Two days before my younger brother’s twelfth birthday, he broke his neck. He’d been running around in a church gymnasium, playing a game of tag, when he tripped and ran head-first into a wall. He’s since learned how to throw his hands in front of himself if he’s falling or flying, but that day, he didn’t. He was temporarily paralyzed from the neck down until the swelling around his fractured vertebrae went down. Even then, though, he had months of physical therapy ahead of him until he’d be able to gain back his full motor function. As an incentive to get him to go to physical therapy on the more difficult days when he got frustrated, my mom promised that once he was able to leave the rehab center and go back home, he could get a kitten - an orange one (that’s his favorite color). This is Ginger. She was a kitten when we got her and she still looks like a kitten now, having stopped growing when she was around six months old.