instance, one is in my lap and the other has somehow figured out how to summon Siri on this laptop … which I find amazing, because I hadn’t realized until just now that this computer comes with Siri.

But it does give me an idea.

“Hey Siri … how do I keep kittens off my keyboard?”

“Hmmm. I don’t think I can help you with that.”

This is going to be a work in progresssssssssssssssssss.