Kittens, kittens, everywhere, in the flowers, in the chair....
It's been quite a week for these kittens.
They started spending a little more time on the front porch instead of under the porch, so we started feeding them up there. It's kind of cute how we put the food down and they slowly climb up over the edge one at a time to partake, or even greet us at the front door in the mornings, not so patiently waiting for their chow.
Yesterday was a pretty exciting day. Socks (the black one) was missing all day and mama cat was acting really weird. We assumed it was because one of her babies had disappeared. We discovered later that the mama cat was in heat, doing her best moves to attract all the local boys and letting them have their way with her. Just what I need... more cats.
But, Ashlee was determined this was NOT going to happen. First off, mama cat already has a family and chances are, based on the size and color of the two Tom cats having their way with mama, those are her brothers. I'm not sure if cats are in to that sort of thing, but one never knows. So she spent most of the evening chasing off the Tom cats and was determined to shield the babies eyes (and bodies, since surely a Tom cat is what hauled off Socks) from such vile things.
So she brought them all in the house until I got too worried about them defiling my carpet like they do my flower pots and hauled them back outside.
Well, the day had a happy ending. We took a board off the front porch to see what was going on under there and didn't find anything but a couple of scared kittens, a mama cat and an injured Tom cat. We worried Socks was under there injured. We scared off the Tom cat, but mama and her babies weren't budging, not for all the tuna in the world.
Ashlee had left her blanket outside and she went out to get it about 10:30 last night. She could hear some serious meowing going on and the kids went to investigate and found baby Socks in a Russian Olive tree at grandma's house. But with that Tom cat under the porch, mama wasn't coming out, nor would Socks go in, so we put him in Arilee's bedroom with her for the night.
The next morning, we reunited mama and baby. It took a bit of sniffing, but it wasn't long before mama was licking her baby and Socks was rolling around with a smile on his face in absolute joy. Even his siblings had to do a bit of sniffing to make sure it was really him, then it was back to biting each others jugular, as if he'd never left.
I don't know why we're keeping these kittens, but it looks like we are. Ashlee has concluded that the boys (we're still not sure what is what, they all look the same to us, so they are either all boys or all girls) will get big and wander off to terrorize the neighborhood eventually anyway, so why bother sending them to a new home.
We still haven't decided for sure if Stella is pregnant. She is getting big, but it could be because she eats constantly, which also means she could be pregnant, but she doesn't "feel" pregnant - as if I am a vet. I will give her a couple more weeks just in case. We need to get the mama cats fixed - preferably before one of those Tom's dirty deeds takes root - but I'm cringing at the $70 (each) it will cost to do so for cats that aren't even mine. But we are warning Ashlee now - these are the ONLY kittens that we will ever keep. Any more absolutely MUST find a new home. This is not a cat farm. If only they were worth money....
No comments:
Post a Comment