When we finally sold our apartment in Kahala and moved out here full-time in March 1990, we discovered that Hiwa's family had moved away and left her to fend for herself. She had taken up residence up on the roof of our house, where she would spend hours at a time, but quickly agreed to move inside and become a regular part of our household. Our best guess is that she was a little more than a year old when we adopted her.

At that time, our feline family consisted of Miki (the senior calico, still with us today), Kua (our second calico), and Kolo (a beautiful classic gray tabby and Kaaawa adoptee), all inside cats.

Hiwa loved to play, but arriving as an adult, never did get along too well with the other cats, except for Buster, who arrived on the scene a bit later.