Page "Honor Harrington" Paragraph 13

Honor is one of the few people adopted by a Sphinxian treecat, an telempathic intelligent indigenous species — who spent much of their history with humanity scouting and concealing their true abilities from mankind.

The adoption process is involuntary and uncontrollable and strikes like ' Love at First Sight ', known to human experience, but strikes much more powerfully.

The bonding is more of a recognition of something that was missing suddenly being complete and so right that life without the new bond is unthinkable.

So striking suddenly, the mutual adoptions are essentially an empathic life-bond, and hers occurred during Honor's childhood ( age 11 Earth years ), a rarity since most adoptions involve adult humans.

She had dubbed her ' cat Nimitz ( after World War II Admiral Chester W. Nimitz ), although to his own people he has been known as " Laughs Brightly ", a member of a clan that lives near her home, and in the treecat community, formerly being one of their scouts by occupation, as are most adopted cats since they most often interact with the humans they are spying upon.