Catnip Lullabies - A Tale of Kittens

I don't know about you but I've never heard of communal kitten raising.  Until recently.

See, I have this problem.  I adore cats.  That's not really the problem though, how shall I put this....they love me?  No, that's not the problem either.  Hmmm.....let me think a moment....

Maybe it's writing about kittens on a writing blog, but that would a problem for you maybe it's my blog so I imagine I can write whatever I want.  The problem, I THINK....is that cats have a tendency to create these oh so cute little clones of themselves that you just want to hold onto and love and hug and kiss and snuggle.  I call these little clones kittens.  Cats are like liver.  There's no "eh".  You either love them or you just well don't.

My problem started, ooooh about three years ago.  His name is Eddie Vedder.  Honestly, he's not a pretty cat, but we love him.  Once upon a time he belonged to the postman.  The postman lives down the street from us.  Eddie doesn't like the postman.  So now he lives here.  Kinda.  He definitely bring his dates here, and Eddie?  He's a stud.  He has LOTS of dates.  Eddie's best side you see when he walks away.  The only truly remarkable thing about him is his balls.  Sorry, I said it.  They're cute.  One is black.  One is white.  Maybe it makes me crazy but it's absolutely adorable.

The problem though began to escalate.  Consider the layers of an onion if you will, and you might start to get the picture I'm painting somewhere along the line.  This is Half Tail.  Look closely and you'll see that I'm not subtle with coming up with names for stray toms.  How can you not love a big 'ol Tom with half a tail?  The other cat is one of his many progeny. 

Follow along now if you will.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of Zombie or Gwenny, but this is Courage, their brother.  The problem with all of these cats is that they're very much feral.  They will sit in my doorway and coerce me with soft little noises to feed them, but will they reciprocate with allowing a pat to the head or a scratch behind the ears?  Not a chance.  Sooo, all of you people out there who are rabid supports of the spay and neuter program, catch these suckers and I'd be glad to have them denied future kitten bearing.

Then there was Whole Tail, Day, Dawn and Diary.  Yes my daughter has a fixation with zombie movies.  I don't know what ever happened to Day and Dawn but Diary......oh Diary......she stayed around to play games and mooch off the huge hearts of people who cannot stand to think of a creature going hungry.  And of course to use my deck as a nursery.  Below are Lucifer, Bear and Ugly Betty, delivered to us on Halloween night.  Thank GOD, they're not knocked up.  Yet.

This is Mia and Muffin.  They're sisters and this is how you see them.  If there's one.  There's the other.  They got knocked up the same night.  They got huge together.  They ate me out of house and home together, and eventually they had their kittens together.  Eight of them.  

Meanwhile, Diary, yes, she's still here, had her own little bundle of adorableness.  Four more kittens who are currently residing under my riding lawn mower.  Not fun I assure you.  Whenever I have to cut the grass, I have to take an extra ten minutes to clear them out from under it.  This was one of the rare times they held still to be photographed, obviously they were distracted.

So count with me now, eight and four.  Yes.  I have twelve little bundles of cuteness distributed in various locations around my yard.  All was well until last Sunday.  Muffin and Mia had hidden their babies in a copse of thick bushes at the corner of our yard.  My daughter had prom Saturday and in all the preparations, I didn't have time to check on the kittens like we had been.  Sunday, there were two missing.  Couldn't find them anywhere, and I feared the worst.  Of course one of my favorites was missing too.  The following day five of them were missing.  Of course, where they're hidden is very close to the road and the dog walkers, so I figured that they'd run into an untimely end and yes, my little heart was breaking a little bit.  Well a lot actually.

We were down to three kittens for DAYS.  I checked all over the yard for the others, watched the mama cats religiously to see if they led me to the others but nothing, they seemed only interested in the three.  

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I go outside this morning to check on the three and alas.....there are once more eight.  Have no idea where they were or what they were doing, but I'm soooo glad their back, regardless of my grumbling about how much it's costing to feed them all.  So that's my writing adventure for today, I leave you with......

Cuteness.