Please don’t take my remarks about Darla’s impending sainthead literally. The Catholic Church has already assigned the title of patron saint of animals to St. Francis of Assissi, and rightly so. Still, if you’re looking for someone who has fed and named generations of individual hummingbirds and prepared and served quartered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to a family of foxes (I’m not sure if she removed the crusts), you need look no farther than Darla.

Now that winter has arrived with its snow and ice and freezing rain, you won’t be surprised, I’m sure, when I tell you that yet another stray cat has made its way to Darla’s door and, contrary to all her protestations, been adopted.

She says otherwise; he can come and go as he pleases. This entails Darla constantly hopping up and down to let him in and out. He is a tom, intact. When I asked if she was going to have him neutered, she said she can’t get him into a cat carrier, and that he has already drawn blood with his claws more than once. Maybe after he has become more tame.

Sternutation is a formal word for sneezing. If you sternutate three times in a row, it means good luck is coming.

Or it could be the cat you’re allergic to.

This stray brings to mind Crispin, a Maine coon cat who was born feral and lived out of doors until a couple on Hurricane Road in Keene decided to adopt him. For Crispin’s protection, they decided to make an indoor cat of him. After all, there are plenty of wild animals in Keene who prey on cats.

“Crispin will live longer as an indoor cat,” they said.

Crispin, however, did not see it that way. In the first place, he refused to recognize the name “Crispin,” except to mean “dinner’s served.” Moreover, he loathed living inside a house. He spent all of his time looking out the window. His attempts to escape were in vain. What’s the use? he asked himself. He began to let himself go, stopped grooming himself and started looking seedy. He would not use the litter box.

As Crispin became increasingly despondent, the couple — let’s call them Tim and Jane — consulted their veterinarian, who in turn referred them to a pet behaviorist.

The behaviorist advised Tim and Jane to buy cat toys and to interact with Crispin at regularly scheduled play times.

Crispin, who would not even glance at the toys, did not see his own behavior as a problem. No, for Crispin the problem was that all of the chipmunks and small birds he liked to chase and kill were on the other side of the door.

Eventually he threw himself off an upstairs balcony, landed on his feet in the snow, and ran deep into the woods, never to be seen again by Ted, Jane or the animal behaviorist. Live free or die. Or live free and die. Whatever. Problem solved, according to Crispin. Tim and Jane are still making payments to Care Credit to pay off the veterinarian and the behaviorist.

Would Crispin have fared better had he gone to a true cat psychiatrist? A psychiatrist would have Crispin’s interests at heart rather than Tim’s and Jane’s. Tim and Jane, let’s face it, probably wanted to change Crispin’s behavior in part for their own convenience.

Felines are very different from humans. What is normal for a cat would be considered psychopathic in a human or dog.

If you imagine, for example, that Crispin lies awake at night wondering how Jane and Tim are doing, or worrying about their Care Credit bill, you are sadly mistaken.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with Crispin; he is simply a cat.

So, about the late Peter, Darla’s diabetic former stray. I wrote that he “passed into another realm,” rather than stating simply that he died, because Peter has appeared to Darla’s husband in a dream.

“The new cat’s name is Ezra,” Peter said.

They’ll have to keep him now.

Have a good week.