I thought you might be needing this.

I like that we now have a little tradition on this blog in which I post pictures of cute animals and you tell me that they aren't cuter than the baby panda.

I present you with this teenage river otter/single parent holding its blind, helpless baby otter/dumpling with pink paws. She wants your love, people, and not your judgment. She's just a kid who made a stupid mistake, OK?

By the way, have you read The Ring of Bright Water trilogy by Gavin Maxwell? When life was really sucktastic in London, this memoir - particularly the first volume - filled me with indescribable joy (the last two volumes are really poignant, but I needed a good cry). How can you not love a book about a man who moves to a remote corner of Scotland to raise otters and a host of other creatures?

Ever since then, I've wanted a baby otter of my very own, even if it means I have to drag Fauxhawk to an abandoned shack on the Scottish coast where we will live without Starbucks and heat but will still have our otters.