This morning, I woke to squeaky mews and the feeling of tiny paws on my chest, neck and face. It’s been four days since my family adopted Siegfried and Odette, a pair of kittens rescued from across the island from each other, only to become fast friends in foster care.

After we lost Maoler at the end of last month, my mother and brother returned home to a flat that was, for the first time in over two decades, without at least one pet. My mum was released from the chores that came with spoilt cats—tasks that used to take up a lot of time and energy, and that she would sometimes complain about—but the free time did not make up for the emptiness of a feline-free household.

The grief for Maoler still remains, but my mother and brother had started entertaining the thought of adopting a cat again. My return to my childhood home this week—a visit between work trips abroad, while my cat boys are well cared for by a friend—was the nudge from idea to action. Scrolling through the Facebook page of the cat rescuer who had led Salty and Begbie to us, a collage of photos caught my attention: two kittens peering at the camera from a cat tree, one a tiny tabby girl, another a little black kitten who seemed, as kittens often do, to be made up almost entirely of ears.

I got in touch, expressing interest. A day later, after a short home visit, the two babies joined our family. They’re named Siegfried and Odette, a reference to Swan Lake; my Mandarin-speaking father has no issue pronouncing “Siegfried” because there’s a French horn solo in the ballet that he’s more than familiar with. We’ve quite quickly started calling him Siggy, because it seems to fit a naughty, springy kitten who dashes here and there with his stumpy tail in the air. Odette, meanwhile, is a curious little princess who eats in small, dainty portions that need to be protected from her gluttonous adopted sibling.

We’ve been cat people for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are of feeding community cats under my grandparents’ HDB block with my grandfather, who’d kept up a daily feeding schedule until the construction works from lift upgrading chased all the cats away. My mum had cared for cats for the best part of the last twenty years, but never such tiny ones. We decided that the kittens are too tiny to be allowed to roam around the flat right away; there are too many nooks and crannies for such little ones to hide in. The master bedroom, with an en-suite bathroom where we could install a litter box, was deemed the best fit. It’s the room I’m staying in while home this week, and my experience with caring for Houdini since he was about eight weeks old made me the de facto kitten expert of the family. My transition into the role of kitten big sister/mother was natural and seamless.

I’m a non-discriminatory cat slave. I will love and pet and coo over cats of all breeds and all ages. Case in point: a few days after my arrival in Chiang Mai earlier this month, I went to a supermarket to buy premium immune system-boosting cat treats to carry around in case I met street cats who could do with some high-quality nutrition. But there’s a special magic to raising kittens. They’re cute as heck and haven’t yet learnt the sass and backchat you get from older brats. It never stops feeling special when a kitten, pure sunshine and simple innocence, chooses you.

I once met a woman who described herself as a medium (but who later turned out to be leader of a cult, long story). She’d visited me with a friend, back when Houdini was not much older than Siegfried and Odette are now. He’d been very curious about the visitors, running around the room and climbing into laps. She’d claimed that Houdini had a “higher soul” and that he’d come to “save” me. “He’s here to remind you to live simply,” she’d told me in her Malaysian-accented Mandarin. “To eat well when you’re eating, sleep well when you’re sleeping, play hard when you’re playing.” I don’t remember much of what she’d said about me but I remember that. I didn’t need a medium to be the one to say it, but it was a useful reminder all the same.

I napped most of today, catching up on days of (self-inflicted) sleep deprivation, because the kittens kept wanting to nap on me, curled up under chin or on my chest, so there wasn’t much else for me to do. Instead of doomscrolling on social media, I sat and watched them eat kitten food, trying to make sure Siggy didn’t steal too much of Odette’s share. I stroked tiny heads and scratched behind disproportionately oversized ears. The weekend vanished and I didn’t do any of the things I’d intended to do, but it doesn’t really matter. It was healing bliss.

The way the kittens curl up against my body or sit between my feet while I brush my teeth show how much they trust me. They’ve decided that I’m safe and a protector, that they can crawl up on my shoulders and trust that I won’t shove them off or let them fall. There are many ways in which my desire to be everything to everyone, to take care of and fix things, no longer serve me and need to be addressed. But raising kittens satisfies my need to be needed with very few side effects. There’s no way to have a toxic relationship with kittens, because your kindness will be repaid many times over with their unguarded love.