Nap Time

Well, our dog, Bludger, has a basket full of toys... but to the new kittens, it's a great place for a nap.

David Smith Photo

Left to right, that's Thing Two, Gretchen Wilson, and Fat Louie. Thing One is absent from this picture.

How did we get these kittens? I mean that rhetorically, but I'll give you the answer anyway...

Back in June or so, a gray cat started showing up raiding our cats' left over food. (We had 4 intentional cats - Binky, Meester, Seven, and Eightball - plus a rescued stray - Trouble - at the time). After a while, we noticed she was pregnant... and, not wanting to have more wild cats around the house, we coaxed her into the house to have her kittens there.

I named the new cat Snagglepuss because she reminds me of a cartoon character of the same name.

The kittens were born August 4. We thought one (Gretchen) was going to die - she was so small and not competing effectively for nursing. But Rebekah kept picking her up and putting her on a teat and she thrived. Still, she usually doesn't sleep with the other kittens now - a reaction to always being on the bottom of the pile?

Rachel named the kittens Edgar, Fat Louie, Thing One, and Thing Two... but it appears that they're all female, so Edgar was renamed Gretchen Wilson.

The plan was that Rachel would keep Gretchen and we had homes lined up for the others... but tregedy struck. The little stray, Trouble got sick - turned out to be leukemia, which is contagious in cats. She was so far along that we had to have her put down.

We got all the other adult cats in to the vet to be checked and vaccinated. Everyone else was OK except Meester. He's asymptomatic. He's Rebekah's special pet. So we're keeping him alive for now and trying to keep him separate from the others. (The disease is spread in saliva and urine, so we mainly make sure he doesn't eat out of the same dish as the others).

But, we don't really know if the kittens are disease-free. This has put the plans to send them to their new homes on hold until they get checked and vaccinated in early November. Wish them luck!

For now, we have 10 cats. Yikes!