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These are the kittens!  Guess I’ll have to stop calling them that, they are now about 16 months old.  But in this picture they’re itty, bitty, two-week-old kittens. 

Someone I know who is into animal rescue in general and cats in particular was looking for a volunteer—some folks had adopted a stray cat who was almost ready to give birth.  They wanted to keep the mother cat, but weren’t sure how their dogs would react to the kittens.  Their vet said they’d find a home for the babies.  They just needed someone to give mother and kittens a temporary home until the kitties were weaned. 

We’ve got two dogs, too, but they’re used to cats, and they don’t go upstairs (Bailey can’t even manage the stairs with his barrel torso and spindly legs), so I had a place where I could keep them isolated from the rest of the house.  The kitties were due the week I was already planning to take off from work to spend at home.   It worked out perfectly.  Toby was 18, Duncan was 1, but our other 18 year old had recently died, so we were kinda in the market for another cat anyway.  I had missed my chance to adopt Toby’s sister when I got him, and I had missed my chance to adopt Duncan’s sister, but I had long wanted to get a pair of littermates.  So I figured we would keep two of the kittens.  She had three, and, well, which one were we going to reject?  So we wound up keeping them all!

From left to right:  Nero was the first one born, he’s a tuxedo cat.  (Mom picked the name, based on the Italian word for black.)  Tula is the tortoiseshell, and the only girl out of five cats and two dogs.  She was the last one born, and has been making up for lost time ever since.  Claude was the middle born, and though it’s hard to tell in this picture, he was the biggest from the start.  Claude now looks just like a ragdoll, but the points took a while to come in.  Such a variety—but they really did have the same mom!  (Though I suspect mom was rather promiscuous.  She had a certain operation before even leaving the “home for unwed cat mothers.”)

Next week I hope to post a picture of the triplets at 1 year old.  My how they’ve grown!  They were and still are a complete delight!  There’s nothing like having a bunch of kittens that actually get along with each other chasing each other around the house. 

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Date: 04/13/2006 Views: 84