LostWoods Blog

I grew up on a farm in northeastern Colorado. As far back as I can remember we had cats. They were barn cats who only came in the house when one of us kids would sneak them in. We never spayed or neutered our cats — the population was kept under control by predators and accidents. So every year there were kittens around.

One summer when I was in elementary school we had two black mom-cats, Perky and Sassy. Perky was a wily older girl (probably only 3 or so, but for the farm that was old.) Sassy was her daughter from the previous summer’s litter. Both of them were pregnant at the same time. Sassy was the first to deliver, having her babies in a shed close to the house — 7 black and gray (yes, I know, I’d call them blue now, but they were gray then!) kittens. Perky apparently thought they were hers and she’d steal them, carrying them off to the shop a little further away from the house. Sassy would go retrieve them. A day or so later, Perky had her kittens in the shop — 4 more black and gray kittens. This did not stop her from stealing Sassy’s babies though. At any point in the day we’d see mom-cats carrying kittens back and forth between the shop and the shed. It’s a wonder any of the kittens survived. After a couple days, my mother and I staged a rare intervention into the lives of the barn cats — we moved all 11 (we could no longer tell who belonged to whom) and their mothers to the shed and shut the door. The moms settled down and co-mothered the kittens. I think this was the bunch that included one of my favorite kittens, TB (tiny beast) but that’s another story.

I was reminded of all this silliness last night when I was taking pictures of the Kali’s kittens, the BBs. Talia had been allowed to leave the guest room for some “me time” — something I’ve learned Talia needs to be happy. When Ce’Nedra starting crying because I’d taken her away from her bed, grandma Talia came running, every bit as concerned about Ce’nedra as she would have been if Ce’Nedra had been one of Talia’s kittens. A few minutes later, after I’d taken all the kittens’ photos, I went downstairs to download them to my pc. Ken tells me that Talia then went into our bedroom and tried to steal one of Kali’s kittens. He stopped her and she went back to her room. Next thing you know, I discover that Cyradis (one of Talia’s kittens) is missing from her bed. Talia is in with Kali’s kittens and sure enough, she’s taken Cyradis with her.  I took Cyradis back and before I could close the door, Talia ran in, grabbed Zakath and headed for the other room. Kali came in to see what was stirring up her kids and snuggled in to feed them. Although I took Zakath back, Talia apparently thought that soothing the upset BBs was more important, so she settled in to nurse them, too. (Click on the picture below to see a bigger version.)

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do. I’d planned to let Talia and her kittens get settled for a few days, then move Kali and kittens back to the guest room — a quieter and safer place for kittens than my room. But I’m don’t know if co-parenting is going to be good for Talia’s babies. Despite all this silliness so far, they are growing by leaps and bounds. There’s only 2.6 oz difference between Zakath and Taiba — and between Taiba and Garion there’s 1.4 oz, so it’s not like the BBs are that much bigger than the MBs. I have to think about this… In the meantime they are separate and all the kittens are doing very well. It ought to be a crazy place when these 9 babies get big enough to start romping through the house!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 10:35 am and is filed under NFCs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.