Life with birds

Sitting at my desk, I heard the sound of a bird flying into an office window. Darn it. It happens sometimes, but at least it didn't sound like it hit very hard. Took me another couple of minutes to realize the bird was in the room, and hit the window from this side.
There followed several minutes of closing blinds so it wouldn't try to fly through the windows again, and opening doors so it could fly through them. One door I opened let the cat in, and he took a great interest in our new house bird.
Poor birdie - it flew up on top of the laundry cabinets, then into and all around the living room with the cat bounding behind in hot pursuit, and me in pursuit of the cat. It perched on the arm of a couch and I almost picked it up but no, off it flew again.
Finally came back into the kitchen and perched up high on an open cabinet door over the stove, and next to the kitchen door where it probably came in. I had parted the bug curtains so that it could fly out easily, and I sat at the kitchen table saying, "You're almost there, you're almost there."
The cat walked by looking disgusted because he had lost the bird and did not look up to see it. Yay.
The bird was looking at the door with the bug curtains, and you could see it was thinking, thinking, thinking, and watching the birds flying around outside.
Finally it bucked up its courage, took off ... and flew into the top of the bug curtain, and spiraled down to the the top of the milk crate where I keep the dog towels.
"You're almost there!" I said again.
It sat there for another minute.
Then it hopped down to the threshhold of the door, sat there a second, and walked out.
Turned right, and that was the last we saw of it.
We being me and the dog.
I think it might have been a female house finch, but the beak didn't look right. Too pointy. Darn. I sit here poring over my bird book and still confuse purple finches with house finches.
But I do believe I saw a ruby crowned kinglet yesterday. First one this year!