Remember the sister kittens we adopted just before Christmas?

Well, we took them in for their third vaccination yesterday, and (SURPRISE), it turns out that Ember (the one on the right) is not a sister, but a brother. The other couple who adopted the other two of the litter discovered that they had one of each, which meant that we did as well, and upon inspection, yup, things are sprouting down there that were less obvious when they were six weeks old.

So we’ve been misgendering him for several weeks; hopefully it won’t give him a life-long complex.

We’ve decided not to rename him; it’s not clear that combustion byproducts of wood have a gender (though they probably do in German), but now we’ve got to get used to saying “him” instead of “her,” and “he” instead of “she.” Fortunately it’s not a long-held habit. We’re looking at him with new eyes now. It’s funny, because he’s the smallest (he was probably the runt), but he’s fearless, and loves to attack his big sister.