Frank Boudreaux

I love these photos of my best friend, Kate.  The one of her looking out over a Colorado mountain lake, kneeling at its utter majesty, illustrates Kate's fundamental humility, curiosity, and open wonder of our world.  Her surrender to the landscape is as much a vision as the landscape itself.

And, like any authentic cowgirl, Kate knows the right moment to throw back a sip of Early Times on a mountain hike.  (Just look at the relief...)

Kate, I love you, gal.  I'll drink a swig of bourbon to the hope that we walk these mountains the rest of our lives!

Jess Boyd

Kate is the Katiest Kate I know.
She makes Kate Kate.
Kate is not a Kathy, nor Katherine, nor Kitty
(although occasionally a Kat)
but she Kates the Kate out of Kate.

She also pulls off tomboy better than anyone I have ever met in my entire life.

Sky Switser

Kate Kita is awesome because:
Yes, she has a firecrotch!

Caroline Amy Kita

My sister Kate is left-handed

She can bake a great pecan pie

She always sees the good in people

She wants to make the world a beautiful place

She listens

She never forgets where she came from

She has incredible inner strength

She speaks her mind

She likes to play

She is loyal

She is fearless

She loves with her whole heart

She likes to take care of people

She wants everyone to be happy

She challenges herself

She lights up a room

She believes

She is a writer

She is an actor

She is an artist

She is beautiful

My sister Kate can fly

Emily

Watch me ramble on about why living with Kate is rad.

(Thank you, Blogger, for choosing that still for the video. It's very flattering.)

Nick Capodice

 "Kate's so great, she knows the scoop. When she brushes her teeth, it goes BEE-DOOP."

Courtney Scarborough

I think that Kate Kita is one of the most genuine people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.  If I could snap my fingers and become a little more like Kate, I would (and not only for the likely increase in bra size). 

Brenna Farrell

Kate Kita is a straight shooter! And a true athlete--she's naturally coordinated, tough, and not afraid to get dirty. When I think of Kate, I think of the outdoors. And running! And laughing! And exploring! 

Katy Kassler

Top Ten Reasons I’m Jealous of Kate Kita:

 

10.) Emily loves her best.

9.) She has my ideal figure. Truly! I have seen most of her bits and bobs and they are all divine.

8.) We’re both from Buffalo, but she’s from the GOOD part...

7.) We have the same initials, but her name is undeniably cuter—it just sounds snappy!

6.) She’s a cowgirl.

5.) When Kate talks to you, she makes you feel like you’re adorable and witty and wonderful.

4.) Kate has an amazing family of friends.

3.) Red hair. Duh.

2.) She’s brave! She up and moved to a completely different part of the country and created a new life there! Who DOES that!?

1.) Prairie dogs.

Emily

Kate is very stylish.

Michael Bell

I just have a warm fuzzy feeling that she was beautiful, solid - a rock for you and Frank, surprisingly gymnastic, and I have a mental picture of her from two photos: as the centrepiece one of three babes (with you and Bunz) in Loch Ness (attached), and another of her windswept with Frank on the campanile or cupola in Florence - where I think she did a handstand (wasn't that also her thing? - unless restrained she would feel compelled to go upside down at public monuments)

Christine "Bunz" Larsen

John Henry Boudreaux

1. The woman is too great to be encompassed by one name.  So I call her: Kate Kita.  Kateskavitch.  Kathl**n (I don't dare write it all out just I would write G*d) The Governor.  

2.  Kate's energy, compassion and curiosity expands every room she enters.  She is a writer, a thinker, and actor, director, listener, philosopher, drinker, partier and inexplicably my friend and I sleep better with that knowledge.

Elizabeth Boudreaux

Kate is awesome, because she is natural with children.  She knows how to talk to them, how to listen to them, how to make kids laugh.  She knows how to teach children, how to keep their attention.  She knows how to let the parents know that she really cares about your children, that she is not just asking about them to be polite.  It is a gift to love children, and I admire that about Kate.

Frank Philbrick

Kate Kita warmed this old ballplayer's heart one bleary morning in McGolrick park.  Sipping on terrible beer in eggshell blue cans, coughing on chunks of Dice's bloody mary and entertaining old Polish couples was one way to spend a Sunday.  Kate would sip, but never stop, and I knew as no one else there what the inside of her shoulder felt like as it whirled again and again.  The little pops and slips that let you know your love of something is breaking you down.  Kate just played through it, right into my highest esteem.

Megan Gaffney

It is not merely her beauty -- which makes me take in a deep breath when I see her (or rather, it is in spite of her beauty, which, in truth, might have made me secretly seething with envy, and maybe, in truth, it even did the first couple of times I saw her) -- that makes Kate Kita an exceptional, magical, inspring human being.

 

It is the depths of her thoughts, and her willingness to dive down into them with me, making me at once less alone in this blithering world, and more... well, more EVERYTHING. The way Kate explains the world, the fabric that is woven as she speaks, makes me more terrified, more excited, more enchanted.  It is the words she writes, that expose myself to me, sometimes in a harrowing way, sometimes in an uplifting way, but always in a never-before-thought-of way.  It is the way she makes everything more fun, because she is WILLING. This willingness pushes Kate to jump, hike, write, laugh, dance. When I see her so willing, I am willing too.

 

She makes me a better person by her example. I wish so, so, so much that I had had more time living in the same city as she lives. Confounding timing left me moving back to Brooklyn, just as she left for a magical mountain land.. It is my greatest hope that somehow, some way, I get to live close to her one of these days. I can only imagine, by the way she affects me from afar, the wondrous turn by life would take were she close by!

Kat Randazzo

"I guess most memorable Kate memory was shortly after I met you all. I had a party on my roof and you two showed up in cowboy boots, short skirts and cowboy hats. and something about your winning personalities didn't make me want to push you off! it was cute (obviously), and not annoying."

Matt Urban

"I drove 6 hours with my friend, Tony, to see Counting Crows play a gig in a banquet hall in Lackawanna, NY. Hey, look, it was the 90's ... shit happens. Knowing Lackawanna was somewhere near her hometown of Buffalo, I looked up Kate and asked if she wanted to hang out with Tony and I after the concert. We had some laughs, and some beer.

I should have known what would happen. I had spent at least one year at NYU with Kate by this point, so I was well aware of her superior beauty both inside and out. I should have warned Tony. It was my fault.

Tony completely fell under Kate's spell. Whenever she went for another drink, he would whisper to me "She is the most exquisite creature I have ever encountered." Every time she got up.

Now, I attributed this new found infatuation to long driving ... drinking ... sobering up ... and more roadtripping. It can wear you down. Emotions run high. When Tony talked about her the whole ride home, I thought it was adorable. But when he continued to ask me about her the following year, I felt sad for what I had done to my friend.

Time passed ... I lost touch with Tony. I just heard he is getting married soon, so I can only assume that Kate's magic has finally and mercifully released him from its grip. The lesson I hope you, dear reader, glean from this story ... warn friends upon introducing them to Kate Kita. They may never be the same."

Joe Randazzo

"I have always found it nice the way Kate Kita squints. It conveys a shy kind of thoughtfulness that is not often come across."

Emily

I like that Kate looks like the Virgin Mary: